Customer Reviews

Gertrude Jekyll's Lost Garden

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In 1983, Rosamund Wallinger (the author) and her husband purchased a turn-of-the-century manor house in Hampshire called Upton Grey, a large estate that needed many repairs and a derelict garden that was overgrown with weeds. While researching the history of the house, Wallinger learned that the garden was designed by the great garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. She had no interest in gardening before she moved to Upton Grey, but she did recognize Gertrude Jekyll's stature in gardening history, and so she set out to restore the garden to its original splendor, a task that would take more than a decade. She located Jekyll's original plans at the University of California and began a difficult process of translating the plans from Jekyll's bad handwriting and attempting to locate the plants that were originally used in the garden. Fortunately for us and herself, Wallinger kept a journal in which she documented her progress. The before and after photographs are amazing and the reader becomes quickly engrossed in Wallinger's project as well as a growing attachment to her menagerie of dogs, ducks and geese. This beautiful book will be an inspriation to any gardener, especially those have a formidable gardening challenge ahead of them.

During research for restoration of a derelict Arts and Crafts home, which had been designed by the famous English architect, Edwin Lutyens, to fit around the shell of an Elizabethan farmhouse, the new owners discovered that the original garden had been designed in 1908 by the legendary Gertrude Jekyll.

Rosamond Wallinger began research on the garden, discovered Jekyll's plans in the University of California's Bancroft Library, and `with the ignorance and enthusiasm of a true amateur', decided to restore the garden to its exact original glory

This story is a fascinating account of the labors, heartaches, and joys which accompanied the sixteen year project. It took her and her husband two years to remove the brambles and weeds which covered the two acres of original garden. The detective work required for the location of exact plants specified in the plans involved a global search and brought her many connections throughout England and Europe, gardeners who shared her enthusiasm for the project and provided information, seeds, and cuttings.

Wallinger, whose previous gardening experience was nearly non-existent, freely confesses the mistakes and mishaps which occurred during the project. Her meticulous records and beautiful photographs show the emergence of the now complete garden, the only fully restored Jekyll garden still in existence. Readers will enjoy the unfolding story, told with self-deprecating humor, which also contains practical advice and insight into the Jekyll's ,methods.

An eminently readable book of interest to garden historians, garden enthusiasts, and arm chair gardeners as well.

(The garden is now, in season, open to the public on a regular schedule, and visitors today can enjoy the paradise garden envisioned by Gertrude Jekyll nearly a century ago.)

Imagine buying a delapidated old manor house old manor house with a large overgrown garden for a very reasonable price and finding that not only was the house historically important but the garden, invisible under weed growth, had been designed by one of the most famous of English garden designers. Its hard to imagine who was most fortunate - the purchasers who lucked into this masterpiece but who paid for it many times over in the toil and expense of careful restoration, or the nation who almost lost a yet another treasure to developers.

The Wallingers, looking for a house that was fairly close to London, but within their price range, took a chance on a most unprepossessing house. This book tells the story of the restoration of the garden to the exact specifications of Gertrude Jekyll. It must have been a daunting task. The plans themselves, once they were unearthed, were difficult to read. To be honest, they look like a bunch of scribbles and scrawls and to have deciphered them at all is a remarkable achievement.

This book covers the first fifteen years of the gardens re-birth. It is a detailed account, taken from Rosamund Wallingers diary, but it is written with wit and style and her frustrations and triumphs are felt rather than read. And all along you can follow the illustrations of how the garden progressed from months of ripping up and burning to the glorious borders, wild garden and rose garden of the present.

But this is a value-for-money book with the story of one familys life work , not just a collection of pretty garden pictures. Not many people restore gardens, we usually start off from scratch. So this is a whole new viewpoint, and there is much that we gardeners can learn from it.

Unfolding with a little of the feel of a gothic romance, this book makes for an interesting read. It is informative, too, on subjects from English history to project management, with some particular insights into the artistic development of the English gardening tradition. It is not tightly written enough to be a gripping narrative; it is not well organized enough to be an invaluable reference; it is not uninhibited enough to be a fascinating diary. However, by combining elements of all three approaches, it scrambles its way into being a worthwhile investment for anyone interested in the subject matter.