Rosemary Verey. Barbara Paul Robinson

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      In 1962 David placed a jewel in the garden. He acquired a small, classically styled Temple, suffering from years of disrepair and neglect at nearby Fairford Park. He had it moved stone by stone to Barnsley where he sited it just behind an existing reflecting pool located in a walled corner off to the east side of the Parterres. This corner of the garden had served as his parents’ private retreat during the years they lived in The Close. After their death, David had installed this small pond to replace what had been his parents’ lawn. By chance, the measurements of the elegant Temple perfectly aligned with the width of the pool and anchored one end of the garden with a beautifully proportioned set piece of formal architecture. In hindsight Rosemary observed, “Men gardeners will do things like moving temples. I wouldn’t have done that and I don’t think [David] would have been all that good at designing borders.”¹⁴

      David also rescued a set of iron railing with double gates which he placed in front of the Temple with its pool to create a sense of enclosure; he chose to paint it a surprising but pleasant deep blue, the perfect foil for the profusion of plants that Rosemary would add to scramble through it.

      David then planted an avenue of lime trees (Tilia platyphyllos ‘Rubra’) in line with the Temple leading away toward the garden wall at the far western end. Because there are no straight lines in old houses, David soon realized that his parallel rows of nine lime trees seemed to veer off sideways because the old stone wall running alongside was not truly parallel to the house causing his trees to run off at a slight angle. Correction came in the form of optical illusion or an architectural trick. Nicholas Ridley, their local Member of Parliament and a grandson of the late, revered architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, gave “an instant pronouncement. Plant another line of limes!”¹⁵ And plant them to compensate for the problem by slowly increasing the space between each tree in the double row. To the untutored eye, these two rows of limes, one a single row and the other a double, now appear to be perfectly straight.

      To complete this avenue effect, Rosemary asked her brother Francis and his wife Gill for a gift of laburnums and wisterias. Or to be more precise, Rosemary ordered the plants and informed the Sandilands that these plants would be their anniversary gift. “I have bought as a silver wedding present from you, Francis, ten Laburnum and ten Wisterias for an extension to David’s lime avenue. When the bill comes I will send it to you! I think it might be quite something one day!”¹⁶ It was just like Rosemary not only to expect a gift but to dictate the choice and then buy it herself. She knew exactly what she wanted and made sure she got it. Indeed her words proved to be prophetic. The laburnum allée would not only “be quite something one day,” it would become one of the most photographed and iconic of garden images.

      Where did this idea of a laburnum allée come from? Certainly the magnificent one at Bodnant, now a National Trust property in Wales, was well known at the time. Given its grand scale and fame, it is hard to think that its existence wasn’t at least known to Rosemary. But she claimed not to have been influenced by the Bodnant laburnums, nor to have seen them before she created her own, or “ours might have been wider.”¹⁷ She credits instead Russell Page’s Education of a Gardener, published in 1962, for causing her to think about focal points and a long axis, something that was sorely missing in her Wilderness.

      Nearer to home, Nancy Lancaster – living at Haseley Court in neighboring Oxfordshire – had also created a beautiful laburnum walk in her own garden. Nancy Lancaster was an American living in England with a great sense of style. She became well known for founding the decorating firm of Colefax and Fowler, which promoted the “English country house” style in furnishings and fabrics. One of Rosemary’s gardeners, Nick Burton, would later observe, “The lovely irony is it took an American [Nancy Lancaster] to teach the English how to decorate their houses.” Rosemary certainly knew and must have been influenced by Nancy who would later be among the women featured in Rosemary’s first book.

      Did either or both of these earlier laburnum walks inspire Rosemary’s choice? While it is impossible to know, Rosemary does not credit either source, although she was usually generous in acknowledging the influence of others. Her own garden designs are not necessarily original. What Rosemary did do, and do brilliantly, was to adapt existing designs and make them fit into her relatively small garden, there to be enriched by her extraordinary sense of color and stunning profusion of plants. First-time visitors to Barnsley are often surprised when they see how small the scale actually is of this oft-photographed laburnum walk. There are only five laburnums on either side of the path and wisteria was planted to climb through each laburnum, adding their touch of purple flowers to mix and bloom simultaneously with the yellow laburnums. She underplanted the row with the purple globes of Allium aflatunense to complete the picture. This vision of yellow and mauve blooming together for almost three weeks every year called for a high degree of horticultural skill to insure all the plants were happy, and that the wisteria didn’t strangle the laburnum.

      The composition was perfected when David added his quite original rough pebble path beneath the pendulous blossoms of laburnum and wisteria. David’s travels for the Housing Ministry took him as far afield as Wales, and he loved to swim, often visiting the Welsh beaches where he picked up stones and carried them home in the trunk of his car. He then spent hours painstakingly setting each small stone in cement by hand to create an uneven walk. To at least one observer, this entire enterprise seemed bizarre and the path appeared impossible to walk on. But David’s pebble path added an idiosyncratic, delightful touch to the laburnum allée. “It all looked so homespun as to be ridiculous. Anyone would trip over these huge pebbles with lots of space in between, but in fact it works. It’s great. It’s unusual.”¹⁸

      Shortly before David retired from his position as senior investigator of historic buildings in 1965, he bought and restored a derelict mill that was little more than a shell in the next village of Arlington into a small, private museum. Because of his interest in architectural history and in particular, the history of the Cotswolds and the Arts and Crafts movement, he wanted to display artifacts alongside local crafts. The museum was quirky and original, containing all the things he loved. He had spent many years studying, cataloging, and grading the handsome stone churches of Gloucestershire, the so-called Wool Churches built in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by fortunes made from sheep and the wool trade. After retiring, he had the time to spend on his museum as well as his own writing. He wrote a Shell Guide to Gloucestershire in addition to the two volumes he had produced for the Pevsner’s buildings series.¹⁹

      For opening day of the museum, David invited a young sculptor, Simon Verity, to carve an inscription outside the door to attract people to come. Simon’s uncle, Oliver Hill, was a distinguished architect and knew David slightly from those circles. Simon quickly saw that he was “the carver and the act.” Rosemary admired his talents, and Simon’s wonderful statues, plinth, and fountain would later add important dimensions to the developing gardens at Barnsley.

      In 1968, David was appointed High Sheriff of Gloucestershire. That office dates back to the tenth century and exists to this day as a royal appointment of great prestige and honor. The High Sheriff represents the Crown in overseeing law and order but more as a formality than a reality. Over the centuries as the professional police force developed, the office of High Sheriff had become largely ceremonial. In David’s year, he had to attend countless openings, dedications, and similar activities occurring throughout the County. He also had to equip himself with the appropriate dress to suit his title and to greet and host various visiting dignitaries, all at his own expense.

      Rosemary served as his official consort and hostess. Since David was always a fairly private person, in contrast to Rosemary who always loved a party, some close observers believed that she might well have preferred to hold the title herself. “Rosemary secretly felt that she was at least half of the equation although the role was his,” her assistant, Katherine Lambert, observed.

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