Bateman’s
Former home of Rudyard Kipling, this East Sussex garden is full of historic flourishes and clever ideas
Set in the rolling landscape of the Sussex High Weald, Bateman’s is a 17th-century manor house surrounded by fields, woodland and ancient hedgerows. With its oak beams and mullioned windows it’s a handsome building, which became the home of novelist Rudyard Kipling from 1902 until his death in 1936. Much of the character and design of the 12-acre garden was created by Kipling himself. He was a keen gardener with much to say on the topic in his poem The Glory of the Garden (1911): Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing ‘Oh, how beautiful’ and sitting in the shade While better men than we go out and start their working lives At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives. The formal garden close to the house includes a raised path and lawn, which became known as the Quarterdeck – part of a ship’s upper deck near the stern. Kipling couldn’t join the navy due to his poor eyesight, but in gardening he must have found a rewarding physical outlet. There are remnants of his borders around the edges of the Quarterdeck where in spring the exquisite blooms of Magnolia soulangeana and M. veitchii are joined by the flowers of pulmonaria, scilla, hellebores and primroses. Summer-flowering shrubs include Exochorda macrantha ‘The Bride’, f lanked by a wide range of colourful perennials that keep on blooming well into autumn. Wisteria sinensis, with its scented purple cascades of flowers, and the orange and red tubular flowers of Campsis grandiflora (Chinese trumpet vine) clothe the old stone walls of the house. Autumn is a fabulous time to see
The formal garden includes a raised path and lawn, known as the Quarterdeck
Kipling’s dramatic Pear Allée is an ironwork tunnel cloaked with trained pear trees
patches of pink-flowered autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale, dotted about the garden and to appreciate the abundance of the vegetable beds. The orchard is filled with heritage cultivars of apples, pears and plums alongside more unusual fruit such as medlar and quince. One of the oldest apple trees, ‘Beauty of Bath’, died in 2014 and had to be removed, but grafts were taken so some of its genetic stock can live on. Here you can find Kipling’s dramatic Pear Allée, an ironwork tunnel cloaked with trained pear trees that frames long views back towards the house. A restoration project in 2007 involved taking the allée trees down in order to repair the iron framework, then replanting with new pears of the same cultivars. The Mulberry Garden, named after the black Morus nigra tree at its centre, is enclosed by brick walls and hedges and was originally a cattle yard that Kipling transformed into a potager garden. Shrubs and perennials were added in the 1970s, only to be taken out again in 2009 in order to stay true to Kipling’s original vision of a garden that mixed attractive ornamentals with cut flowers and veg. Now you can find colourful sunflowers and cosmos here, jostling with tomatoes, sweetcorn and lettuce that are left to run to seed to create architectural towers of ruffled leaves. In 1907 Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first English-speaking author to do so. Along with the prize came £7,770, which he put to good use at home – creating a vast lily pond and rose garden. Visitors can still appreciate this tranquil spot, which bursts with fragrance and colour in summer. In his time at Bateman’s, Kipling gradually bought up more of the land that surrounded the house. When his widow gave the house and estate to the National Trust in 1939 it totalled a whopping 300 acres. It’s still possible to wander through the wider estate on waymarked paths, and to experience the fabulous Wild Garden (a tennis court in Kipling’s day). This tamed
wilderness is now filled with trees such as amelanchier and ornamental cherries, underplanted with a mass of springflowering bulbs. These are followed by summer wildflowers and the jungly foliage of gunnera and Darmera peltata. Perhaps the real beauty of Bateman’s lies in the effortless way the garden blends with its rural location. Climb up the steps in the Quarry Garden and you’ll enjoy fabulous views over the garden and its surrounding countryside. It’s here that you’ll appreciate why Kipling loved this place so much; the quiet and solitude would doubtless create the perfect place to write.