Charles Chesshire: The Art of Dishevelment

Date: Tuesday 31 January - 2pm

Location:  Cerne Abbas Village Hall, Kettle Bridge Lane, Dorchester DT2 7GY

Cost: £16 booked on line to include tea. (Payment at door possible)

About: Many of you will remember Charles Chesshire who was a popular speaker on Clematis. He is a garden designer whose creations can be found as far afield as New York, Long Island, Saudi Arabia, London and France. After a lifetime of travelling the world designing gardens, studying plants, writing and teaching, Charles has settled near Bridport in Dorset where his garden design business is based alongside his rare plant nursery. Charles has been curator of Burford House Gardens and consultant to Sudeley Castle and Sezincote gardens. His most recent commissions have been the restoration of the Park and gardens around Lydney Park in Gloucestershire and complete design of the 90 acres of Morton Hall Gardens, both frequently open the public.

A personal and occasionally tongue-in-cheek view on just how much 'control' each of us likes to exert on our gardens, this talk takes a journey through the garden from perfect order to anarchy, a journey that is part psychological, part historical and part political.

“The neatness, simplicity and elegance of English gardening as the happy medium between the wildness of nature and the stillness of art.

In the same manner as the English constitution is the happy medium between the liberty of savages and the restraint of despotic government

Humphry Repton, (former political agent turned gardener”