Sources of inspiration

Head Gardener Dan recently described Winterbourne’s garden as ‘a patchwork quilt of ideas developed over decades by dozens of brilliant, talented and creative people’. When designing the garden, Winterbourne’s first mistress Margaret Nettlefold was particularly influenced by the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll, something that shows in many of the garden’s features.

Following a recent visit to Hestercombe House and Gardens, a garden designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, our Work and Retrain as a Gardener (WRAGS) Trainee Deborah Johnson took some time to reflect on the many sources of inspiration for gardeners, and how gardens can come to reflect the ideas and inspirations of many different people.

In September, I attended a gardening networking day at RHS Rosemoor in Devon. On the way home I took the opportunity of visiting Hestercombe House and Gardens. The Edwardian formal garden there is one of the best examples of the collaboration between Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.

As a bit of background history, the garden spans three centuries of garden design. There’s the Georgian Landscape Garden (1750s), the Victorian Shrubbery, and the Edwardian Formal Gardens (early 1900s).

The Georgian Landscape Garden was created by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde in the 1750s. It offers a series of carefully composed views, each one designed to look like a landscape painting, inspired by classical views of Italy. It has many eye-catchers, including Pope’s Urn, Sibyl’s Temple and The Gothic Alcove.

The spectacular Great Cascade is the dramatic centrepiece of the Landscape Garden and was inspired by Bampfylde’s visit to William Shenstone’s garden – The Leasowes, Halesowen – in 1762. I live only a few minutes’ drive from The Leasowes yet, shamefully, have only been there once. As well as woodland walks and natural water features, there is a lovely restored walled garden.

Henry Hawkins Tremayne, Squire of Heligan, Cornwall comment in 1785: ‘Mr Bampfylde himself being supposed to have the finest taste for laying out Ground of any Man in England, his Skill and taste in painting gives him an advantage as it enables him to seize every object and opportunity to set off the different points of view to advantage’.

There is a breathtaking view from the top of the magnificent Daisy Steps, which were designed by Lutyens to create a link between Jekyll’s formal garden and the earlier Georgian Landscape Garden. The Victorian terrace overlooks the Great Plat – a great sunken parterre laid out with geometric borders edged with stone and planted with bergenias and blue delphiniums. It is approached by descending some steps onto the Grey Walk, which features soft borders of silver and grey-leafed plants.

The pairing of structure and water were key for Jekyll. The East and West Rills are located on each side of the Great Plat with a pergola enclosing the garden at the bottom, allowing it to remain part of the surrounding countryside.

When designing a garden, Jekyll often considered her natural surroundings, an approach shared by the gardener William Robinson who wrote ‘The Wild Garden’, and with whom she formed a lifelong friendship.

Walking around Winterbourne it is easy to see how Jekyll inspired Margaret Nettlefold, a painter who studied at Birmingham School of Art after leaving school. Many of Margaret’s sketches and paintings from her travels abroad are on display in the house. Both Gertrude Jekyll and Margaret Nettlefold painted and travelled extensively, and both contributed to their capabilities in garden design.

As a result of Margaret’s love of Jekyll’s designs, in the garden you’ll find the Lutyens-style steps, the Nut Walk, the ‘pink and blue border’ and the ‘red and yellow border’, planted up using Jekyll’s colour combinations and including many of her signature plants. However, it was Winterbourne’s final owner John Nicholson who introduced the Pergola to the garden after he bought the house in 1925.

It is also interesting to ponder on how a garden is ‘owned’ by different people over the years and how they or the great designers in their employ left their mark. As gardeners, we too can be inspired by visiting these gardens, and we hope that Winterbourne provides a source of inspiration for everyone who walks through it.