younger daughter, Davina, described her childhood as “very old fashioned … a mix of almost post-war progression with a hint of pre-war (almost pre-First World War) life style. I didn’t go to school until I was nine [and Veronica almost twelve] … most of our time was spent out of doors. My parents’ relationship with employees and children was both intimate and distant at the same time. There was still a lack of equality that is hard to imagine nowadays; although society had started to change, Gloucestershire was still a backwater.” Davina thought Rosemary had a very natural way with her children and was “a very common-sense mother,” but she could also be demeaning. Given her own high standards, Rosemary must have been a demanding and tough tutor for her girls. Years later, when she was quite frail, she was still chastising Davina in front of company for failing to load the dirty plates in the dishwasher exactly as required.
Rosemary and David had different priorities. For David, the hunt was a way of life rather than a pleasure, but for Rosemary it was her passion. While David rode well, he never enjoyed the hard work of grooming the horses and pulling on his boots. Rosemary loved to ride and found the hunt exhilarating. She believed “that hunting develops a spirit of independence. You are out in the countryside, suddenly alone. Who will help you? You must follow your own line if you wish to survive.”18
But it proved to be a horse that almost killed her. In 1953, Rosemary had a serious accident that would change her life. She and a friend were getting some horses ready for the Christmas hunting when Rosemary mounted a horse not yet fully broken. “It reared over backwards so swiftly that I was still in the saddle as it fell,” Rosemary recounted. When Rosemary was extracted from underneath the horse that had rolled over on her, they discovered that among her injuries, she had a badly smashed femur. She was sent off to the hospital with an injury so severe it required a plate to be inserted. She was in traction for over three months. It was not clear if she would ever walk again.
With the boys safely away at school, David took the girls and Nanny Verey to live with Rosemary’s parents in London while Rosemary remained in the hospital in traction. She recalled, “Pain is difficult to remember once it leaves you, but I do remember the pain.”19 When she returned home, she refused to give up riding entirely. Never prone to complaining or sharing her inner feelings, Rosemary was always matter of fact in recounting this episode even though her injuries would adversely affect her health later in life. She continued to ride and hunt, although perhaps with a bit less enthusiasm and greater caution. As someone who never enjoyed doing anything by halves, she eventually gave it up entirely, leaving a void in her life that allowed her interest in the garden to grow.
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales greeting Rosemary Verey as she alights from a small plane for her eightieth birthday celebration. December 1998. Courtesy of Country Life.
Rosemary Verey in the Laburnum Walk at Barnsley House, by Andrew Lawson.
The Sandilands family: Prescott and Gladys Sandilands with their four children, Pat, Francis, Christina, and Rosemary (in riding clothes). Courtesy of the Verey family.
The wedding of David Verey and Rosemary Sandilands at St. James, London, October 21, 1939. Courtesy of the Verey family.
Portrait by N. Lytton of Rosemary with her two sons, Charles and Christopher, 1944. Courtesy of the Verey family.
The Verey family: David and Rosemary Verey with their four children, Charles, Christopher, Veronica, and Davina. Courtesy of the Verey family.
David and Rosemary at Barnsley House in the 1950s, before there were any gardens. Courtesy of the Verey family.
Rosemary, a passionate hunter, jumping on Mata Hari. Courtesy of the Verey family.
David and Rosemary at Barnsley House in front of the covered verandah where the Knot Garden would be. Courtesy of the Verey family.
CHAPTER THREE
Creating the Garden 1960s
In a garden you get what you work for, don’t you?
IT WAS DAVID who pushed Rosemary into creating a garden at Barnsley. He first piqued her interest in the subject by buying and presenting her with old gardening books he acquired on his travels for the Ministry of Housing. He loved books himself, particularly the books he collected for his own scholarly work on the architectural history of Gloucestershire. He introduced Rosemary to the classical Greek and Roman writers, the likes of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, whose writings about plants influenced medieval science and medicine, along with the early herbalists who became her favorites, such as William Turner, John Gerard, and John Parkinson.
“With his understanding of Rosemary and her mathematical, geometric mind, [David] was able to nudge her. He was really a great bibliophile. He had a lot of books on Gloucestershire. He started to buy her ancient books on gardening. I think he could see that with these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century treatises … she could have a lot of fun and really make a niche for herself, which indeed she did.”1 After dinner, Rosemary would curl up in her chair for hours before the fire, sitting companionably with David while immersed in some large tome about gardens. These old herbals were hard to read but offered a window into the past, appealing to Rosemary’s interest in history and her fascination with classical patterns and designs.
The older Vereys had died not many years after giving Barnsley to David, first David’s mother in 1956 and then his father in 1958.2 David decided it was time to replace the garden that Rosemary had grassed over soon after they moved into Barnsley House. Perhaps he wished to pay tribute to his mother’s memory or perhaps, because the girls had gone away to board at St. Mary’s Calne School, he realized there was no longer any need for grassy playing fields. Whatever the reason, David chose not to wait for Rosemary to move ahead with this idea.3
But he did ask her what she proposed to do in order to occupy the time formerly spent on teaching the girls. Rosemary, still sufficiently engaged with riding and having groomed her own horses and kept the tack clean for years, asked for a full-time groom. David complied and turned his parents’ residence in The Close into groom’s quarters. Later, however, Rosemary would say that she began to tire of riding. “It became a way of life rather than an occasional pursuit. I realized then that I did not want to devote the rest of my life from September until March to hunting.”4
The timing was perfect. Rosemary was at loose ends without her daughters at home to teach, and her energies needed some outlet. She recognized that “one of the worst things about
