Topiary and foxgloves in the Museum knot garden

The Museum’s 17th century style knot garden with historically authentic planting was created in 1981 and formally opened by the Queen Mother in 1983. It was designed by the Museum’s President, The Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury, who was at that time also making the gardens at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire where John Tradescant the Elder had been gardener from 1610 to 1615.

Knot gardens had been popular in Britain since the 16th century when woody herbs were clipped to form low, formal hedges in geometric designs. Lady Salisbury designed the Museum knot to represent 17th century taste and style, demonstrated most clearly by that fact that the hedge is planted with dwarf box, Buxus sempervirens ‘Suffruticosa’, rather than herbs. All the plants inside the knot would have been grown in gardens of this period.

The design is traditional and geometric, enclosed within a square and incorporating a smaller square, a large circle and four half circles. Four sections of the hedge are planted to contrast with the box and form the ‘T’ shape for Tradescant, repeated symmetrically within the design. The ‘T’s are planted with cotton lavender, Santolina chamaecyparissus. At the centre of the knot is a topiarised holly spiral, Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Golden King’ a golden variegated form which, despite its name, is a female berrying form.

The compartments inside the hedges are planted with a mixture of shrubs, roses, herbaceous perennials, annuals and bulbs. In summer the garden has all the informality of a cottage garden whilst in winter it is much more formal, with the pattern of the hedge seen most clearly.

Particular plants of interest include various period shrub roses such as gallicas, centifolias and damasks. Bulbs include crown fritillaries, Persian fritillaries and Madonna lilies, and in spring we enjoy planting 17th century style tulips that often include flamboyant parrots and the sophisticated ‘Val Tol’ range. Perennials include the yellow asphodel, Asphodeline lutea, Dictamnus albus, or dittany, and Tradescantia virginiana. Annuals and biennial plants such as foxgloves, calendula, love-in-a-mist and larkspur contribute an air of informality to the summer garden.

Tradescantia virginiana

The borders surrounding the knot are fully planted with a range of 17th century plants including more roses such as the beautiful wall-trained Rosa x alba ‘Maxima’ near the fountain. Two columns of myrtle, Myrtus communis, are clipped either side of a seat beneath the big east window and two abstract lollipops of Viburnum tinus stand sentinel either side of the fountain. Other clipped hedges decorate the borders, including rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis, Teucrium fruticans, Teucrium chamedrys, and the variegated form of sea buckthorn, Rhamnus alaternus ‘Argenteovariegata’.

Trees include two forms of Strawberry Tree, Arbutus unedo and Arbutus x andrachnoides (slightly out of period!), as well as a mulberry, Morus nigra, and a medlar, Mespilus germanica.

The false acacia, Robinia pseudoacacia leans out from the Lambeth Palace wall and there are several multi-stemmed specimens of Amelanchier ovalis and, rather surprisingly, a banana plant that survives winter and produces self-fertilised flowers, and occasionally juvenile fruit.