Restoring the Jekyll style at the Manor


House, Upton Grey by Liz Ware


Actors should never appear with animals or children. Teachers should never turn their backs on a class. Most professions have their accepted wisdoms. Gardeners are told to be very wary of over-meticulous garden restoration. Copying an old plan plant by plant can result in a garden that feels more dead than alive. However, some actors work well with animals and children, some teachers have eyes in the backs of their heads, and hidden away in Hampshire is a garden restoration that more than defies the rule.


When John and Rosamund Wallinger bought The Manor House in Upton Grey in 1984, they could not have imagined the journey they were about to undertake. Within months of moving in, they discovered, hidden beneath the overgrown garden, the bare bones of a Gertrude Jekyll-designed masterpiece. While those with more experience might have been stalled by doubts, the couple, fresh from London, embarked on an ambitious restoration project. Today, the garden is a delight.


In happier days, The Manor


Steps leading from the Rose Garden to the Bowling and Tennis Lawns


House had been owned, altered and extended by Charles Holme, a wealthy textile merchant and founder of the Arts and Crafts movement’s leading publication, ‘The Studio’. In


1908, the multi-talented artist and gardener Gertrude Jekyll designed a garden to complement the house.


All the surviving Jekyll garden plans are kept in the Reef Point Collection at the University of California. Fortunately for the Wallingers, plans for The Manor House were amongst them. Copies were ordered so that the restoration could start in earnest. The plans were working copies that Miss Jekyll had written for herself. As they were never intended to be interpreted, much of the writing was illegible.


Remarkably, with the additional help of just one man, most of the restoration work was undertaken by the Wallingers themselves. Mrs Wallinger immersed herself totally, learning everything from scratch; from the running and maintenance of machinery, to propagation. At the same time she read everything available about the Arts and Crafts Movement and Gertrude Jekyll’s horticultural writings. For the sake of both accuracy and economy, they decided to grow most of the plants in the garden from seed. By 1986, just two years after they started, they had created ‘an exciting embryo garden’.


At the front of the house they reinstated Miss Jekyll’s Wild


The herbaceous border in the Kitchen Garden


Garden. Here in spring, the great Edwardian gardener’s original drifts of daffodils still carpet the ground. By mid-summer, tranquil mown paths meander through a mix of rambling roses, shrubs, bamboo, and trees making it difficult to imagine the tangled confusion that met the Wallingers in 1984.


On the other side of the house they rebuilt the contrasting Formal Garden. The restored framework of yew hedges, dry- stone walls and trapezoidal beds provide the garden with good structure in winter. In summer, Miss Jekyll’s famed herbaceous borders run alongside the dark hedges. A quarter of a century on, the planting remains almost completely true to Gertrude Jekyll’s plan. Yet, far from being frozen in time, this garden has a timeless feel about it. Why does this restoration work so well?


There is no doubt that Gertrude Jekyll’s choice of plants is crucial. Plants such as bergenia, antirrhinum, nepeta and centranthus that soften the straight edges of the formal garden are so reliable that they are just as likely to be found in gardens today as they were 100 years ago. They don’t look dated.


Perhaps the factor that lifts this garden restoration into a class of its own is Mrs Wallinger’s grasp of Gertrude Jekyll’s thinking. The understanding that she has gained during the restoration allows her to exercise a ‘tolerant control’ that keeps the garden alive; to know when to intervene and when to leave things alone.


In some respects it is the Kitchen Garden, the planting of which was not included in the original plan, that most helps the place to retain its character. It is here, where plants are nurtured for use in the Wild and Formal gardens that Mrs Wallinger’s intelligent interpretation of Miss Jekyll’s ideas is most evident.


The garden will be open during September but by appointment only.


For details see www.gertrudejekyllgarden.co.uk Country Gardener 51


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