The Garden of La Chaire.

This blog looks at the garden of La Chaire on the Island of Jersey. The garden is now in urgent need of restoration before it is lost forever. Only a few original plants survive, plants that were sent from such places as Australia and Kew.

Samuel Curtis, cousin of William Curtis, the founder of the Botanical Magazine had been seeking a suitable location in which to establish a garden, a garden in which he could grow tropical and rare plants. Curtis wanted to grow non hardy plants that could not possibly be established in any other part of the British Isles, including Cornwall. He also wanted to grow the new plants coming in from Australia, New Zealand, China and Sikkim. Curtis had searched from the West Coast of Scotland down through England, but if he had found the climate fairly suitable the underlying rock or the soil had not been ideal for such plants to thrive and indeed survive. Samuel Curtis had some success in growing less than hardy plants at his home in Essex, called Glazenwood. Here he had already experimented in growing Australian plants.

In 1841 Curtis eventually discovered the perfect location in which to grow his tropical plants. This was in an east west valley in a tiny fishing village on the north east coast of Jersey called Rozel. Not only was the climate suitable, kept frost free by the surrounding sea and far warmer than anywhere in England but unlike the rest of Jersey the bedrock is not granite but Rozel Conglomerate. This is a purple pudding stone that unlike granite can easily be broken up and penetrated by plant roots. The valley he discovered was also supplied by a stream that was constant both in winter and summer.

Curtis although not fully resident at La Chaire until 1847 immediately set to work to build a house and construct the garden. The land was sold to him by Thomas Machon and was then called Le Mont Crevieu ou Le Chaires. Curtis abridged the name to La Chaire.

Samuel Curtis was a close friend and work colleague of William Hooker who become Director of Kew. They disagreed professionally at times but always remained friends. Hooker was instrumental in sending plants to La Chaire and many of these can be seen requested in letters to Hooker, written by Curtis. In a letter sent to Hooker from La Chaire on the 1st October 1853 Curtis wrote, ‘’I think this is a good time to plant our half hardy tender plants in our sheltered nooks and crannies…….send me a parcel containing such things as you might consider curious as out of door plants. The Australian plants I think would mostly do here; would not Banksia and Degandras’’? In another letter he says that, ‘’I have more than thirty tall stems of Yucca gloriosa in blossom at once’’! By 1858 when Adam White from the Linnaean Society visited La Chaire, Curtis was able to tell him that the garden had over 2,000 different species of plants. Kew also benefited from La Chaire. One Kew ‘plants in’ entry shows Curtis sending Gladiolus, a cutting of Jerusalem sage, hibiscus and seedling Acacia raised from seed collected on the banks of the Namoi river, New South Wales.

 

Curtis died in 1860 and left a garden that by 1884 when the ‘Jersey Gardener’ magazine visited was reaching maturity. They wrote about the many species of Rhododendrons and Acacias that could be seen and …. . ‘’The Loquat, The China Tea, Thea veridis, the Olea Fragrans…Olea sativa…a New Holland PepperTree, Tasmania aromatica, Spiræa grandiflora…Bamboos…Gum trees from Australia, a host of sotres of Mesembryanthemums and bulbous plants from South Africa. Azalias, from India and America. And all sorts of odds and ends, from all parts of the world, are to be found growing on that little patch of semi-barren rock’’.

 

La Chaire has had many owners over the years, too many to mention here. But undoubtedly the most flamboyant and charismatic of these was Charles Fletcher. A man likened to Toad of Toad hall for his love of the good life, cars and boats! Fletcher owned La Chaire from 1898 to 1906 and the infrastructure of the garden as seen today can be attributed to him. Fletcher added a comprehensive irrigation system that Curtis had not thought necessary during his tenure and enlarged the original house.

 

Curtis had a turbulent relationship with his gardeners and neighbours and also closed the garden to visitors. During the ownership of La Chaire by Samuel Curtis and his widowed daughter Harriet, the garden was a must see on the tourist trail and four horse coaches would stop for visitors to take in the garden. In March 1899 Fletcher informed the coach company and the local Hotel that the garden was closed to visitors.