Gertrude Jekyll and the Garden at Upton Grey

How is a Jekyll garden different without Lutyens?

Rosamund Wallinger (Upton Grey), Claire Greenslade (Hestercombe);
Host: Martin Lutyens

Panelists:
Claire Greenslade
Head Gardener at Hestercombe Gardens
Having grown up in Kent, Claire studied Fashion & Textiles at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Her first profession was as a textile designer. An interest in stained-glass prompted a return to college where she found her true calling. Gardening ticked all the boxes by encompassing colour, design, history, food and communities. While continuing her studies, Claire volunteered at the Barley Wood Walled Gardens, near Bristol. Claire was placed at Barrington Court during her National Trust Careership -- a three-year hands-on apprenticeship where five times a year for two week blocks all the National Trust students went to college and learned the theory side, gaining a brilliant all-round knowledge. Barrington Court, with its Jekyll-esque herbaceous borders, was a perfect placement. “I was lucky enough to work in a team of gardeners who had worked there for over 30 years and remembered what it was like to work there before it was a National Trust garden.”

Rosamund Wallinger
In 1983 John and I left London to buy a house in the country for a life with dogs, bantams and children. What we chose was a remarkably inexpensive, derelict Arts and Crafts house that stood in an even more derelict garden of 5 acres. I had had two successful careers; one owning and running a second-hand book-shop, the other running a small agency cooking directors’ lunches in the City. The garden was to become my third. In February 1984 an important gardening friend, Richard Bisgrove, told me that our garden had been designed by Gertrude Jekyll in 1908 for the house which was then owned by Charles Holme, founder and editor of the Arts and Crafts magazine, The Studio, and that, thanks to Beatrix Farrand, the plans survived in the Reef Point Collection at the University of California at Berkeley. We moved in in 1984 to start the enormous restoration work immediately.


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