Within the garden walls at Hogarth’s House. Val Bott

William and Jane Hogarth took on a second home in the country in 1749. The house stood in the corner of a mixed orchard which had been enclosed within a high brick wall in the 1670s. It had been built between 1713 and 1717 and the Hogarths immediately extended it by an additional room on each of its three floors. The family was to retain a connection with the property until 1808.

Research into the history of the site has supported the lottery-funded Mulberry Garden Project now nearing completion. A handsome learning studio has been built beside the House. Hogarth’s serpentine ‘Line of Beauty’ has influenced both the architecture and the planting. The plot has become an innovative “exhibition garden” with planting and features telling its whole story, to be recounted in this talk. The mulberry from the 1670s was rescued after bomb damage and is now complemented by fan-trained fruits along the wall. The nut walk and skittle ground which Hogarth enjoyed have been re-created. A replica of the Hogarths’ pet memorials is still to come. A bothy, which will serve as a base for the volunteer gardening team, now stands where the stable with Hogarth’s studio above once was, and a small glass-house echoes that used by a nursery gardener there in the 1890s.

Val Bott is Chairman of the William Hogarth Trust (WHT). She has been working on The Mulberry Garden Project on behalf of WHT, in partnership with the Hogarth House Trust / Hounslow Council. The new ‘exhibition garden’ at Hogarth’s House will present its history in planting and garden features and, along with the new learning studio, is due to open later in 2021.