Denmans Garden: Restoring the garden once owned by John Brookes MBE for future generations to enjoy

Gwendolyn van Paasschen is the current owner and chair of John Brookes-Denmans Foundation.

She said: “As we restore the garden, our guidelines are defined by what Mrs. Robinson and John Brookes did and how they approached the garden."

Lord Denmans owned the garden in the late 1800s and sold it in 1903 after which it changed hands several times before the Robinsons bought the property in 1946. Mrs. Robinson, who Gwendolyn described as a ‘woman of the Earth’, began gardening ornamentally in the early 1950s.

The Robinsons farmed part of the property and had pigs, chickens, and a dairy herd. In 1970, after a trip to Delos, Mrs. Robinson began her gravel gardens. The dry riverbeds were created between 1977-79.

“John brought his students from the Inchbald School of Garden Design of which he was the director to see what Mrs. Robinson was doing because her naturalistic planting style and use of gravel was so innovative. In 1979 Mrs Robinson agreed that he should come live at Denmans to take over management of the garden and to start the Clock House School of Design. He renovated the old stable block, which he called Clock House, and lived, taught, and worked there until his death in March 2018. We are not sure of the extent to which Mrs. Robinson and John collaborated."

Gwendolyn, who moved to Fontwell from America, met John in the 1990s.

She said: “I decided to have a change of career, and was studying design when someone mentioned that John Brookes was doing a lecture in New York so I went, I actually did it twice in 1992 and 95. And it was so amazing. John taught three-day Masterclasses in garden design in 1993 and 1995.

“I was hired to work on a 400+ acre estate in upstate New York and persuaded the owner to bring John on as the landscape designer. We worked on the garden for over ten years. Initially he made several visits a year.

“In 2015 I came to visit John for a few days and ended up helping him write his memoir, A Landscape Legacy, (Pimpernel Press 2018). I also helped him and his colleague resolve a business dispute that threatened the garden’s future."

And she never left.

Alongside restoring the garden Gwendolyn and the team are keen to develop the archive to help their restoration efforts as well as to help future custodians of the garden.

She said: “We have lots of pictures but we are missing some from the 1960s and 1970s. If people have any they can share that would be a great.

"We also have a lot from the same angle so people looking up the riverbed and then we got some that were people looking down. Having photos of different parts of the garden and from different angles, especially if they are dated, are very useful tools in helping us document the evolution of the garden.

“We just want to collect stories and pictures to really build up the archive and history of the place for our future custodians.”

John and Mrs Robinson were very different in their approach to the garden.

Gwendolyn said: “He was about design first and then thought about the plants, whereas Mrs. Robinson was a plantswoman who was interested in design but was never trained as a garden designer. She was very inventive in how she combined plants.

“That is why the garden has amazing structure and plants. The garden has amazing structure in the form of its lines and plantings as well as a broad variety of unusual plants.

"As we have cleared overgrown areas, we have discovered quite a few plants. The first year we were very surprised to see snowdrops in the garden as John hated them. Mrs. Robinson had planted them years ago. Since then we have discovered a broader variety of bulbs, roses, various shrubs, and even a few trees that had been engulfed in overgrown shrubs and rampant weeds."

Gwendolyn is also happy to have visitors back in the garden as it had to close during lockdown.

She said: “John always wanted to inspire and people still come here to be inspired. Both Mrs. Robinson and John loved having visitors in the garden. I promised John, however, that it would always remain a peaceful country garden from which people could draw inspiration as well as enjoy its tranquility."

For more information, visit www.denmans.org if you have any pictures or stories please email [email protected]