The Benton End project so far: a Q&A with Garden Museum Director Christopher Woodward

What were your first impressions on your initial visit to the historic Tudor manor?

At around the same time, each Christmas Andrew Lambirth the art critic would take me to see Ronald Blythe, the writer. Ronnie would talk about Cedric too, and chuckle at his own stories. I’d sit by the fire and listen. Then Andrew took me to see Glyn Morgan, a former pupil at Benton End, on Hadleigh High Street. We stopped the car at Benton End and I tried to look over the wall. Andrew would not get out of the car.

‘There’s nothing there’, he called out. But he gave me the Morphet catalogue and said ‘you must do a Cedric show’.

One of the most inspiring things about Benton End is how many stories, themes and creative people weave in and out of its history. What are some of the moments in time at Benton End that have stuck with you?

During lockdown Matt Collins our Head Gardener and I were talking about how hard it was to be in London. I said ‘why don’t you go and stay at Benton End?’ He and his wife and their first child spent an exact year there, tending and watching the garden, and Matt writing in the attic. That was very beautiful, going to see a family spending a year out of time and Emlyn taking his first steps in what Ronnie remembered as Cedric’s ‘hayfield of exotics’. Matt wrote about it for The Guardian.

And of course when Sarah Cook did her display of irises at the Flower Show in 2015. It was one of those moments in horticulture when you can feel the ground move. Every night there was a mob. And those irises pulsed with Cedric’s desire for ‘lust’ in flowers.

How did the ambitious plan to restore Benton End come together?

There was no plan to restore Benton End. It never occurred to anyone. Andrew Lambirth did the Cedric Morris exhibition with our Curator Emma House in 2018 , and the ‘Poppies’ was on the cover of the catalogue. Philip Mould sponsored that show – Philip has been hugely generous, not least in research – and put on a second of his own, researching Cedric’s travel paintings.

One night he gave a lecture at the Museum and the owners of Benton End came to dinner after. ‘What’s your connection?’ someone said. ‘We live at Benton End. We’re selling. Or we were but the sale fell through this morning’. Was it that night they met Bridget Pinchbeck? This miraculous thing happened. Rob and Bridget bought it, so it could be restored and re-opened to the public. It’s really important to understand that this was from the heart. They lived in Gloucestershire and Italy. It’s pure altruism. They didn’t even want their name on it.

Why do you think this is an important project for the Garden Museum to lead?

The Garden Museum is all about heroes and heroines, from Tradescant to Chatto. Cedric became one of our heroes. But Benton End brought together everything we value at the Museum. Art and gardens, food, laughter, and learning.

In practical terms the Museum is getting full. 62 schools have visited this year but Samia our excellent Plant Science Educator has had to turn away 20 schools. That programme can expand at Benton End in new ways. We have also run out of slots for exhibitions of contemporary artists. Artists’ residencies too. You meet so many artists who want to work in a garden, and don’t have one of their own. That was Cedric’s vision too: he went to Merthyr Tydfil in the 1930s to teach art to unemployed miners. One day a young artist from a gardenless flat in Lambeth will wake up in a bedroom at Benton End hung with works from our collection here and walk into the garden at dawn. And make something.

Beth Chatto once described the garden at Benton End as “a bewildering, mind-stretching, eye-widening canvas of colour, texture and shapes”. How did the Garden Museum set about reviving the spirit of a garden that was by nature so wild and ephemeral?

The first funder was The Linbury Trust, a charity who modestly but monumentally have changed the British cultural and environmental landscape. They funded the Head Gardener role for three years, and we appointed James Horner. James’s talent was being talked about everywhere in the gardens world, and he gave a spell-binding interview about his relationship to Cedric. It was a very brave thing for him to do: close his own nursery garden and self-employed practice in Sussex, and move to Suffolk.

The next big leap came when Mark Fane, Chair of the Garden Museum for 12 years, and co-founder of Nurture Landscapes, rang up to say ‘I’ve had an idea’. He would commission Sarah Price to design a garden at Chelsea inspired by Cedric Price. It was Mark who intuited her connection to Cedric. That became The Nurture Landscapes Garden of 2023, which is still for many the greatest Chelsea garden ever.

Mark Whyman built it; his team have done the landscape at Benton End. He turned to me on press day and said ‘It has an aura’. One of the pleasures of this project has been to see how James and Sarah have collaborated. Visitors to Benton End will feel that Nurture Landscapes garden in the air.

What have been some of the challenges so far?

It has been really hard looking after the museum and taking on a second project. I submitted the grant application to the Linbury Trust on a Saturday night; I remember that because Craig Charles was playing on Radio Six when I pressed ‘Send’.

Bringing a flower garden back to life is notoriously hard. You can restore a garden such as Stowe – urns, hedges, water. You can’t ‘restore’ what Beth described. This is where the Committee came in. The Chair is Polly Nicholson – who is curating our upcoming ‘Tulips’ exhibition next year – and Sarah Cook (holder of the National Collection of Benton irises and former Head Gardener at Sissinghurst Castle) and Jim Marshall, too. Jim was No.2 in the National Trust gardens team. He gave us a master-class in the conservation process. Record. Define your values. What do you keep? What should be new?

And Arne Maynard, also on the Committee, has shone his amiable genius over the whole process. One day Sarah, James and I went to his studio in Bath and he made pizza and they talked about Cedric and I sat in the corner and listened, as I did in Ronnie Blythe’s kitchen. We all knew that we had to make a garden good enough for Arne to give his special smile and say ‘That’s it’.

Through Arne, Project Giving Back became a major supporter. They have been joined by The Tanner Trust, The Broadwall Trust, plus over 300 givers to The Big Give. It’s been quite astonishing. Hard to keep up with thank yous. Two trainees funded through the Wrags scheme. The Rick Mather David Scrase Trust are funding James for the next three years.

This week the newly revived walled garden opened to its first public visitors, a huge milestone in the Benton End journey. Can you tell us about the garden, what are some of your favourite elements?

The big realization was seeing that we have made a stage for James and his team to enact their talent. Elements? There is a meadow for the spring bulbs – what we call ‘Cedric’s ghosts’ – and you can see him lying there in the sun, like a cat, Ronnie said. And the poppies. James planted over a thousand: a super bloom of Papaverum Cedric Morris.

What is unique to this project is that Cedric appointed a plant executor who entrusted his plants to friends. Beth grew the poppy. John Morley brought back snowdrops and cotelium. ‘These are Cedric’s’ he’d say as he arrived with a cardboard box. ‘I still miss him’.

But it seems like a dream that the lost garden has come to life. But it has only happened because of how Cedric inspired people, from the Pinchbecks to the volunteers propagating in the rain yesterday. The test of a personality is how they live on after their death. That’s what you learn as a Museum Curator. Some people just die and you cannot resurrect them. Never trust an epitaph; the person who pays for the epitaph writes the words. Cedric is alive through his values and kindness. He’s a seed bomb. A tall, funny, seed-bomb in corduroy.

While we take a moment to enjoy the garden this summer, what’s next on the horizon for Benton End?

The house. The Heritage Fund have awarded £2.9 million towards the restoration and remodelling of the house – and the wilder two acres of the garden. We have to match that.

Most donors to the walled garden have been Friends of the Museum, or Cedric fans. We need to reach out to Suffolk now. We have appointed Charles Spicer – who lives close by – as Chair of the Benton End Board and a Trustee of the Garden Museum to lead that process.

We are now moving on to the design phase for the house, to include bedrooms and learning spaces. But as Arne said the key thing is to get the atmosphere inside right. How it feels.

Watch Gardeners’ World visit Benton End, catch up on BBC iPlayer

Help us revive Benton End as a new centre of art, horticulture and creativity: support Benton End

The walled garden project has been made possible thanks to:

The Linbury Trust
Project Giving Back
The Tanner Trust
The Broadwall Foundation
The Stanley Smith Foundation
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund via HM Government
Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils
The Cedric Morris Foundation
The Rick Mather David Scrase Foundation
WFGA
The Bedford Family
Reed Educational Trust
J Paul Getty Jnr Foundation