Behind the Privet Hedge

Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain

Michael Gilson

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781789148794
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The surprising origin story of Britain's love affair with suburban gardening. It is said that Britain is a nation of gardeners and its suburban gardens with roses and privet hedges are widely admired and copied across the world. But how and why did millions across the United Kingdom develop an obsession with colorful plots of land to begin with? Behind the Privet Hedge seeks to answer this question and reveals how, despite their stereotype as symbols of dull middle-class conformity, these open spaces were once seen as a tool to bring about social change in the early twentieth century. The book restores to the story a remarkable but long-forgotten figure, Richard Sudell, who spent a lifetime evangelizing for gardens as the vanguard of a more egalitarian society.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: On the Train to Roehampton with Edith Sitwell and D. H. Lawrence
• 1 ‘A little garden city’
• 2 ‘An industrial slave? Never’
• 3 Trouble at the Whit Monday Garden Show
• 4 The Birth of Beautification
• 5 Sudell the Flower Evangelist
• 6 ‘Taste is utterly debased’
• 7 ‘There were little bridges, gnomes and things’
• 8 An Unrivalled Influence on a New Nation of Gardeners
• 9 ‘A new Britain must arise on better lines than the old’
• 10 The Landscape Architect Struggles to Make a Mark
• 11 ‘An important and influential figure’
• 12 The Importance of Play
• 13 Sudell Urges Us to Invite Betty Uprichard into our Garden
• 14 ‘Sudell has been proved right’
• References
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements
• Index