22/02/12: Cottage Garden flowers research

Types of flower and plant typical to the traditional English Cottage Garden.

Primroses

Pinks

Wild roses


Violets

Calendula/ Marigolds


Pansies

Delphinium



Foxgloves




Hollyhocks




Carnations


Sweet Williams

Marguerites/ Daisies

Lilies

Peonies

Tulips

Crocuses

Lavender

Campanulas

Evening Primrose


12/02/12: A phone call from Stephen Crisp

On Thursday 9th February 2012 I had a lovely phone call from Stephen Crisp who designed the Cottage Garden part of the Woman’s Weekly garden for the 1986 Stoke National Garden Festival Park. Stephen now works as head gardener at Winfield House in London and when I caught up with him had just returned from giving gardening lectures in America. Stephen was delighted to hear that Red Nile were revisiting the park and told me some fantastic details about the design and creation of the garden and who was involved:

The project was funded by Woman’s Weekly, gardening was a key theme of the magazine. The garden celebrated their 75th anniversary by taking a look back at gardens from when the magazine started in 1911. At that time the cottage garden would have been a common style seen around the UK.

Stephen was keen to point out that the garden they created reflected the “chocolate box, jigsaw image” of a cottage garden which was an image manufactured over time- in reality the gardens would have been practical and the people poor. The garden was created around a mini replica stone cottage, both were purposefully designed to live up to fantasy to draw in visitors who were then educated about the history of cottage gardening through displays and information inside the cottage. Cottage gardening history very much reflected social history, seen though the developing and changing use of the gardens over time.

The garden designed, planned and maintained by Cottage Garden Society which was a very new society at that stage. When Woman’s Weekly asked the Cottage Garden Society to get involved they put out a call to their members to help with the garden. When they heard that Stephen Crisp was a professional gardener they appointed him to design the garden, he told me he was at least 20 years younger than anyone else who was involved!

All of the flowers were donated by Cottage Garden Society members. This fitted with the ethos of cottage gardening- things were begged, borrowed and donated as people were poor. The design of the garden was organic, haphazard and carefree as a reflection of this. Stephen said the donations were a bit ad-hoc; someone would ring up and say “I’ve got 3 delphiniums” and they would excitedly wait for 3 clumps of flowers only to find the person turned up with 3 yoghurt pots with single flowers in each! He said that this added to the charm of the project. Typical flowers of the cottage garden were delphiniums, hollyhocks, types of roses, bearded irises, sweet peas, then herbs, vegetables and fruit

When they arrived in 1985 the site was a mud bath- little more than a very badly ploughed field. Everything was done in a year, Stephen said a real inspiration and testament to what can be done with a garden in a short space of time. The garden had to be real (not like Chelsea Flower Show gardens, for example, which are just there for a week) and had to survive a year, to grow and to be maintained. It was cared for over the year by various members of the Cottage Garden Society from around the Midlands.

The garden included things like a privy and a water pump to contextualise the flowerbeds. The cottage in the background set the scene, Stephen said the garden wouldn’t have worked without those manmade items. Reclaimed gates and doors were donated by Cottage Garden Society members to give a weathered effect. Two traditional ‘skep’ style dome-shaped beehives, in keeping with the time, were made by a local traditional maker.

The garden won two gold awards and Best Historical Garden out of all of the styles on show. Stephen says the Cottage Garden Society and Woman’s Weekly were a very happy partnership and he remembers the project as a very happy time with real excitement in seeing the garden grow in a year through the collaboration and efforts of so many people.

When they arrived in 1985 the site was a mud bath- nothing more than a very badly ploughed field. Everything was done in a year, Stephen said a real inspiration and testament to what can be done with a garden in a short space of time. The garden had to be real (not like Chelsea Flower Show gardens, for example, which are just there for a week) and had to survive a year, to grow and to be maintained. It was cared for over the year by various members of the Cottage Garden Society from around the Midlands.

The garden included things like a privy and a water pump to contextualise the flowerbeds. The cottage in the background set the scene, Stephen said the garden wouldn’t have worked without those manmade items. Reclaimed gates and doors were donated by Cottage Garden Society members to give a weathered effect. Two traditional ‘skep’ style dome-shaped beehives, in keeping with the time, were made by a local traditional maker.

The garden won two gold awards and Best Historical Garden out of all of the styles on show. Stephen says the Cottage Garden Society and Woman’s Weekly were a very happy partnership and he remembers the project as a very happy time with real excitement in seeing the garden grow in a year through the collaboration and efforts of so many people.