Musings on the design of an Italianate garden
The garden at Great Ambrook (created between 1909 and 1912) is so often referred to as ‘unique’ and so it appears to be, as well as extraordinary, with its Italianate style hidden in the midst of rolling Devonshire countryside. Just how extraordinary can be set against the era of Arthur Graham’s life and the influences to which he must have been exposed.
If we bear in mind that Queen Victoria died in 1901 and Graham’s life span was from 1871 to 1928, then we can see that his early years would have been influenced by the late Victorian reign, he being 30 when the queen died. He was born into a time which is considered by many as the ‘Golden Age’ of plant collecting and exploration, brought about by the expansion of the British Empire and the continuing industrial revolution at home. The emergence of the ‘nouveaux riches’ meant a new demand for large country houses and estates and all the materialistic trappings that went with this new-found wealth. These manifested themselves in many ways but in particular in the extravagant Victorian garden, walled kitchen gardens, glasshouses and the demand for all the plants that went with them.
Among his contemporaries – including perhaps his brother at Busbridge Hall – house decoration and garden design or layouts were the perfect mediums for them to express their wealth. Graham had that wealth but it seems not the desire to openly display it to the masses in the same way.
The Victorians loved the formality of designs associated with the English Renaissance as experienced by many Englishmen on their ‘Grand Tours’, which were a ‘must-do’ for the wealthy and aristocratic during the 1600s up until about 1800, and which referenced earlier Italian Renaissance gardens. Among others, these were associated with the Medici family in Florence and by the end of the 19th century, Florence had become a favourite destination for expatriates. Balustrading, urns, staircases, fountains and terraces were to become common. For the Victorians the formal layouts offered by these garden designs were ideal for planting the many new tender exotics that were becoming popular. In addition, bedding plants in bright vivid colours could be incorporated into ever more sophisticated bedding schemes.
Just how extraordinary the garden is can be set against the era of Arthur Graham’s life and the influences to which he must have been exposed
graham would have seen significant changes in the approaches to garden design during the reign of queen victoria and into the early 20th century
The influence of the formal Italian garden continued to be adopted by many garden designers, even if only in cameo within a different garden setting, but by the last years of Victoria’s reign and through that of Edward VII, gardens developed from the highly ornate gardens of the Victorians to become much more natural. The period marks a significant change in the design of gardens with the influence of plants people such as Gertrude Jekyll, and William Robinson along with memorable designers and architects such as Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944 and hence a contemporary of Graham and Lyon who designed Great Ambrook Italian Garden), William Morris and John Ruskin, who with others established the Arts and Crafts movement.
Graham can’t have been unaware of the existence and influence of these people but he certainly did not embrace the Arts and Crafts belief held by Ruskin and Morris that the house and garden should be designed as one integrated whole, the garden a logical extension of the house.
WE CAN SEE THAT GRAHAM ADOPTED AN ADAPTATION OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE STYLE…
…but positioned the garden away from the house, ensuring that it was well-hidden behind very high walls and tucked far away from public scrutiny. As a homosexual, he could not be seen or known to be entertaining his friends in public. His enormous wealth was used not to create a show-piece, but a secret, hidden garden, discretely tucked away from the main house in remote countryside. It is also noticeable that the garden ‘stood alone’ in the sense that it was created as a whole, self-contained and quite significantly-sized Italian-style garden and was not part of a larger scheme.
It could be that he and/or Thomas Henry Lyon, his friend and garden designer, were influenced by another great garden designer of their time – Harold Ainsworth Peto (1854-1933). This seems likely to be the case since Peto had designed the Italian garden at Busbridge Hall, which had been purchased by Graham’s younger brother, Percy Graham.
Peto was strongly influenced by the formal Italian garden and he assembled a personal collection of classical features and objects which would harmonise well with the English landscape. He ran an architectural practice with Ernest George, which was joined by the young college graduate Edwin Lutyens in 1887.
It is said that Peto disliked the English taste in planting ‘running riot in masses of colour irrespective of form’ and he brought balance, harmony and order back to garden design amid the flamboyance and sometimes excess of ‘Victorianesque’ garden fashion.
peto’s design principles seem to chime well with what we see at great ambrook
It was in 1887 that Peto travelled to Italy and he was much impressed by the Renaissance villas and gardens he saw. He settled at Iford Manor in Wiltshire in 1899 and quickly commenced work on his garden, which was largely completed in 1907.
His objectives, as displayed at Iford (a private garden, open to the public) and Buscot Park (National Trust), would seem to fit with what we see at Great Ambrook. They were to:
· Create a successful mix of formal and informal layouts
· Use and successfully harmonise hard and soft landscaping
· Draw a link between Italianate and Picturesque styles
· Use artefacts and sculptural elements
· Scale down the grand Italian style to fit a more compact area within an existing garden or English landscape
The creators of the Italian Garden breathed lasting life and atmosphere into the garden, just as Peto did at Iford
The Swimming Pool
Although some of the above may not be evident or is yet to be discovered at Great Ambrook, there do seem to be some obvious parallels to be drawn. Peto’s work at Buscot Park, near Lechlade, has been described as ‘an unusual marriage of Italian formality in an English landscape’ (Great British Gardens on-line website). Surely this could also be applied to Lyon and Graham’s Great Ambrook Italian garden.
The Octagonal Plunge Pool
It is also worth looking beyond the practical and historical to take a look at the garden and try to define its ‘Spirit of Place’ (an exercise that the National Trust has undertaken recently for its historic places).
In a very recent article in Country Life (Country Life, 4 October 2020), Troy Scott-Smith (Head Gardener at Iford Manor, formerly at Sissinghurst) describes Peto’s garden not in terms of its physical attributes and appearance but much more in terms of its atmosphere and emotional connection. Troy portrays Peto’s breath at Iford as creating:
“the embedded sense of place that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary”, and Iford as:
“’…not only rich in emotion and intimacy, but where Nature and gardener work in harmony’”
The history, owner and creators of Great Ambrook Italian Garden breathed lasting life and atmosphere into the garden, just as Peto did at Iford.
Viv Cloke - Volunteer Garden Guide