Gardeners’ gardener

Christopher Lloyd died on 27 January. Not since the deaths of Gertrude Jekyll in 1932, William Robinson in 1935 and Vita Sackville-West in 1962 has so much homage been paid in the broadsheets to the memory of a gardener. In the nation at large, more people mourned the deaths of Percy Thrower and Geoff Hamilton, but these were television personalities. Christopher’s reputation rested on a weekly column, ‘In My Garden’, in Country Life from 1963 until shortly before his death, his contributions to the Observer and the Guardian, a succession of thoughtful, opinionated books, such as The Well-Tempered Garden, and, most particularly, on his garden and nursery at Great Dixter in East Sussex, a draw for garden enthusiasts for almost 50 years.

He was lucky with his situation. His parents, Nathaniel and Daisy Lloyd, bought the 15th-century manor house in 1910. Edwin Lutyens, a friend, remodelled it and added a hall house of the same age, which had been taken to bits and brought the four miles from Benenden. Lutyens, with Nathaniel, laid out the garden in strongly geometrical fashion, incorporating tidied-up outbuildings, and employing pleasing detailing, for which Lutyens was famous, such as tiles-on-edge in paving and arches. Several formal gardens, enclosed by evergreen hedging, were laid out around the house. Nathaniel Lloyd continued the Arts and Crafts tradition by putting in a Sunk Garden with octagonal pool, as well as masses of quirky topiary. He even wrote a book, Garden Craftsmanship in Yew and Box, on the subject.

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The Arts and Crafts atmosphere of the garden explains much of the enduring popularity and importance of this garden, since it is a style to which most gardeners happily respond. Indeed, its popularity was an important reason why Modernist gardens in the 1930s failed to make any impact on the collective psyche of garden owners.