Faith and Flowers

 After all, when the fabulously rich le Fleming family had the grounds of Rydal Hall landscaped in 1909, they are hardly likely to have settled for second best. The fact that their landscape architect, Thomas Mawson, persuaded them to eschew the Lake District’s  beautiful Westmorland green slate and limestone in constructing their new garden’s Italianate terraces, fountain, steps and arbours must mean that his pre-fabricated concrete slabs, mouldings and balustrades were a fitting substitute.

 But, to my mind, the concrete can wait. And anyway, I’m enjoying the summer rain. There is no rain like Lake District rain: so fine that it’s like being misted with perfume; so refreshing they ought to bottle it and sell it as a pick-me-up.

 Alasdair and I defy the drizzle and take a seat on a bench at one end of the formal terraces, and he tells me that I have come to Rydal Hall at a good time. Flush with hard-won grants of £900,000, the gardens are about to be restored to their former glory.

 Before us, the land drops steeply away to the south, and Lake Windermere. Thomas Mawson relished challenging sites which leant themselves to great terraces and pergolas, and Rydal gave him enormous scope. He was able to create formal Italianate gardens which lead down to an informal, contemplative garden that in turn blends in to the meadows beyond. With Loughrigg Fell to the west and Wansfell to the east, the garden he created is perfectly framed by nature.

 Mawson is a relatively obscure figure today, but he was the leading landscape architect of the Edwardian era. His deadly rival Gertrude Jekyll’s reputation has fared far better than his, which is ironic given that it was Mawson’s 1900 book The Art and Craft of Garden Making which gave a name to the Arts and Crafts movement of which Jekyll became a leading light.

 But Rydal is not merely a garden, and its restoration – which is certainly exciting – is by no means all that is happening here.

 For 40 years the Anglican Diocese of Carlisle has run retreats and conferences at Rydal, which boasts not just the Grade 2* listed, 30 bedroom hall but also a 32-bed bunkhouse, a conference centre, holiday cottages and camp sites in woodland glades on the 34 acres above the house.

 Central to Rydal is its lay community; a fluid multi-faith amalgam of mostly young people who come for a matter of months or sometimes more, and who follow a rule of service to the guests and visitors, and of daily prayer.

 As the garden is restored, the community will develop. “I want slightly older people,” says Alasdair. “People who are perhaps going through a life-changing experience and need somewhere in which to contemplate what they are going to do next. People who will commit to stay for a year or more. They might be considering a ministry, or a pretty profound change of career. And I’m going to pay them the minimum wage. This has really set the cat among the pigeons, but I think it is right – there is quite a bit of Christian slavery practiced at present.”

 Clearly Alasdair, appointed bursar and general administrator 18 months ago, is sweeping though the place like a whirlwind.

 “The diocese has always said this is an ecumenical centre,” he says, “and nominally that has been so. But when they appointed me they got someone who took that very seriously. I’m not an Anglican, I’m a Quaker, and so to me it is very important that the Hall, and the community, should be truly ecumenical.”

 There will be more retreats, more conferences, greater use of the Hall and the rest of the complex and, while remaining true to its ethos, it will be placed on a solid business footing.

 In all this, the garden will be integral.

 “Categorically,” Alasdair says, “the garden is critical to the success of this place. In terms of the experience people get here it is crucial.”

 We walk across the terrace that adjoins the south face of the house, and from which steps run down to the formal gardens. The rendered frontage is flat except for a central bay which rises the full three storeys of the Hall.

 For a moment I feel we might be at any one of the dozens of rather grand country house hotels, converted from the homes of rich Edwardian merchants and industrialists, which line the valleys from Windermere to Keswick, but I am immediately reminded that we are not. Alasdair pauses by the French doors of the bay and shows me the chapel. “It’s at the heart of the house,” he says, “and of the garden as well. Often we open these doors and spill out on to the terrace during worship.”

 From here, Mawson’s formal garden is laid out before us, and I can see that Alasdair is almost bursting to get to the concrete. But I stall him. “Tell me about Mawson,” I say.

 “He was a remarkable garden designer. A local man; his father was a builder and he ran a nursery – so he was a plantsman as well. He had a very vivid planting style – full of colour and vibrancy, lots of yuccas and great bold architectural plants. He didn’t go for the gentle blending of colours which Jekyll was known for.”

 Mawson liked box-edged beds, yew topiary, steps leading the eye to vistas, and to incorporate and enhance existing water features in his designs.

Once, in summer, there would have been brugmansias (Angel Trumpets), aeoniums and other tender specimens in large concrete urns placed on plinths on the balustrade which delineates the formal part of the garden. The pots are gone, the herbaceous borders have been colonised by foxgloves and ferns, and the once-grand fountain now splutters and wheezes in a sorry fashion. Once there were arbours at various points, but while the pillars remain the wooden roofing is gone. Urns, exotic plants and arbours: all will be replaced.

 As we skirt the fountain, the crumbling balustrade at the edge of the formal garden forms our horizon, and I know it will soon be impossible to avoid the subject of concrete. To deflect it, I ask if Mawson felt the spiritual power of a garden.

 “Mawson was a Methodist who saw a garden as a way to God,” says Alasdair, making it clear that he feels the same way.

 We cross the edge of the formal world, and edge down crumbling steps which run to left and right, doubling back on themselves to deliver us to the informal, contemplative garden. Tucked beneath the steps is a grotto. The white stone fountain is dry; fixed to a wall of green slate which has been colonised by starfish-like ferns.

 And the moment for the concrete has come. Alasdair picks up a piece. It looks for all the world like a cheap paving slab from B&Q, but then he turns it over to reveal a very natural-looking surface covered with tiny pieces of pea gravel. I have to admit that this is a rather superior sort of concrete. “It’s almost like Yorkshire Grit stone,” he says. This chunk, formed in a mould, was once cemented – rather like stucco or ornate plaster moulding - to the face of a plain pillar. With the application of numerous pieces, plain beams were transformed into highly decorative creations. Alasdair rubs the surface.

 “The technique seems to have been that the concrete was left to set in the mould and then, just before it had completely dried, it was washed or scrubbed and the surface cement removed, leaving the gravel exposed. Its technical name is exposed aggregate pre-cast concrete.”

 It should look like a chunk from a ‘30s pebble-dashed semi, but it does not.

 “You can see it must have given great scope to create ornately moulded features throughout the hard landscaping. He did the lot, all the paving slabs; the house even had a concrete balustrade put on top of the south face, so that it complemented the garden.”

 Great efforts are going in to matching the materials originally used. “The gravel for the concrete was extracted from a pit on the edge of the lake, but that has been closed for some time and, because this is a national park, extraction is forbidden. However, for this project the park authority has made an exception. We also don’t want it to be white, as it would have been when new, so we are working on how to colour it to a more natural, stone-like hue.”

 I realise now that Alasdair was right – this really is remarkable concrete.

 There is concrete, also, in the contemplative garden – but of a more basic kind. Here, Mawson took the stream which flowed through this typically light and grassy Cumbrian woodland and used concrete masked by limestone to create a series of mirror-still ponds that reflect the gently stirring yew, firs and sweet chestnuts.

 As we follow the path that curves back towards the house, the steady drumming of Rydal Beck’s waterfall, which has played in the background all afternoon, becomes a full timpani. In this, the wildest part of the garden, Mawson let a previous age alone. As the thunder of the falls reaches a crescendo, we come to a 17^th century grotto. Its oak door is locked, but Alasdair has the key, and dramatically flings the door open to reveal one of the loveliest waterfalls in the Lakes.

 Sun has broken through the clouds, and it illuminates the great flume of white water that crashes down into a plunge pool in which visitors often swim. This spot has had distinguished admirers. William Wordsworth, whose home at Rydal Mount was just across the lane from the Hall, came often, and Constable has painted here. The grotto, which is also suffering from neglect, will be part of Rydal Hall’s phoenix-like restoration.

 As we stroll back to the Hall I ask Alasdair what brought him here. A native of Skye for whom home is a croft and whose career has been in running educational and retreat centres, he was looking forward to retirement when the call to Rydal came. "The challenge of working with such a diverse and talented community, and to build on the very special ethos and atmosphere at Rydal,” he says, "made it an impossible opportunity to turn down".

 That and, of course, the very fine concrete.

 For information about  Rydal Hall’s accommodation, activities and retreats,  call 015394 32050, or e-mail bookings@rydallhall.org