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Mr Weeding was in 1795 the aptly named first recorded gardener at the Charterhouse – or at least that’s what Emily, one of the current team tells, with a straight face, the mixture of Londoners and tourists she is showing around.
The temperature is above 30 degrees Celsius as the capital endures its fourth heatwave of the summer, and Emily’s priority is the environment; more specifically, attracting pollinators, which means she weeds by hand and does not use sprays across six courtyards and 6.5 acres.
Together with the head gardener Justin, she also has to balance the competing needs of the present-day Charterhouse that is home to around 40 residents, all over 60. Ambulances, for instance, must have access.
A former monastery, then a Tudor mansion, the Charterhouse is also run as a charity with limited means. For funding, it relies on weddings, its usefulness as a setting for films and productions, such as “Downton Abbey,” and showing round visitors. Happily, the gardener’s salary nevertheless exceeds Mr. Weeding’s £26 a year.
If you particularly want to know about the history and the buildings, the standard one-hour tour could be for you.
The garden tour, led by Emily, or her boss Justin, is for anyone keen to inspect the 130-year-old mulberry trees, which keep the residents in jam, and to reflect on the challenges and the delights of gardening in 21st-century southern England.
A deep source of joy is the survival and continued fruitfulness of the mulberry trees that have grown along rather than up as their gnarled stems have split. Another major source of optimism is the Charterhouse gardeners’ collaboration with the “Pollinating London Together” network, set up in 2020, to help nurture pollinators across London.
Emily freely admits the Charterhouse is not yet doing everything right, but as a Grade 2 SINC (Site of Importance for Nature Conservation), it is working on it.
In the Charterhouse Square, which is also part of its remit, the Charterhouse has had 50,000 bulbs planted and has fenced off the bottom of the plane trees to protect them against the damage from human footfall.
Back inside the various courtyards, more water butts are planned in the Master’s Court, where the filming tends to take place, meaning gardening must be unobtrusive. The gardeners are also expecting to replace box hedges, prone to box-tree moth, with yew.
We also address the three-cornered leek, which is an invasive species, but good for pollinators.
Emily and Justin are experimenting with allowing this to grow in the Master’s Garden, which was once the burial ground for the monks – hence the entrance is marked by skull and crossbones momento mori.
Now it is a walled garden with a small orchard and a pride of India, or golden rain tree, and perhaps soon a carpet of three-cornered leek, provided it doesn’t take over. Ironically, perhaps, this former cemetery is the least peaceful of the six courtyards as the traffic of Clerkenwell Road rumbles by on the other side of the wall. Everywhere else at the Charterhouse, you can easily forget you are in central London.
Emily leads us back into the sanctuary of the inner courtyards and the Norfolk Garden, named after Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, who bought the Charterhouse in 1564 and rebuilt parts of it, including the Norfolk Cloister from the ruins of the monks’ original cloister.
Justin contacted landscape architect Ryan Carter to help embellish the garden used for weddings and other events. As a result, an arch has been hand-forged for roses to clamber up and wedding couples to walk through. To reflect the rich layers of the Charterhouse’s history, the arch recalls the Carthusian monks, as well as Tudor arches, while its partly fractured nature is a reminder of the devastation caused to Norfolk’s buildings by an incendiary bomb during the Blitz.
But gardening is about looking forward, and Emily is busy anticipating the next big challenge facing the Norfolk Garden as its giant cherry tree has honey fungus and will ultimately have to go. It will be a loss, but also an opportunity and even a dead tree can provide valuable habitat, she reminds us.
The Charterhouse, London
The garden tour.
Mr Weeding was in 1795 the aptly named first recorded gardener at the Charterhouse – or at least that’s what Emily, one of the current team tells, with a straight face, the mixture of Londoners and tourists she is showing around.
The temperature is above 30 degrees Celsius as the capital endures its fourth heatwave of the summer, and Emily’s priority is the environment; more specifically, attracting pollinators, which means she weeds by hand and does not use sprays across six courtyards and 6.5 acres.
Together with the head gardener Justin, she also has to balance the competing needs of the present-day Charterhouse that is home to around 40 residents, all over 60. Ambulances, for instance, must have access.
A former monastery, then a Tudor mansion, the Charterhouse is also run as a charity with limited means. For funding, it relies on weddings, its usefulness as a setting for films and productions, such as “Downton Abbey,” and showing round visitors. Happily, the gardener’s salary nevertheless exceeds Mr. Weeding’s £26 a year.
If you particularly want to know about the history and the buildings, the standard one-hour tour could be for you.
The garden tour, led by Emily, or her boss Justin, is for anyone keen to inspect the 130-year-old mulberry trees, which keep the residents in jam, and to reflect on the challenges and the delights of gardening in 21st-century southern England.
A deep source of joy is the survival and continued fruitfulness of the mulberry trees that have grown along rather than up as their gnarled stems have split. Another major source of optimism is the Charterhouse gardeners’ collaboration with the “Pollinating London Together” network, set up in 2020, to help nurture pollinators across London.
Emily freely admits the Charterhouse is not yet doing everything right, but as a Grade 2 SINC (Site of Importance for Nature Conservation), it is working on it.
In the Charterhouse Square, which is also part of its remit, the Charterhouse has had 50,000 bulbs planted and has fenced off the bottom of the plane trees to protect them against the damage from human footfall.
Back inside the various courtyards, more water butts are planned in the Master’s Court, where the filming tends to take place, meaning gardening must be unobtrusive. The gardeners are also expecting to replace box hedges, prone to box-tree moth, with yew.
We also address the three-cornered leek, which is an invasive species, but good for pollinators.
Emily and Justin are experimenting with allowing this to grow in the Master’s Garden, which was once the burial ground for the monks – hence the entrance is marked by skull and crossbones momento mori.
Now it is a walled garden with a small orchard and a pride of India, or golden rain tree, and perhaps soon a carpet of three-cornered leek, provided it doesn’t take over. Ironically, perhaps, this former cemetery is the least peaceful of the six courtyards as the traffic of Clerkenwell Road rumbles by on the other side of the wall. Everywhere else at the Charterhouse, you can easily forget you are in central London.
Emily leads us back into the sanctuary of the inner courtyards and the Norfolk Garden, named after Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, who bought the Charterhouse in 1564 and rebuilt parts of it, including the Norfolk Cloister from the ruins of the monks’ original cloister.
Justin contacted landscape architect Ryan Carter to help embellish the garden used for weddings and other events. As a result, an arch has been hand-forged for roses to clamber up and wedding couples to walk through. To reflect the rich layers of the Charterhouse’s history, the arch recalls the Carthusian monks, as well as Tudor arches, while its partly fractured nature is a reminder of the devastation caused to Norfolk’s buildings by an incendiary bomb during the Blitz.
But gardening is about looking forward, and Emily is busy anticipating the next big challenge facing the Norfolk Garden as its giant cherry tree has honey fungus and will ultimately have to go. It will be a loss, but also an opportunity and even a dead tree can provide valuable habitat, she reminds us.
It also has a few more seasons to flower and the temptation after an already magical August garden tour is to plan another visit when the blossom is back.
Barbara Lewis © 2025.
By Barbara Lewis • architecture, history, year 2025 • Tags: architecture, Barbara Lewis, history