Florence Dunbar in the Garden at The Cedars c.1938 oil on canvas Photograph: ©LissLlewellyn Private collection
The Dunbar family moved into The Cedars, a 17-roomed mid-Victorian house in Strood (the westernmost area of Rochester, Kent) in 1924. I imagine the family was hugely content with William Dunbar's purchase and their new home. Beforehand they had lived at 244, High Street, Rochester, a 4-storey house opposite the forecourt of the old Rochester railway station. Not many pictures survive of this house, but first impressions suggest that it was cramped and dark, with a very limited garden area.
Here are the Dunbars soon after moving into The Cedars, all except William, who was presumably the photographer.
The Dunbar family in the garden at The Cedars, 1924. Photo: Dunbar family archive.
Left to right they are: Ronald, the oldest of the siblings; Evelyn, the youngest, who would be 16 the following December; Felbridge, a sort of lurcher; Alec; Florence, their mother; Jessie and finally Marjorie (usually known as 'Midge'), born so close together in 1897/98 as to be almost twins. The family seems to me to express a dynamic of energetic unity, and it's this, for what it's worth, that encourages me to think that this photo was very probably taken on the day they moved into The Cedars...that, and the length and quality of the grass. Florence, a gardener to her green fingertips, would in normal circumstances never have allowed a lawn to grow to such a length, nor to have so many alien plants colonising it.
A background feature of this family photograph is the brick wall, which features in so many of Evelyn's garden images. Here's one of them:
Here the garden, or that part of it lying against the brick wall, appears to be well established, no doubt due to the efforts of its handmaidens, maybe Evelyn herself in the foreground and Florence, almost hidden by the greenery just slightly right of centre in the middle ground. The diagonally-laid brick edging evident in later images was probably the work of a rather shadowy pair of gardeners, Alf and/or Bert.
Which was Alf and which was Bert we shall probably never know, and we can only guess at the significance of the marionette strings. One, surnamed Clarke, was a fixture when William Dunbar bought The Cedars. In another letter to Mahoney, dated March 1936, Evelyn wrote '[...] we have another man in the garden to do an 8-hour day on Saturdays [...] He has been very highly recommended & is quite young and strong.' Pausing to note some Evelynish touches, the small change of her esprit, like the patches on Clarke's knees and the spotted handkerchief peeping out of his jacket pocket, we can perhaps assume that Alf and Bert occupied themselves mostly with the fruit and vegetables while Florence, and occasionally her daughters, looked after the ornamental garden.
Florence Dunbar was really the guiding spirit in the development of The Cedars garden. Here - for reference - she is again, as painted by Evelyn, waiting for spring to happen:
Florence Dunbar in the Garden at The Cedars c.1938 oil on canvas Photograph: ©LissLlewellyn Private collection
It's a cold day in March or April. The first daffodils are flowering, more will follow. Beyond Florence, well wrapped under a plaid blanket and wearing her preferred gardening jacket, some beds of bare earth await her attentions. It's as though she can't wait to get started. Her vigil is shared by what is at first sight an inexplicable black lump in the left foreground, but which on closer examination turns out to be Paul, the Dunbar's Aberdeen terrier, the successor to Felbridge.
Under the green-fingered Florence's guidance The Cedars garden quickly became Evelyn's abiding source of inspiration. For her it became a metaphor for the Bible-specified interaction between mankind and creator, a notion encapsulated in the story of the Garden of Eden. This garden concept fitted comfortably with Evelyn's - and her mother's - Christian Science, and continued to do so, greatly amplified, with the onset of World War 2; her employment as a war artist recording the agricultural work of the Women's Land Army extended her horizons far beyond an obscure garden in north Kent.
As if in tribute to Florence's influence, Evelyn includes her mother in several of her garden paintings.
The Garden at The Cedars might also be the continuation of Florence Dunbar in the Garden at The Cedars, indeed it might record the very next day. Spring has sprung, Florence has abandoned her plaid for her fork, and is getting on with her devotions. We see her again on the extreme right in The Shed, in early summer mode.
The Shed oil on canvas c.1937. Private collection
And we find her again in Apple Blossom at The Cedars, still on the extreme right, still busy. (Follow the link for a fuller discussion.)
The most extensive of Evelyn's garden images is surely Winter Garden, which I analysed (with some risk of repeat here) almost exactly 10 years ago. The orientation is such that she might have painted it sitting in the open doorway of The Shed. Everything is there - the buttressed brick wall, the diagonally-laid brick path-edgings, the neatly trimmed lawn, the apple trees and of course The Cedars with its tower in the distance. No human figures, though. All gardens have their own personality, not necessarily reflecting the people who created them. Maybe Evelyn's rendering of The Cedars garden captures its own personality, rather than that of the dedicated people who dressed it and kept it.
Winter Garden 1927-38. Signed 'Evelyn Dunbar'. Purchased by the Tate from the artist in 1939. Photograph ©Tate, London 2016
And just as well. These images are the only records we have of it. The Cedars garden has disappeared. William Dunbar died in 1932, Alec Dunbar left home in 1936, Florence died in 1944. Evelyn left in 1945, to set up their first married home with her husband Roger Folley in Warwickshire. By the end of 1946 there was no longer a Dunbar presence at The Cedars. It was sold, and for a while became a hotel. In due course the garden ground was laid to rest beneath the foundations, drains and infrastructure of an overcrowded housing estate. The garden lives on only through Evelyn's images of it.
Warmest thanks to Paul Liss and Sarah Hill for their contributions.
Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2022.
by Christopher Campbell-Howes
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