The Head Gardeners. Heroes of Horticulture

281 Pages·2007·14.74 MB·English

by  Toby Musgrave

THE HEAD GARDENERS
Dr. Toby Musgrave is a horticulturist and garden historian, and author of a
number of books including the best-selling The Plant Hunters, An Empire of
Plants, The Seven Deadly Sins of Gardening, Courtyard Gardens and Cottage
Gardens. Presenter of the DVD Your First Garden Made Easy, Toby designs
gardens around the world and lectures widely on garden history and garden
design. For more information visit www.TobyMusgrave.com
THE HEAD
GARDENERS
Forgotten Heroes of Horticulture
TOBY MUSGRAVE
Hortis qui praesunt, vos nunc priscosque ministros rite salutamus:
floreat omne genus.
DR ARMAND D’ANGOUR 2007
to Vibeke
for everything
my love and thanks
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 – In the Beginning
Chapter 2 – The Eighteenth Century
Chapter 3 – Education and Apprenticeship
Chapter 4 – The Practical Working Life of a Trainee
Chapter 5 – The Head Gardener
Chapter 6 – The Head Gardeners’ Contributions
Chapter 7 – Paxton of Chatsworth
Chapter 8 – Barnes of Bicton
Epilogue
Appendix A
Bibliography
Notes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to make use
of the material from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.
My thanks to all who have helped in the production of this tome. Especially
to Dr Armand D’Angour for taking the time and interest to compose such an
appropriate elegiac couplet, Chris Jones for her hospitality and conviviality, Dr
Brent Elliott and the staff of the Lindley Library, the staff of the Rare Books
Room at the University of Cambridge Library, and Penrhyn Castle, National
Trust for kind permission to reproduce the oral archive of Norman Thomas.
Thanks also to Sarah Dalkin and all at Aurum Press. Of course to Vibeke and
Tasso. And last, but not least, to all head gardeners past and present who have
made and continue to make gardens such a beautiful and pleasurable part of life.
INTRODUCTION
Adam could be called the first head gardener, for the practice of making gardens
both as a form of art and for the production of edible crops is as old as
civilisation itself. How far back gardening can be traced in England is, however,
a matter of conjecture. Certainly the Romans brought to these shores both
gardening skills and new plants, including varieties of rose, the vine and the
sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa). The craft of horticulture was subsequently
preserved behind the walls of monastic establishments during the Dark Ages
before later invaders, the Normans, brought more new plants and more new
ideas. A glance through any book on the subject of British garden history reveals
that as successive centuries passed, and garden fashions came and went, so
hundreds of great gardens were made by Lord this, Earl that, or Duke the other.
These wealthy noblemen, and later, the socially aspirant nouveaux riches
certainly footed the bills, but the physical creation and practical management of
grand ornamental grounds and bounteous kitchen gardens required a large labour
force overseen by a skilled and expert head gardener.
CHANGING ROLES OF THE GARDENER
It is the Pipe Rolls (or royal accounts) from the reigns of Henry III, and
subsequently Edward I, that contain the first named English gardener – one
Edmund the Gardener, who received 21/2 pence per day for his work at Windsor
Castle (Berkshire) between 1256 and 1277. Edmund’s epithet gives his
profession but tells little of what he actually did; indeed for several hundred
years after the Norman Conquest, the word ‘gardener’ was widely used as a
general term. Before 1606 and the Royal Charter that established the Company
of Gardeners, a gardener could be anyone ‘of various skills and often diverse
social standing’,1 while the term itself encompassed ‘botanist, florist, forester,
fruiter, fruit grower, garden implement dealer, green grocer, herbalist,
horticulturist, sundriesman, landscape gardener, market gardener, nurseryman,
plant merchant, seedsman and sower’.2
In the following three centuries, however, the horticulture industry evolved,
diversified and became more sophisticated; so that by the turn of the nineteenth
century there were demarcated but inter-related specialisms. The market
gardener grew edible crops for market, while the landscape gardener designed
gardens. Orchardmen produced and sold fruit trees, seedsmen sold seed, and
florists raised and sold ‘new varieties of a limited range of bulbs and fibrous-
rooted plants, which became known as Florists’ Flowers’.3 Nurserymen supplied
a wider range of ornamental plants, be they run of the mill varieties or more
sought-after items such as large specimens or rare plants from abroad. And the
master or head gardener was a man charged with the responsibility of managing,
maintaining and developing both the ornamental and productive gardens
associated with a large country house estate.
However, one aspect of the head gardener’s story that changes little down the
centuries is the paucity of information about the men themselves. Not
surprisingly, the closer we come to the modern day, the more information was
generated and has survived. But for the largest part of the past millennium or so,
the head gardener remains an unsung and elusive hero – his name and something
of his works may have survived, but little about the man himself.
What is a matter of record is that the head gardener emerged as a man of
influence within the spheres of horticulture and botany during the seventeenth
and, more notably, the eighteenth century. Certain head gardeners did become
famous – but often for another reason: in the eighteenth century, for example,
‘Capability’ Brown as a landscape designer, Philip Miller an author, and James
Gordon a nurseryman. But it was in the nineteenth century that the head
gardener’s star rose to its zenith, a position it held until the outbreak of the First
World War. The stereotype of a head gardener of this period is a ferocious-
looking, conspicuously bewhiskered chap, sporting a bowler hat, waistcoat and
long apron; his fearsome demeanour consistent with his position as autonomous
ruler of a large domain who terrorised his staff and employer alike. The
engravings and, later, the photographs, of head gardeners of this time do nothing
to belie this myth; nor does the behaviour of some notorious miscreants. In spite
of their formidable appearance, however, the vast majority of head gardeners
were honest men who worked exceedingly hard for a poor wage. Thus another
truism that has remained constant down the centuries is that head gardeners do
not so much have a job as a vocation – a vocation which is undertaken for the
love of the work and certainly not for the financial reward! The names of many
of the nineteenth century’s head gardeners are a matter of record, but with the
possible exception of Sir Joseph Paxton of Chatsworth (Derbyshire) have been
forgotten. In many instances, their gardens are still extant, albeit shadows of
their former glories – Battersea Park (London), Belvoir (Leicestershire), Bicton
Park (Devon), Cliveden (Buckinghamshire), Elvaston Castle (Derbyshire) and
Shrubland Park (Suffolk) to name but half-a-dozen. But even though head
gardeners of some of the century’s finest gardens were ‘stars’ within their
gardening world, who today remembers John Gibson, William Ingram, James
Barnes, John Fleming, William Barron and Donald Beaton, or what they
achieved?
SKILLS AND CHARACTERISTICS REQUIRED
In an age without formal horticultural education, and although ‘only’ a servant,
the head gardener had to be intelligent, adaptable and ingenious, and be
possessed of superb managerial skills and honed horticultural talent. He
achieved his position by successfully demonstrating the resilience and aptitude
necessary to endure a long and rigorous apprenticeship. Once appointed, he
continued to master all new developments as the science of horticulture and art
of garden-making moved forward apace. And if he wished to climb to a position
of eminence, he had to help drive that progress. Such work was in addition to the
daily management of a domain as large as its responsibilities were complex, for
the head gardener was tasked to make gardens that were never anything less than
perfect. The formal gardens, the ornamental grounds and the conservatory were
a ‘shop window’ for demonstrating his employer’s refinement, taste and wealth.
As such, they had to be manicured and flawless, filled with rare and exotic
plants, and their scale as attention-grabbing as their complexity. No less was
demanded from kitchen gardens, for serving the earliest asparagus or the most
perfect pineapple at the dining table was another opportunity for one-upmanship.
To meet the diversity of demands head gardeners worked at the cutting edge of
horticulture, but in spite of what was expected from them, head gardeners were
surprisingly poorly paid and under-appreciated. Yet it was these professionals
who were the vanguard of the horticultural advances that transformed gardens
and gardening who made the nineteenth century the golden age of gardening,
and whose influence is still felt today.
It was head gardeners who revolutionised garden fashions. Joseph Paxton
with his harmonious co-existence of art and nature at Chatsworth, John Fleming
and John Gibson with their new systems of bedding, and Edward Kemp whose
How to Lay Out a Small Garden (1850) revolutionised suburban villa gardens. It
was head gardeners who played a fundamental role in determining what was
grown. Controlled hybridisation programmes in private gardens resulted in
hundreds of new plants types, many of which became commercially important,
be they dessert fruits (Thomas Foster’s Seedling grapes), vegetables (Robert
Fenn’s Jersey Royal potato), or flowers (Peter Grieve’s variegated-leaved