Marylyn Abbott
The gardener, writer and opera host discusses creating gardens at opposite ends of the earth and why structure and wild flowers are now music to her ears
GWORDS ANNIE GATTI
PORTRAIT CHARLIE HOPKINSON ardeners, as a rule, are a resilient lot. But Australian gardener and writer Marylyn Abbott, who has made two outstanding gardens on opposite sides of the world, takes resilience to a new level. She grew up in the countryside in New South Wales, Australia, where, she explains, “The men used to sit at one end of the table and talk wool prices and futures, and the women at the other end talked church guild and gardens.” An only child, she studied History and English, and then Library Science, at university but at the age of 20 married a sheep farmer and spent the next seven years working on the land, and trying to make a garden that was repeatedly invaded by the sheep.
The marriage ended and she moved to Sydney where her organisational skills and flair for marketing were spotted by the Sydney Opera House and Marylyn became their marketing and tourism manager. Meanwhile she had immersed herself in English gardening books, especially those by Rosemary Verey and Penelope Hobhouse and their influence is clear to see in her romantic transformations of Kennerton Green in Mittagong, New South Wales, and her Hampshire garden, West Green House.
Having also made a subtropical garden for her beach house north of Sydney and steeped in knowledge of tough, hard-working plants (which became the subject of her 2011 book, The Resilient Garden), Marylyn came to England in 1993 in search of a new garden in a kinder climate. “I wanted to buy an old place that needed a bit of love, with land for a garden where I could grow a proper herbaceous border,” she says. Then she saw West Green House, a 1720s manor house with ten acres of derelict gardens, and was instantly smitten. “The house was enchanting and although the garden was a wilderness, overrun with brambles, I could make out the beautiful follies and the excellent sightlines.” It wasn’t until her second visit, when she’d already bought the 99-year lease from the National Trust, that she realised just how much love – and money – she would have to give it.
The walled garden, which had been re-designed by the Scottish landscape designer Robert Weir Schultz around 1900, had lost most of its structural hedging and was smothered in pink cranesbill. The lake had disappeared into a marshy swamp and most of the follies, made by architect Quinlan Terry, had to be rebuilt. It took four years of soil improvement before she could even start to plant. Then shortly after she reinserted the box hedging in the parterre she lost all 75,000 plants to blight. Undaunted, she successfully took cuttings from a few unaffected plants and started all over again. All this, while running what had become one of Australia’s most visited gardens. How did she keep control of both, I ask? She chuckles. “Lots of yelling over phones, in the middle of the night.” It’s also clear that Marylyn’s warmth and feistiness has attracted an entourage of loyal friends and supporters.
It was the theatrical setting and natural acoustics of the enclosed terraced lawn adjoining the west façade of the house, one of Marylyn’s favourite parts of the garden, that inspired the first concert – an Australasian celebration led by the Australian Chamber Orchestra – at West Green House. With Marylyn’s connections in the industry, an ambitious programme of opera and other classical music has been established, and West Green now has its own orchestra, an elegant glass-sided auditorium, and midday concerts as well as the celebrated torch-lit evening operatic performances (this year Strauss features for the first time with a production of Ariadne auf Naxos).
On opera nights guests can picnic beside the illuminated lake and it is this part of the garden that has occupied Marylyn since she sold Kennerton Green, in 2007. “There was all this wildness round the sides of the lake but if you wanted to go for a promenade, there was no beginning or end, just dead ends,” she says. The new promenade starts with a river of Iris sibirica (Marylyn favours massed plantings in many of her designs) and leads via five wooden bridges to a topiary garden where the clipped shrubs from her 2014 Chelsea Show garden have now found a home. But here they will emerge from a carpet of wild flowers where, with an eye to her midsummer opera nights, Marylyn plans to insert lots of Californian poppies. “Structure and wild flowers, I love that look,” she adds.
Ironically, perhaps one of Marylyn’s greatest challenges – to become a permanent UK resident – has been out of her control. Happily, residency was granted last year, and now she can relax in her two European gardens, a private white garden on the coast of Majorca, and the shared theatrical masterpiece that is West Green House. USEFUL INFORMATION West Green House Gardens, Thackham’s Lane, near Hartley Wintney, Hook, Hampshire RG27 8JB. Tel 01252 844611. For details of West Green House’s 2015 opera programme, and to book tickets, visit westgreenhouseopera.co.uk NEXT MONTH Landscape architects Tommaso del Buono and Paul Gazerwitz.