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Monday, March 19, 2007

Lullingstone Castle: Save the Homeplace


A plant hunter, kidnapped in Panama, returns home to build a garden out of gratitude.


imageTom Hart Dyke

Photo: Kent News

With a name like Tom Hart Dyke you have to be a Brit, one destined for romantic adventure and, like all proper Englishmen, a garden.

Hart Dyke’s saga will be aired tonight and for the next five Mondays on the BBC (too bad we don’t have a satellite dish!). And we do mean saga. A globe-trotting botanist, Tom was kidnapped while hunting for rare orchids in Panama in 2000. A guerilla group held Hart Dyke and his traveling companion Paul Winder prisoner for nine months.

“After being told they would be shot in the head and then cut up into pieces, the friends were put back in separate huts at the mountain camp. Mr Winder spent the afternoon praying, but to stay sane Mr. Hart Dyke dreamt up the idea for his World Garden, as he wanted to leave a legacy behind him.”

Like the foxhole prayers made by many folk artists, Hart Dyke’s creative pledge has become reality. He was released, returned to his family estate in Kent, and with help from neighbor and garden designer Adam S. Bailey, has set about building flower-bed “continents” for some 10,000 plants from across the world. Already, the garden has produced the first Silver Princess Eucalyptus Caesia flowers ever to bloom in England.

imageThe World Garden— in progress

Photo: Lullingstone Castle

Plumping this heroic story into an outright fairy tale, Hart Dyke’s garden may also save the ancestral home. Lullingstone Castle (you didn’t think we were talking about a ‘70s ranch-style did you?) has belonged to his family for 20 generations, about 500 years. It’s “one of England’s oldest family-owned estates.” But don’t let a couple of old turrets deceive you. Castle upkeep happens to be quite expensive these days. “Lullingstone …was opened to the public in 1950 – attracting 50,000 visitors during its heyday – but this number had fallen to just 2,000 by 2002.”

The place has been “on the verge of bankruptcy. Unless the current Hart Dyke family can dramatically turn things around, they may be the last generation of their family to live at Lullingstone.”

Horrors!! Step right up, pay your admission, and save the homeplace. Hart Dyke believes that enough visitors will come through the turnstile at the World Garden for Lullingstone to stay in the family. If a handsome and valiant young botanist “survivor,” a castle, heritage and 10,000 plants can’t get tour buses rolling to Eynsford, Master Tom will at least have made good on his promise.

The World Garden will open officially this April 1st (closed Good Friday, and Mondays-Tuesdays).


Posted by Julie on 03/19 at 05:52 PM
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