This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
Tickle your irises with a paintbrush! Benton End is reborn. The former Suffolk home and East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, created by Cedric Morris and his lifelong partner Arthur Lett-Haines has now — 44 years after his death — reopened as part of the Garden Museum.
Artist, gardener, poppy and iris breeder, Cedric Morris used his paintbrush to cross pollinate irises to achieve the famous rich colours and speckles of the Benton End series. He wrote in 1944 that a flower painter must express “the presence of entities other than human who concern themselves with the well-being of plants”. He could have been describing Benton End itself.
Benton End was a place where plants, painting, conversation, cooking and friendship became inseparable to create a unique cours libre. In what has been described as the horticultural event of the year, the newly reopened garden feels less like a restoration than a continuation, a living tribute to its creators and their circle.
Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, first passed by when visiting Ronald Blythe, author of Akenfield. He was told that there was “nothing left”.
As recent Philip Mould exhibitions and books demonstrate however, the spirit that animated Benton End has survived in the memories of his students and collaborators, in paintings and in Cedric’s precious plants, dispersed for safe keeping by his plant executor Jenny Robinson.
The restoration team used Cedric’s paintings to inspire the layout, uncovered “ghost” plants in situ and reconvened others fostered by expert breeders such as Sarah Cook and the Beth Chatto Foundation. Artist and planting designer Sarah Price and head gardener James Horner have retained his gnarled old trees and underplanted them with Benton irises and other finds like Papaver orientalis “Cedric Morris” and Rubus x tridel “Benenden”.
Pink paths of crushed Suffolk bricks, mixed with a 1990s upcycled terrace and local loam, create a framework for naturalistic planting rich in texture and colour. Humming with bees and laid out to catch both breeze and play of light, the borders against the old walls already feel like a living painting.
Nursery stock tables full of seedlings are also on display, as befits a garden in progress. Pragmatic and experimental, like Morris, this first season feels like a sketchbook of ideas and inspirations, with many rich layers to come.
Like Great Dixter, where Horner trained, Benton End celebrated craft learned through doing. Its significance lies in its role as a place of both inspiration and education to many artists. Cedric and Lett brought the Parisian West Bank to Suffolk in the 1940s, creating an intense milieu where artists learned through observation and conversation.
Students paid little or stayed at Benton End in exchange for work, receiving gentle guidance from Cedric together with Lett’s excellent cooking, parties and pub trips.
A wayward young Lucian Freud was sent by his father to learn his craft. Maggi Hambling said it “made me who I am”. Benjamin Britten and John Nash were regular visitors. Beth Chatto came with her plantsman husband Andrew and said Cedric gave her the confidence to create her own garden.
Money was always tight, but the generosity of ballet dancer and painter Paul Odo Cross’s bequest allowed Cedric to stay at Benton End until his death.
Further generosity from the Pinchbeck Charitable Trust has now enabled the Garden Museum to reopen it, whilst celebrating in London with an exhibition titled “Paradise of Pollen and Paint”.
Having secured £2.9m lottery money, this paves the way for future funding to restore the house and create a space to teach and inspire future generations of artists and gardeners.
Visiting Benton End for the first time, Ronald Blythe recalled “The atmosphere was … robust and coarse, exquisite and tentative all at once, round and ready and fine mannered and also faintly dangerous.” He said it gave him the confidence to pursue a writing career.
Benton End’s greatest achievement will not be the recreation of a historic garden but the revival of an aura and a culture.
In an age where historic places are too often preserved as sterile museums, this project recognises that the most important inheritance can be a way of living: observing closely, sharing knowledge freely and finding delight in plants and people.
