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).

A Lost Garden in Jersey - and Samuel Curtis

Image from Samuel Curtis Garden Project

A post on the Garden History Society Forum tells that sadly the garden of Chateau la Chaire (now is Chateau La Chaire hotel and restaurant) is 'destined to remain lost since the failure to kick start the renaissance of this once sublime sub-tropical plants mans paradise at Rozel Bay, on the Sunshine Island of Jersey.'

The garden was designed in from 1841 by the English nurseryman, publisher and botanist Samuel Curtis. Curtis who designed Victoria Park in Bethnal Green from 1845.  The park is being used as part of the 2012 London Olympics to host BT London Live Victoria Park.

1845 Plan for Victoria Park

Curtis eventually moved into the chateau in 1852There is a goodly correspond between Curtis and  Sir William Hooker (who was Director) at Kew, and  Outbooks reveal that Curtis received many new, exotic and slightly tender plants which had arrived at Kew through the endeavours of the plant hunters and which Kew dispatched in order to trial them in Curtis's new garden.  There is more about the garden and hoped-for restoration at the Samuel Curtis Garden Project.

You may also recognise Samuel's surname from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, which was founded by Samuel's first cousin and father-in-law, William Curtis in 1787.  Samuel  succeeded to the editorship of the magazine in 1927 selling his rights in 1846. Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1801-1920) is downloadable for free from our good friends at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Samuel died at la Chaire in 1860 - and surely there must be a philanthropist or two amongst Jersey's millionaires who would like to help restore Curtis's wonderful creation?