Mavis Batey

"In the and the of the , grandiloquent homes were built for the nation's leaders and heroes with great avenues of approach and triumphal arches. Villages which were found to stand in the way of these grandiose undertakings were removed out of sight. Sweeping changes were made at the seat of the , the victor of , which necessitated the moving of the village of in ; was destroyed in the creating of 's dramatic for the ; disappeared in the lay-out for the magnificent seat of the in . The great Whig palaces and extensive gardens at , and overran ancient villages and hamlets that stood in the way of improvements. , who had envisaged an avenue of trees between London and his , began his improvements by removing the village of which lay in the shadow of his house. The village of in was resited to give breathing space to the family of . ... By the middle of the century great gardens were being made, not only to reflect their creator's importance or political beliefs, but to demonstrate the excellence of his taste. The new vogue was not for great avenues, canals, fountains and grand parterres but for naturalized landscape. Wealthy families in every county bought up vast tracts of land to make natural gardens, which would look like landscape paintings; some took the English countryside for these picture gardens and with the help of idealized and, 'improved' it; the with memories of their s revelled in the creation of Italian classical landscapes."

"… The accepted idea of the of a building, furniture or a painting, as the rehabilitation of an object already in existence, albeit in imperfect form, cannot be applied to gardens which are by their nature organic. They have allotted life spans and have been dug up and refashioned over the centuries. ... At the has been able to restore the garden of the great from original plans, so that the design of the s and seen today is much as Evelyn described it when he visited in 1678. At in the National Trust has restored a from engravings, existing evidence and plant list which have enabled them to use contemporary plants including old cultivars of Turkish irises, apples and pears and old tulips. A current true restoration is being undertaken at , , where the poet 's famous beds, painted by in 1777, are being reinstated with authentic planting. … The ultimate in scholarly garden reconstruction is the Roman garden at executed through excavation and .."

"Mavis fell in love with her future husband, , himself one of the Bletchley “break-in” experts, after he helped her with a particularly difficult code breaking problem: “I was alone on the evening shift in the cottage and I sought the help of what called 'one of the clever Cambridge mathematicians in Hut 6’. We put our heads together and in the calmer light of logic, and much ersatz coffee, solved the problem. Dilly made no objections to my having sought such help and when I told him I was going to marry the 'clever mathematician from hut 6’ he gave us a lovely wedding present.” After the war Mavis Batey brought her indefatigability to the protection of Britain’s historical gardens. Her interest began in the late 1960s, when her husband was appointed the “Secretary of the Chest”, the chief financial officer of Oxford University. They lived in a university-owned house on the park at and she set about ensuring that the overgrown gardens were restored to their original landscaped state."