I have a soft spot for those who restore old gardens–clearing overgrowth, rediscovering features and researching original plantings and layouts. It is tough work, requiring a combination of intellect, enthusiasm and physical strength, and it can go on for years. Funding can be a special challenge. The world has so many pressing needs that it is sometimes hard to convince people that restoring a piece of horticultural art is one of them.
Still, determined individuals persist, creating or recreating great landscapes. One of those people was an Englishwoman, Lavinia, Marchioness of Cholmondeley, who died recently at the advanced age of 94. Beginning sixty-six years ago, at age twenty-eight, Lady Lavinia spent the rest of her life renovating and improving the landscape at her husband’s family’s property, Cholmondeley—pronounced chum-lee—Castle, a crenellated pile in the northwest English region of Cheshire.
The original garden at Cholmondeley goes back to the 1600’s, when it was created by a well-known nurseryman and landscape designer, George London. It was revitalized in the next century by another landscape designer, William Eames, who transformed parts of the property into a park-like state in the style of his better-known contemporary, Lancelot “Capability” Brown. The estate’s grounds were to wait almost two hundred years before Lavinia Cholmondeley arrived to further transform them.
That arrival happened in 1949, at the conclusion of World War II. The castle had been unoccupied by the Cholmondeley family for twelve years. In the intervening time, it had been requisitioned for military use—like many of England’s great houses–and had served as a military hospital.
The soil at Cholmondeley is acid and especially suitable for rhododendrons, azaleas and laurels. When the young Lady Lavinia arrived, parts of the neglected grounds had been overrun by untamed laurel, rambunctious bamboo and especially by one particularly beautiful, but pernicious rhododendron, Rhododendron ponticum. This purple-flowered, broad leaf evergreen is native from Spain and Portugal all the way west to western Asia. Its first recorded appearance in England was in 1763. Rhododendron ponticum’s beauty and hardiness made it a favorite for estate plantings in the Victorian era, which is probably how it landed at Cholmondeley. Sadly, it spreads quickly, self-seeding and rooting wherever branches touch the ground, rapidly developing into thickets. By shading out less hardy native vegetation and competing successfully for available nutrients, it wins the botanical battle much of the time. These days estate and park managers all over the British Isles make herculean efforts to eradicate Rhododendron ponticum.
The same was true of Lady Lavinia. Since manpower, equipment and resources were scarce just after the war, she used all available hands—including her own–to clear the property. Her obituary in the Telegraph newspaper quotes her description of her early days on the estate. “When friends came to stay for the weekend,” she said,” we gave them an axe and a saw, and told them to set to,”
With clearance underway, Lady Lavinia started the nineteen fifties with a quintessentially English endeavor—a rose garden, with hardscaping of locally quarried limestone. Though the enclosing hedging had to be replaced several years ago, the rose garden survives today. The rose garden led to many other specialty garden areas, including a “Silver Garden”, created in 1977 in honor of Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee and planted with silver-leafed specimens, and abundant herbaceous borders, which were refreshed and renovated in 2008. As the garden expanded, Lady Lavinia began working with a team of gardeners. Since 2013, this team has been led by Head Gardener, Barry Grain. Mr. Grain seems to have undertaken a whole host of garden projects, including “tweaking” of some of the major garden areas. In the spring of 2016, Cholmondeley’s “Tower Garden” will be recreated as an exhibit at the Royal Horticultural Society’s prestigious Chelsea Flower Show. Exposure at Chelsea is sure to raise the profile of this very unique landscape and, I am sure, increase the number of visitors who contribute the revenue stream that makes the gardens’ continued existence possible.
Lady Lavinia continued to work in, plan and enjoy her garden into old age. The Telegraph’s obituary writer notes the following: “… in her final days she enjoyed being taken in her buggy along paths and over swards to examine new growth.”
It sounds as if Lady Lavinia capped her garden restoration career by making plans to ensure the Cholmondeley gardens’ future. Now it is up to her descendants to carry on that work.