Garden Restoration at the Museum in the Park, Stroud

Photo credit: Kites over Stroud

According to the Stroud News construction work begins to open up ‘hidden’ garden behind the Museum in the Park. The restoration of this walled garden is not only to return the garden to its original quadripartite form and to develop the four quarters, but also to open the garden up to the community and offer new learning and public programming opportunities.

The project is being run by the  the Friends of the Museum in the Park and there is more information here on how to become involved and support this worthy project.

Victorian Garden Restoration at Woodchester Mansion

Photo Credit: Western Daily Press

Another cheering garden restoration story, this time form the Western Daily Press reporting on the most unusual property of Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire.

Woodchester Mansion is a 19th century Gothic masterpiece hidden in a secluded Cotswold valley and which was mysteriously abandoned mid-construction in 1873. National Trust staff and volunteers discovered the remains of the Italianate terraced garden overgrown with trees. Very little is known about it, although documents dating from 1843 record terrace walks, a temple overlooking the view of the garden below, and ornamental fountains.

More visitor information can be found from the National Trust webpage.

Restoration of Quex Park Walled Garden

Photo Credit: Quex Park

The garden team at Quex Park in Kent is planning to restore the Victorian Walled Garden to its former glory. But as is so often the case in such situations there is shortage of records from which to work.

So the team is sending out a plea for help. They are looking for photographs of the walled garden before the hurricane in 1987, memories from anyone who worked in the gardens and information or pictures relating to the garden between 1883 and 1923.

If you can help, please contact the team here, and for more on this story read the article in the Isle of Thanet Gazette.

Garden Restoration Success Stories

Victoria Park restored for the London Olympics.  Photo Credit: The Telegraph

It is always uplifting to be able to report success stories, just as it is depressing to tell of gardens that are under threat or which have suffered loss.

Into the former is this story in The Telegraph which features nine gardens to visit that have recently been restored thanks to a variety of funding sources, including the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Restored Wrest Park.  Photo Credit: The Telegraph

One thing, though, the links on The Telegraph pages do not all take you direct to the page relating to the garden, the ones below, however, do.

The gardens nine are:

1. Wrest Park in Bedfordshire.
2. Lowther Castle and Gardens in Penrith.
3. Victoria Park in London E2.  Which I also mentioned earlier in the year.
4. Springhill in Moneymore, Co. Londonderry.
5. Festival Gardens in Liverpool.
6. Hackfall in North Yorkshire.
7. Botanic Garden in Oxford,.
8. Myddleton House in Enfield.
9. Battersea Park Old English Garden London (and Friends of Battersea Park).

Batty Langley 1696 - 1751

Batty Langley from The Twickenham Museum

I wanted to share with you this interesting blog post on the landscape designer Batty Langley, his work and how it has been used for the restoration of the kitchen and fruit garden at Castle Bromwich.

Plan for a Serpentine Garden from New Principles

And, of course, those good folk at the Biodiversity Heritage Library can supply you with a free copy of Langley's New principles of gardening (1728). 

Oruawharo - a Garden Restoration in New Zealand

Images from the Oruawharo website

In central Hawke's Bay on the North Island of New Zealand's stands Oruawharo.  According to Oruawharo website, the house which was completed in 1879 was designed by a Wellington architect and built by D McLeoud of Waipukurau at a cost of some £4000 for Sydney Johnston and his bride Sophia Lambert. And surrounding the house were 17 hectares, (40 acres) of gardens and parkland laid out by Johnston who replicated the landscapes he had seen around stately English homes, and who as a keen tree-lover, planted thousands of trees.

In 2000 Peter and Dianne Harris purchased Oruawharo, which was suffering from 30 years of neglect.  As well as bringing the house back to life Peter and Dianne have embarked on a restoration of the grounds with the aim of returning them to their early splendour.  Cleared of undergrowth the hillside woodland once again reveals numerous fine trees specimens while nearer the house the croquet lawn is once more smooth and verdant and surrounded by gardens.  In the fields opposite is the large vegetable garden next to which are new additions - citrus and olive groves, a vineyard and oaks and hazelnuts for a truffiere.

Alcatraz Historic Garden

Image from The Gardens of Alcatraz website

I have to confess when I think of Alcatraz the first thing that springs to mind are movies not gardens.  However, there is an historic garden on this ex-prison island stuck in the middle of San Fransisco Bay.  Since 2003 the garden has been in the joint care of The Garden Conservancy and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.  

The gardens have their own great website, from which I take the following quote:

'For more than a century, gardens were an important part of everyday life for officers, families, and prisoners confined to Alcatraz by sentence or duty. Many of the plants selected by these unheralded gardeners proved to be excellent choices for the harsh and barren environment, flourishing through the four decades of neglect that followed the prison’s closing.

Before & After: looking over the Rose Terrace

Alcatraz’s current visitors experience an island that is alive with colorful plants gathered decades ago from around the world, and complemented by newly introduced plants. These historic gardens not only illustrate the importance of gardens to the human spirit, but also the ecological benefits and aesthetic possibilities of sustainable gardening.

Officers’ Row, Overlooking Middle Foundation

Through the Alcatraz Historic Gardens Project, the partner organizations preserve, rebuild, and maintain the gardens created by those who lived on the island during its military and prison eras, and interpret their history, horticulture, and cultural significance for visitors.'

And should you wish to help restore and care for this most unusual of historic gardens, then there is a volunteer programme for you to join.

More of This...Please

Now this is just the kind of article we should be reading on a much more frequent basis.  This is Gloucestershire reports that the enlightened owner of the elegant Glenmore Lodge in Cheltenham (one of the first properties built as part of developer Joseph Pitt's original plans for the area in 1827) wishes to knock down an ugly 20th century bungalow with the intent of restoring the Lodge's original garden.  Cheltenham Civic Society is on board and a decision should be made by the borough council's planning committee by March 20.  Good Luck!

Designs for Knole Park

According to KentNews.co.uk, final year garden design students at the University of Greenwich, have undertaken a theoretical Historic Garden Conservation brief on behalf of the Sackville-West family.   Lecturer in Garden Design at Greenwich, Marian Boswall,s aid: “The aim of the students’ proposals is to inspire all those involved with Knole to think about the conservation of the garden and park in a variety of creative ways.

An exhibition showing the work, Designs for the Park & Garden at Knole, will be held in the Orangery, from the 3rd of  March.

Eudora Welty's Garden Restored

From the US National Portrait Gallery

Its always heart-warming and encouraging to be able to report a success story.  And here is a particularly good one, which involves the garden of the celebrated American author Eudora Wetly (1909-2001.)  Perhaps best known for her 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Optimist's Daughter (1972), Welty was also a great garden lover. 

Eudora Wetly's house in Jackson, MI.

Later in life she bemoaned that the garden of her house in in Jackson, Mississippi  where she had lived almost continuously since childhood, had fallen into decay.  According to The Christian Science Monitor: 'During the 1980s, Welty had donated her house to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, with the understanding that the house would be turned into a museum after she died. In August of 1994, Susan Haltom, who worked at the department and had an interest in garden design, showed up at Welty’s doorstep along with other department employees. With the assistance of other volunteers, they offered to slowly restore the garden that Welty and her late mother had once tended to perfection, creating an Eden of daylilies, roses, nandinas, camellias, azaleas and other Southern horticultural favorites.'

Now the story of this remarkable garden, its owner and restoration is told in a new book, One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place by Susan Haltom, Jane Roy Brown and Langdon Clay.