ROSEMARY VEREY AND THE EDIBLE LANDSCAPE
Her kitchen garden featured espaliered fruit trees. The ones people commented on the most were trained as closed goblets, which some visitors described as lollipops. The vegetable beds were inside neat box hedges. All of these fit the classical potager design, but Verey had updated this historical style to suit modern sensibilities.
In her book, "Classic Garden Design-How to Adapt and Recreate Garden Features of the Past," Verey devotes an entire chapter to the vegetable and fruit garden. Of all her books, this is my favorite. She illustrated it with photos from Barnsley House, showing red cabbages alternating with ornamental cabbages, all enclosed by a hedge of lavender.
Verey liked the fact that fruit trees added height to the vegetable garden. Without this dimension she felt the garden was just commonplace.
She recommended fruit trees, and gave advice on choosing appropriate ones for training as standards, cordons, espalier, tunnels, and closed goblets. She even suggested appropriate planting schemes, such as planting white tulips to bloom the same time as the white-flowering pears. She shared details on pruning and training the trees, and discussed both ornamental and practical purposes they could serve. Examples include planting them to separate areas of the garden, and as a screen to hide compost piles.
Verey was the author of numerous books. In 1984 she published "The American Woman's Garden." "The American Man's Garden" followed that. The cover of "Rosemary Verey's English Country Gardens" shows her sitting in her garden at Barnsley.
Some of her other gardening books include "The New Englishwoman's Garden," "The Garden in Winter." "The Flower Arranger's Garden," "The Scented Garden," "Rosemary Verey's Good Planting Plans," "Rosemary Verey's Making of a Garden," and "The Herb Growing Book."
Verey was a noted garden designer. Prince Charles liked what he saw at Barnsley House Garden. He consulted with her regarding his own gardens at Highgrove. Prince Charles said, "Mrs. Verey makes gardening seem the easiest and most natural thing in the world." Others, including Elton John, and the late King Hussein, made use of her design skills.
One might consider Verey a late bloomer. She began gardening in a serious way late in life after her children had left for boarding school and she was forced to give up horseback riding after an accident.
Initially she took on the task of designing the gardens at Barnsley only after her husband
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