“It almost feels like archiving the gardens in high -grove with fabric,” says Claire Vallis, designer of Heritage Brand Sanderson. In the past 15 months, your team has a new collection of fabrics and background images based on King Charles III's private Gloucestershire Garden. Created. “Sometimes it was crazy; we put together design Mood boards and then sent them to get his consent.” The king's last answer? “He said he couldn't believe what we had done to represent the garden.”
When the king bought the good -looking Georgian property in the summer of 1980, his garden was an inconspicuous empty canvas. An Avenue of Stubby Golden Yews ran west of the house, the trees covered the parking land and the original kitchen garden was overgrown and neglected. The only defining feature was a majestic cedar of the Lebanon tree.
Forty -five years later, the garden is a tour de force: fully mature, if never. The original Yews are meticulously in 24 bizarre Topiary forms, fragrant thyme on their base, while wildflower meadows penetrate the house. There are intimate areas such as the formal sundament, its low box hedge and the exuberant hut garden. Experimental gardens include the atmospheric dumplings, a mass of mosses and magnolias, spring -flowered snowdrops and halberes. This is a garden that is completely grounded in nature, craft and cooperation – and a magnet for tens of thousands of visitors every year.
The new Sanderson collection collection took up the favorite features and plants (ferns, hostas and dolphinium among them) as a starting point, but from there the design team was released to be inspired directly by the gardens. The fabrics tell their history. The wildflower meadow, for example, is reinterpreted with meandering paths that are abstracted in cloud -like waves and are interspersed with fritillaries and wild flowers. The mix and brocade that has been woven in Italy in Italy contains the king's favorite acer trees as well as striking pheasants, sheep and deer and the unmistakable carved oak houses of the estate, which was commissioned by Anthony Paine by Fortnum & Mason.
For the chief gardener Gráinne Ring, who came to High -Grove for the first time in 2016, before leaving in 2021 to study and return last year, the gardens are a marker for the commitment of the king of ecological concerns. “His majesty is an environmentalist and can contribute to this debate himself in Highgrove,” she says. “He has been in the forefront for a long time; everyone is now making organic, but it was very different in the 1980s than he started.”
The entire compost is created on site, with the exception of the Bracken, which is used as mulch on the acid beds, which is made of cumbria and hampshire. No chemicals are used; The king has a sanguine approach to pests. “In an organic environment, you have to accept a certain degree of damage while we work with nature,” says Ring. “We keep the plants as healthy as possible so that they can recover.” But the garden is as susceptible to all other often to frequent problems, including a box -light or box caterpillar; So far, organic sprays, pheromone traps and the use of diseases resistant varieties have contributed to avoiding catastrophic damage.
The biological grassland of the meadow now has 70 plant species and seven native orchids, including the green -winged orchid. “It's an endangered way, but we have it here,” says Ring. “It is astonishing to think about how it was built up and how the king followed what he talked about. He did it himself.”
At the same time, when the then Prince of Wales arrived in Highgrove, a 31-year-old gardening, he was supported by a number of mentors and employees. And the collaboration continues; The garden team creates briefs for new plants, but the king will make the final selection and add long favorites such as “The Rengoune Gardener” or “Lady Waterlow” rose. They recently increased the dumpery with new tree farms, added a new rose garden and renovated the Thymian Walk, which was originally planted by the king in the 1990s.
Highgrove is a very personal garden that is decorated with objects that have been collected when traveling or gifted by family, friends or organizations. His eclecticism is also very noticeable in the Sanderson collection. The intrusive carved gate, the visitor welcomed, was originally found in Jodhpur and is named after Queen Camilla's late brother Mark Shand. It delivered the starting point for a richly embroidered fabric called Shand Gate, which was produced in an Indian mill with a newly developed technology. The embroidery is covered with ink and then blown from the surface, which causes puddles to dye to cause the tactile carvings of the door.
There are further indications of hand -woven West African EWE Kente fabric, Ikat fabrics and embroidered Suzanis from Uzbekistan. “You see many Suzanis in British country houses and the king collects them,” says Vallis. The Sanderson takes over stylized flower motifs with dense embroidery and is named after the sister Annabel Eliot of the queen, an interior designer and frequent employees of the characteristics of the king. “British decoration has always been a lot layered, and this eclecticism was something that we would like to explore because the garden has many influences from all over the world,” added Vallis.
The ultimate confirmation comes from the royal budget. “They use the collection so that this is fantastic,” says Vallis, who has already worked on special versions with unique scales or color pallets.
Each new design can also be inspired by drawings and textile fragments in Sanderson's huge archive in the Voyysey House in Chiswick, London, which contains more than 70,000 documents. A chintz from the early 20th century was revised, for example, to integrate the popular dolphinia of the king (he is a patron of the dolphinium society and the high-towering blue flowers are an important feature of high-grove gardens). A toile de jouy-etwas that the Sanderson team wanted for its classicism, but also his storytelling wanted to include the 18th century. The original design has been re-drawn to take Highgrove's cast yew protection, topiary and terracotta pots into account. The hedge that surrounds the sunscreen near the house is also included, a bust of the king that is located.
The toile was produced in the Historic Fabric Printer Standfast & Barracks, founded in Lancaster in 1924. In addition, this is a collection that shows cultural life in every piece of fabric or paper. “Every artist who works on a design is handpicked for a certain ability,” says Vallis. “We either draw internally or go to a certain artist that we know that he may have a more botanical hand or someone who is more painter.”
An archive design by Walter Crane from 1902 was repainted to integrate the fruits and blooming of the tunnel of Espalier apple trees into the kitchen garden in High -Grove. The wallpaper is superfluous in Sanderson's factory in Sanderson's factory. “Now there are not many of them in the country and it requires real skills to keep these machines going,” says Vallis. “There were stories in the press about how expensive background images are, but it is a craft. We have several generations in our factories. As a country, we have to estimate it. If we don't do it, we will lose it.”
The king is on board. Ten percent of net sales from the collection will go to the King's Foundation. The charity organization supports countless handicrafts with courses and workshops across the country (and beyond) on topics that range from agricultural and rural abilities to fine furniture. At the entrance to Highgrove, a group of buildings for some of the students of the foundation in studios and workshops was transformed. The gardens also play a role in this work; Since the opening of tours in 1996, they have increased millions for the King's charity organizations.
At Highgrove “there are always new projects,” says Ring, who was planted by the planting of imposing topiary beds, which were made from copies that were given to the king for his 70th birthday. A new Topiary tour promises a highlight for visitors this season, and of course there is also a fabric. Topiary View, a hemp base, is a bizarre view of the Vista from the west side of the house, so that we can all look at the king's gaze over his topiary lawn areas this summer.
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