A potted history of the Garden Room, Garden-Sharing in Britain and why we love house plants with Advolly Richmond.
Meet Advolly Richmond. Garden, Landscape and Social Historian and BBC Gardener’s World presenter. we chatted during Lockdown via Zoom, check out our interview on YOUTube.
Advolly is passionate about plants, is RHS trained and a juicy revelation that ubiquitously Mediterranean lemons, actually originated from China, transformed her from gardener to plant detective. We chatted about the fascinating way historical events, change our relationships with plants and influences garden design; why historians like Advolly want to dig-in.
History repeats in gardening, too.
In love with the Italian Renaissance period, an era which just keeps coming back into garden fashion, Advolly is also fond of the Edwardian Garden aesthetic which is also experiencing a revival, but what do the Italian Renaissance period and the Edwardian era have in common?
“Italian Renaissance garden owners shared their gardens with the public and Edwardian gardens, in fact, evolved from examples of Italian Renaissance gardens, copying the concept of The Garden Room.”
Whether is was benevolence of bravado, offering space to share or just to show off, Italian garden owners in the 16th century, undoubtedly created magnificent gardens. These gardens featured symmetry, spectacle and used statues to show of wealth, political power, new worldly wisdom and crafted ways to constrain nature with geometric topiary and sharply defined hedges. Geometry, a typical feature in Garden Room design,
“allowed for compartmentalised and private garden areas to gel”.
Giusti Palace and Garden, Verona credit: Giardinogiusti.com
Visit a historical garden
For inspiration, and a chance to get out of the house, now that restrictions have lifted, you can check out how Garden Rooms feature at one of The National Trust’s properties: Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent. The gardens are very grand, but how can it be scaled down?
Advolly has replicated elements of Garden Room design in her own town garden.
“Using plants and archways allow you to ‘move through’ the garden; very much an Italian Renaissance thing.”
You could just add topiary, to take inspiration from somewhere like Villa d’Este, Tivoli, however, What if you’re in a temporary house? How can you add a touch of this style to your garden if you rent or Garden-Share?
“It’s about scaling the style down. Take little elements and reduce the size of bigger ideas to fit the size of space you have’”.
Ideal plants to use include dwarf cypresses and neat baby box hedges, which can create the effect of an outdoor room.
Instead of seeing a whole garden at once, plants like Yew can be used to block off sections to give an element of surprise.
The visual trick divides the space into a variety of views which makes a garden look a lot bigger than it actually is
“it’s about breaking it up and curating different focal points.”
Pots, or easily transportable long troughs are perfect for creating box hedging and if you’re not hedging your bets on being able to permanently stay in one place for long, you can take them with you to your next abode.
Advolly’s garden also features something you’ll find at Sissinghurst, which the Victorians’ were potty for.
The Auricula Theatre.
On BBC Gardener’s World. Advolly shares her passion for hers.
Relative of the Primrose, The Auricula was bred in the 17th century when floristry one-upmanship was fashionable and growers would breed rare and unusual specimens such as Advolly’s favourite: the ‘Cockups Eclipse’ and amazingly Auriculas are trending again. Pinterest is littered with Auricula Theatres.
This lovely Auricula Theatre is at Sissinghurst. Learn how to make one with The Small Gardener Photo Credit: Rajul Shah
No garden 100 years ago?
Amazingly Auricula Theatres began to be popularised during the Industrial Revolution, by people without a garden.
This is what a Cockups Eclipse looks like. In case you were wondering?
For people who didn’t have have a garden, Auricular Theatres were a pretty solution, desirable if displayed at eye-level, so they could be admired as you would an ornamental shelf inside.
However, home-spun ‘Cottage Industries’; craftspeople, artisans, accountants even, declined at the peak of The Industrial Revolution and as more people went off to be employed at mills and factories, it meant that people who would have worked from home, could no longer look after their plants, meaning these pampered plants started to fall out of favour.
Today, I'm really inspired by people who are showing us how to thrive during Lockdown and it seems we’re seeing a shift, similarly back to that of the Cottage Industry. Is it a sign society is gradually de-industrialising?
More of us are working from home than ever before, but not just in artisanal craft careers. I know of bank staff, teachers, civil servants who have all questioned whether we need to work in corporate spaces after Lockdown, at all?
The scarcity of gardens for urbanites is also another reason Houseplants are re-trending.
Some of us will be itching to get back to more traditional work environments, but during COVID-19, but whilst many of us have all had to work from home, all of a sudden more of us are in a position to pamper our plants again.
Advolly and I chatted for hours and I reminisced about my childhood home, a high-rise flat and the house plants I grew up with. I was excited to share my charity shop find with Advolly: a beautiful Vintage St Micheal Guide to Houseplants, older than I am, but the styling in it looks just as fresh as as a modern day Vogue article today. Advolly extolls
“See! Fashions repeat! Even with indoor gardening”
Whether you like it or not, Macrame is making a comeback
I’ve spent a lot of time during Lockdown scrolling through green-fingered guru Jamie Song’s (@JamesJungle) Insta. He regularly shares pictures of his urban oasis of oxalis and impressive collection of caladiums, not unlike this retro find.
With Advolly, it’s fascinating to learn about the presence and journey of plants throughout history.
In the 18th Century, rare and impressive exotic fruiting plants were grown in homeowners adjoining hot houses and orangeries. (#Goals) It was then the tradition, during the summertime, to bring scented plants like oranges and honeysuckle indoors and display them in fireplaces at dinner parties.
You might be lucky enough to see Victorian fireplaces remaining today with ornate fruit and floral tiles inspired by the fashion.
An obsession with ornate plants,
continued by the Victorians all the way through to the 1930’s with the likes of air cleansing Aspidistras that could survive the darkest smokiest hallway, was of course impacted by The Wars when a lack of availability and… war, meant primping plants, was low on most people’s agenda.
It wasn’t until the 1950s, specifically from 1951 when the Festival of Britain allowed Britain to reengage with a voracious demand for plants and inspiring Scandinavian stalls brought us a fresh style of Room Plants and it was here where Monsteras were made popular by The Rochfords.
The Rochfords’ success started almost a century before when plant patriarch Michael Rochford, cultivated a way to satisfy Londons insatiable taste for Pineapples (previously shipped from the Azores), by growing them in hothouses in London. However, the popularity of these bromeliads were soon surpassed by Victorian fancies for ferns and palms. When Rochford saw a higher demand for houseplants, in a fantastic pivot of their business, they turned to mass propagating ‘Room Plants’ like Indian Rubber, Selaginella, Solanums and business blossomed if not boomed with a very successful advertising slogan: “No home is complete without living plants” and the rest is history.
Now, it’s not just our homes where we’re experiencing the comforting presence of plants. Many shopfronts, bars and restaurants are also employing the use of green environs to entice consumers.
For many businesses like restaurant Bourne and Hollingsworth, the P in their USP, stands for Plants!
With plants, as they are conducive for our well-being; our offices are becoming like our homes, our homes are becoming our offices, and now we’re going through a moment of history and amazingly, plants have a presence in it.
As well as tending to her garden, Advolly is researching Victorian Botanist and Minister, Anglo-African, Thomas Birch Freeman.
On Freeman’s relocation to West Africa, there’s exciting evidence he corresponded with the Director of Kew Gardens, Sir William Hooker on fruits and plants in Ghana for the colonies.
Kew has been the go to place to find inspiration for generations.
It’s where you’ll find one of these specimens: a Ficus Lyrata; The Fiddle Leaf Fig. I'm sure you’ll recognise it. It’s one of 2020s most popular houseplants, native to West Africa.
Ficus Lyrata; Fiddle Leaf Fig. One the most popular houseplants of 2020, Native to West Africa
However, as we now know plant fashions repeat, the next time you tend to your trendy houseplants, maybe a Fiddle Leaf Fig like this one; just think of the vast history that got it there!
Britain’s history of sharing Gardens
Lend and Tend sits among a modern ‘Internet of Things’, an important initiative in the sharing economy; but Britain has a rich history of societies sharing gardens.
Advolly’s own home forms part of land that was once delineated as ‘Garden Grounds’.
“In the 18th/ 19th century, land was parcelled off and in a way that was almost a precursor to allotments [as we know them now] and you could actually rent these ‘Garden Grounds’ for not an awful lot.”
Another example Advolly gives of ‘Garden Grounds’ are the Guinea gardens in Birmingham which thrived around the industrial centre. The city surrounded by flourishing gardens, was portioned up into patches for its people and used for work and play.
Growers who may not have had gardens, had the opportunity to enjoy the healthful benefits of gardening whilst being able to provide their families and supply stores with produce that would have been unattainable for the majority of the lower classes.
The Guinea Gardens were the height of their popularity exactly 200 years ago and although some allotments remain today, from 1820-1830 much of the land was sold of for industrial, residential and transport infrastructure projects to develop the Birmingham urban landscape.
In 1887 the Allotments Act was established. The government upheld an obligation to provide allotment space where otherwise land had to be rented from private landowners. Today, the number of allotments left in Britain has disconcertingly dwindled. Most dramatically declining by 65% in the past 50 years!
It’s worrying. Research reveals allotments host great amounts of biodiversity, most importantly, to more bees than parks, cemeteries and urban nature reserves put together! Bees love allotments as much as humans due to a variety of flowering and fruiting plants that most pollinators love.
BBC News also recently reported a current surge in the demand for allotments despite their numbers declining.
In an interview, Miriam Dobson a PhD student at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, explains that from 1950s people relied more on supermarkets and convenience stores, hence Allotments falling out favour. Recently, Dobson cited
"Coronavirus has… highlighted to people the fragility inherent within our globalised food system. In a time of crisis, interest in self-sufficiency rises.”
At the beginning of lockdown, the nations allotment holders rejoiced when Micheal Gove appeared on This Morning, confirming restrictions and rules that were to be imposed on our lives for the foreseeable future, Gove stated to Eamon Holmes,
“visiting an allotment counted as “allowable exercise”.
During Lockdown we, (those lucky enough to have outside space) became a nation of gardeners, but what about the 100’s of 1000s of people who don’t have a garden, let alone an allotment? It just reinforces the importance of keeping allotments as gardens; a precious resource for small scale agriculture, supporting the well-being of many. Imperative in times like these!
I find it exasperating to learn of the ongoing demise of allotments. Advolly shares my fury, which is why I’m passionate to facilitate the radical act of sharing gardens.
Lend and Tend, born out of my frustration of not being able to get an allotment myself, could mean more of us could increase the bio-diversity of unloved gardens and in reflection of the recent ‘self-sufficiency crisis’, we could also move towards growing more food and supporting our wellbeing by sharing gardens!
How is garden design changing?
History repeats in flora as it does fashion, but what’s different about our era of garden design to what we’ve seen before?
“IT’S CLIMATE CHANGE!”
Because of Climate Change, gardens must be adaptable, we gardeners need to be adaptable too.
We’re going to have to be prepared for unexpected change and learn practical ways how to be more sustainable as gardeners. For instance, under COVID, National Trust gardens are being run on limited staff and in a state of panic due to Lockdown, meaning a loss of funds.
“We’re really are going to have to look at gardening more carefully, using Peat-Free compost, washing and reusing pots, conserving water and composting for a sustainable way of gardening. Managing what we have in a better way.”
If you are about to enter into a Garden-Sharing partnership as lockdown measures ease, what’s the first task when starting a garden?
Still regarded as one of the foundations of Landscape Architecture. Genius loci: Latin for The “spirit of a place”. In gardening terms it means getting to know your garden’s distinctive characteristics.
“CONSULT, THE GENIUS OF THE PLACE.
[Gardening] needn’t be an uphill struggle, before you reach for the Rotavator, look at the site.
Where does the sun set and rise?
Where are the frost pockets?
So, before you get carried away with ideas and designs, plan to make your garden as sustainable as possible, pleasurable and easy to manage. Things to consider:
Think about sunlight! How much/how little does it get?
Water! Is it wet, near water, or dry, how will it be watered?
Is it flat, or on a hill?
“Start small. Look at what the garden is like through all four seasons, see what comes up or doesn’t, to help you plan your plantings. Plant plants suitable for the situation which means you can leave them alone: Using less energy, time and less effort.”
Very sound advice from a busy woman with a beautiful garden and a plant detective case to solve. 🔎🌱