Exhibitors
Courtyard gardens
Anthea Guthrie Garden Design
A Pleasance for the Rose and Lily Queen
Designer: Anthea Guthrie
Contractor: Heritage Gardens
Click on the images to view a hi-res version
Welcome to the court of Henrietta Maria and Charles the first, keen thespians - so keen, they insisted on taking time off to learn their lines even at the height of the civil war. Henrietta Maria favoured the playwright Ben Johnson, who wrote Chloridia, and this stage set is for that play.
Chloridia was a heavenly goddess who lived among the stars, but was transformed by Juno, the wind god, into Flora, the goddess of flowers. She was sent to the earthly world, 'so the earth shall have her stars and lights as heaven'. The play was a flattery to Henrietta Maria who, having divine right, was able to intervene between heaven and earth.
The King and Queen liked to go on royal 'progression', visiting aristocratic families who would be expected to provide elaborate and expensive hospitality. The designer Anthea Guthrie imagined a place created as a diversion in one of the great estates during a progression. Henrietta Maria can indulge her love for acting in this stage set, a love considered scandalous at a time when female parts were played by boys, and the country was riven by religious differences. Small, private garden rooms were found adjacent to the 'big house' for the family to enjoy; this is one of those rooms, known as a 'pleasance'.
The Queen was a patron of French garden designer Andre Mollet and the shape of the parterre is taken from a much bigger design of his discovered in its original portfolio by Anthea Guthrie in the RHS Lindley Library. The lily throne has been hand-carved by Dominic Walpole from Welsh oak. The backdrop is taken from the original design by Inigo Jones, the architect responsible for Somerset House and has been painted on hessian, as it would have been then, by Dave Keast and Tony Constantinescu.
Henrietta Maria was the 'French lily' married to the 'English rose', and was popularly known as the Rose and Lily Queen. Anthea was thrilled to realise on a chance visit that the inscription on the tombstone of famous plant hunter John Tradescant and his son, in the Museum of Garden History, makes reference to Henrietta Maria as 'My rose and lily Queen'. White quartered old English roses and white lilies are the only flowers on the garden and symbolise the purity and chastity of the Royal marriage.
Anthea Guthrie won two Gold Medals and two Best Creative Garden awards last year. She has been a self-employed garden rescuer for the last four years. Anthea was inspired to create this garden while she was building her Mayflower garden at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show last summer - one of the homes of Charles and Henrietta Maria. For years she thought the RHS Flora medals involved sponsorship from a margarine: although it is unlikely anyone else thought the same, if they did, then this garden should put them right.