‘Our biggest challenge in creating the garden was a lack of time,’ Sir Roy recalls. ‘We both needed to be in London for work but on a Thursday night I’d fill the car with files from the V&A and we’d travel down here, returning to the city on Sunday. We would have a week here at Easter and Christmas and a few weeks in the summer when I used to cut the hedges.’ The soil at The Laskett is rich and well-drained, which allowed the Strongs to grow a huge variety of plants. Although the couple worked in harmony there was one thing on which they couldn’t agree. ‘My wife hated anyone coming to see the garden when I was becoming known as a landscape designer. When that happened she would pull every curtain in the house and disappear,’ he says. After Julia’s death in 2003, Sir Roy regularly opened the garden to the public. ‘Julia would have hated it, but I think it’s wonderful to share a garden.’
THE SILVER JUBILEE GARDEN
This area was laid out in 1977 to mark the Queen’s 25 years on the throne, and revamped in 2005. At its centre is a sundial from the garden of the society photographer
Sir Cecil Beaton, Sir Roy’s great friend, who was the subject of one of his exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery. In 1968, after the exhibition, Sir Roy spent several weekends at Beaton’s Reddish House in Wiltshire, which opened his eyes to the wonders of gardening. ‘To him I owe my first horticultural stirrings,’ he says.
THE V&A TEMPLE Sir Roy calls The Laskett ‘an autobiographical garden’, and the V&A Temple was built in 1988 just after he left his directorship of the museum. In it there is a plaque by sculptor Simon Verity, with Sir Roy’s profile positioned between those of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
THE ROSE GARDEN This was the first area to be cultivated, in 1974. ‘Its full name is Pierpont Morgan Rose Garden because I paid for it with a fee for a lecture at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York,’ says Sir Roy. ‘I’ve always liked roses and I enjoy their extraordinary history.’
A BIRD’S EYE VIEW The last project was the white and terracotta Belvedere, completed in 2018. A friend kept sending Sir Roy aerial shots of The Laskett, taken from a drone, and he realised what was missing was a way of looking down on it. ‘So I sold some things at Christie’s and built the Belvedere,’ he explains. ‘It’s magical up here – romantic. There’s nothing more to add now, that’s it.’
THE CHRISTMAS ORCHARD Julia and Sir Roy started the orchard on Christmas Eve 1974. It was Julia’s space, where she planted a small collection of historic apple trees. In spring there is beautiful blossom and swathes of bulbs. The memorial urn contains her ashes.