![Nymans Garden 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Nymans_Garden_01.jpg)
Nymans is an English garden to the east of the village of
Handcross
Handcross is a village in the Mid Sussex District, Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, England. It lies on the A23 road south of Crawley. At the 2011 Census the population fell within the civil parish of Slaugham.
Nymans Garden, of parklands r ...
, and in the civil parish of
Slaugham
Slaugham () is a village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, England. It is located to the south of Crawley, on the A23 road to Brighton. The civil parish covers an area of . At the 2001 census it had a population of 2,226 ...
in
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...
, England. The garden was developed, starting in the late 19th century, by three generations of the Messel family, and was brought to renown by Leonard Messel.
In 1953 Nymans became a
National Trust
The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...
property. Nymans is the origin of many
sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...
, selections and hybrids, both planned and serendipitous, some of which can be identified by the term ''nymansensis'', "of Nymans". ''
Eucryphia × nymansensis'' (''E. cordifolia'' × ''E. glutinosa'') is also known as ''E.'' "Nymansay". ''
Magnolia × loebneri
''Magnolia'' × ''loebneri'' Kache is a hybrid of two Magnolia species, the Japanese ''Magnolia kobus'' and '' M. stellata''. crossed by ''Garteninspektor'' Max Löbner of Pillnitz, Germany, shortly before World War I; it first flowered in 1917. ...
'' 'Leonard Messel', Camellia 'Maud Messel' and ''
Forsythia suspensa
''Forsythia suspensa'', commonly known as weeping forsythia or golden-bell, is a species of flowering plant in the family Oleaceae, it is native to China.
Taxonomy
The Latin epithet of ''suspensa'' is derived from ''suspensus'' meaning suspend ...
'' 'Nymans', with its bronze young stems, are all familiar shrubs to gardeners.
The gardens are listed Grade II* in Historic England's
Register of Parks and Gardens
The Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England provides a listing and classification system for historic parks and gardens similar to that used for listed buildings. The register is managed by Historic England ...
, and the house is a Grade II
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
. During 2019, the gardens received 382,948 visitors.
History
In the late 19th century, Ludwig Ernest Wilhelm Leonard Messel (1847-1915), a member of a German Jewish family, settled in England and bought the Nymans estate, a house with 600 acres on a sloping site overlooking the picturesque
High Weald of Sussex. There he set about turning the estate into a place for family life and entertainment, with an
Arts and Crafts
A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...
-inspired garden room where
topiary
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants w ...
features contrast with new plants from temperate zones around the world.
After buying the property in 1890, Messel set about transforming the original Regency house into a German-style structure. Ludwig's brother
Alfred Messel, already a well-known architect in Germany, drew up the plans; construction work was carried out by local builders.
Messel's head gardener from 1895 was James Comber, whose expertise helped form plant collections at Nymans of
camellia
''Camellia'' (pronounced or ) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae. They are found in eastern and southern Asia, from the Himalayas east to Japan and Indonesia. There are more than 220 described species, with some controversy ...
s,
rhododendron
''Rhododendron'' (; from Ancient Greek ''rhódon'' "rose" and ''déndron'' "tree") is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are nati ...
s, which unusually at the time were combined with planting
heather (''
Erica
Erica or ERICA may refer to:
* Erica (given name)
* ''Erica'' (plant), a flowering plant genus
* Erica (chatbot), a service of Bank of America
* ''Erica'' (video game), a 2019 FMV video game
* ''Erica'' (spider), a jumping spider genus
* Eric ...
'')
eucryphia
''Eucryphia'' is a small genus of trees and large shrubs native to the south temperate regions of South America and coastal eastern Australia, mainly Tasmania. Sometimes placed in a family of their own, the Eucryphiaceae, more recent classificati ...
s and
magnolia
''Magnolia'' is a large genus of about 210 to 340The number of species in the genus ''Magnolia'' depends on the taxonomic view that one takes up. Recent molecular and morphological research shows that former genera ''Talauma'', ''Dugandiodendro ...
s.
William Robinson advised in establishing the Wild Garden.
Unfortunately Messel, who was of Jewish ancestry and of German extraction, was harassed during the First World War. Unsubstantiated rumours abounded that he used the tower at Nymans for the purposes of espionage.
Ludwig's son Colonel Leonard Messel succeeded to the property in 1915 and, at the request of his wife Maud, replaced the German-style wood-beam house with a picturesque mock-medieval stone manor, designed by
Sir Walter Tapper and
Norman Evill
Norman Adolphus Evill FRIBA (1873 – 5 August 1958) was an English architect and draughtsman, apprenticed to Edwin Lutyens.
Life and works
Evill was born in the village of Hewelsfield, Gloucestershire, in 1873. His father, Walter, was also an ...
in a mellow late Gothic/Tudor style. He and his wife Maud (daughter of
Edward Linley Sambourne
Edward Linley Sambourne (4 January 18443 August 1910) was an English cartoonist and illustrator most famous for being a draughtsman for the satirical magazine ''Punch'' for more than forty years and rising to the position of "First Cartoonist" i ...
) extended the garden to the north and subscribed to seed collecting expeditions in the Himalayas and South America.
The garden reached a peak in the 1930s and was regularly opened to the public. The severe reduction of staff in World War II was followed in 1947 by a disastrous fire in the house, which survives as a garden ruin. The house was partially rebuilt and became the home of Leonard Messel's daughter
Anne Messel and her second husband the
6th Earl of Rosse. At Leonard Messel's death in 1953 it was bequeathed to the National Trust with 275 acres of woodland, one of the first gardens taken on by the Trust. Lady Rosse continued to serve as Garden Director.
The garden suffered much damage in the
Great Storm of October 1987, losing 486 mature trees and many of the shrubs. The
pinetum, one of the garden's earliest features, was destroyed.
TourUK:Nymans
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File:Nymans 1932.jpg, The southern frontage of Nymans in 1932 before the fire and subsequent ruin
File:Nymans, Southern Frontage - geograph.org.uk - 709812.jpg, The southern frontage today. The ruined house remains a garden feature.
File:Nymans Gardens. - geograph.org.uk - 428649.jpg, Mixed borders of perennials and annuals in midsummer
Notes
{{Coord, 51.050, -0.197, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title
National Trust properties in West Sussex
Gardens in West Sussex
Grade II* listed parks and gardens in West Sussex
Grade II listed buildings in West Sussex