Lower Orangery Terrace - Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace gets a taste for the exotic as the Lower Orangery Garden is restored to its Baroque glory!

Hampton Court Palaces Garden and Estates team has begun the exciting process of restoring William III and Mary II’s baroque Lower Orangery Garden. Complete with its exotic plant collection, it is recreating the stunning displays first introduced some 300-years ago by avid horticulturalists William III and Mary II. The garden is due for completion in the summer.

Today there are no other surviving 17th century gardens in Europe, or indeed the rest of the world, displaying exotics in this manner. The restoration of the Lower Orangery Garden will confirm that the gardens at Hampton Court Palace are amongst the best presented, landscaped and historically significant in Europe.

The re-introduction of the Lower Orangery Garden was inspired by the restoration of Hampton Court’s Privy Garden in 1995, where exotic plants were a key element of the layout. Since 1987 the Gardens and Estates team and curators at Hampton Court Palace have been researching the Lower Orangery Garden - formally known as the ‘Greenhouse Quarter’. The team used contemporary accounts, plant lists, maps, documents and pictures, plus recent archaeological digs to confirm the exact lay out of the garden. The exotics themselves have been collected and propagated with the help of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and developing partnerships, with local nurseries and British and European suppliers.

There will be different planting schemes for each season in the Lower Orangery Garden. In winter the beds will be quite stark and sculptural, featuring carefully shaped trees such as yews, juniper, holly and box. In early spring a riot of tulips, narcissus, hyacinths, daffodils, auriculas and polyanthus will bloom beneath the trees. Finally in the summer months the exotic plants from the greenhouses will be brought out, displayed in a selection of replica containers and pots similar to those Queen Mary had specially made to showcase her exotics, which generated as much interest as the unusual plants themselves.

Terry Gough, Head of Gardens and Estates at Historic Royal Palaces, said of the restoration, ‘With the help of the Royal Horticultural Society, Historic Royal Palaces has been given the opportunity to reintroduce a method and style of garden display which was pioneered at Hampton Court Palace over 300-years ago. These exotic plants in beautiful containers, set within their original garden setting, will provide visitors with a unique experience as well as pay tribute to King William and Queen Mary two of England’s greatest horticultural pioneers.’
In 1689 following their accession to the throne, William III and Mary II made Hampton Court Palace their favoured home. As keen gardeners and plant collectors they began to assemble one of the finest unique botanical collections in the world, a precursor to that of Kew Gardens, founded some 70-years later. Queen Mary, in particular, loved exotics from the Mediterranean, Virginia, Mauritius and the New World, and it was these she displayed at Hampton Court Palace, sparking off a trend amongst the social elite. Her collection included 2,000 different species, including 1,000 orange trees (the symbol of the House of Orange dynasty from which William descended). So large was the collection it needed a full time botanist, Dr Leonard Plukenet, was employed to maintain and document it.

Following the death of William III in 1702, the exotics collection was maintained by subsequent monarchs until the reign of King George III. By 1760, when Hampton Court Palace was no longer used as a Royal residence, much of the now unfashionable exotics collection had been moved to Kew. Remnants of the collection survived, and there is evidence of orange trees being displayed at Hampton Court Palace into the early 20th century. The collection finally died out during the First World War, as the war effort and lack of manpower meant relevant care and attention was not available.

After the restoration is complete a second phase of the project will begin with the recreation of replica pots and containers, similar to those used by Queen Mary herself, separate funding for which is being sought.