Hidcote Manor Gardens

Now owned by the National Trust and boasting a large and growing band of ardent admirers, Hidcote is the magnificent garden that almost didn't happen - twice.

in 1907, the house, with its 287 acres on a Gloucestershire plateau providing panoramic views of the countryside, was bought by a wealthy American expatriate, Gertrude Winthrop. Her son, Major Lawrence Johnston, came to live with her and - a keen horticulturalist, plant collector and designer - converted 11 acres into a magical "garden of rooms".

But that was later.

Some five years after buying the estate, Mrs Winthrop thought of selling it but, busy with trips abroad and other matters, she vacillated. Soon the Great War began, and ideas of selling ended.

But the War led to the more serious threat to the creation of the garden.

The garden also almost didn't come into existence because Johnston's own existence nearly came to a sudden and premature end. A naturalised British citizen, he fought for the British Army (hence the Major in his title) and was left for dead on a World War One battlefield. Fortunately, he made some movements which his comrades noticed and he was saved.

A series of gifts and inheritances

Hidcote Manor House is a 17th-century farmhouse that was owned by the Freeman family and inherited by a local farmer, John Tucker, in 1907. Soon after probate, the house went put up for auction but withdrawn. Afterward, Johnston bought it for his mother, leaving a tenner as a deposit on the £7,200 purchase price. Johnston, it seems, later inherited the property from his mother. When it came his turn to bequeath the property, the never-married childless Johnston had a free hand.

In 1947-48, the National Trust started acquiring properties in the Country Houses Scheme. The timing was propitious. Johnston owned a house, with a garden he had designed, in Serre de la Madone in southern France. For several years, he had been hoping to relocate to France, change his domicile, and leave Hidcote to the National Trust in his will - provided they would accept it.

 

They would, and did, in 1948, but not after numerous conversations and exchanges of letters and legal documents. If some accounts are to be believed, a bit of tomfoolery was involved: the Trust's representatives, worried that Johnston might change his mind, got him to sign a minor document that was in fact a legal transfer. A full account is provided in the National Trust guidebook written by Graham S Pearson, and with superb photographs and other illustrations.

Johnston promptly moved to France and, although he had the right to return to Hidcote, did so only once, in 1950. He died in 1958 in France and his remains were returned to the Cotswolds, to nurture the earth near his mother, in Mickleton churchyard.