Margaret Beale's Garden Diary: four decades of gardening at Standen 1890-1935

Ikin, Caroline

Margaret Beale's Garden Diary: four decades of gardening at Standen 1890-1935

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Sussex_Gardens_Trust_Journal_Issue_2_Autumn_2023.pdf

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Journal article

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Ikin, Caroline

Date published

2023

Abstract

Margaret Beale (1847-1936) was from the professional middle classes, a Unitarian with a progressive social outlook and artistic taste. She was an amateur gardener, interested in plants for both botanical novelty and ornamental usefulness, and created a garden at Standen, the country house built for her family by renowned Arts and Crafts architect Philip Webb (1831-1915) in 1892-94. The detail of Beale’s plant choices and garden activities is documented in her diary, incorporating garden and weather notes from 1890 to 1935, offering an extraordinary record of one woman’s horticultural intent. The diary, together with an archive of notes and jottings, invoices and photographs, illustrates the work of a middle-class amateur gardener, offering insights into plant choices, learning and practice of a type that is not always recognised as worthy of preservation or study. The garden at Standen remains largely intact as a testament to Beale’s personal response to her Arts and Crafts home and to the dynamic milieu of new plant introductions and garden style.