From 1940, at Benton End, near Hadleigh in Suffolk, the artist Cedric Morris brought his eye to breeding irises. Eliminating hated shades of ‘salmon or knicker’, he was, according to his biographer Hugh St Clair, ‘unstinting in his efforts to produce a pure, delicate pink’. Forty years of dedication brought a wild abundance to the garden, which was packed with cultivars, including ‘Benton Baggage’ (pale rose with a blue blaze), ‘Benton Persephone’ (very large white flowers) and ‘Benton Mocha’ (coffee-coloured, with a bright orange beard). A living flower painting. Sacheverell Sitwell saw the tones of ‘vellum, chamois and fuchsia’ – the walls of the half-timbered house were also lime-washed pink – as a 16th-century Japanese scroll, but truly, it was a Cedric Morris.
Lett-Haines’s apple pie used to be served with beak marks that had been made by Morris’s pet jackdaw
In an infinity loop of cultivation, Morris’s paintings are now being consulted by gardeners working to restore Benton End. The rare flowers were exported widely to gardens such as Sissinghurst, but Benton End itself went to seed after the death of Morris in 1982 and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines in 1978. This was a double disaster, as the site was also a small but important art school where Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling had studied. A major fundraising and renewal effort by the Garden Museum has resulted in the tentative first public admissions to Benton End this summer. To celebrate, the Garden Museum and Philip Mould Gallery have put on a charming if half-formed exhibition.
