Rosemary Verey. Barbara Paul Robinson
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treasures could be tried by tucking them in among these strong performers.
Although Percy Cane had urged her to always create vistas using the longest axis across the garden, it took Rosemary quite a long time to comply. Finally in 1968, she opened a vista that began at the Temple and continued for over one hundred yards to the old stone wall at the opposite end. She removed an old lonicera hedge and other obstructing plantings, which were replaced with a wide grassy walk, flanked on one side by the limes and laburnums and the other by a newly developing area Rosemary called her long border. Acknowledging Gertrude Jekyll’s advice, Rosemary incorporated yellows in this border, to “create a feeling of sunlight. A glowing yellow took over what had once been drab and was now alive.”
By the end of the 1960s, Rosemary felt confident enough about her developing garden and skills to begin to write short articles for The Countryman. This was not a garden magazine per se, but a quarterly publication devoted to the issues surrounding rural life. The Countryman describes itself as “A Quarterly non-party review and miscellany of rural life and work for the English Speaking World.” Published in Gloucestershire, The Countryman’s topics ranged from articles on birds, fishing, shooting, and decoys to advice for farmers, with a scattering of cartoons, often depicting oafish farmers.
Rosemary’s first writings appeared in 1968 in a two-part article entitled “A Garden Inheritance” in which she described Barnsley’s garden and its evolution. Crediting the influence of others and attending the Royal Horticultural Society shows at Vincent Square, she included practical advice along with her enthusiasm, noting how important it was to bear in mind the limey Cotswold soil. So began Rosemary’s regular writing for The Countryman. She first wrote a couple of articles on her own garden before becoming a regular contributor, with several others, to a section entitled “Hints from the Home Acre.” She usually wrote a short page or two on specific plant topics and how to grow them. She encouraged her readers to visit other gardens, as she had done herself when she began, and to keep notes of the plants coveted from a friend’s garden, ones that have long summer bloom, prove reliable in the English “unsummery summers,” require no staking, and prove to be good mixers.
Rosemary always took notes herself and encouraged her readers to do the same. “Good plant associations play a vital part in achieving a successful garden and creating them is a constant fascination. If you have kept an eye open for effective combinations in other people’s gardens and remembered to make a note of them.” She also used her eyes. “I have cut a stalk of ceanothus and carried it round the garden to find other good combinations.”23
By 1970, Rosemary had her first article published in the prestigious magazine Country Life, writing about the fruits and flowers of Nassau after she and David had taken a trip there. Here, again, she followed David, for he had an article published in the magazine a year before and would have several more in 1970, 1971, and 1973 about historic churches, the Georgian buildings of Nassau, and related architectural topics. Her first article was a complement to David’s; she’d have to wait nine years for a second appearance. But by that time, she wrote on her own.
In that same year of 1970, Rosemary turned fifty-two and opened her garden to the public for the first time. It was only for a single day as part of the National Gardens Scheme, but it was a start.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sharpening Her Art 1970s
It would be awful not to be wanted.
AS IS TRUE of any personal garden, Rosemary’s would evolve over time. At the start of the 1970s, the core of her garden was in place and maturing, but Rosemary would add some of its most distinctive features over the next decade, sharpening and refining her art. Drawing from her personal library of old herbals and garden books and her strong interest in garden history, she decided to add a knot garden, followed by an herb garden, and finally her influential potager. Each of these creations benefited from her love of geometrical patterns and was enriched by her deepening knowledge of plants.
When her house was built in 1697, formal gardens would have been in fashion and she felt, quite rightly, it was historically correct to design formal gardens to compliment the architecture of the house. Knot gardens, popular in Elizabethean times, had an interlacing of clipped herbs or shrubs within a square or rectangular framework. They were often planted in the shape of heraldic designs or made to mimic the patterns created by embroidery or oriental carpets. Ideally, the viewer would look down to “admire their knot gardens from a mount or a raised wall.”1 Rosemary was fascinated by the geometric possibilities of these designs and decided to create one at Barnsley.
In her library, she turned to Gervase Markham’s The Countrie Farm (1616) as well as to The Compleat Gardeners Practice by Stephen Blake (1664) for ideas. She found examples in each book that could be copied on a small scale, and her mathematical skills allowed her to follow Gervase Markham’s advice: “First make your design on paper and then superimpose grid lines. Using cord and pegs, stretch out this grid on the ground and copy the knot over it with a trail of dry sand.” She sited her own knot garden just off the verandah on the western side of the house with its crenellated porch.
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