Thomas Mawson, Graythwaite Hall, Ulverston, Cumbria
BY THE EARLY 1900S, WRITING ABOUT garden design in Britain advanced from the theoretical to the practical. With the publication of two outstanding books, The Art and Craft of Garden Making (1900) and Gardens for Small Country Houses (1912), garden design became an identifiable entity, rather than an adjunct of architecture. Many books covered the details of horticulture and planting design, but few explored the practicalities of designing and laying out small properties from the homeowner’s viewpoint. John Sedding, Reginald Blomfield, and their followers had enlightened people about the proper attitude regarding garden design, but it fell to Thomas Mawson and Gertrude Jekyll to demonstrate exactly how to execute these ideas.
One of the few designers who was not an architect by training, Thomas Hayton Mawson (1861–1933) successfully bridged the gap between horticulture and architecture. Mawson referred to himself variously as “garden architect,” “landscape gardener,” and “landscape architect,” thus revealing the inexactitude of the profession in its formative years.1 Although Mawson was primarily associated with his native Cumbria and Yorkshire, in later years he had one of the largest British and international practices of his generation.2 Although an exceptionally competent designer, especially in the realm of site planning and architectural detailing, Mawson lacked an easily identifiable style.
The key to his successful career was the combination of his exceptional knowledge of practical horticulture and his expert technical skills. Early in his career, he worked in a family nursery business and attended a technical school, where he learned drawing and drafting, an experience that coalesced when he and his brother Robert established Lakeland Nurseries in Windermere in the Lake District. Robert managed the horticultural side of the business, while Thomas designed the grounds for their clients. Mawson’s first significant client was Colonel Thomas Myles Sandys, who commissioned him to lay out six acres of grounds at Graythwaite Hall in Ulverston, Cumbria, in 1889. At Graythwaite, the assignment required extensive earthmoving and grading to take advantage of the picturesque quality of the grounds and give definition to the house. Mawson designed a sweeping drive, stone terraces, and a formal garden filled with yew topiaries, and he specified landscape plantings throughout the property.
At Graythwaite, he met the architect Dan Gibson (1865–1907), who subsequently worked for him for two years before establishing an independent architectural practice. “He exercised a great influence on the work of the office,” Mawson recalled, “and set up as high an ideal for the architectural section of our work as I had striven for in landscape expression.”3 Gibson, whose work was lauded in Jekyll’s book Garden Ornament, excelled in the design of sundials, gates, and garden houses, which added cachet to Mawson’s practice.4 In 1899, Mawson crossed paths again with Gibson at Brockhole, the summer home of William Gaddum in the increasingly fashionable Lake District. For the spectacular thirty-acre site, Mawson designed a series of terraces ranging from formal to informal that slope down to the shores of Lake Windermere.
Although Mawson’s career is heralded today for its international scope, it is his early work in the 1890s as a regional Lakeland garden designer that reveals his commitment to the Arts and Crafts Movement. Surprisingly, a number of his early projects, such as Graythwaite Hall, Brockhole, and Langdale Chase, survive, although the latter two are no longer private residences. Brockhole, with its extensive grounds still intact, has been repurposed as a regional visitor center, and Langdale Chase is now a luxury hotel. The commission for Langdale Chase came in 1894 from Edna Howarth, an avid yachtswoman who wanted a comfortable place to entertain guests. Mawson’s solution for the steep site, not unlike that at nearby Broadleys, was informal groupings of azaleas and rhododendrons, with an expertly executed series of stairs leading down to the shore. It probably commands the best view of Lake Windermere of all the projects. By 1901, Mawson opened a London office (next door to Edward Mallows’s office) in addition to the one in Windermere. Of all his clients, his greatest was Sir William Lever (later Lord Leverhulme), who commissioned four significant gardens, including Mawson’s masterpiece, the classically inspired garden at The Hill, Hampstead, London, with its extraordinary range of pergolas.5
In addition to his gardens, Mawson’s greatest legacy is his book The Art and Craft of Garden Making, first published with his own funds in 1900. Literally an overnight success, one reviewer hailed it as a worthy successor to Blomfield’s book ten years earlier.6 A second edition appeared the next year, followed by three more; the final edition of 1926, written in collaboration with his son, E. Prentice Mawson, is considered the definitive work on Mawson’s career. Today the book is regarded as the first modern work to address the extent of responsibilities entailed in landscape architecture. Dedicated to his first client and mentor, Colonel Sandys, Mawson also acknowledged his indebtedness to Mallows, Frederick Griggs, and others who provided illustrations for his book. Later editions include color plates by artists Ernest Albert Chadwick and Ernest Arthur Rowe, whose illustrations regularly appeared in The Studio. Between the first and second editions, the book grew by leaps and bounds from a quarto size to a heavy folio of more than 400 pages.
Mawson’s book clearly made a case for both the art and the craft of garden making. Written in plain language, with appealing illustrations, it blended theory with practical details of design and planting. It was addressed to potential clients to help them understand the scope of what a garden designer does and to provide them with sample solutions, whether an overall plan of the grounds or details of the architectural embellishments and garden furnishings in which his firm specialized. Mawson’s book also brought a new dimension to the professional rendering of landscape plans that included topography, elevations, and sightlines as opposed to romanticized visions of gardens on paper.
On a visit to the offices of the Olmsted Brothers in Brookline, Massachusetts, the leading landscape architecture firm of its day, Mawson was impressed by the thoroughness of their approach and their working methods. “In the matter of office organization we in England have much to learn [and] their survey and contour work, which formed the basis of every plan, was done with a thoroughness seldom attempted at home,” he wrote. “The method of preparing the plans by regular stages, ending with the work of the men who take out the quantities for trees and shrubs required, all carefully noted on the plans, was a revelation to me.”7 Because Mawson was able to define and illustrate the role of a landscape architect in a way that had not been done before, The Art and Craft of Garden Making was hailed by academic institutions in America, where the landscape architecture profession was just blossoming with the establishment of a program at Harvard University in 1900. As a result, Mawson received speaking engagements at Harvard, Cornell, and Yale universities on landscape architecture.
Foremost among Mawson’s theories was the Arts and Crafts dictum of integrated house and garden, or as he expressed it, “garden design in its relation to the house and its architectural character.”8 The Art and Craft of Garden Making attests to the practical methods for ensuring this essential harmony, illustrated with examples drawn exclusively from his own work. In essence, Mawson regarded garden design as an art, in which the style of the house dictates the configuration of the garden. He held formality at arm’s length, however, preferring to enhance the natural character of the landscape rather than forcing the issue. Whenever possible, he used local materials and vernacular detailing in his architectural components. His work benefited greatly from his collaboration with architects such as Gibson, Mallows, M. H. Baillie Scott, and C. F. A. Voysey.9
As shown in his book, Mawson’s responsibilities ranged from laying out new gardens to reconfiguring old ones by other designers. Little Onn Hall, in Church Eaton, Staffordshire, is an excellent example of Mawson’s ability to conceptualize a comprehensive scheme for improvements where an earlier landscape was already in place. The original Victorian hall, built in the 1850s by Colonel Ashton on the site of an ancient moated house, had fallen into disrepair by the time of his death. His daughters approached Mawson in the early 1890s about improving the extensive grounds that still retained remnants of the ancient watercourse. Designed in collaboration with Gibson, Little Onn Hall must have pleased Mawson, who included the project in each edition of his book.
Thomas Mawson, Gardens at Bailrigg, Near Lancaster, perspective by Ernest Albert Chadwick (Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art, 1908)
Thomas Mawson, Water Pavilion and Pergola at Shenstone Court, Lichfield, perspective by Ernest Albert Chadwick (Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art, 1908)
Foremost in his mind was providing the low-lying Tudor-style hall with an “architectural support,” as he called it.10 As the ground was fairly level, he felt the need to introduce some architectural character into the site. His plan shows how he achieved this with an arrangement of terraces for a rose garden and flower borders that linked with an existing kitchen garden and, farther afield, a moat garden. The surrounding grounds were enhanced with plantations of rhododendrons, azaleas, lilacs, yews, and holly trees to complement mature oak, elm, and sycamore trees. To provide more architectural form to the terraces, he planted Irish yews clipped into squares and pyramids. As he wrote, “the architectural details have a great influence on the scheme as a whole.”11 He designed a charming summerhouse (indicated as a water pavilion on his plan) overlooking one end of the moat. The rose garden, opposite the front courtyard, was planted with masses of old-fashioned varieties, such as China roses, damask roses, and York and Lancaster roses; the enclosure walls were covered in tea and noisette roses. Mawson built two pavilions in the corners of the rose garden. Little Onn Hall combines the best of old and new, with a delicate balance between architectural and horticultural elements.
Dyffryn Gardens near Cardiff, South Wales, is one of Mawson’s best surviving gardens and fully encapsulates his design philosophy.12 The site is in a sheltered valley, with undulating pasture lands and picturesquely timbered forested areas. In 1906, Mawson received the commission from philanthropist John Cory to extend the existing gardens, which had been laid out in 1893 when the house was built. After Cory’s death four years later, Mawson’s extensive plans were implemented by his son, Reginald Cory, a well-known horticulturist and plant collector who proved to be an ideal client.13 Mawson did not include a discussion of the project until the final edition of his book, perhaps to preserve the privacy of his client.
In his plan for the fifty-five-acre property, Mawson added a great lawn to the south front of the sprawling Victorian house to “provide a restful base to the house.” To enhance the setting, he added a long axial canal and lily pond extending from the balustrade near the house to the lake in the distance. In contrast to the serenity of the south front, Mawson, encouraged by his client’s passion for gardening, created a riot of special gardens—rock gardens, rose gardens, a Pompeiian garden, terraced gardens, pond gardens, herbaceous borders, and “most important of all, the pinetum and experimental gardens”—on the east and west sides. The result, he wrote, was one of “startling contrasts and surprises [and because] each garden is enclosed in its own screen of architecture or foliage, it seldom clashes with its neighbour.”14
Two midcareer garden commissions in 1909, both in the Lake District, show how Mawson’s style had solidified with terraces, ornamental pools, flights of stone steps, and other architectural features drawn directly from his book. At Rydal Hall, which had been in the Le Fleming family since the sixteenth century (with many subsequent improvements), Mawson laid out an Edwardian-style terrace garden that is largely unchanged today (it was restored in 2005). From the upper terrace, a flight of steps leads down to two main parterres with flower beds and a central pool and fountain. His addition of two small pergolas along the outer wall adds interest to an otherwise conventional layout. Steps lead down to the lower level with further beds along the balustrades. All the construction materials, which were locally acquired, were restored. In all, it is a classic Mawson garden that works perfectly with the old hall. At Holker Hall, now one of the most famous gardens in the Lake District, Mawson’s charge was to design a walled rose garden in an extensive twenty-five-acre site, ranging from formal gardens to woodland walks with champion trees developed by generations of the Cavendish family. In the 1990s, Mawson’s rose garden was replaced by an elliptical garden, part of a scheme that included development of new gardens, such as a labyrinth and Kim Wilkie’s turf amphitheater.
Influential as Mawson’s book was, Gardens for Small Country Houses by Jekyll and Weaver probably had a greater impact than any book of the era on the practical issues of garden design for the average homeowner. First published in 1912, it served as a companion volume to Country Life’s popular Small Country Houses of To-Day series, which spotlighted recent work by Arts and Crafts architects. The authors noted in the preface to their book that it “filled a place hitherto empty, on the bookshelves of the garden-loving public.”15 Unlike Mawson’s book, theirs was aimed primarily at owners of moderate-sized houses in affluent communities, but it also had a wide appeal among professional garden designers and architects alike, especially in America. For years it was considered the bible of formal garden design principles, and even today, more than one hundred years after its publication, it is still a major resource for garden designers, landscape architects, and architects.
The Arts and Crafts approach to garden making, with its emphasis on practicality and ingenuity, unfolds in the pages of Gardens for Small Country Houses through schemes by many of the key architects of the day, including Robert Lorimer, Edwin Lutyens, Mallows, and Voysey. The heart of the book is the well-honed selection of Country Life’s incomparable photographs, Jekyll’s delightful plans, and the authors’ insightful commentary. The book’s topics are similar to those included in Mawson’s book, but it is not nearly as encyclopedic. Its success lies in its broader focus on both new and historic gardens, rather than on the work of a single designer.
Unlike earlier manifestos by Blomfield and others, Gardens for Small Country Houses is a far cry from pompous historicism and rigid rules. The advice offered is always inspirational, yet practical. “Our noble English yew is nearly always beneficial in the garden landscape,” the authors wrote. “Whether as a trimmed hedge or as a fast-growing tree, its splendid richness of deepest green, and, indeed, its whole aspect is of the utmost value.”16 The prose may be somewhat flowery, but the advice is always solid, without a shred of romanticism. What also distinguishes the book is its expert selection of gardens suited to various small sites. Examples of the work of Lutyens and Jekyll abound, but others, such H. Inigo Triggs’s own garden, Little Boarhunt, in Liphook, are equally skillful in their planning. They included it as an example of “how the qualities that make the beauty of the historic formal gardens may be reproduced . . . for houses of moderate size.”
Whether King John actually ran a boar through the grounds at Little Boarhunt is a matter of dispute, but Triggs captured some of the romance of a bygone era in his well-considered scheme for a sunken parterre in the former farmyard. The enclosure nestles into the L-shaped house, with the other two sides framed by brick pergolas and a garden house in one corner, “inexpensively built a single brick thick, with its faces cemented.” A long water rill runs the length of the enclosure, with a central rectangular pool that serves for watering the garden. A figure of a boy with a fish rises from a slender brick column in the center of the pool, and a brick dovecote anchors the north wall. “The sunk garden itself is an admirable example of the wealth of interesting detail that can be employed in a small space without creating any feeling of overcrowding.”17 Thanks to their exposure in Gardens for Small Country Houses, the water rill, garden house, and dovecote at Little Boarhunt soon became much-imitated features in British and American gardens, just as the work of Lutyens and Jekyll held wide appeal among landscape architects worldwide.
Along with layouts that worked so naturally with their houses, Arts and Crafts gardens were renowned for their detailing, which both books describe. Steps and paving, summerhouses, pergolas, arbors, and water features all fell into this category. Mawson concurred with Jekyll and Weaver that “nothing imparts character to a garden, and gives more interest, than well designed and carefully executed architectural details.”18 The stone steps and paving that seem technically correct in Mawson’s work burst into life in a playful manner in Lutyens’s designs, where the paving has just the right amount of irregularity, and his signature half-moon steps, such as those at Folly Farm, provide a pleasing method of connecting changes in levels. “Although stairways are among the most useful elements in garden design, and give just opportunity for conscious architectural treatment” wrote Jekyll and Weaver, “it is not always desirable to force the note of formality.”19
One of the most ancient ways of defining outdoor spaces is through the use of hedges, or living greenery. They serve as a background for flower borders, a neat enclosure for a bowling green, or an ornamental device to be clipped and pruned into decorative shapes; in short, they offer architectural interest. Used by nearly every Arts and Crafts architect, hedges not only provide drama in perspective renderings, but also work well on the ground. Mawson recommended yew and holly hedges to enhance the effect of flowers against their dark background, but he advocated simpler forms of clipped hedges. “The simpler forms . . . are the most satisfactory because they express their purpose without any show or pretense, [but] it is well to avoid heads clipped to the forms of wild beasts, peacocks, etc., unless to express some symbolic meaning.”20
Enclosure walls of brick or stone not only ensure privacy and shelter, but they can extend the parameters of the house. Arched openings offer easy access from one area to the next. If these are covered with vines, they should not smother the walls and obliterate their beauty—one of Jekyll’s pet peeves. Low retaining walls, typically in rough stone of the region, can be enhanced with careful plantings of alpines in the wall joints and a judicious selection of small shrubs and rambling roses at the foot. Jekyll thought that such low walls were enhanced by plantings on the top, rather than at the foot.
Formal water features, such as long canals, waterlily ponds, reflecting pools, and small fountains, add immeasurably to small gardens. Mawson even questioned whether a garden was complete without water, whether a small reflecting pool or an architecturally treated pond with fountains and cascades derived from the great European gardens. Jekyll and Weaver recommended that the water, whether set in turf or in a paved court, “should be kept at its proper level, which is as high as possible. The nearer it is to the kerb of the pool, the wider and more beautiful will be the reflections.”21
One of the most important elements of gardens of the Arts and Crafts era were small structures, such as sturdy pergolas, informal gazebos, thatched pavilions, stone summerhouses, or romantic dovecotes. Their success, advised Jekyll and Weaver, depends as much on skillful placement as upon their form and materials. A small structure was usually integrated into the scheme either at the end of a long walk or at the corner of a garden wall, but most importantly, its style should reflect the architecture of the main house and it should be built of local materials. Mawson, Jekyll, and Weaver had their points of dispute about what was best and how to achieve it, but in the end their recommendations have proved timeless.
