The Lloyd Family at Great Dixter

The Lloyd Family

https://www.greatdixter.co.uk/the-lloyd-family

 

Nathaniel and Daisy Lloyd brought up six children at Great Dixter where they all developed a lasting attachment to the house and a deep knowledge of the garden. One of the bathrooms still has the pencil marks on a wall recording their increasing height year by year. Selwyn (1909-35), the eldest child, went into the family business but died at a young age from TB; Oliver (1911-85), whose second Christian name Cromwell spoke of Daisy’s ancestral connections, became a medical doctor and academic; Patrick (1913-56) was a professional soldier and died on active service in the Middle East; Quentin (1916-95) served as the estate manager for Great Dixter for many years; Letitia (1919-74) trained as a nurse; Christopher (1921-2006), the youngest child, was born in the north bedroom of the Lutyens wing and for the rest of his life Dixter was his home.

 

The Lloyd children photographed in height order at Great Dixter

 

Daisy Lloyd and Christopher Lloyd in the meadow at Great DixterWith the renovations and extension complete by 1912, Great Dixter was a large and comfortable family home. Central heating and electric lighting were installed from the outset and there was a domestic staff of five or more, including a chauffeur, a cook, two housemaids and a nursery maid. Outside staff included nine gardeners. For four years during the First World War, part of the house became a hospital and a total of 380 wounded soldiers passed through the temporary wards created in the great hall and the solar. In the Second War, Dixter housed 10 evacuee boys from September 1939 until it was decided that they should go further west and away from the path of enemy aircraft.

 

After Nathaniel’s death in 1933, the formidable Daisy was in control until her own demise in 1972. Her contribution to the garden was most evident in the wild flower meadows but her passion for all things plant related was as extensive as it was infectious.Daisy Lloyd wearing Austrian peasant costume on the steps of the Yeomans hall

 

She was a determinedly energetic lady, an accomplished cook and brilliant embroiderer, who, having taken to wearing Austrian peasant costume, cut an eccentric figure on the local scene.

 

Nathaniel Lloyd OBE FSA (5 March 1867 – 8 December 1933) was a business man who, later in life, studied architecture as a pupil of Sir Edwin Lutyens and became an architectural historian and author. He owned the Grade 1 listed house Great Dixter in East Sussex, now a legacy left to the nation by his youngest child, Christopher Lloyd, the gardener and author.

 

Born in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire to John and Rachel Lloyd, a comfortably well off middle class family, Nathaniel Lloyd started his career with the Mazawattee Tea Co and was responsible for its advertising and printing at the height of its expansion. In 1893, Lloyd left the tea company and founded his own business, Nathaniel Lloyd & Co, Lithographic Printers. This successful colour printing firm was responsible for numerous advertising posters, for example, a poster for ‘Lazenby’s “Chef” Sauce and other delicacies’ held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and posters printed to aid the war effort held by the Science Museum, London. It was so successful that Lloyd was able to take partial early retirement in 1909, becoming joint managing director of the Star Bleaching Co, which he sold in 1912 and turned to his second career in architecture.

 

Lloyd studied architectural drawing and set up a small practice. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1931[10] and was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a member of the London Survey Committee. Lloyd was a keen photographer who took many of the photographs for his books and his collection, of over 3600 prints and negatives, mostly taken between 1910 and 1930, was acquired by Historic England in 1997.Photographs by Nathaniel Lloyd are also held by the National Trust and in the Conway Library, whose archive of mainly architectural images is being digitised under the wider Courtauld Connects project.

 

Great Dixter

When he retired from his business in 1909, Nathaniel Lloyd began looking for an old house to buy and renovate. In 1910 he purchased the 15th century manor house Dixter for the sum of £6,000 and also bought a 16th century timbered yeoman’s house in Benenden Kent, subject to a demolition order, for £75, dismantling it and moving it to Dixter. He commissioned Edwin Lutyens and together they renovated the houses, built onto them and designed the 5 acre garden. At that time it was renamed Great Dixter.

 

Lloyd was always conscious that the work should be conducted sympathetically and true to its period and, after the restoration was completed in 1912, he wrote in a memorandum of 1913; "The spirit in which the work has been done may be summed up by saying that nothing has been done without authority, nothing has been done from imagination; there has been no forgery". 1913 was also the year in which Great Dixter first appeared in the magazine Country Life in an illustrated article.

 

Both Nathaniel and his wife, Daisy took an interest in the extensive gardens at Great Dixter, employing nine gardeners, and that interest was continued by their youngest son Christopher Lloyd. After taking a degree in horticulture at Wye College in Kent and becoming an associate lecturer at the college for four years, Christopher returned to Great Dixter in 1954 and set up a plant nursery. From 1963 onwards he wrote the weekly column ‘In My Garden’ which appeared in Country Life for over 40 years. Christopher continued to live in Great Dixter and regularly opened the house and gardens to the public. Prior to his death he set up The Great Dixter Charitable Trust to run the estate and continue to open the house and garden to visitors.

 

Private life

In 1905 Nathaniel Lloyd married Daisy Field[3] and they had six children, 5 sons, Selwyn (1909–35), Oliver (1911–85), Patrick (1913–56), Quentin (1916–95), Christopher (1921-2006) and 1 daughter, Letitia (1919–74). After Nathaniel’s death in 1933, Daisy Lloyd took over the running of the estate, assisted by Christopher, until her death in 1972, aged 91.

 

Christopher "Christo" Hamilton Lloyd, OBE (2 March 1921 – 27 January 2006) was an English gardener and a gardening author of note, as the 20th-century chronicler for thickly planted, labour-intensive country gardening.

Lloyd was born in Great Dixter, into an upper-middle-class family, the youngest of six children. In 1910, his father, Nathaniel Lloyd, an Arts and Crafts architect, author, printer and designer of posters and other images for confectionery firms, bought Great Dixter, a manor house in Northiam, East Sussex near the south coast of England. Edwin Lutyens was hired to renovate and extend the house and advise on the structure of the garden. Nathaniel Lloyd loved gardens, designed some of this one himself, and passed that love on to his son. Lloyd learned the skills required of a gardener from his mother Daisy, who did the actual gardening and introduced him as a young boy to Gertrude Jekyll,[3] who was a considerable influence on Lloyd, in particular with respect to "mixed borders". His mother Daisy, to whom he had remained close his entire life, died at Great Dixter on 9th June 1972, aged 91.

 

After Wellesley House (Broadstairs) and Rugby School, he attended King's College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages before entering the Army during World War II.[7] After the war he received his bachelors in Horticulture from Wye College, University of London, in 1950. He stayed on there as an assistant lecturer in horticulture[8] until 1954.

 

In 1954, Lloyd moved home to Great Dixter and set up a nursery specialising in unusual plants. He regularly opened the house and gardens to the public.[9] Lloyd did not do all of the gardening himself, but, like his parents, employed a staff of gardeners. In 1991, Fergus Garrett became his head gardener, and continued in that role after Lloyd's death.

 

In 1979 Lloyd received the Victoria Medal of Honour, the highest award of the Royal Horticultural Society, for his promotion of gardening and his extensive work on their Floral Committee.[10] In 1996, Lloyd was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Open University. In 2000, he was appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire.

 

Lloyd was a great-grandson of Edwin Wilkins Field, a law-reforming solicitor, and the great uncle of Christopher Lloyd, the author of numerous non-fiction books, including the popular What on Earth? Happened from the Big Bang to the Present Day and a series of children's historical Wallbook titles.

 

Christopher Lloyd

Doyen of gardening writers famed for his innovative planting at Great Dixter

 

Rosemary Alexander

Mon 30 Jan 2006 11.19 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jan/30/pressandpublishing.booksobituaries

 

The gardener and writer Christopher Lloyd, who has died aged 84 following a stroke, was the supreme master of his profession. Awarded in 1979 the Victoria Medal of Honour, the highest horticultural accolade, he was the best informed, liveliest and most innovative gardening writer of our times.

 

The author of a string of classic books and, until last October, 42 years' worth of regular weekly articles in Country Life, he was, until his death, gardening correspondent of the Guardian. His garden at Great Dixter, in east Sussex, gave pleasure to thousands of visitors and provided a springboard for conveying ideas - successes and disappointments - to his readers in a relaxed and non-technical manner.

 

One of six children, Lloyd was born at Great Dixter, into a strictly run household, where no smoking or drinking was permitted. His father, Nathaniel Lloyd, came from a comfortably off middle-class family in Manchester and his mother, Daisy Field, was reputedly a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. Nathaniel had bought Great Dixter in 1910, and commissioned Edwin Lutyens to restore and add to its 15th-century buildings. Lutyens also set out the framework of the garden as an array of formal spaces, which still exist today. Nathaniel died in 1933, leaving the 450-acre estate to his formidable widow.

 

Lloyd was educated at Wellesley House, Rugby and King's College, Cambridge, where he took an MA in modern languages. Having inherited his mother's passion for flowers, he studied horticulture at Wye College - in those days it was a general degree, including science and botany - and was an assistant lecturer there from 1950 to 1954.

 

Returning to the family home that year, he started a nursery, specialising in clematis and uncommon plants (Vita Sackville West gave him cuttings of the original rosemary from Corsica, r.beneden blue). Sharing their enthusiasm for gardening, mother and son continued to develop the gardens and encourage visitors until Daisy died in 1972. The house and garden then became the property of Christopher and his niece Olivia.

 

In 1957, after experimenting with Dixter's long border, Christopher wrote his first book, The Mixed Border, propounding the then revolutionary idea of combining shrubbery and herbaceous border. In 1965 came two further books, now modern classics: Clematis (with John Treasure), and Trees and Shrubs for Small Gardens, both of which combined technical knowledge with a humorous and informed sense of English style. In May 1963, he was persuaded by Arthur Hellyer to start his Country Life column. He always thought of something new to say, producing copy on time, even, on one occasion, from his hospital bed.

 

As a result of Christopher's writing, Great Dixter is the most documented of gardens, its most celebrated feature being the immense mixed border, measuring 210ft x 15ft, planned for midsummer, but in reality extending from April to October. More recently, bored by his celebrated but diseased rose garden, he announced that roses were "miserable and unsatisfactory shrubs". Encouraged by his protege and head gardener Fergus Garrett - but to the alarm of the gardening cognoscenti - he created a tropical garden, proving that dahlias, the Japanese banana (musa basjoo), cannas and caster oil plants can extend the colourful gardening season through to the first frosts, provided they are well wrapped in winter.

 

Occasionally referred to as the "ill tempered gardener", a play on the title of his 1970 book The Well Tempered Garden, Christopher did not suffer fools gladly, occasionally refusing to divulge the name of a plant to non-serious visitors without notebooks. Far from being a plant snob, however, he used both the essential Latin and the common names of plants, and was always generous in sharing his knowledge and hospitality.

 

Life at Great Dixter was conducted as an ongoing house party. Once, after Christopher's dachshunds (with whom he shared the house) ate the sandwiches of a group of Hungarian students, he invited them to be his house guests. He enjoyed encouraging young people with an interest in gardens and always remained loyal to his students at Wye College.

 

He also wrote about his enjoyment of cooking, and eating homegrown fruit and vegetables. Fervent about food - inspired by his mother, by Jane Grigson and, more recently, by Delia Smith - he was an expert classic cook. He served straight from the stove and hated books with "glamorously laid out meals and violently coloured illustration". He was averse to mechanisation, though he doted on the Magimix given to him by his friend Beth Chatto, with whom he wrote Dear Friend and Gardener (1998). An enthusiastic traveller, journeying regularly to the United States or Australia on lecture tours, he cherished his annual holiday in the Hebrides, where he could indulge in walking and whisky.

 

An irrepressible socialiser, Christopher was an inspiration to all and a mentor to many distinguished horticulturalists and garden writers. When staying with Marco Polo Stufano, then director of Wave Hill botanic garden in New York, who had every book by Christopher in his library, he not only signed each one but wrote a different note in each. A master of the non-sequitur, when asked on the telephone if a visit to Great Dixter could be arranged he would ask "Why?".

 

His 80th birthday was celebrated by an ongoing 24-hour event - lunch, a recital by Graham Gough, dinner and breakfast - that brought together friends from all over the world. To the end, Christopher and Fergus, who had brought new energy and enthusiasm into Christopher's life, conspired to enliven the planting. In later years, Christopher added television to his media, his audacious wit and puckish comments enlivening each programme.

 

Christopher Lloyd challenged people's thinking through his writing and his friendship. His innovative influence on gardens and garden journalism, and his beloved garden itself, will remain a legacy for our future.

 

Polly Pattullo writes: Not long ago, on a visit to Great Dixter, I noticed a figure in the famous long border, on his knees, trug by his side, like Beatrix Potter's Mr McGregor among the cucumber frames. It was Christopher who got to his feet, wiped his hands on his trousers and beamed. He enjoyed wandering around Dixter unrecognised - in old jumpers and corduroys - eavesdropping on the comments of the public.

 

He was prepared to utter gardening heresies; indeed, he enjoyed communicating his radical views. On a March visit, he pointed out a startling display of pale blue and baby pink hyacinths under a bush of orange-stemmed spiraea; he chuckled and told us that his old friend Beth Chatto had commented that this colour scheme "jarred". But Christopher's aim was not to shock - he wanted to stimulate the sometimes precious world of gardening.

 

He was a man of great erudition; besides gardens and food, he knew a lot about opera - he regularly went to Glyndebourne, whose gardens he found somewhat wanting. He was also modest: he wrote in his preface to The Adventurous Gardener (1983): "Never take the 'I shan't see it' attitude. By exercising a little vision you will come to realise that the tree, which has a possible future, perhaps a great one, may be more important than yourself, nearing your end."

 

Always planning ahead, delighting in experiment, he passionately wanted everyone to join him on the gardening journey which he had cherished for so long.

 

· Christopher Lloyd, gardener and writer, born March 2 1921; died January 27 2006