{"id":10564,"date":"2022-05-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=10564"},"modified":"2022-05-24T18:16:29","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T16:16:29","slug":"a-new-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/2022\/05\/24\/a-new-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"A new vision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As part of a redesign of the gardens at Chatsworth, Tom Stuart-Smith has created a bold new plan for Joseph Paxton\u2019s 19th-century Rock Garden<\/p>\n\n

WORDS TIM RICHARDSON | PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
A froth of tall, white Persicaria<\/em> x fennica<\/em> \u2018Johanniswolke\u2019 dominates the Rock Garden at Chatsworth. Created in the 1840s by the 6th Duke of Devonshire and his head gardener Joseph Paxton, the garden was partly inspired by their travels to the Alps and partly by the wild moorland landscape around Bolton Abbey, the Duke\u2019s Yorkshire seat. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
<\/div>
\n
IN BRIEF<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

What <\/strong>Mid-19th-century rock garden at ducal estate.
Where <\/strong>Derbyshire.
Soil <\/strong>Brashy, heavy, stony clay; slightly acidic.
Size<\/strong> Three acres.
Climate<\/strong> Temperate.
Hardiness zone<\/strong> USDA 8.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

\"\"
A few existing Japanese maples were left in situ, but otherwise Tom has refigured the planting, which has a broadly pink, purple and white theme, courtesy of thalictrum, campanula, iris and other plants of wild appeal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

For most of us, a rockery is a small agglomeration of natural-looking stones at the far end of a garden, and an opportunity to grow delicate alpine flowers and succulents. That\u2019s a rather 20th-century notion, perhaps a little quaint. And it is dramatically at variance with Joseph Paxton\u2019s grand picturesque vision at Chatsworth, where from 1842 he created a craggy wonderland designed to transport visitors \u2013 in the imagination at least \u2013 to wild Yorkshire moorland, or perhaps even as far as the Alps, whence the 6th Duke of Devonshire (together with Paxton, as his head gardener) had travelled.<\/p>\n\n

Tom Stuart-Smith was one of half a dozen designers invited up to Chatsworth in 2018 to comment not on the Rock Garden, but on an area of woodland subsequently developed as a new system of glades named Arcadia (see page 73). But as the 12th Duke of Devonshire recalls, \u201cthe scales fell from our eyes\u201d when Tom lit upon the Rock Garden instead.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cTom said, \u2018You are missing something really basic here. You have this wonderful rockery but it has this motorway path going through it and all these ditzy gardens\u2019,\u201d says the Duke. \u201cWe had started taking off the rambling roses and so on, but that was really just nibbling around the edges.\u201d In the event, the commission from the Duke and Duchess was for Tom to work on both the Rock Garden and Arcadia simultaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

According to the Duke, the gardens at Chatsworth had been left largely unchanged since Paxton\u2019s era, barring a brief interlude in the 1910s and 1920s. \u201cThe 6th Duke died in 1868,\u201d he explains, \u201cand I am led to believe that nothing much happened after that until my great-grandmother Evelyn Fitzmaurice [the 9th Duchess] came here in the early 20th century and did quite a lot of gardening. Her father [Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Viceroy of India, 1888\u201394] had been in charge of India and so she was used to going up into the Himalayas. There are a few rhododendrons remaining in the Rock Garden from her time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Tom\u2019s feeling was that the Rock Garden had lost much of its definition and character, smothered as it was by a canopy of tall trees and mature shrubs. \u201cThe whole progress through was just a bit too decorous and the planting too horticultural and patchy,\u201d says Tom. \u201cThis is a garden that ought to look semi-apocalyptic \u2013 as if some great eruption has happened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Tom has replanned the path system so that visitors must wend their way around and sometimes through the rocks and boulders, adding to the atmosphere of exploration.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Some 50 tonnes of locally quarried gritstone have been brought in to the Rock Garden, complementing the \u2018towers\u2019 originally engineered by Paxton and his team. Fluffy white persicaria<\/em> creates a softer complement to the rock textures.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
\"\"
A cascade tumbles down the face of one of Paxton\u2019s original cantilevered rock stacks, some of which contain a metal armature, surrounded by a mix of lush planting dominated by a large Darmera peltata <\/em>and spots of purple colour from Salvia nemorosa<\/em> \u2018Caradonna\u2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

So he decided to start again more or less from scratch, emphasising \u2013 and dramatising \u2013 particularly the two entrances into the Rock Garden, while also finessing and varying the path system. It now feels as if the paths are finding their way through the rocks, as opposed to forging through them.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt is probably the biggest rockery ever made in terms of the sheer amount of rock \u2013 an amazing concept,\u201d says Tom. \u201cQuite a lot of the big rock piles had fallen apart and have been remade. You can see the original Paxton rocks quite clearly: they are either towers, or these extraordinary cantilevered stacks, often with a long \u2018diving-board\u2019 rock protruding in characteristic style. You occasionally see it occurring naturally up in the Dales, and we tried to echo that Paxton style.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Tom bolstered Paxton\u2019s original vision by adding numerous gritstone boulders, a stone quarried on the estate and used for the house fa\u00e7ades. An estimated 50 tonnes of rock has been brought in \u2013 the newer boulders a light buff colour while Paxton\u2019s originals are a darker grey. At the heart of the Rock Garden is a large pond, fed by the Strid \u2013 an artificial \u2018wild\u2019 stream \u2013 that Tom says creates a feeling of openness and animation in the midst of the scene. A decision was taken to remove a bridge that had formerly spanned it, to avoid any hint of domestication.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Head gardener Steve Porter is equally admiring of the feat of Victorian engineering the Rock Garden represents. \u201cPaxton\u2019s rockwork was designed to look precarious,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is some internal ironwork, but a lot of it is counter-weighted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Mature woodland surrounds the Rock Garden, which takes the form of a half-bowl. The scale of the boulders is in keeping with the magnificent landscape of the surrounding Chatsworth estate.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Steve also notes the slightly Japanese character of the Rock Garden as it developed, with mature katsuras and acers coming to dominate. Tom has retained some of these, but otherwise introduced perhaps less demonstrative species, notably Cornus <\/em>kousa <\/em>in several varieties, as a favourite of the current Duke and Duchess. On the tops of the rocks he has used Phillyrea, <\/em>with some \u2018quite ornamental\u2019 smaller trees used lower down, such as the cutleaf crab apple, Malus <\/em>transitoria, <\/em>the Yoshino cherry, Prunus <\/em>x yedoensis, <\/em>and two snowball trees, Styrax <\/em>japonicus <\/em>and S. <\/em>hemsleyanus. <\/em><\/p>\n\n

Overall, says Tom, his vision has been to make it less horticultural and more experiential. \u201cI wanted more groups and drifts and repetitions,\u201d he says, listing as key link plants veronicastrums, actaeas, persicarias, irises (mainly I. <\/em>sibirica), <\/em>astrantias, rodgersias, epimediums and hellebores. \u201cThere are also some quite \u2018gardeny\u2019 things,\u201d he adds, such as the tall, pink Phlox <\/em>x arendsii <\/em>\u2018Utopia\u2019. Bulbs, too, play an important role, with martagon lilies and the rhizomatous perennial Omphalodes <\/em>cappadocica <\/em>\u2018Cherry Ingram\u2019, which appears in spring alongside puschkinias and dwarf narcissi.<\/p>\n\n

The planting could be characterised as quietly connoisseurial, but Tom sees his horticultural interventions as the start of something, rather than an end point. \u201cI am hoping I have created a framework that the garden team does not need to regard as static,\u201d he says. \u201cThey can always improve on it and add new things.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

USEFUL INFORMATION <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Address <\/strong>Chatsworth, Bakewell, Derbyshire DE45 1PP. Web <\/strong>chatsworth.org<\/a> Garden <\/strong>open <\/strong>10.30am-5pm. Garden-only admission \u00a315; see website for other ticket options and seasonal opening times.<\/p>\n\n

Find out more about Tom\u2019s work at tomstuartsmith.co.uk<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n

The wider landscape at Chatsworth<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Having completed the \u00a332m Masterplan project to restore the house a few years ago, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire looked to undertake a similar revitalising effect on the garden. As well as Tom\u2019s work in the Rock Garden, key projects include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arcadia <\/strong>
\u201cArcadia is a sort of code name: a link to the painting by Poussin in the house,\u201d explains head gardener Steve Porter, alluding to Nicolas Poussin\u2019s Et in Arcadia Ego. <\/em>In an initiative supported by Gucci since 2018, this 15-acre area of woodland has been partially cleared and intensively replanted by Tom to create a walk that connects four glades of contrasting character, offering fine views back across to the house and garden. There is a bog garden, the \u2018rabbit glade\u2019, with a diagonal vista back to the conservatory, and the \u2018meadow glade\u2019, which has been planted by Tom\u2019s regular collaborator, naturalistic plantsman James Hitchmough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Maze Borders <\/strong>
Tom has reconfigured what was formerly a lupin garden into a largely herbaceous garden that reflects his own exuberant style. It is lent structure by stone pillars, clipped yew shapes and (planned) ironwork baskets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rose Garden <\/strong>
The old, quartered rose garden in front of Chatsworth\u2019s glasshouse, has been re-imagined by Tom and now includes a far wider variety of roses, including classics such as \u2019Tuscany Superb\u2019 and \u2018Charles de Mills\u2019. The roses are complemented by a richly romantic, \u2018jewel-box\u2019 planting of perennials such as irises, violas and old-fashioned pinks. Four wooden arbours are to be added. Tom\u2019s inspiration was the kind of \u2018antiquarian\u2019 gardening pursued by the Marchioness of Salisbury at Hatfield House and Cranborne Manor from the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trout Stream <\/strong>
Dan Pearson\u2019s work in the upper reaches of the garden was first essayed in a well-received RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden in 2015: a planted-up stream, which wends its way down the hillside and ends at the Jack Pond.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

16 key plants<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n

1 Thalictrum <\/em>\u2018Black Stockings\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A useful early season accompaniment to Iris <\/em>5 <\/strong>sibirica <\/em>and astrantias. \u201cThe dark stems of this cultivar make it more telling than the species,\u201d says Tom. 2m x 75cm. AGM*. RHS H7, USDA 5a-9b\u2020<\/sup> . <\/p>\n\n

2 Campanula poscharskyana <\/em>\u2018Stella\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A low-growing bellflower that Tom uses extensively with Erigeron karvinskianus <\/em>to colonise the cracks in the rocks. But he warns, it is very prolific. 20cm x 50cm. AGM. RHS H5, USDA 3a-8b. <\/p>\n\n

3 Astrantia major <\/em>\u2018Alba\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A long-lived perennial that is well-suited to large-scale planting, and one that Tom describes as being \u201cvery fresh and light in early summer\u201d. 90cm x 45cm. RHS H4, USDA 4a-7b. <\/p>\n\n

4 Dianthus carthusianorum <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Creates bright spots of colour in among grasses and salvias.\u201cThe higher parts of the rockery are very dry and this species seems well adapted to such conditions,\u201d says Tom. 40cm x 20cm. RHS H7. <\/p>\n\n

5 Erigeron karvinskianus <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A popular, low-growing perennial that Tom likens to \u201cvegetable Polyfilla \u2013 rapidly healing over gaps opened up by adventurous visitors \u2013 scaling the rocks in unexpected ways\u201d. 30cm x 1m. AGM. RHS H5. <\/p>\n\n

6 Sesleria autumnalis <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

For Tom, the autumn moor-grass is \u201cone of the most successful grasses on the dry banks \u2013a very robust evergreen associating well with origanum, salvia, dianthus and cenolophium, to make something quite reminiscent of an alpine meadow.\u201d 1m x 50cm. RHS H7, USDA 5a-8b. <\/p>\n\n

7 Persicaria <\/em>x fennica <\/em>\u2018Johanniswolke\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Tom calls this persicaria \u201ca giant handsome thug\u201d, but it is one that doesn\u2019t seem to seed, so it just gradually expands to become a \u201cvast frothing mass\u201d. 2.5m x 1.5m. RHS H7. <\/p>\n\n

8 Cenolophium denudatum <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

An umbellifer that Tom describes as being \u201csomewhere between cow parsley and wild carrot but with a glossy, smart sophistication\u201d. For Tom just a few of these can give a garden a wild feel but he warns that it can seed freely. 1m x 75cm. RHS H6.<\/p>\n\n

9 Monarda bradburiana <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A spring-flowering, low-growing, mildew-free, <\/strong>tenacious bergamot for difficult dry places. 60cm x 60cm. USDA 5a-8b. <\/p>\n\n

10 <\/strong>Heuchera villosa <\/strong><\/em>\u2018Autumn Bride\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

An excellent plant for dry banks in sun or semi shade. Evergreen and weed-excluding, it is very fresh in flower in August and September. 60cm x 1.2m. RHS H6. <\/p>\n\n

11 Iris <\/em>\u2018Silver Edge\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Siberian irises play an important role in the Rock Garden. Tom likes them because they are long-lived, slowly expanding and diseaseresistant, while the foliage provides good bold texture. This is a cultiver he finds to be particularly strong. 1.2m x 50cm. AGM. RHS H7, USDA 3a-8b. <\/p>\n\n

12 <\/strong>Iris <\/strong><\/em>\u2018White Swirl\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Another Iris sibirica <\/em>cultivar found in the Rock Garden with elegant, ivory-white falls flushed with yellow at the base, and narrow, linear leaves. 90cm x 30cm. RHS H7, USDA 3a-8b. <\/p>\n\n

13 Omphalodes cappadocica<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>\u2018Cherry Ingram\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A spreading groundcover, with smart foliage and piercing scilla-blue flowers. Perfect for slightly moist semi-shade, Tom likes to use it with hellebores, epimediums and pushkinias. 20cm x 45cm. RHS H5.<\/p>\n\n

14 Amsonia tabernaemontana <\/em>var. salicifolia <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

A clump-forming perennial with pale, icy blue flowers that Tom calls a \u201cunique colour\u201d. Along with this variety, he has used various amsonias in the Rock Garden, including the cultivar \u2018Blue Ice\u2019. 70cm x 45cm. RHS H5, USDA 3a-9b.<\/p>\n\n

15 <\/strong>Cornus kousa var. chinensis <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

\u2018A small tree that has everything,\u201d says Tom. \u201cFine shape, flowers, fruit, autumn colour.\u201d 7m x 5m. RHS H6, USDA 5a-8b. <\/p>\n\n

16 Kolkwitzia amabilis <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Known as the beauty bush this deciduous, dense shrub bears a profusion of pink flowers in spring. \u201cThis is such an elegant, transparent and delicate shrub,\u201d says Tom. 3m x 4m. RHS H6.<\/p>\n\n

*Holds an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. \u2020 <\/sup>Hardiness ratings given where available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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