Goddards Garden: Our Northern Gem - Talk

The ‘Other’ Goddards Garden: The Terrys and George Dillistone 

For most garden enthusiasts, the name ‘Goddards’ probably suggests the Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll collaboration in Surrey.  But the York Goddards was built in 1926-7 for Noel and Kathleen Terry, designed by Walter Brierley, and is now in the care of the National Trust.  It is surrounded by an important survivor of a mid-war period ‘suburban’ garden. George Dillistone (1877-1957), who designed the garden, is an unjustly neglected figure - despite the many gardens he designed, his contemporaries’ approval, his writing, and his founding role in the Institute of Landscape Architects.  Goddards may be the only remaining garden where he designed both hard landscaping and planting and that still exists in its entirety, attached to the house for which it was planned.  The illustrated talk by garden historian, Professor Gillian Parker, uses Goddards’ Arts and Crafts garden as a framework for exploring Dillistone’s landscape design significance, his life and work and his relationship with the Terrys and their architect. 

Gillian Parker: since retiring from a long career as a researcher in health and social care policy, Gillian has been turning herself into a garden historian. She completed a Post-graduate Diploma in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London in 2020 and since 2021 has been a post-graduate research student in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield, especially illuminating the history of the Backhouse Nursery of York.  Her interest in George Dillistone started with her role as a volunteer in his garden at Goddards, and she has had full access to the archives of the National Trust and of the Terry/Dillistone material held at the Borthwick Institute. 

Host or Publisher York Civic Trust