Dean Garnier Garden
The Dean Garnier Garden is accessible to all. Now over ten years old, it is a landmark of the Cathedral much appreciated by townsfolk and tourists alike for its panoramic view of the great Cathedral and for its stillness and beauty the year round.
The Dean Garnier Garden was officially opened in October 1995 by the then Dean of Winchester Trevor Beeson. Designed for the benefit of the Winchester community and visitors to the Cathedral, it has been constructed on an unusual site remarkable for its history and panoramic view of Winchester Cathedral.
Located on the remains of the medieval monks’ Dorter (a dormitory) of the Priory of St Swithun, it is accessed through a heavy oak door and up ancient stone steps from the Inner Close of the Cathedral. The upper elevations of the Dorter were destroyed during Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries in the early sixteenth century, but the ground floor walls remain, filled with rubble, preserving the upper-floor level of the present garden.
The site was an uncultivated relic of the past until the 19th century ‘gardening dean’, Thomas Garnier, arrived at the Cathedral in 1840 and made of it a rose garden. A founder-member of the Hampshire Horticultural Society, Dean Garnier also beautified the Deanery Garden and planted trees in the grounds of the Cathedral.
With Dean Garnier’s nineteenth-century garden and the medieval monks in mind, an inspired and hard-working Friends of the Dean Garnier Garden, the Hampshire County Council and the Hampshire Gardens Trust built the Dean Garnier Garden to provide a place of repose for the Winchester community and visitors to the Cathedral.
The plants used in the Lady Chapel Garden provide a colourful display in summer designed to reflect the decoration of the Lady Chapel at the east end of the Cathedral. The Monks’ Herb Garden is planted with medicinal herbs once used by the medieval Benedictine monks. The shrub roses of the Long Border, along the garden path by the Presbytery Lawn, are species that existed when Dean Garnier was gardening. In 1998 the Friends of the Dean Garnier Garden published a small illustrated guide to the Garden explaining its design and planting. This is available in the Cathedral Visitors’ Centre.
The Friends of the Dean Garnier Garden who maintain the garden financially and physically number about 200.
For further information about the Friends of the Dean Garnier Garden contact their Secretary Paul Russell on 01962 855615, e-mail paul.russell@goadsby.com or write to Green Quarter, 124 Olivers Battery Road, Winchester SO22 4HB.