‘Never join a queue.’ It’s not a bad motto. It keeps me away from tourist-choked hotspots. It means I don’t visit venues that offer free admission for children, advertise fast-track entry or are just one stop on ‘a multi-attraction sight-seeing experience’. My advice? If they want you to book a time slot, don’t go.
As Bertrand Russell points out in The Conquest of Happiness: ‘Noise and the constant presence of strangers cause fatigue.’ It’s certainly difficult to appreciate great art or admire magnificent architecture in such circumstances. And when I’m studying the text explaining the significance of the Rosetta Stone, I don’t want someone leaning over my shoulder trying to read it at the same time. Especially when they’re chewing strawberry-flavoured gum.
In beautiful gardens especially, hell can be other people – and their children. To enjoy a great garden you need deep, uninterrupted tranquillity. You need Andrew Marvell’s ‘delicious solitude’. Only far from the ‘foolish bustle’ and ‘the busy companies of men’ can you enjoy ‘the garlands of repose’ as ‘the mind withdraws into its happiness’.
So with time to spare on a lovely Sunday afternoon in West Sussex, I checked the websites of half a dozen public gardens to see if in addition to trees and plants they also advertised (in no particular order): adventure playgrounds, family fun, curriculum-linked education sessions, climate change displays, planet-saving initiatives, excellent mobile reception, corporate events, drop-off points, one-way paths, curated dog-walking routes or art workshops.
The only garden I found with none of the above was High Beeches. High Beeches seems content to be just a garden. It has ‘steep inclines’, ‘rough paths’, ‘unfenced water’, dogs are only allowed on Mondays and there’s no mention of an overflow car park. Above all it has no commitment to ‘engage new and diverse audiences’. It seemed to me that High Beeches had resolved, very firmly, not to join the queue – or perhaps indeed the 21st century. So far, so good.
The car park was almost empty and no one was queuing to enter. In parks and gardens I usually take the view that ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ so at first I didn’t bother to read the labels on the trees and plants. Instead I enjoyed a lonely wander along woodland paths and then sat for a long time in a sunlit glade looking out across the Downs. After a while I closed my eyes and listened to the birdsong.
I strolled on – down Queen Mary’s Walk and past Napoleon’s Willow (descended from the tree growing by his grave) – and came upon a bryologist peering through a hand lens at a moss on a tree trunk. ‘Homalothecium sericeum,’ he announced, pointing at the moss. Wondering if only Latin was spoken in this time warp, I moved closer to the tree so I could read its label, ‘Salix babylonica,’ I said, tapping the trunk. ‘Isothecium myosuroides,’ he countered, pointing at another moss. Having no answer to that, I nodded, noted the names and wandered on.
‘Salix babylonica,’ I said, tapping the trunk. ‘Isothecium myosuroides,’ he countered, pointing at another moss
Round another bend I discovered a distinguished-looking gentleman sitting on a bench and reading The Spectator. I congratulated him on his good taste and in the course of our conversation learned that he once won a case of sherry in one of our competitions.
Since this distinguished gentleman and his wife, a descendant of Edward Boscawen (‘Never fire, my lads, till you see the whites of the Frenchmen’s eyes’), run High Beeches, he then gave me a guided tour. I murmured appreciatively at the rare and beautiful Magnolia sargentiana which, traumatised by the great storm of October 1987, waited 20 years before flowering again.
He showed me the clock tower added to the stable block with winnings from the 1924 Derby (a horse called Spion Kop) and explained that his parents-in-law bought the place at auction in 1967. The only other bidder was a timber merchant: ‘If he’d got it there wouldn’t be any trees here today.’ I thanked him for the absence of bouncy castles and treasure hunts and said how pleased I was that picnics were not allowed in the gardens. ‘Not our style,’ he said.
But… if it’s a better experience when there aren’t too many people, won’t that better experience soon be attracting a lot more people to the garden? Don’t great gardens self-destruct? Not necessarily: High Beeches has been open to the public for more than half a century and remains an oasis of tranquillity. If most people prefer gardens that offer 21st-century amenities, then so much the better for those of us who simply seek ‘sweet and wholesome hours’ among the lovely ‘herbs and flow’rs’.
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