Vanessa Berridge - Böcker

A beautiful tour of Britain’s greatest gardens, classic and modern. Inspiration and escapism for every gardener. A unique tour of thirty of Britain's most beautiful gardens, classic and modern. A great gift for gardeners on their days off or during the long winter nights – because gardening is as much about dreaming as doing.Packed with photographs, many specially commissioned, and evocative and entertaining text telling the stories of the gardens and the people who created them.The gardens range from legendary romantic gardens like Sissinghurst and Great Dixter to dramatic locations like Bodnant and Overbecks. There are intimate, historic walled gardens too, as well as gardens that point to the future, like Wildside, which works in harmony with nature. The book includes information on visiting all the gardens, and suggestions for the best times of year.

The British have always been a nation of gardeners. Our gardening history began even before the Romans, who brought Mediterranean plants which still flourish across Britain. Gardening grew in the sixteenth century and a distinctively British style became a major export in the eighteenth century. Today, the annual Chelsea Flower Show is an international festival, and our garden designers are in demand all over the world.This book traces the history of British gardening over 450 years through the stories of twenty-six key figures, showing what drove them, and their role in the evolution of Britain’s gardens. Their work reveals changes in taste and society down the centuries. Familiar names are featured, such as ‘Capability’ Brown, Humphry Repton, Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West and Christopher Lloyd, together with less generally known figures such as John Gerard, whose Herball of 1597 inspired generations of plantsmen, the Tradescants, pioneer plant hunters, and J. C. Loudon, nineteenth-century champion of smaller gardens. In the present day, we meet Beth Chatto, advocate of the right plant in the right place, and John Brookes, who did for gardening what Elizabeth David did for cooking. Their achievements provide a colourful history and inspiration to every gardening enthusiast.

The British enthusiasm for gardening has fascinating roots. The Empire and trade across the globe created an obsession with exotic new plants, and showed the power and reach of Britain in the early eighteenth century. At that time, national influence wasn’t measured by sporting success, musical or artistic influence. Instead it was expressed in the design of parks and gardens such as Kew and Stowe, and the style of these grand gardens was emulated first throughout Britain and then increasingly around the world.Augusta of Saxe-Gotha arrived in England aged sixteen, speaking barely any English, to be married to the wild Prince Frederick, the reviled eldest son of George II. Her lifelong association with Kew Gardens, and that of her husband and their close friend, Lord Bute, would prove to be one that changed the face of British gardening forever. In this book, Vanessa Berridge tells a tangled tale of royal intrigue, scandal and determination in the Georgian court and draws us into the politically charged world of garden design.

The British have always been a nation of gardeners. Our gardening history began even before the Romans, who brought Mediterranean plants which still flourish across Britain. Gardening grew in the sixteenth century and a distinctively British style became a major export in the eighteenth century. Today, the annual Chelsea Flower Show is an international festival, and our garden designers are in demand all over the world. This book traces the history of British gardening over 450 years through the stories of twenty-six key figures, showing what drove them, and their role in the evolution of Britain’s gardens. Their work reveals changes in taste and society down the centuries. Familiar names are featured, such as ‘Capability’ Brown, Humphry Repton, Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West and Christopher Lloyd, together with less generally known figures such as John Gerard, whose Herballof 1597 inspired generations of plantsmen, the Tradescants, pioneer plant hunters, and J. C. Loudon, nineteenth-century champion of smaller gardens. In the present day, we meet Beth Chatto, advocate of the right plant in the right place, and John Brookes, who did for gardening what Elizabeth David did for cooking. Their achievements provide a colourful history and inspiration to every gardening enthusiast.

Kiftsgate Court, perched on the northern edge of the Cotswolds Hills in Gloucestershire, is a garden composed of many different scenes. Some elements - the bluebell wood, the clipped hedging and the rose border, with its famously huge Kiftsgate rose - are traditionally English, but there are also areas of Italianate planting and terracing, and others where a mixture of perennials, roses and rare and exotic shrubs thrive side by side. Equally remarkable is the fine balance between continuity and gentle evolution that the visitor finds at Kiftsgate. This is largely because the garden has belonged to the same family since its creation 100 years ago. Three women have tended Kiftsgate, each one its driving force for a third of a century, and each building on the legacy of the previous generation. In 1919 Heather Muir and her husband, Jack, bought the house, which stands on a relatively narrow plateau from which a bank plunges 100 feet. Heather gave Kiftsgate its structure, laying out the semi-formal gardens by the house, planting the tapestry hedge and rose garden, and terracing the banks. In 1954 Heather was succeeded by her daughter, Diany Binny, who extended and developed her mother's planting, made more borders and paths, and refashioned the White Sunk Garden. Since the late 1980s Diany's daughter, Anne Chambers, has been at the helm, further modernizing the garden and its planting, creating new areas of interest, and opening more often to the public. As Robin Lane Fox, who has written the foreword, comments: `There is nowhere else in Britain that has such a family tradition of planting and dedication ... It is intimate but many-sided, evolving but with roots in a remarkable past.'This beautiful new book - the first dedicated to Kiftsgate - is structured in two main parts. For the first, `The History', Vanessa Berridge has had exclusive access to the Kiftsgate archive, which contains not only family photographs but also letters from their gardening friends, helping us to understand why and how Heather, Diany and Anne have gardened. Among the circle of friends and acquaintances who feature are Lawrence Johnston of Hidcote Manor (Kiftsgate's neighbour); Vita Sackville-West, the creator of Sissinghurst Castle Garden; and the horticulturalist Graham Stuart Thomas, gardens adviser to the National Trust.The second part of the book takes the reader on an extended tour of the garden, illustrated by the glorious photography of Sabina Ruber. The tour concludes with notes on Kiftsgate's signature plants and Anne Chambers's personal reflections on this, one of the great gardens of England.