“Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.”

…is a quotation from Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, English preacher, historian, and author.

Things like music, poetry, plays, arts, crafts.
And how about respect for nature and man’s duty to protect the planet?

Dartington Hall’s parkland and its gardens have been changing since the 14th century, when the Hall was built for John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon and later Duke of Exeter.

Did he keep warhorses in the Tiltyard, practise archery, even jousting? Or is that a romantic legend , encouraged perhaps by Leonard, a lover of all things Medieval?

Go through the arch into the courtyard and imagine what Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst saw when they bought the estate in 1925.
A derelict farmyard. Crumbing buildings.
A place to put down roots, too. Already rooted, the swamp cypress, now 150 years old and known as Swampy to the gardeners who keep the listed grounds in shape.

My guide around the lawns and paths today is Matt White, one of a handful who take visitors on tours. (Hint – they’d like a lot more visitors.)

“It’s a Grade Two listed garden. It’s one of the finest examples of a restored garden in the 20th century. The only thing that stands up to this in my opinion is Sissinghurst, an Elizabethan hall, restored by Vita Sackville West, roughly contemporary.”
Vita visited Dorothy at Dartington. Sisinghurst gets around 200,000 visitors a year and perhaps it’s a relief that Dartington doesn’t suffer from that level of exposure.

The Royal Horticultural Association has bestowed its mark of approval but I asked Matt whether keen planstpeople might not expect more plants. Is the garden really more worth a visit because of the people involved down the decades, rather than exotic specimens (plants that is – there are lots of exotic humans).

Matt agrees. “In the mid 1930s there were more beautiful people per square yard here than anywhere else in Britain.”

He lists a few who visited pre War- Ernest Shackleton, Rabindrinath Tagore, T.E Lawrence, Bernard Leach, Ben Nicholson, Mark Tobey, G.B. Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Kurt Jooss, Aldous Huxley, Walter Gropius (who turned the barn into The Barn Theatre ) , H.G.Wells.

Get in a time machine, and you can imagine them scampering round the lawns, pelting at full tilt down the Tiltyard inclines – steps doesn’t do the massive grass banks justice – putting on plays, thinking, drinking and taking sanctuary from a world heading to war.

The Dartington gardens look as they do thanks to a succession of noted landscape designers from Stuart Lynch and H. Avray Tipping in the 1920s, to Beatrix Farrand in the 1930s to Percy Cane in the 1950s.
Farrand was an American landscape gardener who designed for the White House and created some notable gardens in the US. Part of her legacy at Dartington is walked on every day – the horseshoe path of cobbles and limestone which begin at the gate and enclose the courtyard lawn.

She also, together with estate architect Rex Gardner, designed the thatched playhouse, which overlooks the valley field, where the Elmhirst children played.
Daughter Beatrice continued Dorothy’s love of the theatre and became a well known actor. Her entry in the film and TV Bible, imdb, says she “caught the acting bug while a student in Devonshire, England”. In the 70’s she won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Network.

Remodelling the garden involved removing a Victorian water garden and Dutch formal garden, and installing steps and paths, so letting the grounds breathe and allow sweeping views across the valley.

“So it has form, and not too much flowery bowery stuff,” Matt said approvingly. “One good statue, maybe a nice bench and a centrepiece sunny border.”

There are several good statues – a Henry Moore, Willi Soukop’s Donkey and Peter Randall-Page’s Globe among them.

And the Tilt Yard – where the Elmhirst guests performed for each other – was that really a jousting space in ye olden tymes?

Matt says: “The myth is it’s a tilt yard, dubbed by Leonard. What I think is likely, Leonard found in the rafters some old jousting equipment .He was a keen Medievalist because he believed they did things better in terms of work and community and craft and being together. I know this is not large enough for war horses, it’s unlikely the Holand family were ever able to use it for jousting. It’s not King Arthur….!”