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Newby Hall, Castle Howard, and Middlethorpe Hall, England WHAT MAKES ENGLISH GARDENS SO REDOLENT with sweet blooms? Each of us has an answer , including such things as soil, sun and rain, plant selection, and a long tradition of gardening. My answer was found on a bright day in Newby Hall garden in Yorkshire, England. My answer that day was gardeners. At Newby Hall there are seven. Even the owner, Robin Compton, carried a “spade.” I had stopped him and asked if he were part of the gardening team. He looked surprised, as I said, “I see you have a shovel.” He said, “Madam, in England a shovel is a shovel, but a spade is a spade, and what I have is a spade.” He told me his father had laid out the garden , with twenty-five acres of garden on one side of the house and 15 acres of garden on the other. The design of the garden is influenced by the garden at Hidcote, Gertrude Jekyll’s famous garden. The central axis runs from the house down to the Ure River, with magnificent herbaceous borders on either side. Compton had moved the herbaceous borders forward so that the yew hedges behind could be clipped with electric shears. He pointed out the olive-colored weeping pears next to swags of pink roses and said, with a departing flourish, that he had planted them. Further along I met Malcolm Greaves, a gardener, on both knees weeding. I asked him if weeding were his hardest duty. He replied, “Madam, I am a laborer, and my job is a doodle.” When I looked confused, he explained that he had worked on the Compton’s sheep ranch and that, compared to that, being a gardener was a cinch. A lovely lady gardener explained to me that the beds are thirteen feet deep and that the two-foot-high netting stretched over the borders made individual plant staking unnecessary. I asked her whether the borders were mulched when all the perennials were cut back in the fall and was surprised to learn that they had been removing years of built-up mulch as it was preventing much-needed rain from seeping in. The brilliant beds were framed by the yew hedge. At the back were enormous blue delphiniums. Red roses contrasted sharply with the blue of the campanula and the blue of hardy geraniums and mint. Into this salad of blue and green was thrown a dash of yellow achillea. The entryway to the house was delicious with the scent of lilies and gardenias. The chief flower arranger, Eric Nunn, was arranging a great vase of delphiniums, white lilies, and campanula. Robert Adam (1728–1792) and Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779) had worked together from 1760 to 1772 to create a home of great 100 England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland luxury and taste in Newby Hall. I enjoyed the dining room, where the table was set for ten with a Meissen fruit set. The room, a strong lemon yellow, set off a white plaster frieze with alternating urns and leopard heads. Adam designed four candlelit alabaster urns for wall niches. The carved doors of oak from Yorkshire with their brass fittings were designed and built by Chippendale. Our base for the visit to Newby Hall and Castle Howard was Middlethorpe Hall, near the town of York. York is a small, friendly city with a venerable heritage. Middlethorpe Hall is a Georgian estate on the outskirts, in the peaceful community of Bishopthorpe, only a five-minute drive from the center of York. Built in 1699, Middlethorpe is within walking distance of the York racecourse, which holds more than twenty-three weekends of racing events a year. It is a good, country place to stay when visiting one of Britain’s most splendid cathedrals, the York Minster. The hotel was salvaged twenty years ago from its life as a nightclub, and today it is a delightful place to enjoy the gardens of Yorkshire, including Newby Hall and Castle Howard. The gardens of Middlethorpe are luxurious from early spring through late fall. Andrew Leighton, one of two gardeners, shared his gardening expertise with me. Early in March all the grounds are given a good “lifting up,” then fertilized with blood and bone, and topped off with mulch from well-filled organic piles. That process gets rid of the weeds and provides the shrubs and perennials the start needed to bloom luxuriantly all year. Early spring brings bulbs and...

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