Gertrude Jekyll's Lost Garden: The Restoration Of An Edwardian Masterpiece

Rosamund Wallinger

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Review

In 1908, Charles Holme, proprietor of the influential arts publication "The Studio", wrote to the legendary Gertrude Jekyll inviting her to design his garden at Upton Grey in Hampshire.  "Give me a Jekyll garden with something of all you love; an example of each of your tenets."

Working, not with her celebrated collaborator Edwin Lutyens, but with Ernest Newton who produced a fine Arts and Crafts house, Jekyll provided a garden packed with her signature motifs: terraces with dry-stone walls, a wild garden, a nuttery and pergola - but above all, sumptuous and varied herbaceous borders with her highly individual plant associations.

John and Rosmaund Wallinger came on the scene in 1983, driven from London, it would seem by nothing more dramatic than their inability to find a parking-space outside their Pimlico home (plus ça change!), when both house and garden were derelict.  Not realising the historical importance or the potential, they embarked upon the renovation "with the ignorance and enthusiasm of a true amateur", and this book is a record of their voyage of discovery, from tracking down the original plans through to the painstaking recreation of the designer's vision.

Ros Wallinger's style is direct and self-deprecating, and though at the end of the undertaking she must be a considerable scholar, she remains modest.  Asked, if having become such a talented gardener, she would tire of living with the restrictions of another's plans, she contentedly replies, "I am a copier and this garden is a reproduction of Jekyll's art, not my art."

That might be true, but the end result is a masterpiece of English gardening. - review by Stewart Grimshaw