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Hidcote Manor Garden Hazel Payne
AND THE MAN WHO CREATED IT
Lawrence Johnston
OX MAGAZINE JULY 2020
There is one American garden designer who started creating a truly inspirational garden in 1907, that is still of relevance to many modern-day gardeners and designers, with the garden he created over 100 years ago visited by 170,000 people per year on average.
H
idcote Manor, located in the small hamlet of Hidcote Bartrim, just 2.75 miles from Chipping Campden in the heart of the Cotswolds, was the home of Lawrence Waterbury Johnston and his mother Mrs Gertrude Winthrop from 1907 until Johnston handed over the property and gardens to the National Trust in 1948. Without any formal horticultural training, Johnston spent 40 years creating a garden that became one of the bestknown and most significant British Arts and Crafts inspired gardens. When he wanted to hand over the property to the National Trust, in order to retire to his property at Menton on the French Riviera, the National Trust and the Royal Horticultural Society created the Gardens Fund to save noteworthy gardens, Hidcote being the first to be cared for under this scheme. When Johnston and his mother moved into Hidcote Manor in 1907, they had acquired a ‘valuable freehold farm comprising 287 acres’
sold with a ‘very substantial and picturesque farmhouse’ for the sum of £7,200. At that stage, the garden comprised of lawns with a large kitchen garden and provided 36-year-old Johnston (who had become a naturalised British citizen and followed a military career) with a blank canvas. He was already noted for his gardening abilities having been elected a Fellow of the RHS in 1904, and in 1911 he received an award of merit from the RHS for the Hidcote strain of Primula pulverulenta. With only limited information relating to the development of the garden, it is possible that in the early stages of its redesign, Johnston’s mother had the greatest influence. She certainly would have held the purse strings. Inspired by the work of artists and garden designers Thomas Mawson, Alfred Parsons and Gertrude Jekyll, by 1914 Johnston had created the first stages of the garden’s landscaping, creating a series of ‘garden rooms’. Initially the garden rooms followed the Arts and
