In the 1950s the artist and horticulturalist Cedric Morris created a ‘paradise of pollen and paint’ within the old walls of Benton End, a Tudor manor house in Hadleigh, Suffolk, which he and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines had converted into a radical art school. It was the first naturalistic garden in Britain, with rare plants from Morris’s travels to the Mediterranean and beyond woven between bursts of the irises whose colours he mixed like paint.
Morris died in 1982. The art school became a private dwelling, and the garden was abandoned. It was rescued by Rob and Bridget Pinchbeck who bought Benton End and in 2021 majority gifted it to the Garden Museum, entrusting us to revive Cedric and Lett’s vision of gardens and art, learning and friendship.
We have begun in the walled garden which Beth Chatto – Cedric’s protégé – called ‘a bewildering, mind-stretching, eye-widening canvas’.
So far, a charitable Trust has funded the appointment of James Horner, one of the most talented gardeners of his generation, as Head Gardener and a second Trust, three Trainees. The team has spent two years recording what survives of Cedric’s plant collections, and the rich biodiversity on the site.
Sarah Price – whose Nurture garden at the 2023 Chelsea Flower Show was inspired by Benton End and was, for many, one of the most inspirational Chelsea gardens ever – has been working with James on the plans.
And there have been two miraculous discoveries.
Cedric’s collection of bulbs has survived, slumbering under the earth for forty years. It would have taken just one of the subsequent owners to re-vamp the garden, and rare fritillaries, asphodels and peacock windflowers could have vanished in a week.
Second, Cedric appointed a plant executor to pass on his plants. All this time friends such as John Morley and the late Beth Chatto have nurtured his distinctive snowdrops, poppies, and succulents. They are ready to come home.
Finally, Sarah Cook VMH will donate her priceless collection of thirty varieties of Cedric Morris iris, many of which carry the Benton prefix.
We need your help to bring Cedric’s plants back to Benton End, and to plant a garden in which we can train a new generation of horticultural students. We want to make places where artists and students can set up easels, where Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling once drew. Vitally, if we are to make the walled garden accessible to everyone we need to lay a path of 250 metres winding through the gently sloping loam.
We are just £125,000 from reviving a garden which might have been lost for ever – and opening to you next year.
Film made by Storya, narrated by James Horner, featuring Head Gardener James Horner, Artist in Residence Naomi Munuo and Volunteer Liz Turnbull.