Edward Bawden's Imagined Gardens

At last the sun is out, and I feel incredibly lucky that I can enjoy it safely distanced in my own garden. As parks and gardens become even more precious to all of us, I thought I would write about Edward Bawden’s love of them. Grand parks, small back yards, plants and flowers are the subject of much of his work, in fact there maybe even more horticultural references than there are cats.

Every day he would spend an hour in his own Great Bardfield garden before starting work upstairs in his attic studio. It could be a dangerous hobby, the top joint of his index finger had to be removed after he caught it on a rose and it turned septic. It didn’t slow him down; he was starting to write legibly whilst still in the hospital. My favourite Bawden gardening story though is from the Chelsea Flower Show, to which he apparently advised prospective visitors to take an umbrella and secateurs for covert clipping!

For this blog, as so many of us are without access to a garden, I thought I would share a couple of Bawden’s imaginary gardens from the 1920s. The first is from when he was a student at the Royal College of Art in 1924, ‘Francis Bacon’s Garden’. He was asked to contribute to a book on imagined architecture and although the book was never published, Harold Curwen at The Curwen Press editioned Bawden’s work as a lithograph. The print is based on Francis Bacon’s essay ‘Of Gardens’ from 1625 and follows the text closely, condensing the 30 acres Bacon suggests for a perfect garden into miniature, populated by lords and ladies promenading and the occasional gardener at work. Bacon’s banqueting house is there in the centre, so are the side gardens with their shaded alleys, plenty of fruit trees and at the bottom honeysuckle and sweet briar selected by Bacon for their ‘delightful’ scent.

Edward Bawden (1903-1989) Francis Bacon’s Garden, 1924  © The Edward Bawden Estate

An equally formal garden is the ‘King’s Garden’ from ‘The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins’ by Robert Paltock. Published in 1928 Paltocks book is similar in plot to Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’, the major difference being the inclusion of Glumms and Gawreys; flying humanoid creatures who inhabit the island on which the hero Peter is stranded. 

Edward Bawden (1903-1989) The King’s Garden, 1928 © The Edward Bawden Estate
Illustration in ‘The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins’ by Robert Paltock

Again, this time I imagine much to his own dismay, Bawden followed the author’s description. Paltock’s gardens don’t have flowers but are instead a court of sculptures. ‘These gardens are in perfect architectural accord with the house they adjoin; nor do the changing seasons play havoc with their beauty’. Just behind this plant-less garden, however, there is a touch of greenery which I like to think was of Bawden’s own invention.

Written by Victoria Partridge, Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art