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And another thing

Nothing to beat a garden full of wildfowl and historical memories

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 24th October 2007

Paul Johnson on his favourite spot in London.

George II thought Caroline’s interest in gardens frivolous but was happy for her to indulge it so long as it did not cost him money. In fact Walpole, as First Lord of the Treasury, supplied her with ample means without the King knowing it. She had begun her landscaping activities in Richmond, and was an experienced hand by the time she took possession of Kensington Palace and its park. It had been built by Sir Christopher Wren for William III, after old Whitehall Palace, traditional home of English kings, had burnt down in the 1690s. Together with its Orangerie, joint work of Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, it was and is a handsome complex, and of manageable size. Queen Anne added the sunken garden, which is still there, but the park remained pretty ragged until Caroline got to work. She planted splendid avenues of trees, in a pattern of lines spreading over 300 acres. The most magnificent were the elms bordering what became known as the Broad Walk, which grew to immense stature until disease struck in the 1950s and they were cut down. Many other fine trees were knocked down in the great storm of 1987. But the Queen’s concept of a tree-patterned parkland remains to give delight at all times of the year. I have dozens of watercolours that I have painted of these trees, old and young, especially in autumn and winter.

Caroline wanted standing waters as well as noble trees, and drew on the resources of the West Borne stream, which meandered across the open land between Bayswater (then called ‘the Gravel Pits’) and Kensington village, forming a series of marshy ponds. The Queen created the formidable stretch of lake known as the Long Water and the Serpentine, divided by the Serpentine Bridge, and this is now the chief ornament of Hyde Park. But she also insisted on a big fowl-pond much nearer the palace, and bordering her Broad Walk. This became the Round Pond, and to my eye is peculiarly redolent of the second quarter of the 18th century.