Village Gardeners
MR JOHN DRAKE, the well known garden historian, from Fen Ditton, gave us the
inside story into the development of the Tradescant garden museum of Garden
History which is in Lambeth.
The Trust to set up this memorial garden was formed in 1977, by what sounded like a pretty formidable lady - Mrs Nicholson. She found the much neglected churchyard, whilst doing the "jubilee" walk. It was attached to the closed and decommisioned Lambeth parish church and when she found the tombs of Admiral Blythe, of Bounty fame, and that of John Tradescant, she was determined to acquire it.
She finally did, from the church commissioners, with a full repairing lease - the roof alone costing £90,000 to repair.
To find a group of volunteers who knew about garden history was her next challenge. One of those volunteers was our speaker who with others had to set about restoring the the garden to some sort of order, with a special brief to keep the plants as historically correct as possible - a subject very close to our speaker's heart.
John Tradescant had come with his family from Holland to Suffolk, right at the beginning of the 17th century. He worked for the owners of Chilham castle in Kent(where there still stands a magnificent avenue of sweet chestnuts planted by him in 1610) and the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is better known as advisor to the Cecil family at Hatfield House and to the Duke of Buckingham- a good friend of King James 1st.
John Tradescant (junior) worked as an advisor to Henrietta Maria-the Queen, but travelled further than his father, to Virginia, in 1630, bringing back many plants including the Yukka and Aqualegias. (John Drake, interestingly holds the national collection of these plants.)
Father and son. at this point, decided it was more lucrative to open a plant nursery than advise on plants, which they did near Stockwell in south London. They developed a "closet" of varieties , which was finally left to the Ashmolean museum, when the family died out on the death of the third John Tradescant at the age of 10.
The garden museum was developed with the use of plant directories held by three gardeners in the mid 17th century; John Parkinson, John Gerard, both of whom had gardens in the city of London and Tradescant himself. Many plants had already been collected from Asia, Africa, Europe and America - many of which were highly scented - highly prized and effective when planted near the stinking streets of the capital.
Over the years the garden museum has been patiently and painstakingly restored - leaving the tombs and memorials exactly where they have always been. The soil which was mostly London dust, has been enriched with metropolitan police horse manure (local re-cycling), and thousands of pounds worth of paving. acquired by volunteers, such as Lady Salisbury. Friends in high places who know the right people! Many plants were donated by plant growers - to create a peaceful setting - Saxiphrage, wall flowers, box, violas, phlomis, cistus and valerian - all which could have been there in the seventeen hundreds.
It's maintenance is a problem, as the volunteers who have the necessary knowledge if plants are difficult to find; but it's open from Easter to October (not Saturdays). The church has a small exhibition of garden artefacts too. It sounds for all sorts of reasons to be well worth a visit if you are Lambeth way- or even down Lambeth walk.