Borde Hill Garden: A Plant Hunter’s Paradise
(Merrell, £40)
THE great garden at Borde Hill in the High Weald of West Sussex has been done proud, and rightly so. The famous Elizabethan house, set in 380 acres of Grade Ii-listed parkland, has within its 35 acres of formal gardens and woodland an historic collection of flowering shrubs and trees gathered from around the world by the garden’s indefatigable creator, Stephenson Robert Clarke (1862–1948).
In garden writer Vanessa Berridge and photographer John Glover, Col Clarke and his descendents, who have loved and nurtured the garden from its inception in 1893 until the present day, have the most devoted biographers. The colonel, variously a businessman, soldier, countryman, gardener, botanist and plant collector, ornithologist and traveller, became a key player in what was a fascinating period in British gardening.
A COUNTRY LIFE article of 1902 reported: ‘Here is natural flower gardening at its very best, and nothing can surpass the charm of those long borders of hardy flowers, which are gay with successive blooms from early spring until the last winds of autumn have blown.’
The influential Irish gardener and writer, William Robinson, who regularly appeared in COUNTRY LIFE, was a neighbour and wrote to Clarke after visiting in 1930: ‘We liked the face of the house and the fine landscapes beyond, and we thought we saw some new friends among the hardy flowers and some very fine trees… We also enjoyed your flower borders and the long walks. Your gardener was most obliging.’
There were family links, too, with Henry Elwes, the galanthophile. In giving access to all the family papers, including correspondence between the colonel and nurserymen, plant hunters and botanical gardens, the present owners, Andrewjohn Stephenson Clarke, great-grandson of the colonel, and his wife, Eleni, have ensured that the story of Borde Hill is brilliantly brought to life. Tiffany Daneff