ALAN POWER: Welcome to the National Trust Gardens podcast.
I'm Alan Power, the head gardener at Stourhead in
Wiltshire.
And this is the second of our three part series, bringing you
the secrets behind one of Britain's most beautiful
gardens. Today, I'm at Croome Park in Worcestershire, a
wonderful 18th century landscape garden designed by Capability
Brown and the Earl at the time decorated with 18th century
garden features and a centrepiece, a beautiful
Palladian House. It's overlooked by the magnificent Malvern Hills
in the distance.
Today, I'm here to find out what makes this place so special.
It may once have been a boggy marsh, but it's where one of the
world's greatest landscape gardeners cut his teeth in the
18th century.
Croome has had many uses over the last century, not just as a
wonderful place to visit. The uses have been diverse and wide
ranging. It was a secret wartime airbase at one stage. It's been
a boys school. It's been a Hare Krishna Institution and it was
overlaid with intensive farmland for quite a long time.
In the 18th century, this was the very first estate that was
created in its entirety by the landscape gardener Capability
Brown.
But its recent history has left marks on the landscape. The
National Trust have been working really hard to restore the
gardens to their 18th century style since 1996.
I'm standing near the visitor centre at the northern end of
the estate where we're sheltered from the wind and I'm meeting
Katherine Alker, the head gardener at Croome.
Now, Katherine, you've been here a while, haven't you?
KATHERINE ALKER: Yes. Hi, Alan. I've been here just about 10
years now. It's changed enormously over the past few
centuries and is still changing massively now. And what what
we're doing here is restoring the vision of Capability Brown,
along with the Sixth Earl of Coventry to transform what was
quite an unproductive piece of land into a beautiful landscaped
designed garden with beautiful pasture and yeah, a wonderful
landscape.
ALAN POWER: Katherine today, I have the privilege of you taking
me around your garden. And what I really want to try and get
today is, is more inspiration from Capability Brown's kind of
winter landscape work that he did.
KATHERINE ALKER: Great! And we'll start off with a walk down
the wilderness walk.
ALAN POWER: Katherine, we're standing looking at Brown's
amazing work and this is what thrills me about 18th century
landscape gardens. They're just stunning. They take your breath
away when you emerge from a dark surrounded protected walk like
we just have and you see a view like this across the English
landscape.
And although immediately it's not, it's not obvious the
efforts that went into creating this landscape. It's- it's there
in the detail.
For me as a gardener, I start looking at the efforts from
history, the huge cedar trees that were planted strategically
around the estate to guide your eyes to particular views.
And then I'm looking down at the efforts that you're making
nowadays as, as a garden team, I can see young ambitious trees
planted and surrounded with tree guards. But the whole thing sits
magnificently below the Malvern Hills in the distance. And we're
lucky enough to catch a little bit of November sunshine today.
So what we can see is the shadow stretching across the landscape
and it's looking absolutely amazing.
KATHERINE ALKER: It's been a huge amount of work. But we're,
we're really pleased with how everything's progressing and how
the restoration is coming along.
Standing here in 1996, what we would have seen is an arable
crop. Nearly all of the park and trees had disappeared.
Either due to Dutch Elm Disease because they were awful lot of
elms across the parkland or simply because the farmer had
wanted to get the most productivity from the land and-
ploughed very close to the trees or remove them.
ALAN POWER: Now, the landscape was dressed quite- with a lot of
detail, wasn't it In the 18th century? There was quite a plant
collection at Croome.
KATHERINE ALKER: It was an amazing plant collection. Yeah,
the Sixth Earl of Coventry was really an obsessed man. He loved
plants and spent an absolute fortune bringing in plants from
across the globe.
We've got lots of evidence in the archive, the plant bills and
also a guidebook from 1824 that shows us that they were bringing
in plants from the Far East, from the Americas from all
across the globe really. And, and that was driven by the
Earl's passion for planting.
ALAN POWER: And I know you're working really hard at the
moment, aren't you planting trees? How many trees do you
reckon you've planted in the 10 years you've been here?
KATHERINE ALKER: We have certainly planted thousands, I
would say easily over 10,000 trees. And then shrubs
throughout the shrubberies, we've also done a huge amount of
planting-
ALAN POWER: It must have been amazing for you. The first day
you saw livestock wandering through the trees and the tree
guards.
KATHERINE ALKER: It's lovely and the cattle down on church hill,
just add a beautiful sense of scale. The tenant farmers now
got the right breeds of cattle, so they really look part of the
18th century landscape.
ALAN POWER: How on earth did he get it from being a boggy marsh
to the magnificence of Croome.
KATHERINE ALKER: When Brown arrived here, Croome Court, he
was initially commissioned by the Sixth Earl to actually work
on the court rather than just the landscape. So he would have
seen a much smaller Croome Court, a brick building, but
also sitting in quite an unproductive area of land. There
was a church nearby to the court as well as a little hamlet of
buildings and a few farm buildings.
But typical Brown, That wasn't quite right for him. So he, he
expanded the court, put towers on the end and enveloped the
building in the beautiful bath stone that we can see today.
But also, he wanted a much more open view from the court across
the landscape. So the church was demolished and the hamlet was
moved about a mile away and then Brown himself redesigned the
church and this is the church that we can see today.
ALAN POWER: And it was all about creating the kind of utopian
effect on the landscape. Wasn't it making it that perfect
picture?
KATHERINE ALKER: That's right. And Brown, I think was he was at
the start of his career when he worked at Croome. The Earl took
a bit of a gamble on him and it certainly paid off and he became
one of the country's most famous landscape designers.
ALAN POWER: So I'm meeting with Michael Smith, the general
manager of Croome. Now, general managers for the National Trust
do all sorts of stuff. They look after the conservation ambitions
for the property, the finance for the property, the visitor
experience at the property and every aspect of the management
of the property. But we're standing outside a hut at Croome
today Michael, can you just describe where we are?
MICHAEL SMITH: Well, this hut- And there are many huts like
this spread out across the landscape at Croome is part of
RAF Defford which in the 1940s was an RAF base instrumental in
the development of airborne radar systems. It was all top
secret at the time and it's a quite phenomenal story.
ALAN POWER: It is, isn't it? Can you tell us a little bit more
the kind of the RAF impact on the- on Croomes landscape here?
MICHAEL SMITH: Yeah, there was colossal change at Croome in the
1940s and of course those wide open pastures that Brown had set
out here in the 18th century were the ideal place to create
an airbase. And Croome had three vast interlocking runways, and a
village sprang up here which eventually accommodated almost
3000 service personnel.
So this sprang up over a very short time and here with over
200 aircraft on station, our British electronics experts were
kitting out newly developed radar systems into each and
every type of plane and then testing them, trialling them
here.
There was a whole amount of sort of counter propaganda that went
out. The story about pilots
eyesight being helped by eating carrots was an invention that
came out of RAF Defford to throw our enemies off the trail of
what was really happening here.
But through the efforts of the the young service people here,
service men and service women, developments were made that were
instrumental in securing the allied victory in World War Two.
ALAN POWER: And Michael this- this museum this ambulance shed,
was nearly lost at one stage, wasn't it?
MICHAEL SMITH: It was, we caught these buildings just the nick of
time. And in the 1940s, they were thrown up in a great hurry
as temporary structures, you know, they're half a brick
thick.
And when we took on the management of the state in 1996
we didn't really realize the significance of them and they
were all boarded up in various states of decline, covered with
brambles and scrub.
But gradually as we got to meet the veterans of the air base, we
understood how important they were. We realized that there was
another very important story to tell.
ALAN POWER: Has there been many more significant changes in the
history of landscape at Croome?
MICHAEL SMITH: There have and I think there's a tendency to see
the 1940s developments here as an anomaly. But even after the
1940s, other communities have made the very most of what
Croome has to offer, including devotees of Krishna.
And in 1979 with funding help from George Harrison. Krishna
devotees acquired Croome Court renamed it Caitanya College. And
the natural landscape here has always been appealing in a draw
to whoever has called Croome home.
ALAN POWER: It's fantastic, isn't it? And these people, all
of these people were, were building what is the countryside
around here now? You know, what is the heart of the countryside.
It's such a beautiful place to come.
It's been really fantastic.
MICHAEL SMITH: Cheers Alan, Thanks.
ALAN POWER: Katherine, this is a bit better. down here, isn't it
out of the wind? And we've captured, you know, a little bit
of warm sunshine kind of on our backs, which is really nice this
time of year.
And we're in November, you and I as gardeners were saying goodbye
to autumn colour and we're welcoming in the winter. And do
you find this time of year particularly exciting at Croome?
KATHERINE ALKER: There's still lots lots going on here. Part of
Brown's design actually included an evergreen shrubbery. So at
this time of year, it's actually the perfect place to be because
you've still got flowering shrubs, scented shrubs and it
was designed as a winter walk. So, somewhere to enjoy once the
main summer planting had finished, really.
ALAN POWER: And the structure within those borders is quite
amazing as well, isn't it? You get the berries, you get the
foliage, you get the, the, the center of the foliage in places,
but the way he structured the borders was quite. Fascinating
as well.
KATHERINE ALKER: That's right. It's quite a windy day and, what
we've got at the back of the shrubbery is a line of evergreen
trees, that would have protected from the prevailing winds so
that the plants inside the shrubbery, the real interesting
stuff, was protected.
It had a little microclimate and it could flourish within that
shrubbery even though it's quite exposed out in the Parkland.
We've got plants that will give off scent in winter and early
spring, and even some things that are very early flowering.
So, for example, Daphnes, which have not only beautiful little
pink flowers but amazing scent as well and it just fills the
shrubbery.
ALAN POWER: And it's nice, isn't it? Because it's predominantly
evergreen plants through here. You're not reminded of the end
of a season. You're not reminded that summer is gone and autumn's
gone, you're, you're surrounded by plants that are constantly
alive.
KATHERINE ALKER: That's right. The Portuguese Laurel with
beautiful glossy leaves- Hollies. There's one just over
there with bright red berries. So loads still to keep us
interested throughout the winter.
ALAN POWER: And the Rosemary is one that is really striking for
me because, you know, I'm a bit of a touchy feely plant person.
So I'll always- if I know there's a scent coming from it,
I'll go and grab it and, you know, I carry that scent around
for a while, but there's a few kind of non-standard shrubs in
here, isn't there?
KATHERINE ALKER: There are. Yeah, we've used Rosemary here.
We know that they planted Rosemary in the shrubberies. And
we also have some Sage which hasn't lasted quite so well in
the harsh winters. I've got Jasmine for that, that spring
flowering brightness of yellow colour throughout the winter.
Guelder Rose with bright glossy red berries as well.
We've also got a couple of Witch Hazels, the Hamamelis, which
have the really, sort of spider like yellow flowers. And again,
some of those have fantastic scent.
In the records, there were also hundreds of different Ericas, so
hundreds of different heathers, we haven't quite got to the
stage of replanting that particular section yet. We'll
need to sort out the, the soil for that because they need
Ericaceous compost. And even in the records, there's an example
of them bringing in tons and tons of Ericaceous soil to plant
those, those heathers in so-
ALAN POWER: They used to make it themselves didn't they? And I've
read in a few archives in places how, you know, they would go to
a local timber mill and they would use the, the sawdust from
pine trees to kind of add to the- add to the soil along with
some kind of charcoal and that kind of thing and cinders, to
actually, you know, increase the acidity level in it.
So it's- they were real kind of garden scientists but-
KATHERINE ALKER: Chemistry in the garden.
ALAN POWER: Well, it's nice that variegated holly is really
striking, isn't it? Because? And the birds haven't got to the
berries yet. I'm sure they'll discover them over the next
month or so as the temperatures drop, but they'll get in there.
KATHERINE ALKER: Yeah. And we've also got Broom, lots of
different pines as well. There were a huge number of pines in
the archive records in the plant bills. So that gives us a nice
bit of structure throughout the shrubbery as well.
ALAN POWER: Fantastic, isn't it? It is. It's a living library of
stuff, isn't it? And back then they were just learning about
plants as well all the time. It's amazing. The more I'm
learning about Croome today, the more fascinating it gets.
The depth of knowledge and the depth of history and the depth
of nature conservation here is genuinely, you know, it's
moving, you know, it's a wonderful thing to hear.
KATHERINE ALKER: Well, it's been a delight to show you round.
ALAN POWER: I've left behind the evergreen shrubbery and I'm
heading down towards the lake under this dry arch bridge to
meet Hugh Warwick, the area ranger at Croome.
Hi, Hugh, how are you doing? Yeah, good. Thank you. How are
you? Yeah. Not too bad. Not too bad. So, your role here is area
ranger. What does it involve?
HUGH WARWICK: The main focus for my work here is across the
parkland and woodland. So I'm responsible for looking after
those trying to maintain the good conservation work that we
do and to do the restoration work as well to try to get this
place back to how Brown first envisaged it.
ALAN POWER: So, parkland and woodland, you say, but actually
we've just come under this dry arch bridge and the first thing
I'm met with was this water.
HUGH WARWICK: Yes, we've got a mile and three quarter long
artificial river here at Croome and then that's all well within
the parkland. And we try our best to manage that.
ALAN POWER: And have you had to do any kind of silt management
or anything like that with the lakes here.
HUGH WARWICK: Yeah, certainly when, when the National Trust
took Croome on, in 1996 the full length of the river here was
almost entirely silted up. You could walk across the river in
quite a few places. That, in its own right was a really good
thing, in many ways for, for loss of habitat, lots of
wildlife using that, wading birds and so forth. So we knew
that for the restoration, we had to restore it back to a river.
It had to have water flowing through it, but we also needed
to to do it as sensitively as we can, so as not to just destroy
this habitat. So what we did before we- we dredged the river
out, we actually created two new wetland areas on the estate
here. And those help to, to mitigate against the work we're
doing. So we now have two really nice quiet wetland areas ideal
for wading birds.
ALAN POWER: But it's amazing, isn't it? In, in your role? You
must see it because you're really close to it. But the
minute you add that water element to a garden, you- all of
a sudden the diversity of insects, bird life, it
completely changes, doesn't it?
HUGH WARWICK: Yeah, we have monitoring programs here. So we
have volunteers who are trained to monitor and my assistant
ranger has just recently been doing some water quality
testing. You've got somewhere there that the larvae can grow
and, and then that goes to- obviously you get the insects
then and then that feeds the birds and the bats and the
wildlife.
ALAN POWER: So we're leaving the dry arch bridge behind and in
complete contrast to the enclosure of that bridge, we've
just come out and there is this magnificent view. I can see two
bridges.
I can see what looks like an island but in true Brown
fashion, I don't know whether it's an island until I get
further around the pathways because it's still full of
mystery. Although it's a big view.
Do you have any winter migratory birds that come in and make use
of this wonderful pond?
HUGH WARWICK: Well, we have had an Osprey passing through,
believe it or not. Yeah, we've also had Hawfinches here. We
have Fieldfare and Redwings.
So, yeah, we get quite a few migratory species passing
through and I think we've become a bit of a kind of a local haven
for wildlife because we're a nice green space. There's,
there's the wild flower meadows and so forth and as you say, the
body of water and all the insects that that provides.
ALAN POWER: Well, Hugh, thanks a million.
HUGH WARWICK: My pleasure.
ALAN POWER: It's been a wonderful day at Croome today
and I'm finishing my day in one of the most stunning views I've
captured all day, standing at the rotunda, looking out over a
glorious landscape with the river flowing in the distance.
One of the people who is very close to Croome is with me now,
Malcolm Walford, who has spent his life working and living on
the estate at Croome for the last 68 years.
MALCOM WALFORD: Good afternoon.
ALAN POWER: Malcolm. It's a pleasure to meet you. You've got
quite a CV a Croome, haven't you?
MALCOM WALFORD: Yes I have. I started in 1953 after five years
at RAF Defford.
Still semi employed by the Croome estate trustees.
My job still entails me to be clerk of works. That was my
position since 1986.
ALAN POWER: It's not just you is it? Your family's worked-
MALCOM WALFORD: My grandparents have been on the estate since
the 1800s.
My father was, when he left school at 13. He went as second
groom at Pirton Court, which is all part of the Coventry family.
And my uncle Ern, was head groom and my Uncle Bob was head
forester on the estate.
ALAN POWER: So we, we're standing by a spectacular view
out into the countryside.
And what's striking me, Malcolm is that it's really your home,
isn't it?
MALCOM WALFORD: It is my home.
Yeah, it is my home and when it comes to flood, fire or
whatever, I've always been there for Croome and that's been part
of my job.
ALAN POWER: You obviously feel it's really important to kind of
preserve and conserve Croome for the future-
MALCOM WALFORD: It's got to be! You know, it's got to be
preserved. What better place in Worcestershire is? You've got
stood here looking at Croome River. Where hours and hours
we've, we've gone to the end of the river when all the grounds
here were ploughed up. You know, it's not always been grassland
here.
This was plowed up in the sixties and in front of the
church. And it was part of our job when the farmer complained
the river was too high. We used to take the old van, the A35
Austin van down to the other end of the river and change what we
call the flood board out.
ALAN POWER: Sounds a bit like my job.
You know, I do bits of that at Stourhead. We have a dam we look
after and there's Saturdays, Sundays, evenings, mornings that
I'm out to check the levels. And you know what I love about
working in historic environments is that there are some jobs that
can never change.
It's so it's so important, isn't it? To kind of capture memories
and capture scenes and to share it and hand it on to the next
generation-
MALCOM WALFORD: Some wonderful here at Croome.
But hopefully, I've, I've passed on a lot of information like I
keep finding photographs for Katherine and one thing or
another.
ALAN POWER: So and tell, tell me you mentioned you, it's 68 years
in total, but five years of that was spent with the RAF.
And how did your transition from the RAF onto the estate happen?
MALCOM WALFORD: In a pub.
ALAN POWER: In a pub? Best place for everything to happen isn't
it-
MALCOM WALFORD: And my Uncle Bob came in one night because we'd
already been informed, Defford was closing and my Uncle Bob
come in there and the pub one night and we was talking and he
said there's a labourer job going at Croome. And I wrote a
letter and it went to Colonel Osbert Smith who was grandson of
the ninth Earl. And he said, are you going to be strong enough
for this job?
And the first day I started, I went home on the lunchtime and I
said to my dad, I'm finishing tonight and I thought I can't do
with this.
He said you stick it and I did
ALAN POWER: And 63 years later-
MALCOM WALFORD: Have been over Croome River on a lovely night
ALAN POWER: And you're still in love with the place?
MALCOM WALFORD: Of course, I am. I always will be
ALAN POWER: Malcolm. It's been a pleasure.
MALCOM WALFORD: Thank you very much indeed.
ALAN POWER: Thank you for listening to the National Trust
Gardens podcast. If you've enjoyed this podcast, you can
subscribe or follow on your podcast app for more.
Next month, I'll be at another great garden for festive magic
at Sissinghurst in Kent. So stay warm and enjoy exploring and
we'll see you next time.
BETTANY HUGHES: I'm Bettany Hughes. I've been visiting
National Trust Properties all my life, but in this series of
podcasts, I'm going beyond the delights of teas and topiary to
reveal the surprising European roots of some of the most
splendid sites in England.
You can subscribe to my series by searching for Bettany
Hughes's 10 places, Europe and us. On your podcast app.