A woman drives her carriage through London's Hyde Park, 1899
©TopFoto.co.uk/Public Record Office /HIP

Hyde Park

Public access to Hyde Park, in the centre of the capital (formerly a private royal hunting ground), was first granted by Charles I in 1637. During the Great Plague in London in 1665, many people fled to the park to escape the infection in the crowded slums.

Rotten Row, which runs between Kensington and St James’s Palaces on the southern edge of the park, became the first illuminated highway in England, after William III ordered 300 oil lamps to be installed along it in 1690. The Serpentine lake was opened in the 1730s at the behest of George II’s wife, Queen Caroline. Despite public access, though, Hyde Park remained crown property.

The Victorian era is when the public garden movement really got going. It was thought that gardens would have a socially beneficial function, encouraging a more contemplative temperament among working people, and decreasing public drunkenness.

Derby Arboretum

A year before London’s Kew Gardens opened to the public, the Arboretum in Derby became the first of England’s dedicated public parks. The land was bequeathed to the town by a local cotton magnate and philanthropist, Joseph Strutt, with gardens designed by John Claudius Loudon. Strutt’s instructions were that there should be no more than one of each tree type planted, to encourage visitors to make a full circuit of the park.

On Thursday September 17, 1840, Strutt made an emotional address to the town council, handing over the deeds of the land. A great triumphal procession then made its way from the town hall to the Arboretum, marking the beginning of three days of public festivities.

An enormous crowd, far more than could be catered for, entered the park. Notwithstanding their immense numbers and the general chaos (during which two failed attempts to launch hot-air balloons were made), not a single tree or shrub was damaged, leading Loudon to say that he had never come across a community so worthy of such a public bequest. On the Saturday, a children’s celebration was held, under slightly less hectic circumstances, with teas being served in the pavilion.

Such a social milestone was the opening of the Derby Arboretum that the layout of Central Park in New York in the 1850s was partly based on its design.

Kew Gardens

Kew and Richmond Gardens were merged into one by George III when he inherited Kew upon the death of his mother, Princess Augusta, in 1772. (At this time, the gardens already boasted William Chambers’ Pagoda, which had been built at the height of the fashion for Oriental design, in 1762.) The biggest influence on the way the gardens were to develop was that of Sir Joseph Banks, who had been on Captain Cook’s 1768-71 voyage to the South Seas on the Endeavour. He shifted the emphasis of the gardens from the curiosity value of showing exotic plants to serious botanical research (a pattern that would later be followed by the zoos).

George III (known affectionately as Farmer George) turned part of the gardens over to agricultural production, growing turnips, buckwheat, oats and barley, as well as grazing sheep on them.

Kew Gardens passed from crown control into the hands of the government in 1840. Queen Victoria wasn’t happy about the public gaining access to the gardens (as they did from the following year), since she liked to take regular walks there herself. Once the gardens were a matter of public administration, though, it was necessary to employ professional gardeners rather than the keen amateurs who had run it for the royals.

The first director of the public gardens was Sir William Hooker, who was succeeded by his son Joseph in 1865. The gardens were greatly expanded between the 1840s and the 1880s. The great Palm House (at 363ft long, a marvel of Victorian engineering) was built in 1848.

Today, their mission is seen as participating in worldwide research, supporting conservation and providing public education, as well as training botanical scientists from developing countries. Kew’s mission statement is “All life depends on plants”.

Kew was named a World Heritage Site in 2003.

Into the 20th century

Gardens of note which still attract huge visitor numbers every year include:

• Hidcote Manor Garden in Gloucestershire (designed by its American owner, Major Lawrence Johnston, from 1905 on).
• Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent (designed jointly by writer Vita Sackville-West and her diplomat husband Harold Nicolson in the 1930s).

Hidcote and Sissinghurst are  both prime examples of a movement that originated in British garden design in the late 19th century. Known as the “natural style”, it was first conceived by the influential William Robinson (1838-1935), author of The English Flower Garden (1883), often described as the single most important book in British gardening history.

Robinson, together with his follower Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), argued for a natural look, in answer to the geometrical classicism of earlier times. That meant plenty of creepers and rambling plants, hardy shrubs and herbaceous borders spilling over on to the narrow pathways.