PUBLIC PLACES
This time of year is our bread and butter project season. We need the weather to be kind right
”
through until early spring to allow us to press on with the serious work that’s
beyond routine tidying and maintenance
Young volunteers at work
which, until the onset of the Depression as the 20s closed, had him on the front benches at Westminster, either in government or opposition for close on twenty years.
The plaque marking the generosity of those who bought Chartwell for the National Trust and kept the Churchills in their home
Throughout the 1930s, during what are often referred to as Churchill’s ‘wilderness years’ when out of office, he was pretty hands-on when it came to outdoor maintenance and development of the estate. The scale of things meant he had to employ full-time gardening staff though and he came to rely on them totally after he was called to lead the wartime coalition in May 1940. After the war Churchill, rejected at the ballot box and out of office, found the cost of running Chartwell too onorous. It however remained the Churchill’s home until his death in 1965, though ownership had passed to the National Trust in 1947 after a group of Sir Winston’s business friends had raised near on £50,000 for the purchase, on the understanding that he and Clementine could remain there and continue to enjoy it
for the rest of their lives. This was truly an act of gratitude and affection for what he had done to help defeat Hitler.
Churchill was definitely connected to the natural landscape it seems. In particular, he had a passion for butterflies and sought the expert advice of renowned lepidopterist L H Newman about what plants to grow to attract certain species. In many ways, Sir Winston was very much a conservationist, and certainly a nature lover. Wildlife gardening and creating a water harvesting system for Chartwell’s walled garden made him a garden enthusiast ahead of his time. The Chartwell grounds are open 363 days
a year, so they have to be very good and, more than that, authentic all of the time, whatever the conditions.
“This time of year is our bread and butter project season, Tim went on to say. “We need the weather to be kind right through until early spring to allow us to press on with the serious work that’s beyond routine tidying and maintenance.” “We’ve been working on a restoration
Assistant Head Gardener Daniel Marshall sowing a mix of Devils-bit scabious, Betony and Oxeye daisy in the orchard area
116 PC December/January 2020
The tidying never stops
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