Cambridge has long been a destination for scholars and tourists but should it also be a place for gardeners to visit? Cambridge College Gardens, Tim Richardson’s latest look at the gardens of British academia, suggests so. From the ambitious planting of Wolfson College to the tranquillity of Darwin’s two islands, it seems there is something to discover.
He argues that the gardens are an integral part of each college: “. . . buildings and gardens are almost indivisible if one is open to appreciating the setting as a whole.”
I was given a book to review by White Lion publishing.
As such, the book, a companion to Oxford College Gardens, is as much about the history of the buildings, how they were designed, funded and developed as it is about the plants and trees that surround them.
We learn about the legal wrangle that delayed the setting up of Downing College, the symbolic journey behind the famous gates of Gonville & Caius, and how bowling greens were for much of the 18th and 17th century an important part of colleges.
The style of horticulture is wide-ranging with a Chinese garden at Kings, an exotic planting of bananas, yuccas and Trachycarpus fortunei palms at Selwyn College, and wildflower meadow planting giving a natural feel to the grounds of Lucy Cavendish College.
Some colleges have notable trees, although the claims for ‘Milton’s Mulberry’ at Christ’s College and ‘Newton’s Apple’ in Trinity College are not without dispute.
Christ’s College is the only one to have preserved a dedicated ‘garden book’ – it covers 1645 to 1714 – while the lawn at Corpus Christi College is sometimes cut twice a day in summer and its ‘Keep Off the Grass’ signs are also in Japanese and Chinese. Nuggets of interest such as these make the book very readable while photographs by Clive Boursnell and Marcus Harpur are a delight.
A feature of many Cambridge college gardens is the use of shrubs trained against walls in the form of buttresses. Unlike Oxford, Cambridge has more space and many of the gardens give a greater impression of openness. Indeed, many of the courts (quadrangles in Oxford) have one open side: “. . . views beyond are visible and there is less of a sense of containment.”
Clare College, we are told, has “superlative horticulture” while Wolfson is one of the “most rewarding colleges to visit for the garden-minded”. Many have garden art, including work by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth with a notable collection at Jesus College.
That the gardens are an important part of college life is obvious none more so than at Murray Edwards College where the garden team make herbal teas when ‘offer-holders’ visit what may become their college and where a noticeboard suggests music to listen to while in the garden.
At one point, Richardson declares: “Surely every college in the centre of town needs a garden, to take the edge off the pressures of urban existence and provide some perspective.” It seems many at Cambridge agree.
Cambridge College Gardens by Tim Richardson with photographs by Clive Boursnell and Marcus Harpur is published by White Lion, RRP £40.
Feature picture at top: wisteria, dahlias and salvias in River Court, Magdalene College.
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