Unforgettable Gardens - Denmans Garden
Denmans Garden: From Glorious to Controlled Disarray with Gwendolyn van Paasschen.
Joyce Robinson, who started Denmans Garden in the late 1940s, referred to her garden as “Glorious Disarray”. John Brookes, who discovered the garden in 1973, just after she’d started her gravel gardens, fell in love with it, describing it as something ‘new’. He was intrigued by ‘the way she grew her plants in gravel’, a novel idea in the 1970s. He moved to Denmans in 1980 and over the next 38 years fused his bold lines, architectural plantings, and sculpture with her naturalistic style. At the end of his life, he described the garden as ‘Controlled Disarray’. The effort to restore the garden in the four years since John Brookes passed away has focused on preserving both legacies using photographs, writings, and first-hand stories and will include the development of a multi-year conservation plan and the transfer of the garden to the John Brookes-Denmans Foundation.
Time: 18:00 GMT
