The front cover of Hugh Cavendish’s new book, A Time to Plant, looks like an abstract painting in shades of olive green, tan and rust. It is, in fact, a close-up of the exfoliating bark of a stewartia tree. The tree in question is part of a collection of stewartias at Holker Hall, the Cavendish family home in the English county of Cumbria.
Passionate gardeners frequently turn into writers and aristocratic gardeners seem even more likely to do so. As the result, there are many histories of individual gardens, past and present, on the market. A Time to Plant stands out for its eloquence as well as the beauty of the photo illustrations, all taken by Cavendish’s artist-wife, Grania.
The Holker—pronounced “hooker”–property has been in the author’s family since 1536. It was originally part of the holdings of the Duke of Devonshire, whose primary estate, Chatsworth, is well known to garden lovers. Jane Austin fans also know Chatsworth as the stand-in for the Pemberley estate in the 1995 TV mini series version of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth. Holker’s fortunes became separated from those of Chatsworth in the twentieth century. Hugh Cavendish, known more formally as Lord Cavendish of Furness, grew up there and inherited the property in at the age of thirty-three.
He found himself in a dire situation. The gardens, which had been open to the public for some time, had fallen on hard times. The estate was in financial peril. However, instead of emulating many of his fellow aristocrats and consigning the property to the National Trust, Cavendish decided to undertake a rescue mission. He admits that upgrading and redesigning the gardens waited five years while he, Grania and their business advisors worked to restructure debt, revitalize the estate’s profit-making businesses and create a plan for Holker’s future. It is rare for a gardener to be so frank about the financial impediments to great garden plans. The early challenges in Cavendish’s grand-scale horticultural career make the later triumphs even more inspiring.
Cavendish bucked conventional wisdom by taking a hard look at every aspect of his gardens, including landscape designs that had worn out their welcome or simply never lived up to the original designers’ intentions. Some, like Holker’s struggling rose garden, were scrapped outright in favor of plantings schemes with a greater chance of success and more appeal to visitors. Others were replanted or re-imagined.
Cavendish clearly loves his plants, large and small and is a UK national collection holder for some species. His observations are fresh and interesting. For example, experience at Holker has taught him that plants originating on several different continents look awkward when closely intermingled. Asian species work better in the Cumbrian landscape than related species that originated in North America. Presumably this means that Cavendish’s Japanese stewartia—Stewartia pseudocamellia—is more simpatico than his mountain stewartia—Stewartia ovata.
As a businessman, Cavendish knows that the customer comes first. At Holker this translates to annual garden improvements designed to give repeat visitors something new to see and talk about every year. He and Grania have installed a substantial labyrinth with echoes of Stonehenge in its upended stone slabs. The wildflower meadow helps to unit the formal portions of the garden with the wild landscape beyond it. An ambitious water cascade delights visiting children.
Hugh Cavendish pays fulsome tribute to the circle of women who, he says, have had an impact on the garden. He credits his many aunts; significant female friends, like English garden designer/doyenne Arabella Lenox-Boyd; and even his mother, with whom he had an intense and difficult relationship. Perhaps most of all, the book is a love letter to Grania, his partner in all things, especially the garden.
Now another woman is about to play a significant role in the Holker garden. Cavendish’s daughter, Lucy, a painter, is taking over management of the estate and its businesses, while her parents retire to an advisory role and a house two miles away. The author professes not to be sad about the change. His concept is one of stewardship, rather than ownership—perhaps the inevitable outcome of being only the most recent in a long line of masters and mistresses of Holker.
A Time to Plant brings past and present together. Though the author insists that he is fundamentally lazy, he proves to be an energetic chronicler of the life of his garden. The book has plenty about plants, from the beautiful rediscovered martagon lilies that dot the edge of the woodland garden, to the amazing “handkerchief tree” –Davidia involucrata—that took fourteen years to produce its first flowers. A helpful garden map on the volume’s frontspiece and endpaper give the reader an easy frame of reference. Between the covers, Hugh Cavendish offers a literary map through his life and the forty-year Holker renaissance, with a graceful epilogue that points the way to the future. Taken as a whole, Cavendish’s eloquent map provides the reader with a memorable journey.