Garden Visits and Events in 2009
Directions will be sent nearer the time to those who book SGT visits. If anyone would like a lift to these visits, please do contact the person organising the event. Please note the different start times.
Annual General Meeting of the Sussex Gardens Trust and Talk by Steffie Shields
Tudor Room, The Old School Hall, Cuckfield
Saturday 18 April at 2pm
Cost: £8.50 - the AGM is free but please book for the talk and tea
The AGM of the Sussex Gardens Trust will take place in the Tudor Room of the Old School Hall, Cuckfield. Following the formal proceedings, there will be a talk by Steffie Shields entitled Capability Brown and the Gift of Landscape. Apart from being much involved with the work of the Lincolnshire Gardens Trust and carrying out sterling work as the lead for publicity for the AGT, Steffie is a photographer, lecturer and garden writer. In her photography she specialises in historic landscapes, gardens and plant portraiture and her work has been widely published.
Following the 1987 hurricane, Steffie began to research the work of landscape gardener Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, compiling a photographic record of his landscapes and architecture. To date she has visited over 180 of his 200 plus works and has thousands of photographs on file. She has been consulted on restoration and management plans for various Brown parks, appearing on Channel 4 TV "Great Estates" (2001) to discuss his work at Blenheim. Since 2007 she has run a Garden History course, Capability Brown, the Shakespeare of Gardening, for Cambridge Madingley Institute of Adult Education. Her talk to us is bound to be fascinating.
The usual excellent tea will finish the afternoon.
Hawkhurst House, Wisborough Green
Saturday 9 May at 2:30pm
Please note this date has changed. It was originally advertised as the 10 May.
Cost: £8.00
The owners of Hawkhurst House have kindly invited us to visit their garden when the rhododendrons and azaleas should be at their best. A hunting lodge in the second half of the 18th century, the house was extended in the 19th century and its name changed from Hawkhurst Lodge to Hawkhurst Court. After 1910 the property was acquired by the Earl and Countess of Desart who used it mainly to entertain aristocratic guests during Goodwood Week. There were then huge greenhouses at Hawkhurst Court which supplied the Desarts’ London home with exotic fruit and flowers. Occupied by the Canadian army in the war, Hawkhurst Court was purchased in 1946 by Edmund Lloyd Maunsell who opened a boys’ prep school there and who over the next 23 years expanded the gardens around the house from three to six acres (1.2 hectares to 2.4 hectares), planting rare shrubs and a fine collection of azaleas and rhododendrons. After his death in 1969 Hawkhurst Court passed to Brighton College who retained it until 1982 since when the various buildings have been sold and become individual homes. It is Hawkhurst House, and the gardens developed from those laid out by Edmund Lloyd Maunsell, which we shall be visiting.
We shall have a home-made tea at Hawkhurst House after we have toured the garden.
Freshfields and Twyford House, near Haywards Heath
Thursday 18 June at 11:30am and 2pm
Cost: £15.00
Our June visit is to two very private gardens. While they are very different, they complement each other in design and planting and so will make a delightful combination. First we will go to Freshfields. Although early records go back to 1542 when the site was known as Braybrook, the present house dates from the mid-17th century. Listed Grade II, the house is part half timbered, part mellow stone and is set in 25 acres (10.1 hectares).
Photographs from the 1920s or early 1930s show extensive landscaping, including much stone terracing, brick paths and a sunken garden. The parterre terrace in front of the house is constructed from the Horsham Slab which was once on the roof. The gardens and house very much interact with each other, giving a real country and romantic feel.
After a pub lunch, we will go on to Twyford House. Built in the late 18th century, if not earlier, the house was enlarged and made very grand around 1830.
The original garden at the front consisted of a sloping lawn ending in a haha, with parkland and a lake beyond. In the 1930s an elaborate water garden was constructed behind the Coach House and beyond lay the walled kitchen garden, with glasshouses and a peach house.
The property was divided up in the 1970s, our hosts for the afternoon acquiring part of the main house and half the front garden in 1997. They decided to create a completely new garden which would not only relate sympathetically to the landscape but which would also, despite a common theme of box topiary, have several distinctly different areas for the visitor to explore.
Fairlight Hall, Fairlight
Thursday 23 July at 2pm
Cost: £8.50
Fairlight Hall is a Victorian house built in the Gothic style. Situated on the hills at Fairlight it has stunning views across the valley to the sea. Dungeness can be seen on the horizon and the cliffs at Dover on a clear day.
Completed in 1855, to designs by John Crake, a pupil of Decimus Burton, ‘The Hall’, as it was first known, was built by William Drew Lucas Shadwell (ne Stent) who was born in Tillington, near Petworth, in 1817. He inherited his fortune from his Hastings-born uncle, William Lucas Shadwell. Shadwell senior was a prominent lawyer and developer in Hastings who helped finance the town’s first bank and hospital as well as the building of the seafront neo–classical church and crescent, St. Mary’s in the Castle.
Today Fairlight Hall is a private family home and rarely open to the public. There is little information readily available about the history of the garden. However a walk around the estate (currently around 80 acres, or 32 hectares) shows some remnants of the 19th century plantings. When the current owners purchased the house in 2002 most of the pleasure gardens and some of the woodland had become overwhelmed with Rhododendron ponticum.
The owners are working with Head Gardener, Tony Howard, to re-establish a garden on the estate as well as to bring the walled garden back into production. Tony Howard will give us an introduction to the garden and show us around the grounds. Replanting of the Long Border and HaHa Border began in earnest in 2006 and the Tropical Border in 2007. Whilst very much a ‘work in progress’, there is much to see.
The reconstruction and redesign of the walled garden began in 2006 and was completed in 2008. It has been rebuilt on the original footprint using the existing brickwork at the base of the walls. The contemporary design by Suzanne Watson is based on a painting by the modernist artist Vasily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) and provides a garden that can produce fruit, vegetables and flowers for the house as well as a concert space.
The visit will finish with tea and cake in the walled garden.
Kidbrooke Park, Forest Row
Saturday 22 August at 2:30pm
Please note this date has changed. It was originally advertised as the 15 August.
Cost: £8.00
Kidbrooke Park, now owned by Michael Hall School, is the destination for our visit in August. The house and estate were established in 1733-1734 by William Nevill, Lord Abergavenny, who inherited the title when his two older brothers both died young and within a year of each other. He preferred to build a new house rather than return to the derelict Eridge Park and chose Kidbrooke Park as the ideal site.
The grounds were designed by Humphry Repton who was employed around the turn of the 19th century by the Rt Hon Charles Abbot, Speaker of the House of Commons. Repton created a new winding drive to replace the long straight avenue from Forest Row, which led to the house’s forecourt. There have been a number of owners since then but there are still parts of the gardens and waterworks where we can see evidence of Repton’s work and we understand that new archaeology has revealed more, including a garden building. After visiting the grounds, we will be shown the main rooms of the house and then have tea at the end of our visit.
Sussex Prairie Garden, Henfield
Saturday 19 September at 2:30pm
Cost: £10.00
In complete contrast to the long history of Kidbrooke, September’s visit will take us to a brand new venture, the Sussex Prairie Garden just to the north of Henfield. Here, on a flat six-acre (2.4 hectare) site encompassed by oak trees, Paul and Pauline McBride have laid out a series of curved and interlinked open borders. From the paths which thread through the borders we shall be able to savour the wide variety of planting – more than 550 different plant varieties are on show – and what promises to be a resplendent burst of autumn colour.
The McBrides bring a wealth of experience to their new project. Paul trained in horticulture in Scotland before working for The National Trust and parks department there. In 1998 he was hired to design and create a 12-acre (4.9 hectare) garden on a grassland farm in Luxembourg. It was then decided that a massive new border should be added to the scheme, with Piet Oudolf, whose work was much admired by Paul, as its designer. This whole experience has obviously been important for the evolution of the Sussex Prairie Garden project.
We will be given a short introductory talk when we arrive. At the end of the afternoon we will be able to have tea in the garden’s tea-room, and perhaps be tempted by the unusual plants for sale.