Whenever I go to the movies, I am very aware of the fact that you have to be a superhero to get any box office traction these days.\u00a0 The horticultural world is full of superheroes\u2014past and present.\u00a0 Most of them would look rather lumpy and feel downright uncomfortable in masks, tights or body armor, so they wear sturdy work clothes and garden boots instead.\u00a0 Unlike the conventional superheroes, who get around via swinging spider web filament or rocket packs, the horti-heroes drive conventional vehicles laden with mulch, newly-purchased plants and interesting pots.\u00a0 Their trunks or cargo areas may not be bullet-proof, but they are usually lined with plastic sheets that repel drips and stray dollops of potting mix.<\/p>\n
Norah Lindsay\u20141873-1948\u2014is one of my horticultural superheroes.\u00a0 Her superpowers included a turbo-charged address book, a thoroughgoing knowledge of plants and gardening, quick wit, and the ability to lift heavy social connections and spin them rapidly into paid employment.\u00a0 Like Wonder Woman, she was beautiful, and like just about every superhero, she had an interesting back story.<\/p>\n
Norah Bourke was born into a branch of a noble, Anglo-Irish family.\u00a0 She married Harry Lindsay, another aristocrat, at the age of 22 and settled with her new husband at a Tudor-era manor house in the Oxfordshire village of Sutton Courtenay.\u00a0 The time was a good one for gardeners, as late Victorian formality was giving way to a new, more \u201cnaturalistic\u201d style of planting.\u00a0 The high priestess of this was artist, writer and horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll, who was famed for her artistic approach to garden making that emphasized color, interesting plant combinations and lush borders of perennials, annuals, and flowering shrubs.\u00a0 A Jekyll garden in full flower was something like an Impressionist painting, with melding colors and soft edges.\u00a0 Jekyll\u2019s near contemporary and another horticulture superhero, William Robinson, who became friends with Norah Lindsay, also adopted and experimented with this style at his garden, Gravetye Manor is Sussex.<\/p>\n
Taking a page from Jekyll\u2019s book and her own visits to notable gardens in the British Isles and Europe, Lindsay began creating gardens on the sprawling Sutton Courtenay property.\u00a0 Her plantings emphasized the same ideas as Jekyll\u2019s, but the plants and combinations were even bolder, creating an extremely lush effect.\u00a0 Like Jekyll and Robinson, she was fond of self-seeding species and the ever-changing garden effects produced by the serendipitous appearance of their \u201cvolunteer\u201d offspring.\u00a0 Lindsay also challenged the accepted practice of segregating roses in dedicated beds or gardens, and included them in herbaceous borders.<\/p>\n
In the midst of that aggressive gardening, the Lindsay\u2019s entertained friends who were luminaries in the artistic and social circles of their day.\u00a0 The likes of author Evelyn Waugh and the then-Prince of Wales\u2014later Edward VIII and eventually, the Duke of Windsor\u2014came to visit and, no doubt enjoyed the glorious Sutton Courtenay gardens.\u00a0 One of those guests, the prolific diarist and society gadfly, Henry \u201cChips\u201d Channon, described Lindsay in effulgent terms: \u201cHer wit was extravagant, her conversation an ecstasy, her garden the finest in England, her appearance exotic to a degree.\u201d\u00a0 Channon went on to call her \u201ca fine friend, and a worshipper and begetter of beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately all of that entertaining and begetting of beauty was too expensive for the Lindsay\u2019s.\u00a0 The marriage ended and Norah Lindsay found herself impoverished at the age of 51.\u00a0 With her celebrated garden as her best reference, she began a new chapter in her life and launched a career designing gardens.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you had the money,\u201d wrote her friend and client, the Duke of Windsor, \u201cshe was the one to spend it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lindsay succeeded, creating gardens for a wide array of clients, including the famous American-born, English decorator, Nancy Lancaster, as well as Prussian statesman, Otto von Bismarck.\u00a0 She knew and influenced Vita Sackville-West, who created the still-celebrated gardens at Sissinghurst Castle.\u00a0 Like notable American designers Beatrix Jones Farrand and Ellen Biddle Shipman, Lindsay often stayed at the homes of clients while designing their gardens.\u00a0 This helped with living expenses, not to mention the progress of garden projects.<\/p>\n
Gardens are ephemeral things and the only Lindsay garden that survives substantially intact is at Blickling Hall, a National Trust property in Norfolk, designed in the 1930\u2019s.\u00a0 Her influence, however, lingers to the present day and many garden designers around the world incorporate Lindsay-style romantic plantings and lush combinations in their designs.\u00a0 The late Rosemary Verey, one of the doyennes of late twentieth century gardening, was a direct artistic descendant of Norah Lindsay.<\/p>\n
As I aim to make the \u201cgood\u201d of sound garden practice triumph over the \u201cevil\u201d of weeds and varmints in my own garden, I am inspired not by spandex-clad orchestrators of big-screen mayhem, but by pearl necklace-bedecked horticultural superheroes like Norah Lindsay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whenever I go to the movies, I am very aware of the fact that you have to be a superhero to get any box office traction these days.\u00a0 The horticultural world is full of superheroes\u2014past and present.\u00a0 Most of them would look rather lumpy and feel downright uncomfortable in masks, tights or body armor, so … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1895,505,1893,1892,1897,1894,1896],"class_list":["post-2456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-blickling-hall","tag-english-gardens","tag-garden-designers","tag-norah-lindsay","tag-rosemary-verey","tag-sutton-courtenay","tag-women-gardeners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456\/revisions\/2457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}