British Gardens in Time

Christopher Lloyd's garden Great Dixter, one of the most innovative, spectacular and provocative of the period.

Created on a vast scale with 36 temples, 8 lakes, and a dozen avenues, Stowe launched the career of Launcelot ‘Capability’ Brown and fostered a rebellion that overthrew the first British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole. Rather than being a garden of flower and shrubs, Stowe is a garden of ideas, and its grottos and classical monuments spell out a furious, coded political manifesto.

Biddulph Grange, the best surviving Victorian garden in the country, takes the visitor on a whistle-stop journey around the world from China to Egypt in a series of gardens connected by tunnels and subterranean passageways.

The Messels arrived in Britain in 1870 at a time when both anti-Semitism and anti-German sentiment were rife. Nevertheless Ludwig Messel succeeded in establishing a successful stock-broking firm and creating at Nymans the quintessential English garden with rare plants and a theatrical herbaceous border inspired by William Robinson.