Lawrence Johnston

Hidcote Manor Garden

Lawrence (Waterbury) Johnston (born October 17, 1871 in Paris , † April 27, 1958 in Menton ) was a British soldier and landscaper.

Life

Pool of water in the garden of Serre de la Madone

Lawrence Johnston was born in Paris in 1871 as the eldest son of the Baltimore banker Elliott Johnston (1826-1901) and his wife Gertrude Cleveland Waterbury (1845-1926), a wealthy heiress from New York . He had two younger siblings, but his sister Elisabeth died of whooping cough as a child . Johnston grew up in France, where he was tutored by private tutors. In 1887 his mother, now divorced, married the New York banker Charles Francis Winthrop (1827–1898) in London. In 1893 Johnston and his mother settled in Little Shelford, south of Cambridge , where a certain J. Dunn was supposed to prepare him for university. In the summer semester of 1894 he was enrolled at Trinity College , Cambridge, where he graduated in 1897 with a BA . During his student days he converted to the Catholic faith to which he followed throughout his life. After completing his studies, he tried, on the advice of a college friend, to learn agriculture from the landlord Georg Laing on the Grange estate in New Etal near Cornhill-on-Tweed, east of Coldstream , only to return to Shelford after a while. In 1900 he took British citizenship to fight in the Boer War .

In 1926 he was, together with Lionel de Rothschild , one of the patrons for an expedition of the plant collector Frank Kingdon Ward to northern Burma in the valley of the Seingku . While his mother was very wealthy, Johnston had no income of his own and, with the exception of his time in the military, never had any paid work. His mother financed his eccentric ideas - among other things, he had his own private chapel built in Hidcote - but never as generously as he would have liked.

plant

Johnston designed the famous Hidcote Manor Garden and the Serre de la Madone Garden in Menton . Norah Lindsay advised him on the design of the gardens .

Hidcote Manor Garden has been listed as a Grade I Listed Building in England since February 28, 1986 . This award is only given to buildings of exceptional importance (the official description in English is: Grade I buildings are of exceptional interest, sometimes considered to be internationally important ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.gardenvisit.com/biography/lawrence_johnston
2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ Charles Quest-Ritson: Great British garden makers: Lawrence Johnston, 1871–1958 , June 21, 2010 ( online , accessed February 4, 2012)
4. ^ Graham S. Pearson, Anna Pavord, Hidcote: The Garden and Lawrence Johnston. Anova 2009, 19
5. ↑ Jane Brown, Johnston, Lawrence Waterbury (1871-1958). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 2004, doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 49186 .
6. ↑ http://www.countrylife.co.uk/gardens/great-british-garden-makers-lawrence-johnston-1871-1958-22574#kp1PKI9Lx4Oib7rk.99
7. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011s3pw
8. ↑ 100 years of Hidcote Manor Garden continued ( Online , accessed February 4, 2012)
9. ↑ http://www.serredelamadone.com/historique2.htm
10. ^ The National Heritage List for England ( Online , accessed February 5, 2012)