By Ceri Lumley, Project Archivist: Penelope Hobhouse Archive
As many individuals did during the COVID lockdown of 2020 I turned to gardening and made my first (incredibly) amateurish forays into the world of garden design. I was hooked. As an archivist it felt like the perfect coming together of two worlds when I took on the project at the Garden Museum to catalogue the collections of some of the great names in garden design, writing and photography.
The first of the collections I’ve been working on is that of Penelope Hobhouse, garden designer, consultant, historian, writer, lecturer and recipient of the RHS’ prestigious Victoria Medal of Honour; an honour shared with 63 individuals including Alan Titchmarsh, Jekka McVicar and Carol Klein, and in the past, Gertrude Jekyll, Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto. In 2020 the UK Society of Garden Designers gave Hobhouse a Lifetime Achievement Award for her outstanding contribution to the landscape and garden design profession.
The collection itself originally spanned twenty-six ‘banker’s’ or records management storage boxes containing around 300 folders, five large A1 size boxes, a drawerful of A0 size drawings and a mysterious red tube which on inspection contained a 255cm long planting plan for Royaumont, an early commission for the Rothschild family. One of the first steps was to initially repackage the material, making cataloguing easier and preserving the documents for years to come. This also involved creating a box list from which the arrangement of the collection could be decided. It was clear from the outset that the consultancy and garden design work made up a considerable portion of the whole collection.
However, design work was not how Hobhouse began her career. Hobhouse herself has mentioned in interviews that many of her clients came to her as a direct result of her books on gardening.([1]) Hobhouse began by writing about gardening after designing, working in and caring for some of the most highly praised gardens in the UK, first at Hadspen House in Somerset (now The Newt) and then at Tintinhull, owned by the National Trust. Penelope Hobhouse established a global reputation, having designed gardens all over the world from Europe to the USA, a reputation bolstered by numerous appearances at horticultural clubs, universities, groups and gardens giving talks on a wide range of subjects. The collection holds material related to these talks as well as the publications which were the starting point for much of Hobhouse’s work as a garden designer and consultant.
The Hobhouse Collection is the only collection we currently hold that contains such a wealth of contextual information around each project. In each of the 300 plus project files the drawings, plant lists, correspondence and other material combine to show the level of detail involved in each project, made even more impressive by the fact that Hobhouse and her Associates were often working on multiple projects simultaneously across the globe.
The ephemeral and ever-changing nature of gardens is at the core of what makes them special, more so than most other art forms. One of the first things to strike me when doing initial research into Hobhouse’s designs and commissions, was just how many were either gardens which had been lost or that required Hobhouse’s knowledge of garden history to help restore or reimagine them, such as with the Gertrude Jekyll Garden at The Manor House at Upton Grey, Hampshire or The Walled Garden at Aberglasney in South Wales.
Similarly, I was struck by how many of the houses and gardens themselves have since been lost or changed hands following their completion. It is also the case that Hobhouse was asked back by clients to create new gardens or revise or reinvent aspects of her earlier designs of the same gardens, as with the fashion designer Jil Sander or a garden she designed in the rue de Bellechasse in central Paris. Hobhouse’s influence is felt so strongly, particularly in the United States, that she was asked to present a show garden at the Pennsylvania Flower Show in 2001 as part of the show’s ‘Great Gardeners of the World’ theme.([2]) The garden Hobhouse made for the show was a recreation of part of her own garden at the time in Bettiscombe, Dorset which illustrated her signature approach to design.
The Hobhouse Collection is one of the largest we hold at the Garden Museum. Future collections to be catalogued over the coming years are those of the garden designer John Brookes and Andrew Lawson, renowned garden photographer whose collection currently spans twelve drawers of slides across three filing cabinets along with twelve boxes of volumes and press cuttings. Lawson photographed many Hobhouse designed gardens, a fact which demonstrates the connections across the collections we hold here at the Garden Museum. Beyond Brookes and Lawson there are numerous smaller collections so look out for further updates as the project progresses.
Further reading and resources
A film with Penelope Hobhouse was created by the Museum and can be viewed in our permanent galleries or online: Penelope Hobhouse film
Andrew Lawson’s photographs of ‘Brilliant Gardens’ were featured as part of our ‘Object of the Week’ series: Brilliant Gardens
For enquiries about our holdings, donating an archive, or to make an appointment to consult items from the Archive of Garden Design please contact: archives@gardenmuseum.org.uk
The role of Project Archivist: Penelope Hobhouse Archive was made possible by the John R Murray Charitable Trust.