The garden at Chatsworth in Derbyshire is a place of beauty and grandeur. Jane Powers is captivated
My heart was won over the minute we drove into the car park at Chatsworth, one of the grandest gardens in these islands. There, among the hundreds of vehicles outside this most stately of stately homes, was a small red hen. She accepted a few crumbs from us, and bustled off to check in the other new arrivals. A few other hens were similarly employed among the visitors. What an excellent welcoming committee.
I had expected Chatsworth, the home of the Cavendish family (the Dukes of Devonshire) since 1549, to be an off-putting place - like its stern-looking sister property, Lismore Castle in Co Waterford. The latter, beautiful as it is, makes one feel like an outsider, with its protective architecture and sombre grey stonework. Not so at the Derbyshire seat, where the buttery stone, open aspect, and the welcoming posse of poultry create a congenial atmosphere.
It has been open to the public almost since it was built, and nowadays paying visitors (650,000 of them per annum) are the lifeblood of the property, contributing about £3.2 million a year, all of which goes towards the upkeep of this impeccably maintained estate.
Visitors are encouraged to kick up their heels willy-nilly, or at least, in the words of the guidebook: to "picnic and play wherever you choose" - and to bring their dog, too.
Our couple of hours, alas, allowed no time for picnic or play, or even to linger anywhere. Instead, we promised ourselves a return visit, and galloped around as much of the garden as we could, seeking Chatsworth's most famous features.
The 105-acre plot (set in an estate of 35,000 acres) has long been known for its spectacular waterworks. Tallest of these is the Emperor Fountain, constructed by the sixth Duke of Devonshire to impress Czar Nicholas I of Russia on a visit to England in 1844. It was planned not just to top the Czar's 37-metre fountain at Peterhof, but to be the highest waterspout in the world.
Its engineering, conceived by the then head gardener, Joseph Paxton, is on a grand scale, but engagingly simple. Rainwater from the moors above is collected by the four-kilometre-long Emperor Stream, which in turn fills the eight-acre Emperor Lake, at a level 122 metres higher than the fountain. Then, 1,890 metres of underground pipes carry the water to the fountain on the south side of the house. The jet has been known to shoot 90 metres high - making this still the highest gravity-fed fountain in the world.
A disappointing footnote to the making of this marvel was that the Czar's trip to England allowed no time for a stop at Chatsworth. He never saw the fountain's towering gush. It was named, nonetheless, in his honour.
While the loftiest waterwork at Chatsworth is the Emperor, the most modest must be the ancient lead duck in the Ring Pond. On the day we visit, its spurt is but half a metre high. Yet with a birth date in 1692, any activity from this patinated old thing seems curiously heroic. Originally dating from the same year (but since replaced twice) is what a teenaged Queen Victoria referred to as the "squirting tree". The Willow Tree Fountain, with branches that could be made to drench the unsuspecting passer-by, was a giochi d'acqua, or water joke, a fad born in Italy in the late 16th century, and introduced into fashionable gardens elsewhere in Europe.
England's "best water feature" (according to a Country Life poll of 45 garden experts) is Chatsworth's 300-year-old Cascade, where water pitches down 24 groups of steps. It is splendid, and beloved by children who play in its tumbling, frothing liquid. But my favourite watery diversion here is Revelation, by Angela Conner (whose spiralling Irish Wave oscillates above Dublin's Park West business campus).
Her kinetic sculpture stands in a rectangular pond. It is a massive brushed stainless steel pod that slowly, creakingly opens to reveal a golden seed-sphere within. As it closes, water mystifyingly fills the inside of the shining orb, its weight forcing the steel pod-petals shut. Finally, with a great splasssshhhh!, tons of water are released, and the pod opens once more. Its cycle is mesmerising, and if it were not for the call of the other wonders in this most wonder-filled garden, we would have stayed for hours.
Paxton (who is best known for designing the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851) was head gardener here for more than 30 years. He and the sixth Duke made a powerful team: the drive, ingenuity and multifarious skills of the one matched by the ambition and money of the other. Paxton's greatest achievement was the building in 1840 of the Great Conservatory, 84m (275.6ft) long and 37.5m (123ft) wide (the largest in the world). Its main thoroughfare, the width of two carriages, passed through a jungle of exotics, including palms, cycads, banyans and bananas - among the latter, of course, the dwarf Cavendish banana, one of many plants named for the sixth Duke. Its stoves ate 300 tons of coal in winter to circulate heat around seven miles of pipe.
It also ate money, and in the frugal days after the first World War, it was demolished (having fallen into neglect during the conflict). Also demolished was Paxton's Lily House, where in 1849 the giant Amazonian lily, Victoria amazonica flowered for the first time in Britain.
Yet one of Paxton's other extravaganzas was restored just a couple of years ago. The Rock Garden is several storeys high, mammoth rock balanced upon mammoth rock. It was skilfully constructed (and even more skilfully restored) to look chillingly precarious - as if a bit of bad weather or a clumsy footfall might bring the thousands of tons of hulking grey boulders down into a heap. This is a celebration of rocks for rocks' sake. No bits of aubreita or dianthus peep coyly from their dark crevices. True, an eclectic mix of ferns, bamboo, gunnera, gorse and ivy clusters at their elephantine feet, but by the time they have reached the pinnacle of their pile, several dozen metres up, the rocks are naked, harsh and elemental.
Chatsworth is an invigorating garden to visit, because while the historic features are constantly being preserved and restored, a thoroughly contemporary air pervades the place. New sits gracefully with the old: for instance, Elisabeth Frink's War Horse (its broad back eagerly clambered onto by young visitors) shares the same vista as Paxton's Emperor Fountain and a 17th-century Triton and sea horses. As well as being invigorating, Chatsworth is infinitely interesting. It is impossible to do more than skim over its 105 acres of gardens and centuries of creation in just a couple of hours (never mind a few hundred words). Which is why I look forward to a return visit.
Admission to gardens only (house is extra): adults £5.75 (€8.38), seniors and students £4.25 (€6.19), children £2.50 (€3.65), family £14 (€20.41). Car parking £1.50 (€2.19). Garden guidebook £3 (€4.37). See also www.chatsworth.org