Horace Walpole: The Gothic Gardener of Strawberry Hill
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
September 23, 1717
My dearest garden enthusiasts, on this day we celebrate the birth of Horace Walpole, a man who not only gave us the word 'serendipity' but whose "enchanted little landscape" would help shape the very future of English garden design.
The son of Britain's first Prime Minister created his masterpiece at Strawberry Hill, a Gothic Revival castle that served as both architectural sensation and horticultural haven.
How delightful to imagine those four lucky daily visitors (though notably, as per the 1842 admission ticket, neither in the evening nor with children in tow) discovering his five-acre romantic garden!
Within this "land of beauties," as he affectionately called it, Walpole crafted a garden that embodied the natural style he so ardently championed. His appreciation for William Kent, that pioneering landscape designer, was captured in one of gardening literature's most memorable observations. Kent, he noted, was the first to "[leap] the fence, and [see] that all of nature was a garden."
Among the garden's treasures stood a grove of lime trees and that remarkable Rococo shell seat - a piece so distinctive that modern gardeners can now purchase reproductions for their own spaces.
The ancient Walpole Oak still stands, bearing its dark legend of a servant who, having stolen silver, chose its branches for his final act.
In his seminal work, The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1771), Walpole articulated what many of us feel in our hearts - that a garden should be "nothing but riant, and the gaiety of nature."
How we sympathize with his thoughts on British weather!
In a letter to William Mason, he lamented with characteristic wit:
Don't let this horrid weather put you out of humour with your garden, though I own it is a pity we should have brought it to perfection and [then] have too bad a climate to enjoy it.
It is strictly true this year, as I have often said, that ours is the most beautiful country in the world, when [it is] framed and glazed...
Walpole's legacy blooms anew each year at the Strawberry Hill House Flower Festival, where local florists transform his Gothic masterpiece into a celebration of floral artistry. Modern gardeners can even grow a piece of this history with the David Austin rose Strawberry Hill, whose bubblegum-pink blooms would surely have delighted Walpole himself.
Ever the philosopher of both mind and garden, he left us with this sage advice:
When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Today, as the community garden at Strawberry Hill House continues to thrive, we see the living embodiment of Walpole's vision - that gardens should be both natural and nurturing, both wild and welcoming.