The London Gardener Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

THE London GARDENE R

O R

The Gardener’s Intelligencer For the Year    

Volume the twenty-third

Journal of the London Hi oric Parks and Gardens Trust

The London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust Duck Island Cottage, S t James’s Park L  

(Price TEN Pounds, Free to Members) The London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust is an independent charitable trust whose obje ive is to promote education about historic parks and gardens in London, and to seek to conserve and enhance these gardens for the education and enjoyment of the public. The Trust was established in 1994 .

The Trust aims to draw together a wide range of knowledge, expertise and interested professionals, amateurs, individuals, organisations and societies within London; to promote proje s, influence decisions on the protection and management of historic garden land, and to provide a valuable centre for the education, information, research and creative projects for the improvement and conservation of London’s extensive fabric of historic gardens, for the benefit of everyone.

Editor of The London Gardener Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Editorial Assistance from Sally Williams

Layout by Mette Heinz and Sally Williams

For further information on the Trust please conta

The Secretary The London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust Duck Island Cottage, c/o The Store Yard St James’s Park, London sw1a 2bj Telephone 020 7839 3969 www. londongardenstrust.org

Correspondence concerning The London Gardener should be addressed to The Editor, Avenue House , 20 Church Street, Ampthill, Bedfordshire mk45 2eh

The London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust is registered in England no. 2935176 Registered Office: Duck Island Cottage, St James’s Park, London sw1a 2bj. Registered Charity no. 1042337 This issue of

The London Gardener

Has been made possible through the generosity

The Aldama Foundation Notes for Contributors

Contributions submitted for publication in The London Gardener should be typed double spaced on a4 size paper, leaving a margin of at least 30 mm on the left. Sheets should be numbered consecutively at the top right hand corner. Only one copy of the article is required. Illustrations should be supplied as high resolution digital images (minimum 300 dpi ). References to illustrations should be included. Captions should be noted on a separate sheet, and should include credits to photographers and any acknowledgement of source. Permission to reproduce illustrations and reprodu ion fees are the responsibility of the contributor. Notes - where applicable - should be numbered consecutively throughout and typed on a separate sheet. Contributors are advised to consult the mrha Style Book over questions of style. All material published by The London Gardener is copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without consent of the Editor.

The Editor’s policy is to allow his contributors to pursue their own inclinations, unrestrained. The opinions of the authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Council of Management of the Trust.

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issn 1361-4355 P R E F A C E

The title of the present publication is based upon the second edition of Thomas Fairchild’s The City Gardener (1722), which appeared in c. 1760 . The author claimed his book contained ‘the most experienced methods of cultivating and ordering such ever-greens, fruit trees, flowering shrubs, flowers, exotic plants, &tc . as will be ornamental, and thrive be in London gardens’. Fairchild (1677-1729) , who e ablished a nursery business at Hoxton in the Ea End in the 1690 s, was the fir learned and influential proponent of improved town gardening, and his book The City Gardener was the fir publication by a celebrated London flori , nurseryman and botani dedicated to the ornamental culture, treatment and improvement of ‘little town gardens in London’. The general format and ru ure of The London Gardener is derived from near contemporary publications, including the Spe ator and The Gentleman’s Magazine. For 2019

Containing

More in Quantity , and greater Variety , than any Book of the Kind and Price.

1. A Dream of a London Garden Square by C. Paul Christianson ...... 11 11. John Busch in London by Michael Symes ...... 22 111. ‘Rebel Gardening’ by The Perambulator ...... 30 1v. Evidence from The Keep Records - Humphry Repton and John Nash at Southgate Grove by Alun Coonick ...... 35 v. Fanny Wilkinson - London’s Landscape Gardener by Elizabeth Crawford ...... 48 v1. Here We Go Round the Bethnal Green Mulberry by The Gentle Author ...... 64 v11. From the Speaker’s Garden: Repton’s designs on Westminster by Stephen Daniels ...... 74 v111. Transforming Gunnersbury’s Gardens 1660-1760 by Val Bott, with James Wisdom ...... 85

The Index to Volumes i – xxii of The London Gardener is available at www.thelondongardener.org.uk THE LONDON GARDENER or The Gardener’s Intelligencer Vol no.  For the year 

In addition to his extensive landscaping shrub to Germany and Russia, as well as doing and gardening at Tsarskoye Selo, Busch may the same in English gardens. But all this have had a hand in Pavlovsk, where the stemmed from his time in London. architect was Charles Cameron, who married Busch’s daughter. He worked at Gatchina from 1779 to 1783 , and spent a further six years in Russia before returning home. He was * * * * * * replaced by his son Joseph. It is not known whether John Busch had any involvement with what was now firmly established as Loddiges Acknowledgements nursery, which by 1789 had far outshone his own; he was also nearing 60 and had endured I am greatly indebted to Todd Longstaffe-Gowan 18 years of arduous toil in an alien country with and Marcus Köhler for their considerable an often inhospitable climate, so he was assistance in compiling this article unlikely to be seeking a demanding full-time and also to Mark Laird, Chris Sumner position. Nonetheless he retained property in and Sally Williams Hackney. He settled with his second wife Mary at Busch House, Isleworth, which now survives as part of The Green School for Boys, in the north-west corner of the Syon Park estate (figs. 11 & 12) .17 His name is commemorated at Busch Corner, where ‘Rebel Gardening’ Twickenham Road meets the London Road; By The Perambulator by Busch Close near to the school; and by John Busch House, a modern block at 277 , London n The London Gardener #20 , your Road. He is thus regarded as a most correspondent was indignant at a new di inguished former resident. At Isleworth he Iaddition to the typology of public parks started a new chapter in the story of John and gardens: ‘privately owned public space’ or Busch in London (today Greater London, but, ‘POPS’, increasing in number in the capital at the time, very much in the swim of out-of- and in other major towns and cities around the town gardening). He continued to do some UK. 1 POPS are chara erised by a high degree work at Syon, introducing the Grey Alder of cleanliness, but also the presence of private (Alnus incana) into Britain, together with the security guards: no ball games, no barbeques, flowering currant (Ribes diacantha) and the no buskers. shrubs Caragana jubata and Rhododendron Perhaps the most egregious of these chrysanthemum .18 However, his reputation was unsettling places – so like a public park yet so marred at Syon by being accused of negle ing definitely not one – was never actually built. the orange trees. He died in 1795 and was Boris Johnson’s folly, the Garden Bridge buried in the parish churchyard at Isleworth. down ream from Waterloo Bridge, would not John Busch was a multi-talented man have been a public space but a private one, not with an international reputation. His tangible a public right of way but a permissive one. memorials are his gardens in Russia, but his There would have been strict controls on great achievements were to promulgate the aivities, regular closures for income- landscape garden on the continent and to generating events and ticketed entry for introduce hitherto unused species of tree and groups of more than eight people.

17 . In 1938 the house and grounds became Busch House Open Air How refreshing therefore, two years on School, which catered for pupils aged 5 to 16 . Over the next decades, from his successor finally pulling the plug on the school changed its name a number of times, becoming John Busch School, which catered for 12 to 16 year olds, and by the early Boris’s bridge in 2017 , to see a new public 1990 s it was Syon Park School. It eventually closed as a school in space, in the great tradition of Vi orian place- August 1994 but it remained in educational use as part of Woodbridge Park Education Service until recent years. The making, made for the people by the people and buildings on the site except Busch House have been demolished and 1. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ 2017 /jul/ 24 /pseudo-public- it is due to open as The Green School for Boys. space-explore-data-what-missing. 18 . J. C. Loudon, Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (London: 2. Inscription at Phillips Park, Manchester; quoted in Hazel Longmans etc., 1838 ), Vol i, p. 83 . Conway, People’s Parks , (Cambridge, 1991 ), p. 206 .

30 ‘Rebel Gardening’ given to the people for their protection. 2 The Bowery and East Hou on Street. She named Extinction Rebellion (XR) intervention on the group she formed the Green Guerrillas , Waterloo Bridge in April was not only a key hence the catchy term ‘guerrilla gardening,’ part of the Rebellion week’s programme of and soon after she persuaded the City mass civil disobedience and disruption, it also authorities to grant her a lease of $ 1 a month. served as a riposte to this privatised, The Liz Christy Community Garden was corporatized idea of public space. allowed to thrive and is now on the US When XR launched in November 2018 , National Regi er of Historic Places. it targeted five central London bridges for Gardening was enli ed in a resistance occupation. This was not just a pra ical movement, pitted against the civic indifference decision about the impact of disrupting key of those in power which was trashing the crossing-points, it was a poetic decision about public realm and the social fabric of the city; the symbolism of bridges: a bridge as a and making a defiant gesture of communality connection, a threshold, and a way of against the prevalent ethos of free-market overcoming a barrier. It was the same economics. In this sense gardens were being reasoning that lay behind the decision to make repurposed; away from being the epitome of Waterloo Bridge a key focus of the week-long private ownership, control and individualism, Rebellion in April 2019 . to a refle ion of the shared ‘ownership’ of the From the start it was about a garden- city’s public environment, and empowering intervention on a bridge, not least in response often marginalised communities to exercise to the fiasco of Johnson’s Garden Bridge. agency over that environment. Just like a Along with the delicious satire on Johnson’s London square, an abandoned lot behind wire hubris there was also a genuine under anding mesh is still part of the public realm insofar as of the appeal of transforming a bridge into a it is seen and experienced by passers-by. hanging garden above the Thames. It was Guerrilla gardening had the same moral gardening on a stage; gardening as a ge ure; authority as squatting, with the added force gardening as an act of defiance and resi ance; that it was about public beautification and a means of achieving what has been called ‘a produ ivity replacing ugliness and wa e. little bit of Utopia now’ in the face of the The original Garden Bridge epitomised crushing of the public realm. 3 much of the dysfun ionality of London under Gardening has always been symbolic Boris Johnson’s mayoralty. Dreamt up by a and political, bodying forth ideologies, small group of influential friends, tendered reflecting different conceptions of an ordered with scant regard for procurement rules, universe. Horace Walpole for example careless with public funds and critically, explicitly politicised his garden history; the blurring the lines between public and private formal absurdities of French and Italian space, it was finally dispatched by Sadiq Khan gardens embodying foreign absolutism and after a deva ating report to the Mayor by English landscape gardens the ‘Empire of Margaret Hodge in 2017 . It had been given Freemen’ ushered in by the parliamentary planning permission in 2014 , and the settlement of 1688 . con ruction contract was recklessly let in In the 1970 s a new type of gardening was 2016 , one of the conditions being that the enli ed in more radical political analysis. At Greater London Authority guarantee in the time New York was virtually bankrupt and perpetuity the huge costs of ongoing in a state close to social breakdown. Part of the maintenance, e imated at around £3.5m per response was the adoption, often annum. When in April 2017 the new mayor unauthorised, of dereli lots by activi s who refused to meet that condition, the grotesquely turned them into temporary gardens for the ill-conceived scheme was finally killed off. public. In 1973 , an East Village resident, Liz Nearly two years later, the cost to the public Christy, began clearing decades of rubbish purse in wa ed consultancy fees and cancelled from a City-owned plot on the corner of the contracts, was revealed to have been £ 43m .

3. Peter Lamborn Wilson and Bill Weinberg, ed., Avant Gardening: There have been other dramatic garden ecological struggle in the city and the world , (Brooklyn, 1999 ), p. 33 . interventions in we ern cities: in Paris for

31 THE LONDON GARDENER or The Gardener’s Intelligencer Vol no.  For the year 

13 . The transformation of Waterloo Bridge into a garden during the week of 15th April 2019 [Photograph The Perambulator]

32 ‘Rebel Gardening’ example, in 2010 the Champs Elysées was hundreds who came to occupy the bridge. As transformed for International Biodiversity temperatures rose, Mak came to water the Day. But that was official and expensive, with trees daily, and she found that unknown carers 150,000 plants in 8000 plots, con ructed with had also taken responsibility for watering the the full support of the authorities. More plants along with other routine jobs. The site recently ‘pop-up parks’ have become grew with more and more plants, tents and fashionable badges of green credentials with gazebos added each day. By the end there was a stage, a skate ramp, a kitchen tent serving hot city councils all over the world. There is food round the clock, a yurt, a children’s nothing to compare to Waterloo Bridge: a enclosure, an art space and a recycling centre, public garden space which was unsan ioned, with other tents providing welcome and disruptive and illegal (figs. 13 & 14). wellbeing. Straw bales served as seating; the It was planned and laid out entirely by trees acquired pennants, hand-made plaques volunteers on the basis of a budget for and mementos; the tarmac around them was materials of £3000 . Mak Gilchrist of the decorated with bright graffiti in chalks and admirable Edible Bus Stop Studio and a chalk spray. supporter of XR, was asked to take the lead. When the police finally moved in on the After an anonymous donation boo ed her following Sunday to remove the infra ructure budget, she was able to order a grand total of and the last prote ers, the trees were carried 47 trees ranging from 1.5m to 3m in height. XR back to the churchyard at St John’s, Waterloo, supporters were also invited to bring along where the vicar, the Reverend Giles Goddard, additional shrubs and trees to supplement this was an enthusia ic supporter. The trees were framework. then transported to a depot in south London The situation was of course exposed and from where they have subsequently been taken windswept, although rather than set out the and planted in various community gardens garden in the centre of the bridge a site at the around the city, including the Grenfell southern end was wisely chosen, with some Commemorative Community Garden, Seed at shelter and also proximity to public toilets. Hackney Wick and the Martin Luther King Extra heavy standard specimens of Pinus nigra Playground in Islington. Austriaca and Cornus alba Sibirica were chosen During the week, pollution levels in The for instant impact along with a selection of Strand and on the bridge dropped by between Malus Director Moerland , Malus Profusion, 18 and 30%. In the afternoons of the Rebellion Malus toringo and multi-stemmed Prunus week air pollution levels in central London serrula Tibetica for blossom and colour. were down by as much as 45% on some days. In allation, being illegal, had to be Despite the inconvenience to traffic and to coordinated in secret. On the morning of weary bus-passengers especially, it seemed that Monday 15th , a lorry carrying the trees was most people, though of course not all, were discreetly parked in a slip road near the delighted by the transformation. southern approach, and once the traffic on the Part of the wonder of Waterloo’s Garden bridge had been stopped, fifty volunteers leapt Bridge was that the design was open-ended. into action, carrying the trees into position, People were encouraged to add to it, to take four to each tree. The police, aware of the responsibility for it. Remarkably, although proposed blockade but not of the garden plans, perhaps due to the simple “No Drink or Drugs were not prepared for the sight of trees being Please” signs, it was almost entirely trouble- marched onto the bridge like Birnam Wood free, despite being adjacent to the bars and and the whole operation was completed before clubs of the West End on a Bank Holiday they had stepped in. The Malus and Prunus weekend. The occasional turbo-charged cyclist were placed on the central reservation and on his way home from work was the worst prote ed from being blown over by ropes threat to life and limb. The sheer weight of stretched either side between the lamp posts. numbers of people determined to act decently No one expe ed the occupation to last made antisocial behaviour impossible; unless more than a day or two but over the coming you consider blocking the traffic in the first week the garden evolved in the hands of the place antisocial. But the real ASB is the

33 THE LONDON GARDENER or The Gardener’s Intelligencer Vol no.  For the year 

14 . The transformation of Waterloo Bridge into a garden during the week of 15th April 2019 [Photograph The Perambulator]

34 Evidence from The Keep Records government’s ignoring the climate emergency, However, although the Grade I li ed or Shell’s in committing ecocide in the Niger house was designed and built under the Delta and spending millions lobbying against supervision of John Nash and the garden’s restri ions on its murderous business. design is attributed to Humphry Repton, as The garden was a beautiful thing to are aspe s of the house’s siting and alignment, witness, and a huge number of people around Repton’s and Nash’s contributions to the the world loved it. But despite the fe ive project have become obscured as a result of atmosphere, it was designed with a political changes of ownership and reconfiguration intention: as Gail Bradbrook, one of the both in size and use of the house and gardens founders of XR, said: ‘This is a rebellion. It’s during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. fine if people want to have a bit of fun and a At the beginning of the twentieth century the bit of a dance but this is not a free party. What house was sold together with a much reduced we’re wanting to do is create a political crisis.’ 4 area of the grounds. By 1913 a large section of the remaining estate was purchased by Southgate Urban Di rict Council and * * * * * transformed into the municipal park that is today Grovelands Park. 3 In 1916 the house A version of this article became a hospital for wounded soldiers and appeared in remained a hospital in various guises before The Morning Star falling into disuse and disrepair in 1977 , on 13 th June 2019 re-emerging after refurbishment and extension as a private hospital in 1985 . Until recently, little information has been published which documents the roles Evidence from The Keep Records - that Humphry Repton and John Nash played Humphry Repton and John Nash at in the design, build and supervision of the Southgate Grove works, the artisans involved, materials used or By Alun Coonick timescales of the proje . However, examination of documents held at the East umphry Repton in his 1803 book, Sussex Records Office (the archives known as Observations on the theory and The Keep) may now help to fill some of the practice of Landscape Gardening, 1 gaps in this knowledge. described Southgate Grove as one Southgate Grove has its origins as part Hof his ‘ Creations ’, adding that it was amongst a of an estate outside the southern boundary of small number of new houses which he had Enfield Chase, between the villages of been called upon by the architect to consult on Southgate and Winchmore Hill, Middlesex. 4 &5 their ‘situation and appendages’. The architect The estate is first mentioned in the fifteenth was none other than John Nash and Southgate century as Lord’s Grove, a demesne of Grove was to become regarded as one of the Edmonton Manor. The John Rocque map of finest examples of a Repton / Nash suburban Middlesex of 1754 (fig. 15) shows the area that villa. Terence Davis wrote in his biography of was to become Southgate Grove as being at Nash: the edge of Enfield Chase and labelled as ‘The However, the first time we hear of the Bone’. The ownership of Lord’s Grove passed partners working together is at in 1789 by inheritance to Lady Anna Elizabeth Southgate Grove in north London Brydges, daughter of the Duke of Chandos, where, in 1797 , Nash built his first large who married Earl Temple in 1796 . Over the classical mansion and possibly his best. 2 period 1796-99 and as part of a rationalisation 4. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- 6943551 /HOLLY- 3. Matthew Ecclestone, The Story of Grovelands , (self-published, BANCROFT-reveals-posed-eco-warrior-infiltrate-London-protests. 2nd Ed, 1997 , I SBN-0952869918 ). html 4. ‘Edmonton: Other estates’, A History of the County of Middlesex: _ Volume 5 , (Victoria County History, London, 1976 ), pp. 154-161 . 5. Historic England, GROVELANDS PARK - List Entry Summary, 1. Humphry Repton, Observations on the theory and practice of at www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/ 1000395. Landscape Gardening , (J. Taylor, 1803 ), p. 186 . 2. Terence Davis, John Nash, The Prince Regent’s Architect , (David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1973 ), p. 35 . 35