The Eccentric’s Garden: William Beckford’s Horticultural Legacy

On This Day
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:

Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode.

September 29, 1760

Today, we celebrate the birthday of William Beckford as we contemplate the complex legacy of his wealth - derived from the unconscionable enslavement of Jamaicans - which funded his passionate pursuit of garden design and architectural follies.

This English novelist and architect, known primarily for his romance The History of the Caliph Vathek, harbored a particular fondness for Italianate gardens, those carefully composed landscapes that blur the boundary between nature and art.

Picture, if you will, Beckford's ambitious vision for Lansdown Cemetery, where he created a pleasure garden crowned with an imposing tower.

Such was his attachment to this carefully cultivated space that he wished to rest eternally in its shade, alongside one of his beloved dogs!

Alas, fate had other plans.

The combination of unconsecrated ground and the desired canine companion rendered his final wishes impossible.

His sarcophagus found its ultimate residence in Bath's Abbey Cemetery instead.

Despite his eccentricities - or perhaps because of them - Beckford left us with one of the most enchanting observations about our botanical companions:

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul to.

How curious that this reclusive figure, whose life was marked by privilege and controversy, should capture so perfectly the ineffable quality of flowers - these seemingly ensouled beings that grace our gardens!

Perhaps it was in his solitary wanderings through his carefully crafted landscapes that Beckford came closest to understanding the true nature of gardens - these spaces where human ambition meets divine creation, where the temporal touches the eternal.

William Beckford Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1782
William Beckford Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1782
William Beckford (colorized & enhanced) from drawing of his portrait
William Beckford (colorized & enhanced) from drawing of his portrait
Beckford's tomb with the tower in the background
Beckford's tomb with the tower in the background
William Beckford's Grand Tour through Europe, shown in red
William Beckford's Grand Tour through Europe, shown in red

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