The year 2013 marks many historic horticultural figures and events: the RHS flower show celebrates 100 years at the Royal Hospital Chelsea; André Le Nôtre, the French garden designer of Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles, was born 400 years ago; and it is 70 years since the birth of one of England's most influential garden designers, Gertrude Jekyll. On the 8th and 9th of June, the London Parks & Gardens Trust's Open Garden Squares Weekend also celebrated its 15th anniversary.
Open Garden Squares Weekend encourages visitors to explore the green spaces of London that are not usually accessible to the public. This year's selection of gardens were even more diverse than in 2012. Many community food-growing projects such as North London's Skip Garden and Clissold Community Garden took part. The latter's 'plot to plate' project is funded by the Big Lottery Fund's local food scheme, demonstrating how significant these small gardens are in recreating the centuries-old food-growing traditions within the local community. Many of these community gardens have global links with garden projects in developing countries and offer education programmes to local schools and youth groups.
Abbey Gardens - What will the harvest be? illustrates how the site of a 12th-century Cistercian abbey, where monks ran a productive garden, has been reconnected to many aspects of its local history. Residents have created, in the words of the artists and founders of the space, 'a unique open-access harvest garden where anyone can grow and harvest flowers, fruit and vegetables', (see Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope's www.somewhere.org.uk). Interestingly, the triangular design of the vegetable beds is inspired by 'the Plaistow Landgrabbers', whose 'Triangle Camp' highlighted the local unemployment situation in Newham during the early 20th century.
The weekend also encourages visitors to explore the wider history of these unique gardens and so acquire a deeper understanding of the importance and value a garden has in aesthetic, historic, cultural and educational terms. Many of the gardens featured form a part of London's rich garden heritage: whether an historic garden of an Inn of Court - as seen at Middle or Inner Temple; a Nonconformist Victorian cemetery such as Abney Park in Stoke Newington; or the garden of the Jamyang Buddhist Centre in South London - planted in the prison exercise yard at the old Kennington Courthouse which was built in 1869. There were also escorted visits to the gardens created, planted and maintained by the prisoners at HM Prison Holloway. These gardens are reminders of the therapeutic value of gardening found in the prisoner of war camps and ghetto gardens of the First and Second World Wars.
The research team from the London Parks & Garden Trust provided gardens with histories of their own particular site. Notable additions this year included the Prime Minister's garden at No 10 Downing Street and Burgh House in Hampstead, a Georgian Town house with planting plans from 1911 by Gertrude Jekyll. The team also produced a history of the more contemporary Alara Permaculture Garden, which was established in 2004. This is a community growing space where a new variety of apple tree especially suited to the urban environment called 'Core Blimey' has been planted. It is the first apple specific to London to be developed in 70 years.
This year there were many more tours led by specialist London Blue and Green Badge guides in the areas of the City of London: The Temple, Bloomsbury and Westminster. Naturally, visitors are always fascinated by talking with the resident gardeners, garden committee members or the local people involved with a certain project about the plantings of the site. What makes the Open Gardens Square Weekend especially notable is the desire of so many visitors to acquire additional historical information, to place a garden into a context and understand its story.
Visitors on the City of London walks heard extracts from The City Gardener (Thomas Fairchild 1720), the Hoxton nurseryman, who, like Samuel Pepys, recorded his observations by walking through the London streets describing the trees, shrubs and flowers which grew best in the adverse conditions of a seacoal-polluted atmosphere. Fairchild listed pear and fig trees growing well in gardens in Bishopsgate and mulberries fruiting outside Sam's Coffee House in Ludgate Hill. During the weekend, visitors were amazed to see fig trees in the gardens of the livery companies of the Barber Surgeons and the Goldsmiths and a mulberry in Fountain Court at Middle Temple gardens.
Many of the City gardens, created in the spaces of churchyards made available following the Disused Burial Act 1884, are now planted out with biodiversity-rich herbaceous borders amongst the tombstones. Christchurch Greyfriars in Newgate Street, a Sir Christopher Wren church built after the Great Fire of London (1666), was bombed during the Second World War. All that remains of the church are some external walls, pillars and a restored tower, now converted to a residential home. The planting plan is noteworthy as the design echoes the church and the community - the pews are recreated by box hedging, the stunning flowering beds represent the congregation and wooden vertical structures planted with rambling roses and clematis indicate the crumbling pillars that once supported this church. All the visitors commented on the 'fascinating' detailed history of the site, which like many City gardens has been extensively researched by members of the Trust.
The four gardens of the Inns of Court, Middle and Inner Temple, Gray's Inn, and Lincoln's Inn were described by visitors as 'iconic' and a 'part of our heritage'. These are gardens with extensive archive material. The bills of sales of the gardener at Middle Temple show a charge of £11.11s.3d for 'the new making of the garden in the Benchers' walk' at Easter time 1615 and in 1618 they detail a purchase of 3000 white thorns and 500 poles to lay out hedging.
All the gardens that take part in Open Garden Squares Weekend connect us in some way with our historic past and link us to a sense of place. The gardens educate and inform, some challenge us aesthetically or, as Sir Francis Bacon wrote, they simply provide the 'greatest refreshment to the pleasures of man'. This year's Open Gardens Squares Weekend showed us how vibrant, inventive and passionate all the various communities are who support this tradition of creating gardens.