ROBERT MATTOCK ROSES
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News & Press Releases Chelsea Flower Show 2008 On their exhibit (RHW05) at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show Redwood Stone, from Wells in Somerset, are collaborating with Robert Mattock Roses to bring a flavour of the classical period of English landscape design to garden restoration projects" Inspired by seeing the ruins of ancient Greece and Rome on their Grand Tour of Europe the 18th century gentlemen landowners returned home with a desire to show off such grandeur on their country estates. This led to the birth of the most evocative feature of Georgian landscape design; The Folly The Follies from this era, often Gothic in design, were sometimes structures with no specific purpose but to provide a focal point or feature; a ruin, a temple, a sham castle or tower. These ‘eye-catchers’ could also serve a function as venues for entertaining, as screens, or even house the more workaday necessities of garden upkeep. The 21st century garden has ample opportunity to incorporate a feature of this kind. The Folly template can be adapted to build a romantic spot for evening cocktails, a whimsical façade to screen the compost and bonfire area or an 18th century take on the pool house, potting shed or office/studio; even just a flight of fancy Redwood Stone produce a wide range of Gothic Folly components to build such a feature and also have a large selection of standard designs that can be reproduced stone for stone, or used as a blueprint to fire your imagination. Redwood’s truly believable aged stone ornaments, which ‘look and smell’ hundreds of years old, combined with the vast collection of historic roses on offer from Robert Mattock, will lend authenticity to any restoration project. The Mattock family started dealing with Mr. Redwood senior, the stone mason of Wells, in the late nineteen sixties when they sold his stone garden ornaments through their garden centres. Both businesses have evolved over the years to the point where Robert Mattock now finds himself again working in collaboration with the Redwoods, this time with brothers Tim and Martin on restoration and conservation schemes involving historic gardens. Our exhibit RHW05 at Chelsea Flower Show acknowledges our renewed involvement. The Mattock family have been growing roses for over 125 years in and around Oxford and were ever renowned for their horticultural expertise and high quality plants. They were leading rose nurserymen during the post war mail order boom and early garden centre operators from the 1960’s. In the mid 1980’s they sold both their mail order and their garden centre operations to Messrs. Notcutts to concentrate on their core product, mature large size specimen rose trees. The nursery now produces the largest selection of historic rose varieties and species in Europe all grown to mature specimen sizes and the essential palette for the nursery’s focus on the management, the design, the restoration and the conservation of both historic and contemporary gardens and estates. |
