Garden Writer Tim Woodbridge and the Secret of Stourhead Garden

August 16, 1988

On this day,  Kenneth Woodbridge, a garden writer and historian, died.

Kenneth was known for his work on the history of garden design in England and France.

He wrote The Stourhead Landscape, a book about one of England's most magnificent gardens.

 

The Stourhead Landscape was the passion project of an English banker named Henry Hoare, who lived during much of the 1700s.

While researching Kenneth, I ran across an article about his son, Tim Woodbridge.

Tim piggybacked on the subject his father wrote about, Stourhead Garden in Wiltshire.

Tim says his father discovered almost everything known about Stourhead Garden today.

 

The Stourhead Garden is breathtaking because it surrounds this gloriously spectacular man-made lake.

All along, people have assumed that the lake was part of the plan by Henry Hoare, the banker who established the garden as his lasting legacy.

But Tim believes he's uncovered a secret about the garden that has been lost to time.

 

In 2005, the National Trust commissioned an underwater survey of the lake.

Tim's book, The Choice, explains that the lake is hiding a first garden – the garden built to honor Henry's dead wife, Susan.

 

The garden was nearly completed when Henry's son and only heir, Henry Jr., died of smallpox in Naples. He was just 22 years old.

Tim believes that the garden became too painful for Henry in his grief, so he made the shocking decision to flood the garden.

Tim thinks Henry built a dam and then flooded the garden, creating the magnificent great lake that people drive to see from all over the world.

 

This insight makes Stourhead a bittersweet memorial. The lake represents the overwhelming grief of a husband and father whose tears hid the garden he had built for posterity.

If a garden could drown from grief... Stourhead is such a garden.