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Part two of the life and times of Ralph Hancock, the horticultural
visionary from Penarth whose designs conquered the United
States by creating some of the world’s most spectacular gardens.
GARDEN GENIUS
Ralph was born in Cardiff in 1893
and spent his early married life
in Penarth. In 1935 he was
responsible for designing and
building the roof gardens at the
Rockefeller Centre in New York.
Hancock also ran what we now refer
to as ‘garden tourism’. He charged a
dollar to visit for what was known as
the “Sky Garden Tour”. Sadly the
enterprise did not prove to be
profitable and was losing around
$45,000 a year. By 1938 the attraction
had closed.
The gardens at the Rockefeller were
visited by Trevor Bowen, the
managing director of Barkers who
had taken over Derry and Toms in
Kensington, London. Bowen liked
what he saw and employed Hancock
to create a similar effect in the heart
of London. Again the logistics
involved in the construction are
impressive. On opening, the gardens
contained over five hundred different
varieties of trees and shrubs.
In common with the gardens at the
Rockefeller the gardens at Derry and
Toms had an international flavour and
featured Spanish, Tudor and English
woodland gardens. The gardens were
completed in 1938 at a cost of
£25,000. Once again there was an
admission charge of a shilling (5p)
but this time the money went to
support local hospitals. Over the next
thirty years it was to raise over
£120,000.
This must have been a particularly
busy time for Ralph as he was also
winning Gold Medals for his display
gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show.
A review in Amateur Gardening
magazine in May 1936 comments that
despite Ralph’s previously stated love
for Cotswold and Limestone rock “Mr
Ralph Hancock had gone to the
expense of bringing a special
weatherworn limestone all the way
from Pennsylvania.”
That same year Hancock also found
time to publish a book called “When I
Make a Garden”. For people who
have tried to research Hancock the
book has proved a source of both
interest and considerable frustration.
In the introduction he comments that
“a single photograph conveys so
much more than pages of written
matter. I have, therefore, largely
allowed the illustrations to tell their
own story.” What this means is that
apart from the photographs that are
obviously identifiable as the
Rockefeller centre there is no
indication of where or when any of
the gardens were constructed.
Ralph continued to be a very
successful exhibitor at Chelsea,
winning gold medals in 1936, 37 and
38.The gardens constructed at
Chelsea had moved away from the
naturalistic rock garden style towards
the more arts and crafts style that we
associated him with. His 1938
Chelsea garden was particularly
popular. A review in Amateur
Gardening comments that, “Mr Ralph
Hancock had one of the most
ambitious schemes in the garden
avenue; a model of an old mill
cottage, complete with millstream
and sunken garden, the whole
construction being carried out in a
most realistic manner. It was a centre
of attraction throughout the show.”
As well as work on the book and
constructing gardens at Chelsea,
Ralph also exhibited gardens at the
Ideal Home exhibition in 1936, 37
and 38. Each of the Ideal Homes
gardens was required to conform
to a theme.
The theme for the 1938 show was
‘Novelist and their Gardens’ for
which the designers had to take as
inspiration your favourite living
author. Ralph chose as his inspiration
Rafael Sabatini. Sabatini is famous for
his tales of high adventure such as
Scaramouche, Captain Blood and The
Sea Hawk, all of which have been
made into films. Captain Blood was
produced in 1935 and gave a young
Errol Flynn with his first ever
Hollywood starring role.
The show catalogue hints at some
form of collaboration between the
author and the architect. Ralph’s
garden tribute to Sabatini featured a
half timbered cottage and also his
trademark herringbone brickwork.
The planting, of rhododendrons,
heathers and aquatic plants near a
winding brook, maybe was a
reference to Sabatini’s love of fishing.
Eighteen months after the Ideal Home
Exhibition, Britain was at war.
Like many families in Great Britain,
Ralph’s was not to be immune to the
tragedies of war. Ralph’s wife Hilda
was working for the American
Ambulance taking wounded from the
blitz and also soldiers returning from
Dunkirk. She wrote to John D
Rockefeller Jnr proposing a scheme
to raise money by reopening the
gardens at the Rockefeller Centre to
raise money for the ambulance
service? She writes about Ralph being
“back in the Army for more than a
year, as he was on the reserve of
officers from the last war. He is now
a Captain.” She mentions with a sense
of pride that, “my two young sons
have been in the Army since the day
war started” and that “one is away on
foreign service in the Middle East.”
By the time John D Rockefeller had
received the letter her air of
optimism was to be shattered. Her
youngest son Denys, had been killed
whilst serving in North Africa.
Another causality of war was the roof
garden at Derry and Toms. The roof
garden would be rebuilt but the
death of their youngest son hit Ralph
and Hilda hard. After the war Ralph
worked in partnership with Bramley
as Ralph Hancock and Son.
In 1947 Chelsea restarted and Ralph
returned with a rock garden, a formal
garden and also had an exhibit shown
in the garden designers section.
There was also the construction of
the gardens of Peace at Temple
Newsam in Leeds. It was at one of
these post war Chelsea shows that Sir
David Evans Bevans commissioned
Ralph to build the gardens at Twynyr-
Hydd House, Margam which is
now part of Neath Port Talbot
College’s department of horticulture
and open to the public for visits.
The story of Ralph Hancock is still
unfolding. Recently a garden
designed and built by him has been
discovered in Llanblethian near
Cowbridge. In a 1967 house sale in
the Western Mail the property is
identified as having “one of the best
landscaped gardens in the Vale of
Glamorgan”. These are probably the
last gardens that Ralph was involved
with before his death in 1950. It is
perhaps fitting that they are in Wales,
the land of his birth.
For more information contact
Bob Priddle
Lecturer in Horticulture
Neath Port Talbot College
Tel 01639 648261
robert.priddle@nptc.ac.uk |
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