Letters

From Dr Sarah Rutherford Syon Park, an Arcadian landscape on the ames in Brentford, west London, is once again under threat at the hands of its owner, the Duke of Northumberland. e Duke is planning to move a series of allotments (small plots of land rented by local people for growing vegetables) away from their current site outside the Park and replace them with 37 new plots in the middle of this ‘Capability’ Brown masterpiece. is will allow developers to build apartments where the allotments were, supposedly to fund works to the estate.

e new site for the allotments would be next to one of Brown’s lakes and Robert Adam’s striking Lion gateway (listed Grade I). e gateway was meant to be restored as a condition for receiving planning permission to erect the large and ugly hotel now adjacent to it in the Park, but this work has never been done. Public grant aid was awarded several years ago for restoration of the area of the Park that is now to be turned into allotments.

e local authority refused the allotment scheme in 2017 after some stiff lobbying by the Gardens Trust and local groups and individuals at a public meeting; but, having won that battle, these Davids now have to re-engage with the Goliath of major construction interests in further conflict. It is so dispiriting to have to fight time and time again as developers chance their arm, seeing parks as a soft touch –and so often get away with it. Buckinghamshire, UK

From Martha Dobson Jackson Park is one of the glories of Chicago. In the early 1870s the city embarked on an ambitious plan to create two enormous public parks connected by a mile long (1.5km) boulevard, the Midway Plaisance. Chicago was a wealthy city and could afford the best. It called in Frederick Law Olmsted Snr and Calvert Vaux to design the parks, the only parks designed by the two of them outside New York State. Swamp land next to Lake Michigan was drained and turned into picturesque landscapes with lakes and other water features. e larger park, nearly 600 acres (240ha) in extent, is Jackson Park, named for President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). It has been listed since 1972 – but this seems by no means proof against a President intent on his ‘legacy’. In August 2016 the Barack Obama Foundation announced that it had chosen Jackson Park for the site of the Barack Obama Presidential Center. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a longtime associate of Obama, corralled the Chicago Park District, the City Council and the Illinois legislature, and decided to confiscate some 21 acres (9ha) of the park, the first time publicly owned land has been seized for a presidential legacy center.

Chicagoans were told they were going to get a publiclyowned library in exchange, but the center will actually belong to a private foundation. It will be graced by a 180ft (55m) monolithic structure, visible throughout the park.

Although public protests have led to the design of the building being modified, and those for a massive aboveground car park being scrapped, the Center will still deprive Chicagoans of a significant slice of their park and cause its ambience to be irretrievably altered (and not for the better). Chicago, Illinois, USA

From Eloïse Debreuil Nick Ward’s article on the 1987 Great Storm (HGR 36) concentrated on how it affected the south-east of England. It is worth mentioning that parts of France also suffered a great deal of destruction. Brittany and Normandy were badly hit and even the park at Versailles, although well inland, lost 3,500 trees including a Sophora planted near the Trianon before the time of Marie-Antoinette. Dreux, France

From James Lambert I was interested in Richard Farrar’s persuasive article in HGR 36about the difficulties of visiting historic gardens in a wheelchair – but I would like to suggest that owners may face problems too, particularly where visitor numbers are too few to produce sufficient income to pay for the required outlay for improvements.

Last summer, on a visit to France, I had hoped to see the historic château of Luynes, near Tours. Unfortunately, in spite of investment over previous years in a modern garden in the moat designed to attract more visitors, the owner, the Duc de Luynes, had decided in 2016 to close the whole site to the public because he could not afford the cost of updating to the new norms for entry for handicapped people. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

From Harry Rains On the subject of using a wheelchair to go round a garden, it is often forgotten that, after an accident, Humphry Repton had to use a wheelchair at the end of his life. London, NW10, UK