BEHIND THE PRIVET HEDGE: RICHARD SUDELL, THE SUBURBAN GARDEN AND THE BEAUTIFICATION OF BRITAIN by Michael Gilson
Reaktion Books, £16.95, ISBN 978-1789148602
Everyone is an activist now. At least, that is how it seems to me, as so many artists, celebrities and influencers describe themselves in this way. Such faux-activism tends to add up to little more than relentless self-promotion via social media. Not so with Richard Sudell. He was the real thing: a zealous crusader in the cause of gardens for working people.
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Having left school at 14 to work as a gardener for eight years, Sudell trained at Kew, was imprisoned as a Quaker conscientious objector in the First World War, and then became a tireless advocate for gardens of any size. He sat on just about every committee going, produced a constant stream of articles and books, designed gardens himself and continually innovated – with ideas such as postal fruit and veg competitions, or gardens on rooftops (he designed one for Selfridges). But he has been almost forgotten. This excellent book rehabilitates and revivifies his reputation.
The author at one point jokingly refers to his subject as ‘the champion of crazy paving’ – and it is true that Sudell’s socialist principles meant that his focus was always on what was achievable by the average home-owner, as opposed to the aspirational daydreaming of Arts and Crafts authors. Sudell explained how to plan a small garden so that it provided produce and also looked beautiful, with plenty of flowers and colour. His interest was not so much in design as what might be termed ‘layout’. As such he was not much respected by his contemporaries for his aesthetic taste, and is never mentioned alongside other mid-century landscape-design names such as Geoffrey Jellicoe or Sylvia Crowe. His only major work as a designer was Dolphin Square in London, which has recently been ‘saved’ and restored.
His focus was always on what was achievable by the average home-owner
Neither did Sudell fit in with the horticultural set. He was not a plant nerd in the RHS mould (typical advice: ‘avoid rare alpines, especially the diminutive ones’), nor was he an acolyte of the upper-crust gardening cognoscenti. Yet it is clear that this working-class Lancastrian provided balance on the numerous committees on which he sat, even if colleagues found the high-mindedness somewhat wearing at times. The author quotes a letter from Jellicoe, a fellow council member at the Landscape Institute, referring to a disagreement about the landscaping of aerodromes: ‘My dear Sudell, I know what you feel… possibly you would come and have a cup of tea.’
Sudell challenged the Modernist and ‘preservationist’ caricature of the new suburbs as places of snobbish one-upmanship
Sudell’s working-class understanding of people’s liking for traditional houses also set him at odds with the mid-century Modernists – socialists, too, but in their case, single-mindedly pursuing the dream of ‘lovely buildings in white and crystal, shining in the clear air’, as one zealot put it. Sudell challenged the Modernist and ‘preservationist’ caricature of the new suburbs as places of snobbish one-upmanship, dull conformity and poor taste. The author points out that ‘suburbia’ was of course not a single entity: the biggest divider was between council estates and ‘speculative’ private developments.
The book does an excellent job at placing Sudell’s career in context, while not over-praising him, even if it does skim over his private life. My view of the man was altered late in the book by the revelation that he habitually wore a rose in his buttonhole. Clearly he was not dour. He had a scandalous affair, left his wife and remarried. At the very end of the book it is dropped in that this father of four was in fact homosexual.
The politics of community gardening no longer reflects the kind of state-ist socialism advocated by Sudell, but is probably more anarchist in character. Nevertheless, this book could prove to be an inspiration to anyone who wants to affect real change in the world – the kind of person we used to call an activist.
