The history of the garden at Uppark House and Garden

Sir Harry and Humphry Repton

After Sir Matthew's death in 1774, his son Sir Harry took over the estate and, keen to adapt Uppark to his vision of a party venue, he engaged landscape gardener Humphry Repton to make a series of alterations.

In 1810 Repton produced one of his famous Red Books, in which he detailed plans to relocate the entrance to the north side of the house and create a new driveway that led through the pleasure ground.

A visitor's eye would first have been drawn by the large Coade urn, a two-thirds scale copy of the Borghese Vase now on display in the Louvre, and placed high on the mount so as to be visible from outside the flint wall. The mount itself is thought to be an ancient burial mound, from the top of which the nearby Bronze Age settlements of Kingley Vale can just be seen on the skyline.

Plans for the garden

The book detailed plans for other intriguing features such as a series of colonnades linking the house to the service buildings, an informal cottage garden, and a more formal rose garden with pergolas similar in style to the Game Larder, although no evidence survives to suggest these were ever implemented.

Repton's book makes little mention of planting at Uppark, with the driveway plans identifying an area merely as the ‘flower garden to remain’. However, in 1812 he and Sir Harry discussed the idea of a Linnaeus flower clock, an arrangement of plants whose flowers would open and close at particular times of day from which the time could be roughly established, although difficulty in achieving any precision forced the pair to conclude ‘therefore we must give it up’.

‘In no place have I ever seen such accurate attention to olfactory joy as at Uppark. Every room has its depot of odours for permanent use while every window has its Orange Trees and Tuberoses and admits perfume from the surrounding beds of Mignionette and Heliotrope till the whole is an atmosphere of sweets.’

Humphry Repton, 1815

He also remarked how pleased he was that, in contrast to some country estates, Uppark welcomed strangers to enjoy its beautiful surroundings, and that ‘even the house itself throws open its doors to the inquisitive’.

The alterations made during the Repton era are often considered the garden's zenith, leading to the Trust's decision to present Uppark as a product largely of the Regency period.

The 20th century

Ordnance Survey maps reveal how some features were lost over time, such as the truncation of the east half of the circuit path by 1911. Others had been added, for example the seasonal bedding scheme laid out in front of the east pavilion, as photographed by Country Life magazine in 1910.

During the Meade-Fetherstonhaughs' ownership work took place to halt the garden's decline, but by the time Uppark was conferred to the National Trust in 1954, much of the serpentine paths had been lost.

Storm damage

The storms of 1987 and 1990 resulted in the loss of 80% of Uppark's mature trees, including the specimen beeches along the north driveway. These were subsequently replaced with Acer platanoides (Norway maple), while new shelter belts were planted to offer protection from the drying, salt-laden winds.

Starting in the early 1990s a series of island beds were created in the east lawn. Although not original to Uppark they were intended to be representative of Repton's style and used plants available during his time. These were subsequently removed in 2017 as part of a project to portray a more historically accurate representation of the gardens as they would have been during the time of Repton and Sir Harry.