The Duchess of Beaufort’s Tulips at Badminton

Duchess beaufort tulips — a quick note to anchor this piece for readers.

Duchess beaufort tulips: Quick notes

This year, the British garden show circuit is making room for Badminton, home of the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. It’s in a horsey part of the country, and the estate park has long been home to the Badminton Horse Trials. Delightfully located in Gloucestershire, it’s also very garden-y, and the Duchess (Georgia Beaufort) has been gently steering the trees-and-shrubs pleasure gardens toward a more seasonal display, while maintaining the kind of restraint that a house of this stature requires.

Happily, the gardens have been documented through the seasons by our friend, Britt Willoughby. Earlier this week the Duchess took time out to talk to us about the Badminton way with bulbs.

Photography by Britt Willoughby.

Above: The South Garden is nestled between the house, outbuildings, and a small parish church.

The gardens that surround the 17th century house were designed for walking through. The landscape set pieces by Capability Brown and Charles Bridgeman, influential 18th century English landscape designers, were further into the park. Back then, Badminton’s occupants, explains the Duchess, “were mostly just interested in hunting.” Her late father-in-law, the 11th Duke, with his first wife, hired the French designer François Goffinet to add some garden elements closer to the main building. In this south-facing rear part of the house, hornbeam walls make garden rooms, and boxwood-edged parterres with lollipop topiaries are filled with tulips.

Above: A mixture of intensely hued bulbs spread around the pleasure grounds.

The effect of short grass and Cotswold stone, mixed with tulips in uncut grass, combines beautifully to highlight the venerable trees and shrubs—once the main event of the gardens.

Above: The simpler and greener the background, the more jewel-like the tulip colors appear.

Most gardeners treat tulips as annuals and throw them away after blooming. Left in a bed, they lose vitality after their initial year of flowering, and soon they start sending up nothing but leaves. Other gardeners move their spent tulips to informal areas, so that they can provice some greenery to a verge or driveway. Georgia Beaufort adds fresh bulbs each year; generally, they are leftovers from her annual bulb orders for the formal gardens. The glittering tulip meadows have an air of spontaneity since the colors and shapes are unplanned.

Above: “We don’t lift anything,” says the Duchess. “We just add and pull out.” The pulled-out tulips are sacrificed because they are coming up “blind,” or without a bud. Above: By the Dog Graves, pale daffodils and mauve woodland anemone mingle with tulips, while snakeshead fritillaries take over the damper areas. They vary between mainly dark or mainly white, depending on the season’s conditions. Hyacinths are also put out in the meadows, after being forced for early flowering indoors. Above: Tulips on the Church Grass.

The tulips on the property are a mix of smaller, species tulips, which self-seed and go on and on, and fading hybrids. The green-streaked Viridiflora types, such as Tulipa ‘Spring Green’, are among the longer-lasting hybrids.

Above: The front of the Church of St Michael and All Angels faces the formal South Garden, while the rounded nave exterior (shown here) has a more meadowy look.

Because there aren’t many constructed gardens close to the house, tulip meadows are a way of bringing creative gardening into the landscape. They are spread out in the Church Grass, the Dog Graves, and the Shell Garden—a walled garden with fruit trees and a fountain made from three carved shells fixed to the the wall.

Above: And there are more—a mix of bulbs range around under trees, outside the Kitchen Garden.

“What I really like about tulips,” concludes the Duchess, “is that you can play around a bit, and be more nimble in displays and design.”

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