Anne here.
Ever since my first visit to London as an adult, I've been fascinated by those fabulous English garden squares, like the one Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts's characters broke into in the movie Notting Hill.
That first visit was long before Notting Hill was released, and I remember being shocked at the time to learn that the elegant cast-iron railings that surrounded the large and beautiful garden over the road from my backpacker's hotel, were not just decorative, and that the garden was locked to keep out riff-raff like me. Or indeed anyone who didn't live in one of the very fine houses that surrounded it.
I'm writing a new series at the moment (first book coming out in September) and I've placed the houses of most of the main characters around a large and beautiful garden square. In mine, however access to the garden is only via the back gates of the houses built around it — the garden is entirely enclosed by houses, and it's barely visible from the street.
It's a bit like these ones, Ladbroke Square Garden in Notting Hill, and Arundel Gardens, though mine is a made-up place. And why a made-up place, you ask?
Because most of these large, private, hidden-behind-the-houses gardens were constructed after the period of my stories, which are set in the Regency (1811-20). So I'm bending history a bit, and I'm doing it because I want my characters to be able to interact in the garden, in private.
Ladbroke Square Gardens is one of the largest private garden squares in London, at three hectares, and is only accessible to local residents. Originally the site of a racecourse called the Hippodrome, created in 1837, it was turned into a garden in the 1840's after the racecourse failed. The layout of the gardens hasn't changed much since then — an 1849 architect's plan shows the garden plan pretty much the same as now.
Arundel Gardens, was a speculative development in the 1860's — yes, there were land developers back then, too — and the houses on both sides backed onto elegant communal gardens which were originally known as "pleasure grounds", or "paddocks."
This is all you'll see of Arundel Gardens from the street. It hasn't changed much since it was built.
So it suited me to create my own garden square, and people it with my characters.
The eighteenth and nineteenth century was a real boom time for gardens. A combination of increased prosperity, a growth in scientific knowledge and a general interest in botany, stimulated by colonial expansion and the "discovery" of many new species meant that gardens became both fashionable and exciting.
Garden designers like "Capability" Brown in the 18th century and Humprhy Repton in the 19th, became hugely popular, and their love of "natural" design led to hundreds of formal more geometric gardens being ripped out and "natural" landscapes replaced them — it was very controversial at the time. Many of their gardens are more or less the same today.
Botany became hugely fashionable. Genteel young ladies collected, pressed and mounted botanical specimens, and painted them in careful watercolors. Scientists as well as ladies and gentlemen of wealth, leisure and vision became interested in the collection, breeding and cross-breeding of plants, coming up with new variations.
Societies were formed. The Royal Horticultural Society in England was established in 1804, and continued to foster the academic interest in landscape and gardening.
The gardens of Empress Josephine Bonaparte's gardens at Malmaison in France has over 2,000 species of plants. From my own corner of the world, Joseph Banks, (1743-1820) the botanist who accompanied Captain Cook on several of his voyages, brought 3,500 different species of plants to the Kew RBG. A wealthy landowner, he was President of the Royal Horticultural Society for forty years.
In The Book of Trades, Or Library of the Useful Arts..(1806) there is a chapter devoted to the career of a gardener. It distinguished between flower gardens, fruit gardens and kitchen gardens.
"There are several kinds of gardeners: some gain a living by looking after other people's gardens; for which they receive a certain sum per annum, according to the size of the garden. Others live in gentlemen's houses, and, like domestics in general, receive wages for their labour, from twenty to a hundred pounds per annum, according to their merit, or to what may be expected from them. Some gardeners go out to day work and their wages are from three to five shillings a day."
However, fascinating as all this is, sadly, that's not really what my books are about. But because there were so many botanical developments happening at the time, I need to check things all the time.
My heroine is peeping between the dainty hanging flowers of a fuchsia—wait! Were fuchsias around then?
I jump onto the web. The first fuchsia species were introduced into English gardens and glasshouses at the end of the 18th century. Fuchsia coccinea Aiton arrived at Kew Gardens in 1788 to be formally described in 1789. It was apparently shortly followed by Fuchsia magellanica Lam. (Wikipedia)
Yes!
But would a fuchsia be growing outside in a London garden in 1818? A lot of the plants we see now in gardens have been bred and hybridized for the climate.
A little more research throws up this:
Fuchsia coccinea Aiton was shortly followed by Fuchsia magellanica Lam which proved very hardy outdoors and its cultivars soon naturalized in favorable areas of the British Isles. Other species were quickly introduced to greenhouses.
Phew. My heroine can keep peeping through the fuchsias. I'm not going to explain which variety, but I know it's Fuchsia magellanica Lam. *g*
The other reason I wanted to set this series around a garden is simply because I love gardens and I wanted my people to have access to a beautiful one.
Cicero said: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything.”
He's right, don't you think? And even if you don't have a garden )or a library) you can always visit one.
For years I've been compiling a list of overseas gardens I hope to visit one day, including Monet's garden in France, and Sissinghurst in the UK. A good friend once took me to the Chelsea Physic garden, which was marvelous. But there are many many more, and here here's a list of English gardens worth visiting.
Do you mind it when authors "bend" history as I'm doing with a garden square before its time?
Do you have a garden of your own, or a favorite flower or a garden you like to visit? Tell us about it.