We will revive the walled garden at Benton End; home to The East Anglian School of Painting & Drawing & its founders: artist-plantsman Cedric Morris & artist Arthur Lett-Haines. We’ll be the only garden in the UK dedicated to giving art students close-up access to plants in their natural habitat.
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In the 1950s, artist and horticulturalist Cedric Morris created Britain’s first naturalistic garden within the old walls of Benton End, a Tudor manor house in Hadleigh, Suffolk. This treasure of a garden could be a unique resource for horticultural students, young artists and school children. But the walled garden has lain abandoned since 1983, and closed to the public. Miraculously, though, Cedric’s rare collection of bulbs has survived, slumbering under the earth for forty years.
We will renew the walled garden at Benton End to reopen it for all as a place of art and horticulture, learning and friendship. We have done the research, and we are now ready to bring Cedric’s rare plants back, planting a garden in which to train a new generation of horticultural students. By re-creating the meandering paths, young artists will have places to set up their easels to paint from life in the garden, and our education sessions will welcome school children of all ages.
