Floral meadows surround the old house at Benton End in Suffolk. Once, though, this was one of England’s most beautiful country gardens, created by plantsman and artist Sir Cedric Morris, whose life was as colourful as his plants. Now there are plans to renew the house and grounds as a vibrant centre for art and gardening, writes Twigs Way
Light streams through the windows of Benton End, illuminating the upstairs studios where Cedric Morris once painted the young Lucian Freud. It fills the communal dining room, where artists once argued over the sex life of camels and washed up in a sink made of Portuguese tiles.
Outside, the ghosts of past garden plants emerge from the wild meadows. Lucy Skellorn, Benton End research assistant, carefully points out the speckled fritillaria, deep-red wild tulips, Sicilian honey garlic and scarlet anemone.
Striking crown imperials glow yellow and orange in neglected corners. A vigorous Rosa ‘Sir Cedric Morris’ dominates the upper garden; by June it will be a flamboyant display of white blossoms. These are just a few of the plants dubbed ‘Cedric’s ghosts’: some of the last surviving specimens from what was once one of England’s finest gardens.
BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
The garden was created by artist and plantsman Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris (1889–1982). Born in Wales, he flourished in 1920s Paris and partied with the ‘bright young things’ of London, before turning to the sensuous joys of plants and painting in rural Suffolk. A bohemian dressed in berets and baggy trousers, he kept parrots and peacocks and painted wild birds in his garden paradise at Benton End. There he surrounded himself with fellow artists, students, lovers – and generations of fecund felines.
Morris met his lifetime partner, Arthur Lett-Haines (known simply as Lett) in the post-war celebrations of 1918, in an atmosphere of freedom that was to mark the rest of their lives together. Both were already artists, but as Morris’s exhibitions sold out, Lett’s sculptures and surrealist art were less successful. In 1929, they made South Suffolk their permanent base, leasing Pound Farm in Higham, where Morris had made his first garden. Their East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, initially based at Dedham, provided an oasis for artists whose work and personal lives were outside of the mainstream. The school was an instant success – before spectacularly
