Asleep no more

Fifty years ago, there were very few garden designers. Now, horticulture is a major industry, thanks to the extraordinary revival of the country-house garden, finds Tiffany Daneff

- finds Tiffany Daneff

WHEN George Harrison bought the 30-acre estate of Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, in 1970, he found the famous historic gardens in an almighty mess: glasshouses were glassless, the grand lakes silted up and full of rubbish and the famous topiary garden had knitted together, forming an impenetrable thicket. The demise of Sir Frank Crisp's masterwork—created in the late 1890s and once cared for by 45 gardeners—was emblematic of the entropy that had set in following the two World Wars: all over the country, gardens suffered.

There was no longer the money to pay for the gardeners and, in so many cases, the men had been lost on the battlefield or had left for better-paid work in the factories. Formerly productive kitchen gardens lay idle or were given over to act as glorified stock pens; flowerbeds and tennis courts had been dug up for victory and dock, nettles and elder had wormed their way through the roots of every once-loved peony and rose.

Over the past 50 years, however, the gardens at Friar Park, as have those of so many other country houses—far too many to even hazard a guess at the numbers—have been rescued from their thorny slumbers. After Harrison's death, his widow, Olivia, put all her energies into continuing his work to bring the gardens back to life. She sought out photographs and documents—including from the Country LIFE archives—that shed light on the garden's former glories, she visited specialist nurseries, consulted experts and employed the gardeners necessary. Still the work continues, partly because this is a very large space, partly because the work in gardens is never done.