Rosemary Verey. Barbara Paul Robinson
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– had also created a beautiful laburnum walk in her own garden. Nancy Lancaster was an American living in England with a great sense of style. She became well known for founding the decorating firm of Colefax and Fowler, which promoted the “English country house” style in furnishings and fabrics. One of Rosemary’s gardeners, Nick Burton, would later observe, “The lovely irony is it took an American [Nancy Lancaster] to teach the English how to decorate their houses.” Rosemary certainly knew and must have been influenced by Nancy who would later be among the women featured in Rosemary’s first book.
Did either or both of these earlier laburnum walks inspire Rosemary’s choice? While it is impossible to know, Rosemary does not credit either source, although she was usually generous in acknowledging the influence of others. Her own garden designs are not necessarily original. What Rosemary did do, and do brilliantly, was to adapt existing designs and make them fit into her relatively small garden, there to be enriched by her extraordinary sense of color and stunning profusion of plants. First-time visitors to Barnsley are often surprised when they see how small the scale actually is of this oft-photographed laburnum walk. There are only five laburnums on either side of the path and wisteria was planted to climb through each laburnum, adding their touch of purple flowers to mix and bloom simultaneously with the yellow laburnums. She underplanted the row with the purple globes of Allium aflatunense to complete the picture. This vision of yellow and mauve blooming together for almost three weeks every year called for a high degree of horticultural skill to insure all the plants were happy, and that the wisteria didn’t strangle the laburnum.
The composition was perfected when David added his quite original rough pebble path beneath the pendulous blossoms of laburnum and wisteria. David’s travels for the Housing Ministry took him as far afield as Wales, and he loved to swim, often visiting the Welsh beaches where he picked up stones and carried them home in the trunk of his car. He then spent hours painstakingly setting each small stone in cement by hand to create an uneven walk. To at least one observer, this entire enterprise seemed bizarre and the path appeared impossible to walk on. But David’s pebble path added an idiosyncratic, delightful touch to the laburnum allée. “It all looked so homespun as to be ridiculous. Anyone would trip over these huge pebbles with lots of space in between, but in fact it works. It’s great. It’s unusual.”18
Shortly before David retired from his position as senior investigator of historic buildings in 1965, he bought and restored a derelict mill that was little more than a shell in the next village of Arlington into a small, private museum. Because of his interest in architectural history and in particular, the history of the Cotswolds and the Arts and Crafts movement, he wanted to display artifacts alongside local crafts. The museum was quirky and original, containing all the things he loved. He had spent many years studying, cataloging, and grading the handsome stone churches of Gloucestershire, the so-called Wool Churches built in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by fortunes made from sheep and the wool trade. After retiring, he had the time to spend on his museum as well as his own writing. He wrote a Shell Guide to Gloucestershire in addition to the two volumes he had produced for the Pevsner’s buildings series.19
For opening day of the museum, David invited a young sculptor, Simon Verity, to carve an inscription outside the door to attract people to come. Simon’s uncle, Oliver Hill, was a distinguished architect and knew David slightly from those circles. Simon quickly saw that he was “the carver and the act.” Rosemary admired his talents, and Simon’s wonderful statues, plinth, and fountain would later add important dimensions to the developing gardens at Barnsley.
In 1968, David was appointed High Sheriff of Gloucestershire. That office dates back to the tenth century and exists to this day as a royal appointment of great prestige and honor. The High Sheriff represents the Crown in overseeing law and order but more as a formality than a reality. Over the centuries as the professional police force developed, the office of High Sheriff had become largely ceremonial. In David’s year, he had to attend countless openings, dedications, and similar activities occurring throughout the County. He also had to equip himself with the appropriate dress to suit his title and to greet and host various visiting dignitaries, all at his own expense.
Rosemary served as his official consort and hostess. Since David was always a fairly private person, in contrast to Rosemary who always loved a party, some close observers believed that she might well have preferred to hold the title herself. “Rosemary secretly felt that she was at least half of the equation although the role was his,” her assistant, Katherine Lambert, observed.
Rosemary admitted that she intentionally deferred to David. The garden became her place to shine. “With my husband I always played my success very low key on purpose, because he was the clever one. That was how I saw it and that was the way I played it. He was full of charm and everybody loved him. But he wasn’t a natural in the garden. That was my area.”20 She was not alone. As with so many women before her, the garden had an emancipating effect. It was “a domain in the pre-feminist era which they could set out to conquer, and they did,” observed the historian Jenny Uglow.21 Although at this early stage, Rosemary never thought of making it her career, she knew herself well enough to admit that when she did something, she did it wholeheartedly.
Looking back on their partnership, Rosemary was insightful about the different roles she and David played in creating their garden. After the war and the loss of the head gardener, she asked, “Who has taken charge of the garden? It’s usually the woman of the house. And this has been a way for her to express her artistic talents. She’s learned about plants and she’s learned about color coordination and she’s really enjoyed doing it.” Then with a slightly annoyed tone of voice, she noted, “Usually, it’s the man who has control of the money!” Hence it is the man who says, “Why don’t we plant an avenue, why don’t we make a lake, why don’t we change the drive, and he is in the position to be able to do the much more hard landscaping, the things that are going to be more expensive to do.”22 Certainly this was the case here with David in control of the money and David focusing on the architectural features of their garden.
David also assumed important leadership roles in the Church, serving on the Diocesan Advisory Committee, a highly regarded position. Eventually he became Chair of that committee, a position he held for seventeen years. Rosemary joined him in her commitment to the church. They both served as warden at various times and Rosemary arranged and delivered flowers faithfully every week. Members of the congregation found it very hard to say no to Rosemary when she decided they should perform some service. Once when Anne de Courcy, the parishioner Rosemary had selected to write a history of the church, hesitated, “her eyes swiveled around … in that well known way … and after a direct gaze from Rosemary,” she capitulated.
When the church meetings were in the evening, Rosemary could become confrontational, especially when she had been drinking. She could be prickly, but at least she was also self-aware. Anne recalls she acknowledged that, “If I’m on anything, I feel I have to run it. I feel I have to be Queen Bee.”
While Rosemary was busy supporting David in his High Sheriff role and in the governance of the Church, she continued to enhance her knowledge and horticultural skills. She began to learn about mixed borders, herbaceous plants, and spring bulbs. She had a misting system installed in one of the existing small greenhouses and started propagating plants there. Like any new enthusiast, she entered specimens of her plants into the RHS Flower Shows and competitions, winning a ribbon as a first-timer for one of her unusual willows from the Wilderness (Salix daphnoides aglaia). She continued to read voraciously – especially more contemporary books – visited gardens, took notes, and listened to the advice of others.
One local plant mentor was Nancy Lindsay, the only child of Norah Lindsay, who had been a socially prominent, much-sought-after garden designer before her death in 1948. Along with her mother, Nancy had been a close friend of Major Lawrence Johnston, the creator of Hidcote, where she ran a small nursery. Hidcote is now one of the star properties owned by the National Trust. Lawrence left his other garden in France (called Serre de la Madone) to Nancy when he died. Rosemary visited Nancy at the garden her mother Norah had created at The Manor House at Sutton Courtenay where she made copious notes. One important precept Nancy taught Rosemary was to start by growing easy plants, so she would be