Walpole's 'most delicious' garden recreated
2 April 2011
The garden that inspired 18th-century writer Horace Walpole to pen 'On Modern Gardening', one of the most famous and influential essays ever written on garden design and history, is being recreated at his home at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, London.
Horace Walpole, youngest son of prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, wrote dozens of journals, articles and letters while he lived at his 'little Gothick castle' at Strawberry Hill, originally a modest house but transformed by Walpole into a grand and eccentric villa, complete with battlements. He was a passionate follower of the 18th century landscape movement and also made a richly-planted garden covering 18.5 hectares (46 acres), described in several of his letters as having lawns, meadows, and a 'serpentine wood'.
After many changes of ownership the garden was all but lost, and by the time its restoration began last year was in a very overgrown and unkempt state. Now however a 1.5 ha (four-acre) area of the gardens is being returned to the 'most delicious' landscape described by Walpole in his many letters and papers, in a three-year project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and local charities.
New plantings of Tilia x europaea 'Pallida', T. platyphyllos and Robinia pseudoacacia recreate the 'open grove and closed grove' mentioned by Walpole in his writing, while the lawns have been reseeded and borders replanted. During the rest of the year, visitors will be able to watch the restoration unfolding as a five-metre deep shrubbery is restored complete with an avenue of hornbeam.
Strawberry Hill House is open from 2 April, and the garden is free.