I had a lightbulb moment when I visited Isola Bella, the garden island in Lake Maggiore tiered like a Spanish galleon. I sprinted up to the topmost terrace and looked down at the formal garden below. It had four box-edged parterres with a pool at the centre, a design that art historians call a ‘quincunx’. But the whole garden was framed by four vast yew-trees, still clipped to their original conical shape and now quite out of scale. What had begun as neat dwarf bushes had grown inexorably. Gardeners had pruned them year by year since 1680, but never quite hard enough. I stared and pondered. Those yews were magnificent—I was impressed by their longevity—but I realised in a flash that they were a living lesson in the importance of keeping a garden under control, in scale with the original vision.
This lesson was reinforced in about 1990, when Sir Roy Strong lobbied, very successfully, for the wholesale restoration of William III’s Privy Garden at Hampton Court. This required the vast old yew trees that had stood for nearly 300 years to be removed, so that the entire site could return to its original designs and plantings. The outcome was a triumph and I wondered whether the princely owners of Isola Bella would follow Sir Roy’s example. They didn’t.
This story is from the March 10, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the March 10, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Too divine
Four actresses earn the plaudits this month, for parts ranging from Sarah Siddons to Charlotte Bronté
Stashed away
The vast collection of the late George Withers, encompassing everything from Prattware pot lids to barometers, doubles up as a guide to the mid-market collecting fancies of the past 60 years
Parsley of Macedon
Not quite a native, alexanders can taste like joss stick-tainted celery or sweetly spiced parsnips, depending on your method, warns John Wright
A hungry heart
A man who strove, sought and found, Wassily Kandinsky pioneered not one, but two artistic movements against the tumultuous backdrop of early-20thcentury Europe, as Holly Black relates
Royal favours
AFTER much speculation as to what might be the favourite flower Her of Elizabeth II, the truth was revealed at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2019.
Smart thinking
A private family garden near Godalming in Surrey How does a garden design begin? With a lot of questions and by finding a central theme says James Alexander-Sinclair
Escape to the hills
These four houses in the county of Surrey can offer the best of both worlds: rural settings and easy access to London
A little help from your friends
Driven to distraction by paint charts? A colour consultant could be the answer for anyone befuddled by choosing the right hue
A (crab) apple a day
They may be too tart to eat, but crab apples can be made into all sorts of good things, from jellies to salves, and may even have been Adam and Eve's forbidden fruit, says Ian Morton
The sound of centuries past
The past 50 years have seen an energetic revival of the instruments that would have been played in Bach's day. Henrietta Bredin meets players fascinated by the noises Baroque composers would have heard