The Manor House Garden

One garden room at Hidcote Manor picture taken on my vacation 

Agatha Christie and many of my other favorite authors have written about the weekend house party at someone's manor house and there is always a scene when someone invites someone else out for a stroll in the garden. Once out in the garden there might be the "important talk", a dalliance, or even a murder. It didn't really make much sense to me to go for a walk in the garden because I was picturing my garden, but once I had been to England to see what a real manor house garden looks like it began to make all the more difference to my reading.

Gardening is serious business over there in England. Many of the gardens that I visited are even larger than my entire plot of land (1.67 acres). They employed designers and architects and engaged and maintained a staff. When Hercule Poirot is interviewing the gardener, this character was a full time employee with perhaps a "boy" or two working for him. Here I am, just me beavering away at my attempt at a cottage garden and a small vegetable plot. I've had to take a week off due to the rain and an aching back and the weeds have gone rampant from my neglect.

In researching about famous English gardeners I came across Vita Sackville-West, poet and novelist who funded her gardening passions with the proceeds from her literary career. She and her husband purchased Sissinghurst Castle and transformed the grounds, he did the architectural planning and she the plantings. I used the ever precious inter-library loan system to get a hold of a copy of her In Your Garden a collection of her articles written for The Observer during 1947-1950. Now I understand the inspiration that Katherine Swift had for her gardening column written 50 years later. I guess it is a testament to British gardeners that weekly gardening columns are still popular especially seeing the demise of the printed newspaper editions at least here in the US. I'm guilty of giving up the paper subscription when I found myself recycling stacks of them unread. There is always so much more good reading material than the morning paper.

I'm wandering just like one would along the crazy brick paths of a manor house garden. On January 22, 1950, Sackville-West wrote of her plan to design a garden with a single color scheme. She was envisioning a garden of just white blossoms against a backdrop of green and grey foliage. Of course this garden came to fruition as one for which she is famous.