Downton's most thrilling plot: Highclere Castle's glorious gardens - out-of-bounds to the stars - open to the public next month

By Mary Greene

Last updated at 10:41 PM on 5th November 2011
 

The Dowager Countess of Grantham might never stoop to actual horticultural toil, but she definitely wouldn’t balk at delivering orders to Downton Abbey’s gardeners – in a tone capable of shrivelling any slug that had the temerity to trespass on her borders.

For the lawns, shrubs and floral displays at Downton, which viewers get only rare glimpses of in the series, would be her pride and joy, and a means of displaying the family’s wealth and good taste.

Owners of grand houses at the turn of the last century were keen to show off their mastery of the latest gardening styles and techniques. By the time the story of Downton Abbey began in 1912, it was out with garish displays of Victorian bedding plants and in with a more relaxed ‘country house’ style of herbaceous borders and rambling roses.

Open house: The Monks' Garden, in the foreground, features a climbing rose wall and a lavender walk

Cora, the Countess of Grantham, you can be sure, would have had a copy of Victorian gardening guru Gertrude Jekyll’s latest book exhorting picturesque drifts of colour. At the real Downton Abbey – Highclere Castle in Berkshire, where the series is filmed – the present-day Lady Carnarvon is replanting the garden to create a setting worthy of the grandeur of the Victorian stately home designed in 1842 by Charles Barry, who also designed the Houses of Parliament.

 Sadly for the cast, the garden is out of bounds during filming. ‘I keep meaning to take the actors around the garden for a tour,’ Lady Carnarvon says, apologetically. ‘Jim Carter, who plays Carson, the butler, is a very keen gardener.’ Lady Carnarvon has always loved gardening and embraced it on a grand scale when she and her husband, the 8th Earl, took over Highclere ten years ago.

 

‘I looked at some National Trust gardens with their herbaceous borders,’ she admits, ‘and ours seemed skinny in comparison, so they were redesigned.’ But she hasn’t strayed far from ideas the Countess would have seized on as the height of Edwardian fashion.

Lady Carnarvon says that she keeps on meaning to take the Downtown Abbey TV cast around the gardens

 

Lady Carnarvon says that her herbaceous borders were skinny in comparison to the National Trust gardens that she saw so she had them redesigned

Gertrude Jekyll brought the eye of a painter to English garden design, planting in swathes of harmonious colour in herbaceous borders that start with cool blues and pinks, build up to a crescendo of sizzling yellows, oranges and reds, then recede through paler shades to return to those restful, silvery blues.

‘I’ve gone back to what we think was planted here in the past, but we have to do battle with dreadful soil,’ says Lady Carnarvon, who has three gardeners to help her. Gardeners in the Downton years would have taken advantage of a mass of new innovations. Those velvety Downton lawns would have been mown to perfection by the first petrol lawnmower, introduced in 1902.

HIGHCLERE CASTLE GARDEN FACTS

Lord and Lady Carnarvon

15,000

Bulbs planted by the present Lord Carnarvon

1218

The first record of a garden at Highclere

1,000

Acres of parkland at the castle

Plants from the Americas, India and the Far East, such as rhododendrons, acers and azaleas, began to be more widely grown as gardeners realised they were hardy. By the early 1900s, gardeners at grand houses like Downton Abbey were adept at producing fruit and vegetables all year round. Greenhouses, cold frames and cloches were used to ensure a succession of delicacies for the kitchen.

At Highclere Castle, although no vegetables are grown in the garden today, the magnificent glasshouse contains peaches and nectarines, while quince, medlar and pear trees are trained against the ancient walls of the Monks’ Garden. Also grown in the glasshouse are headily scented, old-fashioned tea roses to be cut for the house.

Until war broadened their horizons, flower arranging would have been the Downton young ladies’ only useful occupation. Some innovations of the Downton era were possibly best not mentioned in front of the Dowager Countess. Artificial fertilisers were being developed to replace the time-honoured formulation – dried bird droppings, known as guano, from South America. Gardeners at Downton would have followed strict fertilising regimes to guarantee plenty of vegetables.

Food shortages and rationing in the last stages of the war would have meant that cook Mrs Patmore was glad of as much homeproduced food as the estate could provide. Gardeners understood the importance of pest control and used lethal combinations of cyanide, nicotine and arsenic, one drop of which was said to be enough to kill a dog.

The Downton cast on set for a garden party, sadly for them, Highclere's garden is out of bounds during filming

The seeds of change: The Edwardian era was a boom time for Britain's gardeners, who were discovering the joys of seed catalogues, giving them the chance to grow exciting exotic plants

Golden age: George V’s wife Queen Mary, pictured second from right, was among the dignitaries at
the inaugural Chelsea Flower Show in 1913 (left) and Elizabeth And Her German Garden - still in print today - tells how an Edwardian woman derives comfort from her garden after marrying a much older nobleman (right\)

As the 1900s progressed, so did the development of a host of synthetic pesticides. One wonders if the hard-pressed Downton staff would ever have had a chance to enjoy the garden. When Molesley, the Crawleys’ butler, was trying to woo housemaid Anna, the book he pressed on her as a gift was Elizabeth And Her German Garden by the Australian-born countess Elizabeth von Arnim. A semi-autobiographical diary, it chronicles her love for her garden, where she escapes the tedium of aristocratic life.

‘I Downton’s most thrilling plot danced for joy out in my frost-bound garden,’ she writes. ‘But I did it behind a bush, having a due regard for the decencies.’ Anna, whose heart belongs to Mr Bates, doesn’t bother to read it. But surely the dutiful Countess, and even the redoubtable Dowager, would have been spellbound by this hugely popular book by a woman who, as they did, married into the highest echelons of the aristocracy. But if they ever danced in secret behind the bushes of Downton Abbey… nobody’s telling.

Lime Avenue was planted at Highclere by Robert Sawyer Herbert, uncle of the 1st Earl, in the 18th century

Highclere Castle is next open to the public from 4-7 December. www.highclerecastle. co.uk. Elizabeth And Her German Garden (Virago Modern Classics, £8.99).

THIS IS AN EDITED VERSION OF AN ARTICLE WHICH FIRST APPEARED IN GARDEN NEWS
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