ALAN POWER: Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast.
In this mini episode, we'll be hearing about the strange tale
that Edith Lady Londonderry had clipped into hedges in Mount
Stewart's famous Shamrock Garden.
Now I'm standing here in the Shamrock Garden at Mount Stewart
surrounded by tall Yew hedges. But what's really striking and
quite unusual is a series of topiary that runs across this
hedge.
Thankfully, Neil the head gardener is here and he's going
to explain the whole thing to me.
NEIL PORTEOUS: Well, the Shamrock hedge on the top of it,
is a children's story in topiary.
And Edith was a great children's story writer. She's published
the Magic Ink Pot in 1928. But on top of the Shamrock hedge is
a different narrative that she just made up on her own with the
artist Edmund Brock who lived in the house quite a lot of the
time during the 1920s.
So after 1928 I think they sort of dreamt up this new narrative,
which was the Stewart family coming in a leather bottom
sailing ship at Curragh to Ireland.
Edith's at the back blowing a horn, three young children,
Helen, Mary and Margaret are under the rigging. And the
artist Edmund Brock is at the bow with a bottle of whiskey.
And the Macaw, Edward, who used to had his wings clipped, but he
could climb up people's backs and sit on their shoulders.
So he's on his shoulder, they're going off on the hunt. So Edith
is depicted as a Huntswoman blowing a horn and they're off
hunting the White Stag, which in Irish mythology, when you die,
your spirit is taken by the White Stag to Tír Na NÓg the
land of the ever young.
So they catch up with the stag.
Edith has depicted as a- an Amazon with a bow and arrow. And
ultimately, she or originally she had a sort of Robin Hood,
Errol Flynn hat with a feather in it.
So we're trying to grow- she'll have a mohawk for a while and
then we'll develop this, Errol Flynn hat and she shoots the
White Stag in the bottom or haunches it.
And so you can see the White Stag with a bit of arrow
sticking out of it. And because all of this is Pagan and pre
Christian, the devil gets involved and he brings down all
the hawks of the air who then swoop down and disrupt the hunt,
scattering everybody.
And in the confusion, he rides the wounded stag to safety and
saves him.
And ultimately, you know, the this hedge was much taller and
we'd like to grow it up taller one day again, this is not the
original hedge.
And we now have this narrative in six pieces. But before
originally, the pieces were much bigger and there were 24 of them
telling the narrative.
And one day we'd love to have the hedge taller and all 24
back. And if we did the last figure right at the end of the
Shamrock hedge would be a boy walking home, disconsolately
with a skinny hair and a pole. And that's all they bring back
from the hunt. So it's complete shambles.
The original structure was made by a man called Robert Burnett
of Skipton in Yorkshire. And we've got pictures of him in his
shed in Yorkshire making the devil.
You know, and the level of detail of this metal structure
is so refined. You can see his eyelashes. I don't know how
you'd ever translate that into topiary.
But the idea is that you the young shoots of the Yew, it's
usually Yew that we're using, although we're starting to use
Chilean Yew now, which is, doesn't get any of the diseases
that Yew get. But it's the same deal is you wrap the little
fresh growth, spiral it around the metal cage really and stop
the end.
So you tie it on, wrap it round, stop the end and this bushes it
up, and makes it much more sort of fluffy.
So what you're trying to do, you know, ultimately is have the
growth about half an inch above the metal. And then you can cut
that with a set of sort of sheep shearing shears and keep it nice
and fine.
And the other trick with the topiary is when you have a right
angled edge, you can't leave it right angled, otherwise, it
looks ragged.
So you take a chamfer off, just you take the corner off and that
makes it look much sharper.
So when we finish, you know, the figures are done with sheep
shearing shears with the chamfer for it looks really sharp.
They haven't quite done it. We find if we leave the work till
early August, when we cut it, we won't have to cut it again. It
won't grow back. So we let it get a little ragged at this time
of year, but it saves us work long term.
ALAN POWER: Thanks for listening to this week's National Trust
mini episode. The next full episode will be available in a
week's time.
Kate Martin, one of our west coast rangers will be in Kinder
Scout in the Peak district exploring the wonders of the
landscape there.
I've really enjoyed taking you with me on our tour of some of
the National Trust's most beautiful gardens and looking
forward to exploring some others in the third season of the
National Trust podcast. Until then from me, Alan Power.
Goodbye.