an English garden

On our last day of summer school, a Saturday, we had a blissful break from buildings and headed south to Surrey to see the garden of Gertrude Jeckyll, a pioneer in garden design who created over 400 gardens in England before her death in 1932. We visited the small corner of Munstead Wood, a large private estate, where Jeckyll lived (in a complex of rustic out buildings)and worked, creating gardens whose free-flowing, naturalistic aesthetic flew in the face of Victorian formality and exoticism. Jeckyll planned her gardens with an eye to the existing landscape, and with a sensibility for the seasons; thus, when we visited in late July, the "July" gardens were all but over and the "August gardens" had not yet emerged. I'm no horticulturist, but I did observe a lot of blues and whites in this transitional garden- and lots and lots of industrious bumble bees!

The special thing about this lovely garden is that it is being revived -and literally restored- by a woman who bought the property in 2002 and obviously has a passion for Jeckyll and for cultivating plants and creating peaceful outdoor spaces. Like Jeckyll, Gail Naughton lives in one of the out buildings, a small barn, and has for the past several years, largely by herself, followed original Jeckyll designs and planting schemes (with some variations here and there) in order to faithfully recreate the Munstead Wood gardens of 1900. I was glad to see that Ms. Naughton left her own mark on the property, in a small way: she had a stone mason build a little arched cat-door in the laid-stone foundation of her barn, so kitty can come and go as she pleases!

There's something so English about a rambling, slightly unkempt garden with small surprises --a sun dial, a lily pond-- tucked away here and there, that it puts me in mind of... Peter Cottontail! Lois made a point of taking what little free time we had to visit the Beatrix Potter exhibit on at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and I am so glad we made it there to see the two small galleries full of Beatrix's tiny sketches and finished water-color illustrations for The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She was quite a talented artist and a keen observer of nature; her rabbits, so simply yet fluidly drawn, seemed to bound off the page!