While Paxton thought that the popular, modern metallic glasshouses espoused by Loudon were graceful in appearance, he concluded that wooden structures were preferable. One advantage was that wood was less expensive than iron. More importantly, he understood that, as the iron in the sash bars and rafters expanded and contracted according to the outside temperature, the glass was prone to breakage. In addition, iron corroded and was far more complicated to repair, whereas a wooden roof needed only a common carpenter. As the debate was revisited in the pages of the Gardeners Magazine, and as his own experiments proceeded, Paxton became increasingly convinced of the superiority of treated wood over iron, experimenting with finer and finer sashes and rafters to admit the greatest amount of light into the house. Within a very short time, the new glasshouses he built yielded fruit and vegetables in perfection, and a profusion of flowers capable of filling the house.
Nine months after their marriage, on 5 December 1827, Paxton and Sarah’s first daughter, Emily, had been born. She was baptised twelve days later in the local village of Edensor. Sarah quickly became pregnant again and their first son, William, was born in January 1829.
The Duke had spent much of 1828 away from Chatsworth, returning only in September and October and noting again the great progress there. He began to take a closer interest in his gardener, visiting the kitchen garden and asking Paxton to thin the woods – showing a confidence in his new man which no doubt put the regular woodsman’s nose out of joint. In early 1829, the Duke walked out in the snow with Paxton to see the woods and sought him out on several occasions to discuss the management of his trees. He returned again in April, when an entry in his diary reveals the growing regard he held for the gardener who was transforming the park before his eyes: ‘I went to woods, much pleased – poor Paxton has been very unwell.’ Paxton rarely complained of illness, whereas the Duke was something of a hypochondriac, beset with hayfever, flu, inflamed eyes, stiffness and a multitude of other, often minor, afflictions which could cause him to be bedridden for weeks at a time. He had a peculiar tenderness for another man’s health.
This was a particularly happy year for the Duke. His sister Georgiana’s daughter, Blanche – his adored, adoring and favourite niece – announced her engagement to William Cavendish, Lord Burlington, the son of the Duke’s cousin, and his appointed heir. He, meanwhile, was busy with Wyatt, with politics and with parties in London, leaving Paxton to embark on his first great landscape scheme for the park and one of the earliest of those curiously Victorian garden features – the pinetum.
Pinetum is the name given to a collection of one or more of each variety of conifer worthy of cultivation. With tens of new varieties now being introduced to Britain, the formation of one offered satisfaction of the collector’s instinct on a grand scale. Here, Paxton’s early experience at Chiswick combined with the Duke’s own strong arboreal interests to create a startling miniature world. It is still there, a place of surprising and extraordinary tranquility, a group of trees strikingly foreign compared to the native hardwoods in the Stand Wood higher on the slope. In spring, swathes of daffodils and piercing birdsong delight in the sunlight filtered by the cool green branches.
That this was to be one of the earliest collections to be planted in England is not entirely surprising.* The creation of a pinetum required not only a serious budget but a large amount of empty ground, separate from any other garden feature. In 1829, 8 acres of the south park were given over to the plan and the ground began to be formed in the summer. Paxton carried the seeds of the Douglas fir, the pride of California and reputed to reach 200 feet high, from London wrapped in his own hat. A Norfolk pine was fetched from Ireland by Andrew Stewart, Paxton’s foreman in the kitchen garden. A giant redwood, the monkey puzzle, hemlock spruces and the Japanese white pine were purchased and planted along with tall larches. In all, over 50 species of pine were mixed with cypress, juniper, Salisburia, thuja and yew, creating a collection of every kind of hardy conifer that could possibly be procured, each planted according to its botanical classification and clearly named on painted wooden tallies. According to the Duke, the pinetum was quickly admired ‘but no two of a party take the same view of it; one extols the scenery, another is in raptures at the old oaks, and a third wonders and asks, why I plant the fir trees so thin’.
It must have been tremendously invigorating for the young Paxton to have control over the conception and planting of such a valuable and extensive collection, combining scientific with ornamental purpose. It is possible that even at this early stage, he conceived it as part of a much larger collection of trees, an arboretum, which in some years’ time would be planted around a new 4-mile walk through the pleasure grounds since part of the new walk was already completed by the time the Duke returned to Chatsworth again in the summer. In addition, the west garden was now newly planted and Cibber’s great sphinxes had been moved there.
So pleased was the Duke with his gardener that he took him to Bolton Abbey – his property in Yorkshire – to shoot. Paxton was ‘enchanted’ – quite the best reaction for a Duke proud of his castles and palaces, deeply desirous that they should be admired and provide enjoyment for his visitors. As if he needed further reason to value the gardener, the fruit ripening in the new greenhouses, particularly melons, figs, peaches and nectarines, started to win medals at the Horticultural Society shows at Chiswick House.
The Duke was becoming deeply charmed by Paxton and began to give him increasing responsibilities, including that over all the woods and forests. In three years, the gardener had shown that he was reliable, intuitive, a practical empiricist when it came to designing plant houses, thoroughly capable of achieving whatever he set his hand to, and, furthermore, a dreamer of schemes to improve the landscape of the park in keeping with the very latest horticultural fashions. As head gardener and forester he now hired and paid his own men, managed their labours and ran his own accounts. These accounts still had to be submitted to the Chatsworth agent, and to the solicitor, Benjamin Currey, but they marked Paxton’s status and responsibility. Not only did the Duke sanction the building of a new office at Paxton’s house in the kitchen garden, but he increased his salary threefold to reflect his seniority within the household. As ‘Gardener and Woodman’ Paxton was now to be paid £226 a year, which included an allowance for finding and keeping a horse.
The increasing expenditure on the gardens and pleasure grounds during these first years indicates the changes that were being wrought. It rose from £505 to almost £2,000 by 1829, much of which was spent on the numerous new glasshouses in the kitchen garden. In addition, the Duke’s own private account books show that he gave a total of £400 to Paxton over several months, to be used for ‘new stoves’. It must be said that in the context of the Duke’s wider spending, these sums were almost insignificant. Tens of thousands of pounds were being spent on Wyatt’s improvements to the house and thousands more on collections of books, sculpture, art and furniture. The Duke was happy to spend £942 during Doncaster races week alone in his efforts to outshine his neighbour the Duke of Rutland.
Just before Easter 1830, the Duke purchased a large weeping ash from a nursery garden near Derby. Around 40 years old, its roots alone were 28 feet in diameter, and its branches radiated on each side of the trunk to a distance of 37 feet. It weighed 8 tons. Paxton was dispatched to engineer its particularly problematic removal and carriage to Chatsworth. He took with him with 40 labourers, at least 6 horses and a new machine constructed to his own design by Messrs Strutt of Belper. By Good Friday, the Duke was in a lather of anticipation. ‘Up at 6 in hope tree had come but it did not all day.’ He went to church instead.
On the first attempt to lift the tree from the ground, the strong chain snapped and it was some time before it was ready to be moved the 28 miles to Chatsworth, just managing to squeeze through toll bars along the route, contrary to the expectations of the many doubters. Four days after they had set out to collect it, the tree arrived at the park gates which had to be lifted from their hinges, parts of the walls taken down and several branches lopped off to allow it in. Finally the Duke met the weeping ash at the new northern entrance to