January 2018 - Gilbert White
Members of the Horndean & District U3A met for their regular monthly meeting on Friday 5th January 2018 at Merchistoun Hall where David Standing, the Head Gardener at Gilbert White's House and Garden in Selborne for over 30 years until his retirement in May 2017, gave a talk about ‘Gilbert White the Gardener’.
Gilbert White’s family moved to the ‘The Wakes’ in Selborne where he was to spend the rest of his life when he was about 7 years old. The house, which was bought by his grandfather for his wife for after his death, would then have just been a two up, two down however various extensions were added subsequently to create the 60-yard long house you see today.
Gilbert White returned to Selborne after university and started to cultivate the garden of The Wakes, which he eventually inherited from his grandmother. He gradually acquired land and extended the garden and parkland to the 25 acres that it covers today. He also planted on land in the village he did not actually own, adding hermitages and straightening a path running up the Hanger. He also planted trees to block his view of the butcher’s window as he found the sight of the meat in it distasteful! He got away with this as the local people did not object and because the Lord of the Manor was a long way away at Magdalen College Oxford and so was probably unaware of what he was doing.
The original manuscript of Gilbert White’s book ‘The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne’, published in 1789 and never out of print, is on display in the house. The view of Selborne and the hedges and hills nearby shown on the frontispiece to the book is largely as it still is today. Prior to writing his book, Gilbert White had kept a diary for twenty years from 1751. Titled ‘The Garden Calendar’, the diary contained a detailed account of everything Gilbert White had done in the garden that year including all the planting, although it was less clear about what he did with everything he grew. He grew huge quantities of cabbages and other vegetables as well as melons and cucumbers using the heat given off by rotting manure supplied by a local farmer. Gilbert White started writing ‘The Naturalist’s Journal’ in 1768 to record his detailed observations of the weather and local natural history of Selborne.
Gilbert White wanted his garden to emulate the great gardens of the time, particularly those created by William Kent, who predated Capability Brown and designed the gardens at Stowe. These gardens inspired the stone walls, a Ha Ha, a fruit wall, a sundial, and two oil jars to act as focal points for a vista. He also erected a statue of Hercules built in two dimensions of wood by the village carpenter John Carpenter because he could not afford a real stone statue. These features have been restored or reproduced as part of the recreation of the garden.
Unfortunately, Gilbert White’s diary and other records contained no plan of his garden, which had all but disappeared in the years following his death, and paintings of it are not an accurate representation. In order to recreate it, new plans were drawn up by the garden designer Kim Wilkie using extensive research by the then head gardener of Gilbert White’s diary, journals, correspondence, household account books, as well as an Ordnance Survey Map from 1870 showing the position of the trees.. The garden was then replanted using only plant varieties that existed in Gilbert White’s lifetime. These were identified by David Standing who drew up an index of the plants recorded in Gilbert White’s diary with the help of ‘The Gardeners Dictionary’ written by the botanist Philip Miller who was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1722.until shortly before his death in 1771.
David Standing concluded his Talk with pictures of some of the old plants in the Garden including Gilbert White’s Curled Marrow, Painted Lady Sweet Pea, Marble of Peru, Chimney Bell Flower, Sweet Rocket, Tulip Tree and Madonna lilies among others.
Andy Forbes
Vice Chairman