by The Laird o’Thistle
May 17 2009
As I often do, I began the month of May by watching a favorite clip from the movie version of Camelot, with Guinevere (Vanessa Redgrave) and all the Arthurian courtiers rollicking through meadows and groves singing, “It’s May, it’s May, the lusty month of May… Tra-la!” Then I went out and had a lovely time working in my back garden, in lieu of any more vigorous observance of Beltane. In any case, it seems to be the season of gardens, and so I thought it might be a good time to take a look at Britain’s royal gardens and gardeners… a look that will extend on into my June column.
As in so many facets of British life – like architecture, ahem! – there is a long royal history of patronage and involvement with the creation of gardens. Earlier this month Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attended the celebration of the 250th anniversary of The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, which is located slightly to the west of London along the Thames. Both the queen and her husband are directly descended from the founder of the gardens, Princess Augusta (the widow of “Poor Fred who’s dead” the Prince of Wales, and mother of George III). Both planted the obligatory trees to mark the occasion, albeit the Queen warned her hosts that she was not blessed with the touch for making things grow.
According to the delightful book by Sir Roy Strong (Royal Gardens, Pocket Books, 1992) the living history of the current royal gardens essentially begins with Charles II. When he returned to take the throne in 1660 the fabric of the monarchy had virtually been shredded to bits by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans who held sway during the Commonwealth. (A grim lot they were, with a special loathing for things like Maypoles!) The English Crown Jewels had been broken up and sold off (the Scottish ones having been safely hidden away, survived), the royal palaces and their furnishings had also been badly damaged, with many sold away and otherwise, let go toward ruin. Whitehall, St. James’, Hampton Court, Windsor, and Holyrood all had to be reclaimed, restored, refurbished, and even (at Holyrood) mostly built anew. The late King Charles I’s estimable art collection had also been dispersed, though many pieces were reclaimed over the following few years. And, the royal gardens that had been developed over the centuries by the Plantagenets, Tudors, and early Stuarts had all been basically destroyed.
In the spirit of those times, culturally dominated by the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, gardens were an essential part of the stage setting of any respectable Monarchy. And so Charles II set about providing himself with a fairly grand performance space. Elements of the gardens laid out for him between Whitehall and St. James’ Palace and features of the Great Park at Windsor such as the Long Walk survive to this day. The Mall itself – though much transformed in the era of George IV — began as part of the landscape plan developed by Charles’ French landscape architect, Andre’ Mollet. Within the garden walls of Clarence house there are even surviving bits of the raised walk (including a set of steps) that were part of Mollet’s design for the gardens of St. James’ Palace in the 1660s. The Long Water at Hampton Court Palace also dates to this era. A portrait of the “Merry Monarch” from about 1670 even shows him being presented with a pineapple by one of the royal gardeners, a chap appropriately named John Rose. It is the earliest surviving portrayal of a gardener with a monarch.
After Charles II, the next monarchs with a serious gardening connection were William and Mary. William, the son of Charles II’s sister who married the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, had married his cousin Mary, the daughter of Charles II’s brother the Duke of York (later James VII / II). In 1688 they pulled off the Glorious Revolution and ran Mary’s erstwhile father off into exile in France. The new joint monarchs brought with them a great love of gardens developed during the early years of their marriage in Holland and particularly refined in their efforts at their new Het Loo Palace during the 1680s. (Hans William Bentinck, William’s great friend and the ancestor of the Dukes of Portland, was also involved in the effort at Het Loo, and was a zealous gardener in his own right.) Mary, in particular, had developed a passion for gardening, perhaps to offset some of the disappointment of their childlessness. In due course she achieved the somewhat odd distinction of becoming the subject of a still beloved nursery rhyme:
Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
Once settled in England the royal couple continued their joint avocation of palace building and garden development. The new portions of Hampton Court Palace designed by Christopher Wren were complemented by landscapes and gardens planned by Daniel Marot, some of the major features of which survive and/or have been restored in later years. (Roy Strong’s book includes a delightful photograph of the Pond Garden at Hampton Court, all abloom with tulips and other spring flowers, that certainly evokes the spirit of Mary’s original gardens… though apparently sans cockle shells.) William and Mary also undertook to develop a new small palace, conceived more as a private semi-rural residence away from Whitehall, at Kensington. There they developed an elaborate Dutch-style garden, unfortunately, swept away by later generations. The great Orangery at Kensington was built during the reign of Mary’s sister, Queen Anne, who loved gardens but also undid a number of the works done by her much-despised brother-in-law, William.
Not surprisingly, most of the Hanoverian Kings were not noted for their deep interest in gardening, with George IV (as often the case) being something of an exception. Several of the Hanoverian wives, however, were very interested and involved in gardening matters. Even before their accession in Britain George I’s mother, the Electress Sophia (through whom the Hanovers inherited the throne), developed an extraordinary garden at the electoral palace at Herrenhausen modeled after the gardens at William and Mary’s Het Loo. The old lady is said to have exhausted her courtiers during vigorous walks – of up to three hours! – through her new garden. Fate took its slight revenge on Sophia when collapsed and died after hurrying in out of the rain during one of these walks… at age eighty-three! But for that, she might have lived a few more months and succeeded her much younger cousin, Queen Anne.
Queen Caroline, the wife of George II, oversaw the development of Kensington Gardens, much as they have survived to the present, and is credited with having nurtured along the development of the more naturalistic “English-landscape” style of gardening. Caroline’s efforts with Kensington Gardens extended on over into the earliest formal landscaping work in adjoining Hyde Park. She also developed significant gardens at her residence at Richmond Lodge, which included an early “gothick” revival folly called Merlin’s Cave. The gardens at Richmond were interspersed among agricultural fields and pasturage, which was quite an innovation at the time. Her unimaginative and boring husband thought her gardening interests rather silly.
Parts of the gardens at Richmond were eventually absorbed into the neighboring Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, founded by Caroline’s daughter-in-law Augusta, Princess of Wales. The original garden there was begun by Prince Frederick shortly before his death in 1751, and in fact, he died of a chill contracted after being caught in a rainstorm while directing work at the garden. But Kew became Augusta’s passion in the years between the death of her husband and the accession of her son, George III, with much of the work being undertaken in collaboration with her close friend (and rumored lover) the Earl of Bute. The distinctive characteristic of Augusta’s effort became the international focus of both the architecture of the various garden structures (pagoda, mosque, etc.) and of its exotic plantings that developed into the royal botanical collection, a fact not unrelated to the ongoing development of the British Empire.
During this same era Princess Augusta’s brother-in-law the Duke of Cumberland (infamous among us Scots as the “Bloody Butcher” of Culloden) developed the large artificial lake, Virginia Water, and man-made cascade in the Great Park at Windsor… an area later much favored, and further developed, by his grand-nephew George IV.
During the reign of George III, the royals enthusiastically embraced the landscape designer Capability Brown, even though he was still regarded as an upstart peasant by many. Brown ushered in the climactic phase of the “English-landscape” movement, sweeping away many older formal gardens and replacing them with naturalized meandering walks, rides, vistas, and so on. The virtue of his work was that his gardens and parklands were much less expensive and easier to maintain than the old baroque-era creations.
During this era, Queen Charlotte, George III’s wife, took a strong ongoing interest in the development of the botanical collections at Kew and became a rather accomplished botanist in her own right… along with her unmarried daughters, who all needed something to do. Charlotte’s personal project in the development of a new garden was at Frogmore, adjoining Windsor Castle. Having acquired the house as a favored getaway spot (but close at hand during King George’s long illnesses), the Queen oversaw the development of the grounds and plantings, continuing to indulge her botanical interests. Charlotte’s death in 1818 occurred at Kew, at the recently restored Dutch House (a.k.a. Kew Palace) where the current Prince of Wales hosted the royal family’s private birthday celebration for Queen Elizabeth II’s eightieth birthday in 2006.
In the history of the royal palaces and grounds, King George IV is the most significant figure since Charles II. The builder of Buckingham Palace, and the re-builder of so much of Windsor Castle, he gave form to much of what still survives in the official residences of the British Crown. And it is notable that after the Windsor fire of 1992 most of the restoration done at the castle faithfully reproduced the rooms as George IV had them. Like Charles II, George IV saw gardens basically as decorated sets for him and his courtiers, but unlike Charles II these sets were kept as private as possible for the King and his favored circle. As he aged (and grew increasingly obese, etc.) George didn’t like being seen by the general public and did all he could to remain out of sight.
George IV’s primary interests were in building and decoration, and gardens we important to him only in relation to those passions. He certainly did not share his mother’s interest in the sciences of botany or horticulture. During his era, the style of landscape design shifted from the rationalized naturalism of Capability Brown to what became known as the “picturesque” style. It was also the time when elaborate conservatories began to be more in vogue… including the “gothick” conservatory at Carlton House built by George as Prince of Wales in 1807, and based on the elaborate fan vaulting of the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The planning and execution of George IV’s gardens were left to professionals like the architect John Nash, his landscape designer friend Humphrey Repton, and William Aiton (the younger) of Kew. Lush exoticism was favored by the Prince at his private retreats at places like his Brighton Pavilion and the Royal Lodge at Windsor (predecessor to the current Royal Lodge), though in the latter case it was in a sort of pseudo-rusticated version.
The most significant of George IV’s surviving garden works are undoubtedly the east terrace at Windsor Castle and the gardens at Buckingham Palace. When the King and his architect Geoffrey Wyatville undertook the transformation of Windsor Castle in the mid-1820s there was no garden. The construction of the walls and banks of the east terrace was done to create a private garden adjoining the King’s private apartments in the east range of the castle, with a very formal landscape design hearkening back to the baroque era being laid out by William Aiton. (The garden was made accessible to the public by Queen Victoria. Aiton’s design survived largely intact up to the current reign, when it was replaced by the much simplified but striking design provided by an artist friend of Prince Philip.)
At Buckingham Palace, the ground-plan of the gardens, once again created by William Aiton, has survived virtually intact to the present day. The “picturesque” landscape of meandering pathways, the lake, and the broad lawns where the summer garden parties are now held provide a 40-acre private preserve for the royal family in the heart of modern London. (Albeit, the palace gardens are increasingly used for concerts and other events in addition to the series of annual garden parties.) The work at Buckingham Palace also included the re-landscaping of St. James Park and the Mall by Nash and Aiton, with the formal Restoration-era plan of Mollet finally giving way to a more naturalized setting that included the serpentine lake and so on. (Not to be confused with “The Serpentine” in Hyde Park, lying just a little way beyond the back corner of the Buckingham Palace gardens.) The redesign of St. James Park also marked its transition to full public access, with the removal of the Stuart-era enclosing walls.
Due to the length, I will stop here for this month. But stay tuned for Part II of this look at the royal gardens and gardeners, which will cover the periods from Queen Victoria down to the present.
Yours Aye,
Ken Cuthbertson