The vanguard of Charlotte Molesworth | financial times

The first sign that something magical awaits behind the hornbeam arched doorway to Charlotte Molesworth’s Kentish garden is a glimpse of the double boxwood hedge. Meticulously trimmed and topped with balls, it enticingly invades a brick walkway.

Through the small wooden door is a wonderland of topiary creatures and towering yews: crowns, whorls, peacocks, dizzying stepped giants, and the beginnings of creatures soon to be shaped. More than 20 varieties of combed box cultivars include Buxus latifolia maculata with its large glossy leaves; B macrophyll (good for larger hedges); the beautiful variegated ‘Elegantissima’ and, of course, the slow-growing, namesake, elegant ‘Molesworth’. Running through the middle of it all, undulating hedges provide a backdrop for lush mixed borders of magnolias, heritage roses, hostas, and white foxgloves.

It’s been 40 years since the artist and plant woman, along with her husband Donald, purchased Balmoral Cottage, a dilapidated gardener’s lodge in the grounds of The Grange estate, with four acres of overgrown land that once time was the kitchen. garden. Until 1981, the entire estate had been the home of Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram, the Edwardian plant hunter and prunus enthusiast who saved the Great White “Taihaku” Cherry, reintroducing it to Japan, where it had been extinct. In keeping with this tradition, the garden Molesworth has created has become a place of pilgrimage for budding scholars, horticulturists and topiaries and, in turn, she has become an enthusiastic champion of these priceless evergreen forms, brilliant for time-bound (they only need pruning once a year), hardy and, as their history attests, created at almost no cost.

Molesworth has a deep connection to gardening. Her mother and her aunt were keen gardeners and collectors: her mother used to tour the North Downs villages where they lived, collecting garden plants on her pony and trap. Her artistic inclinations were nurtured at art school in Canterbury and Brighton, followed by work dyeing costumes and props at the Royal Opera House, and then as an art teacher at Benenden Girls’ School, where she worked for 16 years.

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It was while at Benenden that Molesworth came across Balmoral Cottage, which was not far away. When Donald, then a farmer and then a gardener, proposed to her, she thought it would be perfect for them, and the ideal place to start their cuttings. They were married in July 1983 and approached the cabin’s owners, Martin and Judith Miller, the founders of the successful Miller’s Antique Price Guide – about the purchase. A deal was quickly reached, but the banks wouldn’t lend the money for a dilapidated house, so the Millers, in an act of philanthropy, lent them the rest of the sale price themselves: “The house was falling down, It was a ruin.” . The walls were collapsing, the roof was gone. All he needed to do. Nobody had lived here for a long time,” says Molesworth, as he enjoys a salad of fresh greens still warm from the polytunnel in his garden, served with organic cheddar cheese and the couple’s homemade rye bread.

On Christmas Eve 1983, together with a donkey, two dogs, two cats and seven chickens, they moved into their little house. “We had a light bulb, a little table with two chairs and our bed and a candle,” says Molesworth. “We lit the old Rayburn and the fire with some logs from next door. It was absolutely lovely.”

The garden, though overgrown with weeds and forgotten flowering leeks and cabbages, had the advantage of being on loamy Wealden soil that had been routinely improved over decades of use as a kitchen garden. “Good soil is the food and life of a garden,” says Molesworth. “We were lucky to have him from the beginning. Because you can spend all the money you want, but if you have garbage, bad drainage, or poor soil, that’s where you have to spend. A penny for the plant and a pound for the hole.” (That’s why, perhaps, the dreaded box blight hasn’t made an appearance here, though Molesworth is also a fan of hygiene. And from the beginning she avoided using chemicals in her garden, keeping everything organic long before it was fashionable. do it).

The Molesworths arrived with “hundreds of plants in all kinds of pots: garbage cans, old cans, anything we could get our hands on. We had plants from Don’s father’s garden; from my mother’s garden, from little gardens that I made and we took plants and cuttings wherever we went”. Molesworth “rowed” the box, yew, and holly, creating a makeshift nursery to grow the plants before moving them into their final position.

But this process also gave him time to think: “You can watch them and then you can divide them again or take cuttings and create a stock too,” he says. And so he grew a lovely garden of cuttings along with the full-size plants. Meanwhile, as the hedges grew, he shaped them. And the topiary began to emerge from the largest plants. (She recommends paying close attention to the natural shape of the plant: A strong leader or main stem lends itself to symmetrical upright shapes; forked branches might begin to naturally suggest the shape of a topiary creature.)

At this time, there was a growing interest in the box and formal gardens. Elizabeth Braimbridge had opened Langley Boxwood Nursery in Hampshire in 1983, where she collected countless varieties and raised public awareness of the plant. In the decade that followed, she founded the European Boxwood & Topiary Society, and the Molesworths became inaugural members at the organization’s first meeting at Dorney Court in 1996. “It was a passport to seeing so many private gardens everywhere,” she says. Molesworth. “And we met European producers like Karel Goossens – he opened up a whole new world.”

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Over time, Molesworth was increasingly asked to design other people’s gardens, so he enrolled in a course with landscape designer John Brookes at denmans in West Sussex where he learned how to create meticulous and professional site plans and surveys. His designs are simple (native hedges, fruit trees and topiaries) and his clients have included local Kent properties such as goodnestone park and the manor house Penshurst Place, as well as many private gardens. Many of his gardens have now been taken over by his former protégés, including Darren Lerigo, who have built careers of their own as topiaries.

“Every few years there’s a garden that people start talking about,” says Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, which recently held an evening dedicated to the Molesworth topiary. “I wouldn’t use the word eccentric, because Charlotte is down to earth as well. But it is a garden into which someone’s life and personality have been intruded. There is a very strong central vision.”

Molesworth also continues to work as an artist. During the upcoming August bank holiday weekend (August 26-28), the couple will host a annual open studio and garden, where sculptures by Peter M Clarke, ceramics by Colin Griffiths and prints by Katie Scott will be displayed alongside exuberant paintings by Charlotte. Many of these are from her garden, often with the gnarled apple trees at the far end of the garden (one of which fell, roots nearly uprooted, in the 1987 storms, but is still alive). . Visitors will find the garden teeming with life, insects and creatures, all of which are welcome in this green Eden.

Now that their garden has reached maturity, Molesworth’s attention has turned to legacy. Her story is not just an inspiration, but a response to the “instant garden,” where mature hedges and trees with roots the size of small buildings are shipped all over the world. The instant garden naturally comes at a dizzying cost, but there is also a carbon cost to the planet. “When you’re buying an expensive garden, you’re buying time,” says Molesworth. But she will never be able to recreate the innate spirit of a garden made over a lifetime.

For now, the couple, their two rescue dogs Dolly the donkey and their small flock of rescue Ryeland and Shetland sheep have no plans to abandon this idyll. But Molesworth is not complacent. “I would make another garden. I feel that I have enough time and enough energy, ”he smiles. “I’m a clumsy really, but I’ve been very lucky.”