Description: There’s a long drive down to the gardens, and we’d almost missed the turn-off, as it shares what seems to be a private drive with a Private Home for the Elderly. Admission costs are £4 (2006 prices), although as Trust members, we get in free and the kiosk is strategically placed at the edge of a small car park.
Originally the gardens were part of the extensive grounds attached to a Tudor Manor – this has long been gone, as has the 19th-century house that replaced it - and what remains is the remarkable restoration of the formal gardens. You can, however, see a copy of an engraving by Johannes Kip, dated 1707, showing what Maynard Colchester’s manor looked like in 1707. Immediately on the right, as you enter the grounds, is the “tall pavilion”. Buildings like this were integral parts of formal gardens from the early 16th century and were constructed to give superb views from comfortable surroundings. The pavilion at Westbury has been “seriously” reconstructed following substantial damage in the late 1800s and the Trust actually decided to deconstruct and rebuild using some fairly detailed plans and some fine drawings of the oak panelling (this was finally installed in 2001 using Tulipwood from North America). It is from the top of this building that it’s easiest to appreciate the geometric layouts of the gardens.
This formal Dutch Westbury Court Water Garden was laid out between 1696 and 1705 under the direction of Maynard Colchester and almost certainly influenced by his Dutch neighbour, Catherine Boevey of Flaxley Abbey. His nephew, confusingly called Maynard Colchester, undertook further developments later on. Both Maynard's were meticulous in their record keeping, and so it has been possible from the listing of plants to ensure that only plants from these lists have been re-introduced into these magnificent gardens.
Looking down from the Tall Pavilion, the long canal stretches the length of the west wall, with old varieties of fruit tree meticulously trained to grow against the wall. The T-canal has pride of place in the centre of the garden flanked by a vegetable garden (restored to be an exact replication of the original 1708 garden and nestling between the two water canals) to the west and to the east the formal parterre and the formally informal Quincunx. The formal parterre with its low-clipped box hedges enclosing well-spaced spring bulbs and summer annuals ensuring that plants can be tended and appreciated individually.
The Quincunx, a complicated arrangement of plants complying with the simple rule that groups of five objects are arranged in a recurring theme that four are at the corners, with the fifth at the centre. This was first used by Sir Thomas Browne, in his Garden in 1658, and it was then seen as a learned progression using horticultural techniques first used in Persia (although it is argued the hanging gardens of Babylon were the innovators) and having a direct synergy with the planets.
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