Celebrating 70 years of Norah Lindsay

Remodelling Blickling's Parterre

When Phillip Kerr, 11^th Marquess of Lothian inherited the Blickling Estate in 1930, he set about commissioning the remodelling of the formal garden, as not only had it previously received criticism in Country Life magazine, but it was also extremely expensive to maintain.

Norah Lindsay (1873 - 1948)

Norah Lindsay had already built up quite the reputation as a talented garden designer by the time she was commissioned to remodel the Parterre and Temple Walk at Blickling. The intricate Victorian layout was replaced by four large squares and the 80 sporadic beds were reduced to a more uniform 20.

A disciple of British horticulturalist and artist Gertrude Jekyll, Norah Lindsay was especially attentive to colour. For Blickling’s Parterre she used a graduation of colours including pink, blue, mauve and white towards the house, but a more vivid concentration of yellow and orange to the east.

In contrast to the Victorian garden palette, Norah Lindsay designed whole borders to have cool colours to form a backdrop for brighter hues. Her planting was always carefully considered with regards to the seasons and resulted in high notes at different times of the year.

On the Temple Walk, she removed the avenue of yews that rigidly guided the visitor to the Temple, to create a softer aesthetic and then planted azaleas in subtly changing colour upon the approach.