William Wood and Sons Ltd is familiar to many in Taplow as a well-respected local landscape design and horicultural business. A recent enquiry to HTS by John Warden of Parks and Gardens UK (PGUK), a project cataloguing all notable parks and gardens in the UK, stimulated the following brief account.
PGUK has established that Woods was accorded a Royal Warrant in 1955 for work carried out at Windsor, paid for, it is thought, out of the Privy Purse, which means the work involved the Queen’s private gardens. At present, the exact works are unknown and enquiries continue. The business can be dated to at least the 1930s, based on copies of the firm’s 1935 catalogues, currently offered for sale via a rare books supplier, where Woods is referred to as 'this key landscape supplies firm'. Wood and Sons Ltd is still listed as a current Warrant Holder on the Royal Warrant Holders' website, although the company’s website and email contact details do not seem to be active.
My personal recollection of Woods dates from the 1969, when it was still a genteel firm of landscape gardeners, with whom I had my first job. I joined Dick (who came complete with pork pie hat and pipe) and his team, based in the potting shed about where the off-licence now is in the Bishops Centre: Dick's team consisted of Dick, Hazel, little Colin (who still lives locally) and myself.
The firm grew its own stock and had its retail site on the present Bishops Centre site. Much of my work was watering shrubs, etc., interrupted by firmly adhered-to meal breaks, the first of which was about 10am, after a 7.30-8am start, and involved Cornish pasties or similar, heated over a paraffin stove. Dick was an old-fashioned type of head gardener, who ruled his small empire with aplomb. The qualified nurseryman was John, a plant specialist, who lived in Lent Rise. There was still a sort of apprenticeship system, and promising youngsters were sent off to horticultural college.
The Woods landscape gardener I knew was Mr Brett, a gentleman in all senses, and a very well-respected garden designer. Mr Brett lived next to us in what is now Hillmead (following demolition of the school building), but was then still the original Taplow Grammar School, which had closed I think in 1947, and was then put to use as flats. Our house, The Lodge, is the only remnant of the original buildings, and was the school housekeeper's dwelling (housekeeper upstairs, horse and trap downstairs) until my parents bought it in about 1951.
Around the late 1960s to 1970, Woods was taken over by the original Bishop (J.S.), a very different kettle of fish, who started to turn the plant sales business into a garden centre in the modern sense, and developed the landscape side vigorously. I went to work in the drawing office, and remember visiting Sid James' house to measure up for an outside swimming pool, and also John Lennon's large parcel of land, where Woods installed a very substantial lake. Bishops was probably a more dynamic operation than Woods had been, and I think got a good slice of the region's celebrity and showbiz business!
Gradually, the landscape side of the Bishops operation reduced, and plants sales became less important, until by the time Focus Do-It-All closed down and was replaced early in 2008 by Laura Ashley, plants were no longer sold. In my mind, accurately or not, I caught the end of a well-respected traditional firm of landscape designers in the post-war period, just as the market and society changed during the sixties, ushering a much brasher, pushier and more extrovert design sense, in horticulture as in other kinds of design (e.g. Conran). Makes me quite nostalgic to think of it.
My thanks are due to John Warden of Parks and Gardens (PGUK) for help in the preparation of this note. PGUK is now well on its way to its 2009 target of 7,500 records, and at present already has 4,700 sites in its archive, of which 375 are in Buckinghamshire, (including English Heritage listed, locally listed and lost gardens). The local list system has stimulated awareness of a number of previously unrecorded parks and gardens, resulting in their becoming known to PGUK. At present, our council, South Bucks, does not hold a local list, and does not intend to establish one, pending the Environment and Protection Bill, anticipated in 2010.
The following websites provide further information on PGUK and the Bucks Gardens Trust, which is dedicated to recording, conserving, restoring and according to its website, creating parks, gardens and green spaces in Buckinghamshire, and may be of particular interest to Society members.
http://www.parksandgardens.ac.uk
http://www.bucksgardenstrust.org.uk
Jon Willmore
