He’s right to call his garden a wilderness. Through the window, all we can see is an endless riot of brown-and-grey brambles and dead trees.
“Every garden has its own unique story,” I tell him, leaning forward in my chair. “The aim of garden restoration is to discover this story and allow it to shine.”
He puts down the file and fixes his eyes on me. It’s hard to tell if he’s convinced, but he slowly closes the file and slides it to the end of the massive Victorian desk. “Let me show you something.” He leads me to the far end of the office. On the table is a map: a floorplan of the property and grounds.
“Kendric Park, as you see, includes the house, the gardens, Darling Wood and the narrow strip of land around theNant-o-Arianriver. We are here.” He points to the middle of the building, which on the map looks like an X lying on its side. “This middle part was the original house, built in the late 1700s, but the wings were added later.” He traces the shape with a finger. “As you can see, Kendric House was built to look like a butterfly.”
Now he says it, I can see the ends of the X look like wings.
“This means there are four separate gardens: back, front, east and west. About twenty-two acres plus a further thirty which make up Darling Wood.”
He turns to me. “Obviously, one person can’t handle all that, so you will be taking on North Park.” He points to the biggest space on the diagram, at the back of the house between the twolongest wings. It’s a four-sided garden, narrow at one end but widening out until it reaches the far boundary.
“There are two other gardens.” He points to the two sides, similar shapes but much, much smaller, “East Patch, which we’ve already got someone to plant. This one here to the west. We’re calling it The Courtyard because it’s mostly stone terraces and statues we haven’t decided what to do with it just yet, and no one has come up with a suitable project.”
“So I’m only responsible for the restoration of North Park at the back?” I confirm. “About seven acres?”
“Ten, actually.” He smiles at me. “Shall we go downstairs for a closer look?”
Is this still part of the interview? He plays his cards pretty close to his chest, so this might still be a test to see if I am the right person for this amazing job.
I follow him down the curving Art Nouveau staircase but not to the magnificent hall with the murals. Instead, he leads me through the back via a small conservatory and out onto the wide terrace paved with old slate.
“Miss Palmer.”
“Please call me Evie.”
“Okay, Evie, this is what we’ve been calling North Park.” He smiles. “Boring, I know. We’re hoping you will give it a more exciting name; something that reflects its history,” he continues. “We think it was originally designed about a hundred and twenty years ago.”
I cast my mind back through what I know of historic landscaping. “That would be around the Arts and Crafts movement?”
“Exactly.” He nods. “What do you know about it?”
“The arts aspect? Not much; only how it influenced gardens. They moved away from the early Victorian formal design into a more colourful approach similar to cottage gardens.”
“What can you do with this?” He waves a hand over the acres of weed-choked, overgrown and mostly dead patch of land.
Here we go.Deep breath, talk slowly and clearly. “Public gardens are a huge draw. People pay good money. Even somewhere as small as the Chelsea Physic Gardens charges thirty pounds. And some of these historic gardens charge a lot more—”
“Never mind about that. I’ve already read your business plan. I want you to look at this.” He nods at the tangle of dead bushes. “Tell me what you see.” He moves to perch on a low wall. “Take your time.”
The man has a very unusual approach to job interviews. In a way, I prefer it. I’m not a paper-and-AI-design person. At heart, I am a fresh-air-and-muddy-hands kind of gardener.
I look out over the land. Ten acres where I can create my dream garden. My eyes roam hungrily over the neglected trees and the hopeless tangle of dead brambles stretching in every direction. Yet underneath the out-of-control mess there is… there’s something. The way the land seems to dip in places. The way the occasional tree rises tall above the rest, like a signal. The place almost speaks to me.
My skin comes up in goosebumps. There’s a magic here that wants to be discovered.
I turn to Mr Kendric. “If I had to bet, I’d say once, long ago, someone loved this very much. It’s waiting for someone to discover its secrets and make it shine.”
Before my verbal autopilot runs away with me, I quickly add a note of caution. “Obviously, it’s too large to complete in one year. It’ll take time.”
He nods. “I know. We had someone before you who declared it impossible to make a profit in anything less than ten years.”
So that’s it; they already had someone try and fail, which means they want me to prove I won’t fail too.
“It won’t take that long. Once the ground is cleared and ploughed, we could start, one small section at a time. I think we can open on a limited basis this summer. Perhaps start closest to the house.” I turn to look behind me at the terrace and the long wall of tall arched windows.
“It’s February now. So one acre should be very manageable by the late May bank holiday. And I’ll continue working on the rest and expand from there. So by next year, we could have ten or twelve small gardens linked together in a theme.”
