With many parts of the garden left unseen, they finally decided to call it a day and retreat to the tea rooms for a rest before they took the long drive back to Wickersham.
Jamie had long ago run out of superlatives and now fully understood what unerring taste, design skills, plantsman-ship, passion, drive and dogged persistence it required to create a garden like Hidcote. Back at the parking area, she got into the car, buoyed with a new enthusiasm and determination to shape her own gardens, hoping that one day, long into the future, they would attain the magnificence and breathtaking loveliness of those she’d seen today.
Another week passed with the restoration proceeding at a brisk pace. Jamie was visibly pleased when Kingston told her that most of the clearing was now complete. The original network of gravel paths that crisscrossed the gardens—several thousand feet—was now identified. Locating them had been a slow and laborious process but without the aid of Gillian Thomas’s Ordnance Survey and tithe maps the task would have been nigh on impossible.
The challenging problem of locating old drainage and water supply pipes, culverts and irrigation systems was made easier with the use of a metal detector. While it worked like a charm with the Victorian cast-iron and later date galvanized pipes, finding the earlier ceramic and clay pipes was very much a hit and miss affair.
Over the past weeks Kingston had been interviewing a steady parade of gardeners. Now that all the clearing, grading and groundwork was done, more knowledgeable hands were soon going to be needed for planting, training, fertilizing, watering—all the myriad tasks required in the making and maintaining of a garden the size and scope of Wickersham.
From information that Gillian had dug up, Kingston had learned that just after the turn of the century the garden staff had reached its peak of twenty-two persons. All lived locally, in nearby villages, a few in the then four cottages on the estate. As in many of the large estate gardens at the time, a strict Victorian caste system of employment was enforced where every man knew his place and his job. A gardener’s life at the time was quoted as being the equivalent to serfdom. Working hours were long and holidays few. When the weather was too bad for the gardeners to go outside, they were put to work making labels, mending tools and implements, scrubbing plant pots and cleaning the insides of the greenhouses.
All the garden staff had to wear a clean collar and tie, waistcoat, cap to doff with, and a serge apron with large pockets known as ‘brats’. All these were required to be worn daily, even when working in hot weather or in the boiler house. No smoking was permitted and more often than not, each gardener had to purchase his own knives for such tasks as budding and light pruning. A member of a glasshouse team could rise to become a head gardener, whereas those who worked in the kitchen garden and pleasure gardens could only aspire to the middle ranks. The Victorian head gardener was as strict a disciplinarian as any regimental sergeant major and he was given a house or cottage and all his coal and vegetables for free. Invariably, he would have risen through the ranks from under-gardener, journeyman gardener, to foreman, gaining many years of experience along the way before attaining the important and influential role as head gardener.
Word about the restoration had got around quickly and on most fair weather days a small gallery of locals would show up, curious to check up on the progress. It reminded Kingston of city construction sites where the contractors drilled peepholes in the barricades so that passers-by could observe the show.
In the course of his interviews with prospective gardeners and labourers, Kingston was pleasantly surprised and encouraged that many of the job-seekers were not only young but well qualified—some with degrees in garden design and horticulture—and all eager to take on the hard work and long hours that would be demanded of them. In his day, it had been hard to get youngsters interested in gardening. To start with he hired a staff of seven—two men with considerable journeyman experience, a young man and two young women with some horticultural training, and two local lads as labourers.
A giant cat’s cradle of pegs and strings outlining beds and borders was strung out in various parts of the garden. Many of the beds were already double-dug with manure and other additions worked in to enrich the soil.
The one-acre walled vegetable and cutting flower garden that not too many weeks ago had resembled an overgrown bombsite was starting to take shape. The nine-foot high brick wall on two sides, preserved in remarkable condition, had been cleared of all weeds, brambles and ivy and had been high-pressure washed. On sections of the inside wall, espalier and cordon wires were in place for the apple and pear trees waiting in the wings. The three glasshouses were in various stages of completion and all the cold frames and rehabilitated Victorian cloches were painted and ready to go. Outside the walls several bonfires burned, the smouldering ashes rekindled every morning with an inexhaustible supply of fuel hacked and sawn from the jungle-like gardens.