RALPH HANCOCK

Additional information on the life work of Ralph Hancock can be found through a site was developed by his family www. ralphhancock.com.

And here's a podcast link off BBC radio...

Ralph Hancock - Dear Tempestuous Genius from Robin Hull on Vimeo.

KENSINGTON ROOF GARDENS

Created by Ralph Hancock in the 1930’s, it is still functioning as a public space after 75 years.  Originally the Roof Garden above Derry +Tom’s department store, it is now owned by Sir Richard Branson and known simply as

The Roof Garden

.

A bit about Ralph Hancock…

Clarence Henry Ralph Hancock (known as Ralph) was born in Albany Road, Cardiff, in 1893.  In 1926 he paid his membership fees and became a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society. The following year the family moved to Surrey. It was from here in 1927 that Ralph undertook the first of his more famous garden projects designing and constructing a rock and water garden and also an Iris garden for HRH Princess Victoria, (Edward VII’s daughter) at her home” in Buckinghamshire. Photographs of the garden show a naturalistic style with the use of huge rock outcrops. This fondness for the use of rock combined with the influence of the “arts and crafts” movement is not surprising given the time that Hancock was constructing gardens.

On May 31, 1930, Ralph, set sail for New York. In order to promote his work in the US, he published an illustrated booklet titled English Gardens in America and described himself as being “Landscape Gardener to HRH the Princess Victoria of England”.

The gardens show some of Hancock’s trends, the use of low Cotswold stone walls combined with wrought iron used to construct the gates. He comments that “Cotswold stone harmonizes perfectly and is difficult to beat for this purpose”.

The promotional booklet must have worked as Hancock went on to design an exhibition garden at Erie Station in New Jersey. He also staged exhibits at the Massachusetts Horticulture Show where he won several awards, including in 1933 the Presidents Cup. He was one of the designers of the Lydia Duff Gray Hubbard garden in New Jersey which now forms part of the Garden Club of America Collection. Between 1933 and 1935 Hancock was to embark on the construction of one of his most ambitious projects, a series of roof gardens called the “Gardens of Nations” on the 11th floor of the Rockefeller Centre in New York.  The gardens at the Rockefeller Center were visited by Trevor Bowen, the managing director of Barkers who had taken over Derry and Toms in Kensington, London. Bowen liked what he saw and employed Hancock to create a similar effect in the heart of London. Again the logistics involved in the construction are impressive. On opening, the gardens contained over 500 different varieties of trees and shrubs.

I

n common with the gardens at the Rockefeller the gardens at Derry and Toms had an international flavor and featured Spanish, Tudor and English woodland gardens. The gardens were completed in 1938 at a cost of £25,000. In common with the Rockefeller there was an admission charge of a shilling (5p) but this time the money went to support local hospitals. Over the next 30 years it was to raise over £120,000.

This must have been a particularly busy time for Ralph as he was also winning Gold Medals for his display gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show. Ralph continued to be a very successful exhibitor at Chelsea, winning gold medals in 1936, ’37 and ’38. The gardens constructed at Chelsea had moved away from the naturalistic rock garden style towards the more arts and crafts style that we associated him with. One of Ralph specialities became the use of Moon Gates, which he used both at Chelsea and a number of other gardens.

Original illustrations of Derry + Tom's Roof Garden (courtesy Ralph Hancock archives)

Present day photographs I took earlier this month on a rainy day.

A thoroughly lovely video off of YouTube on this garden...

ROOF GARDEN - COMMUNITY

Thought I'd share some additional precedent on roof gardens that I've researched...

Roof gardens are believed to have been used in ancient times as a communal space, an extra room to be used for an occasional visitor.  In these earthen homes, which were built in the warm climates of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt there is evidence of roof gardens above the house.  Many times basic furnishings such as a bed, table, chair, and candle were set up for the occasional visitor. Interestingly, even downright surprising is the interpretation by some of roof gardens in the Holy Scripture.  In 2 Kings 4:10 “Please, let us make a little walled upper chamber and let us set a bed for him there, and a table and a chair and a lamp stand; and it shall be, when he comes to us, that he can turn in there.”

While the psychological benefits of a hospital roof garden for patients are known to be beneficial, the physical and medicinal benefits of being several stories up above the city streets are thought to have validity. Tenement buildings in Brooklyn during the turn of the century (known as “wage earners’ homes”) were designed in some cases with roof gardens for the “general good health” of laborers.1

Hospital Roof used for the benefit of chidren

“The tuberculosis roof camp was another development in the early 20th century.  Sufferers from ‘the malady,’ were invited to spend the day in these camps.” 2    Some of the press and medical field called for these tuberculosis “light” hospitals to be on the roof of every large apartment building in poor neighborhoods.  There would be playground areas and covered areas for beds.  The belief was that you would quarantine the already sick from healthy children and provide them with a better chance of recovery in this “purer atmosphere.” 2

The restorative benefits of time spent in a roof garden are well documented in the American Journal of Nursing.  In 1935 the local garden club helped to create vegetable and flower gardens atop the Children’s Hospital of Akron, Ohio, “with a wish that blessings of health be restored to each little one entrusted here.”3

Illustration for nursing building with roof garden

According to Theodore Koch in “A Book of Carnegie Libraries”, ninety years ago along the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Public Libraries created open-air reading rooms on their roofs, complete with tables, chairs, flower boxes, awnings and lighting for late-night readers.

 Young girl reading @ roof garden library circa 1910

1.Fortmeyer, Erik, “Were There Ever Roof Gardens in Boerum Hill?” http://www.boerumhillbrooklyn.org/archives/cat_history_of_boerum_hill.html

2  Shaw, Albert, (editor) American Review of Reviews Vol XLII, July-Dec 1910: Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press 1910

3 Chambers, Marion, “A Roof Garden”, The American Journal of Nursing, Vol 35, No. 4 (April 1935) pp. 315-318

ROOF GARDENS 1 - SPIRITUALITY

As a true urbanite, roof gardens are a subject close to my heart. 

Here is the first of (what I envision to be) many posts on this subject matter.

Illustration of ziggurat

The ancient history of aerial gardens began around 4000 B.C. as large temples were being built in Mesopotamian towns on top of mud-brick platforms. Over hundreds of years the temples were rebuilt on the remains of previous buildings, thus the platform grew in size.  As these “ziggurats” evolved in structure, multiple stepped stages were added and stairways spiraled up them on the outer edges. On each level of the ziggurat there was a terrace covered in baked brick. According to British archeologist Sir Leonard Wooley, “at landings on these stepped towers, plantings of trees and shrubs on flat terraces softened the climb and provided relief from the blazing heat of Babylonia.”  The most well known of these is the ziggurat of Nanna in the ancient city of Ur and  “Etemenanki”,  which translated from Sumerian is “house on the foundation of heaven on earth”.  As modern students of history and the bible may be aware of, “Etemenanki” is more commonly referred to as “the Tower-of-Babel.”

 Brueghel, Peter,  The Tower-of-Babel

One of the original seven wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were created from emotional and spiritual reasoning. …built by Nebuchadnezzar around 600 B.C.E.  He built it to please his homesick wife, Amyitis, who was from distant Media. Amyitis found the flat and sun-baked environment of Mesopotamia depressing.  She longed for the trees, meadows and fragrant plants of her homeland.  Nebuchadnezzar, in the hope of appeasing her, decided to build a “recreated homeland” -- an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens (above grade), an “evolved ziggurat”.

(top) Hanging Gardens- Assyrian interpretation

(bottom)

Hanging Gardens

©Briwn Brothers

The Greek geographer Strabo, described the gardens in 1 BCE as “consisting of vaulted terraces raised above one another and resting on cube-shaped pillars.  These were hollow and filled with earth to allow trees of the largest sizes to be planted.”   Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the same era believed “ the garden was 100 feet square and built up in tiers so that it resembled a theatre.  Vaults had been constructed under the ascending terraces which carried the entire weight of the planted garden… the highest gallery contained conduits for the water which was raised by pumps in great abundance from the Euphrates River.”2 Though historians question  the existence of these roof gardens  (although except in 1899 archeologist Robert Koldewey believed he had discovered the site at which it was created in southern Iraq near modern day Baghdad), one can conclude by the survival of this oral history that if the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were a myth, ancient civilizations still conceived of this concept and dreamed of creating this oasis.

Even today there is an innate feeling, an awareness that harkens from the same inner place and thoughts of the ancient Mesopotamians and Incan civilizations of creating a sanctuary at a higher elevation, rising above the rest of the world to a place closer to the sun and the heavens.

Many urban gardens can be inward looking, almost “cloister-ish”.  A garden in the rear of an urban brownstone is no doubt a cherished piece of property.  An oasis surrounded by fifty-foot high buildings is inward looking, reminiscent of the enclosed garden of the Middle Ages.  But, look aloft, to the top of the buildings… the roof garden is outward looking, a sanctuary high up on top of a building, sometimes with an endless panorama, a bright, beautiful, and open sky above it.  Most appropriately, it fits today’s city dweller with their overscheduled, time challenged lives.  For many, traveling to a city park takes a 1/2 hour or longer to embrace nature; walking up a flight of stairs or out their side door to a shared or private roof garden is but seconds away and “immediately gratifying.” A place to look at and admire the blue skies at day and heavens at night. It is a place to relax and re-energize, a place to reflect and even to pray. We enjoy company and serve them meals below the heavens; we even light candles and torches for ambiance at dusk.  How different is this than the Mesopotamian ziggurat, perhaps the first roof garden and cosmic axis?

Maybe the roof garden is a holy place.  Maybe it hasn’t changed much--its essence is arguably the same as it was 6,000 years ago.  People escalated themselves, or surrounded themselves on this (mostly) raised platform to reach another plateau, physically higher and spiritually greater.  One could argue that there isn’t any difference between the priests of Ur in Mesopotamia ascending the ziggurat to its apexical temple and the urban dweller that uses his/her roof garden to unwind and meditate.  Roof gardens can be intensely private spaces, essentially... sanctuaries.  

Frederick Law Olmstead is paraphrased by historian Elizabeth Rogers that the “creation of scenery evokes a poetic mood lifting one out of everyday care and ennobling the spirit with intimations of the divine.”

Gardens are an ethereal world – they should be calming spaces and transport you to another state of mind...

“Let me recommend

What to do

When your heart is heavy or blue.

Get to steppin.’

Climb those stairs

To that ballroom in the air.

Does anyone wanna go

waltzing in the garden?

Does anyone wanna go dance up on the roof?”

-  Al Jarreau, Larry Williams, Andrew Ford,

“Roof Garden”

, Reprise Records ©1981