Lawrence Johnston and Hidcote Garden

first public season. Nowadays, Hidcote is famous worldwide as a masterpiece of design and planting, attracting 150,000 visitors and raising nearly £1 million annually from entrance tickets. Hidcote Garden was the creation of an American in Britain, the shy Major Lawrence Johnston, who came to live on the site in 1907 with his widowed mother, Gertrude Winthrop. In some respects, Winthrop feared her son's talents for expensive landscape gardening and never allowed him full access to the family's funds. Nonetheless, with her inspiration and guidance, Johnston started his design in 1908 and brought it to a peak in the early 1930s when he was in his 60s. At that time, Johnston may rightly be ranked beside Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, creators of Sissinghurst, his garden's only surviving equal.