Classic Gardening Magazine

36 The Lady and the Monkey Puzzle
You know how it is. For some people, one particular plant develops such a fascination that it can become an obsession. For a certain Lady Rolle, that plant was the Monkey Puzzle Tree - Araucaria araucana (left).

The first Monkey Puzzle seeds reached Britain from Chile in 1796, but for 50 years it was very rare. It only really took off when Lady Rolle of Bicton House, near Budleigh Salterton in Devon, had her gardener, James Barnes, plant a 500-yard long avenue of the trees.

He had raised them from seed he obtained from Loddiges, a local nursery. Once planted, they shot up and, within five years, were brushing against carriages as they passed up the avenue to the grand house, and had to be moved back.

The Monkey Puzzle avenue's effect was so stunning that the tree instantly became hugely desirable for any gardener who had to have the latest thing. Barnes was clearly fascinated by plants, and corresponded with Charles Darwin about them.

He says in one letter that he hopes Darwin will one day "enlighten us very much" on "the laws of species". I think he pretty much managed that. All of which makes Lady Rolle and James Barnes worthy additions to the hall of fame in Our Garden Story.

Today, Lady Rolle’s mansion (pictured below) is an agricultural college, but the gardens – which have been restored following neglect during WWII - are open.

37 Here comes the Horticultural Society (later Royal)

Our greatest garden society was founded in 1804 by Sir Joseph Banks and John Wedgwood. The prototype of the society's popular flower shows  began in the late 1820s, with a series of floral fetes held at the Duke of Devonshire's estate in Chiswick.

 The Duke held glittering parties and entertained many of the crowned heads of Europe at Chiswick, including Queen Victoria and two Russian Tsars. He filled his gardens with exotic animals, including an elephant

In 1821 the society leased part of the Duke of Devonshire's estate south of the High Road at Chiswick to set up an experimental garden; in 1823 it employed Joseph Paxton there. From 1827 the society held fetes at the Chiswick garden, and from 1833, shows with competitive classes for flowers and vegetables.

The Chiswick garden was maintained until 1903 – 1904, by which time Sir Thomas Hanbury had bought the garden at Wisley and presented it to the RH. It became royal when a charter was gained for it in 1861 by Prince Albert.

38 The inventor of the lawnmower

The lawn mower was invented by 1831 by Edward Budding, a textile factory engineer who worked out how to adapt a cloth-shearing machine to cut a lawn perfectly smooth. He made small ones you could push on a suburban lawn, larger ones that were hauled by horses shod in leather shoes

In his patent, Budding said: "Country gentlemen may find in using my machine themselves an amusing, useful and healthy exercise." How right he was.

Believe it or not, there’s a lawn mower museum at Faversham Kent which is not sad at all.

Read more about brilliant Mr Budding

39 Nineteenth century garden style

 Fashions are often a reaction against what has been in vogue before, and gardening is no different. At the start of the 19^th century, there was plenty to react against.

 For one thing, the classical Arcadian landscapes with their temples were out.

 For another, Capability Brown’s bare, natural vistas with grass coming right up to the house was also out. Indeed, Brown was now seen as a vandal my some.

 There was also a reaction against the Picturesque tendency, with it’s faux ruins, gnarled trees and tolerance of wild flowers and weeds. Jane Austen had a go at the Picturesque in Sense and Sensibility, where Edward Ferrar shocks Marianne Dashwood by declaring he prefers straight trees to twisted ones and doesn’t like ruins at all.

 Austen, like many of her contemporaries, believed that gardens that were productive, beautiful and well-loved should be cherished, and she gave us an example in Sense and Sensibility. Colonel Brandon has a nice old-fashioned place with “great garden walls that are covered with the very best fruit trees in the county: and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Then there is a dovecote, some delightful stewponds and a very pretty canal; and everything, in short, that one could wish for.”

40 Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford

Scot poured huge amounts of money into his garden near Melrose in the Scottish borders.

Like Austen, he was all for tradition. So, beginning in 1811,  he created formal enclosed areas in the Tudor style, with yew hedging, topiary and geometric flower beds in his gardens that run down to the river Tweed. There was also a conservatory in the Gothic style.