Unforgettable Gardens - Yorkshire

In this series of talks the speakers will introduce a variety of landscapes, gardens and themes enjoyed by Yorkshire Gardens Trust members which portray the wide diversity of designed landscapes in the 3 Yorkshire counties and the interests of the membership.

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This ticket costs £20 for the entire course of 5 sessions or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £5 via the links below. [Gardens Trust members may use their promo code for an additional 10% discount.]

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us). A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

Due to a recent Apple decision to charge a 30% fee for paid online events unfortunately you may no longer be able to purchase this ticket from the Eventbrite iOS app. Please use a web browser on desktop or mobile to purchase or follow the link here.

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Week 1. 1 March . From Naumachia to Naval Warfare: Nautical Frolics in British Parks. First in a series of 5 online lectures, £5 each or all 5 for £20

Week 2. 8 March . Historic Parks for the Future – Cannon Hall. Second in a series of 5 online lectures, £5 each or all 5 for £20

Week 3. 15 March. ‘Exceeding Fine Country’: An Eighteenth-Century Tour of Yorkshire. Third in a series of 5 online lectures, £5 each or all 5 for £20

Week 4. 22 March. The Gardens of Harewood House: past, present & future. Fourth in a series of 5 online lectures, £5 each or all 5 for £20

Week 5. 29 March. George Dillistone and the 'other' Goddards, York. Fifth in a series of 5 online lectures, £5 each or all 5 for £20

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Week 1. 1 March. From Naumachia to Naval Warfare: Nautical Frolics in British Parks with Patrick Eyres

"Look Out Behind You!!" The audience shouts out warnings to the ‘actors’ in the aquatic and pyrotechnic panto that is performed three afternoons a week each summer in Peasholm Park, Scarborough. The excitements of ‘Naval Warfare’ are unique. It is the last of the Naumachia, or mock naval battles, that have been ‘fought’ on the lakes of European gardens and parks since the Renaissance. Naumachia is the Romanised Greek word that described gladiatorial sea fights in the flooded Colosseum. When revived in the Renaissance, they became frolicsome pageants. For Georgian Britons, they combined ‘messing about in boats’ with re-enactment of the latest naval victory. Manned miniature warships, fortlets and docks adorned parkland lakes. Victorians paid to attend these spectacles. The lecture will romp its way through these frolics to highlight the cultural significance of Scarborough’s ‘Naval Warfare’, which was launched in 1927 in Britain’s only public park designed exclusively in the Japanese style.

Dr Patrick Eyres has, since 1981, created 54 editions of the unique, artist-illustrated New Arcadian Journal, which engages with the cultural politics of designed landscapes. Naumachia (1995) is a history of Peasholm Park, Naval Warfare and the Naumachia tradition. He has published extensively, most recently on the poetic gardening of Ian Hamilton Finlay in Penny Florence (ed.), Thinking The Sculpture Garden: Art, Plant, Landscape (2020), and in the 40th anniversary edition of the New Arcadian Journal, Atlantic Flowers: The Naval Memorials of Little Sparta (2022), as well as in the 50th anniversary issue of Garden History (2022). For many years he served on the boards of the Little Sparta Trust, Garden History Society, Leeds Art Fund, and Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust. On behalf of The Gardens Trust, he set up and chaired for ten years the annual New Research Symposium in Garden History.

www.NewArcadianPress.co.uk

Image: Chris Broughton, Naval Warfare in Peasholm Park, NAJ 39/40 (1995)

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Week 2. 8 March . Historic Parks for the Future – Cannon Hall with Sharon Sutton

Cannon Hall dates back to the 14th century but it doesn’t become the parkland we see today until the 1760’s onwards, with obvious transition from Georgian splendour to Victorian folly it remained unchanged throughout the 20th century. Sold to Barnsley Council in 1951 the parkland and Hall have welcomed visitors for over 70 years, as the new millennium dawned the parkland and gardens needed fundamental repairs, and so £3.4million was invested to Restore the Glory and Reveal the Secrets. This talk looks at the appointment of the Project Manager Sharon Sutton, why she was chosen to manage the refurbishment, and how she navigated her way through the 4 year project to Historic Parks for the Future – Cannon Hall provide visitors with a destination parkland and gardens, but also delivered improvements the Council and visitors didn’t expect.

Sharon Sutton started her career in the Agricultural Industry and became increasingly interested in the places where she worked, the landscape, woodland, plants and wildlife were all fascinating, so a change of career was needed. A HND in Landscape Science was obtained in 1998 and as a result, she joined local government working in the Parks and Gardens sector for the next 24 years. During this period, she developed a particular interest in Historic Parks and Gardens and their associated buildings, renovating them for the benefit of the public and wildlife, and searching for ways to ensure their long-term use and protection.

www.cannon-hall.com

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Week 3. 15 March. ‘Exceeding Fine Country’: An Eighteenth-Century Tour of Yorkshire with Jemima Hubberstey

This talk will examine the travel accounts of Philip Yorke (later 2nd Earl of Hardwicke) and his wife, Jemima Marchioness Grey, focusing on their tours of Yorkshire – which Grey judged to be ‘exceeding fine country’. Both keen travellers, the couple often spent summers touring the length and breadth of the country seeking inspiration for their own garden improvements at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. Their travel accounts reveal shifting attitudes to garden design and engagement with the emerging discourse of the picturesque in the mid-eighteenth century, which is particularly evident in their accounts of Studley Royal. While Yorke had praised Aislabie’s improvements when he first visited in 1744; by the time he visited again in 1755 with his wife, both were critical of the way the gardens had been ‘tortured’ to fulfil the owner’s fancy – preferring instead the ‘wild Hilly romantic Country that forms Studley Park.’

Dr Jemima Hubberstey completed a collaborative doctoral award with the University of Oxford and English Heritage in 2021, in which she examined the influence of literary coteries on garden design in the mid-eighteenth century, with a particular focus on the circle at Wrest Park. She is currently a postdoctoral research assistant for ‘Mithraic Groves and Gothic Towers: Reuniting the Lost Literary Legacies of Wrest and Wimpole’, a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship between the University of Oxford, the National Trust, and English Heritage. This project examines the shared literary, gardening, and cultural connections between Wrest Park and Wimpole Hall when both were owned by the Yorke family in the mid-eighteenth century. She recently assisted English Heritage with new garden interpretation at Wrest Park and has published on Jemima Grey’s engagement with garden design in the Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies.

Image: Allan Ramsay, ‘Lady Jemima Campbell, Marchioness Grey’, 1741. Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. © National Trust Images / Roy Fox.

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Week 4. 22 March. The Gardens of Harewood House: past, present & future with Trevor Nicholson

There are over 100 acres of gardens and pleasure grounds at Harewood, set within an ornamental parkland of over 1,000 acres created during the 18th century. The Gardens comprise various horticultural areas, each different in style, and containing a significant plant collection throughout. Trevor will give a brief history of the gardens before talking about the work of the gardens team over the past three decades and provide a glimpse into the future.

The Terrace – a Victorian, Italianate formal garden, complete with C19 parterre by Sir Charles Barry, with fountains, clipped yew and box, prominent mixed flower borders and a large scale sub-tropical planting scheme.

The Himalayan Garden – a naturalistic sunken garden with waterfall and stream, rock and bog gardens containing a thematic plant collection, including trees and shrubs, rhododendrons, and herbaceous plants from Asia.

The Walled Garden – a traditional utilitarian garden, built in the 1750’s and divided into two parts, with a productive kitchen garden, flower borders, apple orchard and meadow.

Trevor Nicholson has been Head Gardener at Harewood for 28 years. His horticulture career began in 1980 at Houghall College, Durham, where he trained in Horticulture and Arboriculture. At Harewood Trevor has worked continuously on the revival, conservation and development of the gardens: introducing bold new planting schemes in the formal terrace gardens, tree & shrub planting in the park, as well as the re-development of the 1930’s rock garden as a Himalayan Garden with a significant collection of Sino-Himalayan plants. Trevor also brought the Walled Garden back into production in the 1990s and is working with the executive team on its restoration and development. With the help of grants from the RHS Bursaries Committee, and support from Harewood House Trust, Trevor undertook two botanical study tours to Nepal, China and Bhutan – informing the development of the Himalayan Garden at Harewood.

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Week 5. 29 March. George Dillistone and the ‘other’ Goddards, York with Gillian Parker

For most garden history enthusiasts, the name ‘Goddards’ probably suggests the Luytens and Jekyll collaboration in Surrey, created 1898-1900 for Frederick Mirrielees. There is another Goddards, however, in York - designed by Walter Brierley, built 1926-7 for Noel and Kathleen Terry, and now in the care of the National Trust. George Dillistone (1877-1957) who designed the garden is a neglected figure, despite the other gardens he planned, his contemporaries’ approval, his writing on garden design and planting, his support for the development of the British Iris Society, and his founding role in the Institute of Landscape Architects. This ‘other’ Goddards may be the only remaining Dillistone garden where he designed both hard landscaping and planting and that still exists in its entirety, attached to the house for which it was planned. The talk uses this late Arts and Crafts garden as a framework for exploring Dillistone’s life and work.

Gillian Parker says: Since retiring from a long career as a researcher in health and social care policy, I have been trying to turn myself into a garden historian. I completed a Post-graduate Diploma in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London in 2020 and since 2021 have been a post-graduate research student in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. My research topic is the Backhouse nursery of York, and my supervisor is Dr Jan Woudstra. My interest in George Dillistone started with my role as a volunteer in his garden at Goddards in York and has become something of an obsession since, as my fellow students in London and fellow volunteers in York would no doubt confirm.

www.sheffield.ac.uk/landscape/people/research/gillian-parker

Image: © National Trust Images

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