Lockdown hairdo from Vita Sackville-West. Loving the sliver of white cuff that matches Harold’s pocket handkerchief. Dreaming of her boots (left). Although crude we love these honest lupins which fix nitrogen in the soil (right).
Liquid hips luring us east. Costume Designs for Khadra created by Celia Franca for Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1946. She went on to found the National Ballet of Canada (left). Adore the ruff on circus acrobatic (right).
Scalloped edges tango through tulles and along the canal of Chateau de Courances, France; a garden we love.
Scalloped dress pines for endlessly long legs and beautifully polished shoes. Colonel Frederick Gustavus Burnaby by James Jacques Tissot, 1870. Private Collection.
Flower petals and foliage on Ice-cream cake made in memory of Prince Hermann von Puckler-Muskau tempt those in lockdown behind Sicilian striped awnings. We love Puckler’s “Letters of a Dead Man”, a series of letters home to Germany from his tour around gardens of England in the 1820s. He suffered from “parkomania” a deep love of landscaped parks.
Loving tights of 1940s Ballet Russe dancer Andre Eglevsky, and footwear and arch of plucked eyebrows on Italian ladies (a new Land Gardener line of shoes?). We long to dance around the garden like Pamela May in Dante Sonata, choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton for Sadler’s Wells, Royal Ballet, London 1940 with music by Franz Liszt.
A Spring Garden prepared by Miss Rhode “it provides an excellent opportunity for experiment”; Gardens and Gardening 1935 (left).1970s herbaceous border beyond the spire of St Mary’s church in Bampton village in the Cotswolds; Great Gardens of Britain by Peter Coates 1977, published by Treasure Press, 1977 (right).
Love spring yellow. Weaving dancers in head-dresses (The Ballet Annual edited by Arnold L Haskell, 1947) and wild yellow lilies – Lilium speciosum – in the arms of film director, Sergei Parajanov, director of The Colour of Pomegranates, 1969 – a film we love.
Perfect balance and puffed sleeves of circus act and perfect pale pink gate in the Walled Garden at The Royal Gardens of Highgrove. We love “Harmony” by HRH, the Prince of Wales. “Harmony is a blueprint for a more balanced, sustainable world that the human race must create to survive”. As our hero The Prince of Wales says “we have to embark on a sustainability revolution”.
From the streets to the straits of Istanbul – inspiration for our new garden tents.
Moss green eye shadow of Kate Bush in Wuthering Heights is the way forward. Her voice connects you to the other-wordly and we adore her directness. We danced to this on stage at Garden Marlborough, last year in New Zealand (www.gardenmarlborough.co.nz).
Delicate fruits of Spindle Tree (Euonymous europeae) – the light wood was ideal for making wool-spinning spindles (left). A glasshouse in Geneva in a walled garden which is still producing armloads of flowers today by Marina Brandt @Gloriousseeds.
We found an old notebook from 1915 of Henrietta’s grandmother, Margery Matthews who wrote notes on everything that interested her including flowers – capturing and recording what she loved. Here she gathers dahlias with her son, Jonathan, in the 1930s.
We love the work of this remarkable family of artists. Sisters Doris and Anna Zinkeisen were war artists, portrait painters and set and costume designers at the Old Vic, London in the 30s and 40s – grandmother and great aunt to wonderful artist Charlotte Johnstone, painting now in Suffolk @charlottejohnstoneportraits.
Mossy growth (Marchantia polymorpha (male A and female B), Meconopsis poppies and flowers of wild apple. Love the simplicity and freshness of these. We pick wild apple lots in spring and bring it into the house.
Loving the tie, socks and shoes of Beatrix Havergal – the founder of Waterperry School of Horticulture for women in 1932 - inspiration for the new Land Gardener look. Love green panelling in this old World of Interiors tearsheet. Sorry can’t find the date. Narcissi by August Courtauld.
Longing for a feathered headdress like that of Julie Andrews - photographed here by Cecil Beaton, 1960 - and a sunhat that fastens under the chin like that of Rhoda, Lady Birley.
Japanese Quince (Chaenomeles japonica – we particularly like Chaenomeles x superba Coral Sea) which we pick in early Spring. We love the perfect balance and gentle command of this circus artist in the plasterwork at Wardington with her diaphanous swirling skirt.
Highly recommend a chicken on your arm in lockdown. A still from The Colour of Pomegranates, by Sergei Parajanov, 1969.
Bird (1959) by George Braque (1882-1963) in the kitchen at Wardington. The entrance to the Orangery at Villa La Pietra, Florence.
We have always loved this photograph for its structure, rhythm, and looseness as nature crawls back into and over it. So sorry no idea where this comes from but still looking!
Love light and folds through a curtain at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence (left). This photograph by Alexander Rodchencko sitting on the kitchen shelf at Wardington never fails to make us laugh. Us in a couple of years. “The real civilisation begins when people realise that being human is one of the greatest miracles of the universe”- Ben Okri.
Loving ringlets in the hair and sandals of Vaslav Nijinksy (1879-1944) as Narcissus “I am God in a body” he wrote in his diary. Nijinksy, by Romola Nijinksy, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1933. Loving oil painting in lockdown. A hand-coloured collar-type lotus of 1890 by Kazumasa Ogawa – which represented the attaining of enlightenment (World of Interiors July/August 2020).
Scenes from Sergei Parajanov’s, Colour of Pomegranates, 1969. Unusual and transporting. This film is luring us east. Celebrating the survival of Armenian culture in the face of oppression, Parajanov called the film “a series of Persian miniatures”. Initially refused distribution outside Armenia by the State Committee of Cinematography, we are grateful the rest of the world got to see it.