Behind the Privet Hedge

Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain

Michael Gilson

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781789148602
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789148794
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Pianificazione urbana e paesaggistica

Britain is a nation of gardeners; the suburban garden, with its roses and privet hedges, is widely admired and copied across the world. But it is little understood how millions across the nation developed an obsession with their colourful plots of land. Behind the Privet Hedge explores the history of this development and how, despite their stereotype as symbols of dull, middle-class conformity, these new open spaces were seen as a means to bring about social change in the early twentieth century. Michael Gilson restores to the story a remarkable but long-forgotten figure, Richard Sudell, who spent a lifetime 'evangelizing' that the garden be in the vanguard of progress towards a new egalitarian society with everyday beauty at its centre.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: On the Train to Roehampton with Edith Sitwell and D. H. Lawrence
• 1 ‘A little garden city’
• 2 ‘An industrial slave? Never’
• 3 Trouble at the Whit Monday Garden Show
• 4 The Birth of Beautification
• 5 Sudell the Flower Evangelist
• 6 ‘Taste is utterly debased’
• 7 ‘There were little bridges, gnomes and things’
• 8 An Unrivalled Influence on a New Nation of Gardeners
• 9 ‘A new Britain must arise on better lines than the old’
• 10 The Landscape Architect Struggles to Make a Mark
• 11 ‘An important and influential figure’
• 12 The Importance of Play
• 13 Sudell Urges Us to Invite Betty Uprichard into our Garden
• 14 ‘Sudell has been proved right’
• References
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements
• Index