Overview

For over a century, Country Life magazine has been an influential force in the world of garden design. The very first gardening article was published on 6 March 1897, and from the beginning, its illuminating weekly essays on houses and gardens sought to educate and influence taste. Superbly illustrated with specially commissioned photographs, and covering a broad spectrum of gardens and styles, the magazine has built up an unrivalled archive ? a unique repository of architectural and gardening history. These archives are the source for this selection of gardens, long since disappeared, and the poignant photographs that capture them forever in their heyday. The ephemeral nature of gardens means that they can very easily become ?lost?. Some of the examples featured in this book have so metamorphosed over decades as to be unrecognisable today from their original concept; some belonged to great country houses which were demolished or burnt down; others were neglected or abandoned in the economic and social changes in the aftermath of the First World War; others still fell out of fashion to be replaced by more up-to-date designs. Some of these gardens have not completely disappeared; parts of the infrastructure may survive, but the original intention and spirit have long since vanished. The forty-five lost English gardens illustrated in this book are organised by region and they cover a wide range of period and style from the late 1890s through the 1930s, revealing the magic of Victorian and Edwardian garden design. Here is St Catherine?s Court, with its once resplendent turf stairway; the magnificent cedars and immaculate bowling green at Campsea Ashe; the great arcaded hedges at Muntham Court; and the impressive topiary gardens of Brockenhurst Park. Here, too, are some of the great rock gardens, immensely fashionable in the 1880s, such as Swaylands in Kent, and the cliff-top garden at Bawdsey Manor in Suffolk. Beautifully reproduced in duotone, the 160 photographs bear testament to the rich and varied heritage of English gardens and of the people who created them. Kathryn Bradley-Hole has revisited most of the locations and her carefully researched, perceptive text explains their background and their fate.

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9781854109910

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Reviews

'A fascinating, if melancholic, tribute to 45 gardens' Sunday Telegraph 'This is a book I have been waiting for ... delectable ... a feast' -- Roy Strong Country Life

'A fascinating, if melancholic, tribute to 45 gardens' Sunday Telegraph 20040530 'This is a book I have been waiting for ... delectable ... a feast' -- Roy Strong Country Life 20040520

Author Information

Kathryn Bradley-Hole is the gardens editor of Country Life. Renowned for her perceptive views on British Gardening, she was for ten years a gardening correspondent on the Daily Telegraph, earning two awards from the Garden Writers' Guild. She has contributed to many books, including The Reader's Digest New Encyclopedia of Garden Plants & Flowers, and is the author of Lost Gardens of England, Stone, Rock and Gravel: Natural Features for Modern Gardens, The Daily Telegraph Weekend Gardening and The Garden Lovers' Guide to Britain.

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