Home Sweet Gnome

 "Sometimes I feel like I'm actually on the wrong planet, 
and it's great when I'm in my garden. 
But the minute I go out the gate I think:
'What the hell am I doing here?' "
George Harrison

In January 1970, George Harrison bought a house called Friar Park, on the western edge of  the Thames-side town of Henley, about an hour west of central London. The 60-acre estate has its feet, as it were, in the realm of the bus-stop-and-bins of suburbia, but its head rests quietly on the edges of the Chilterns. A rambling neo-gothic mansion built in the 1880's, by the '70s Friar Park had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it was due to be demolished. Instead, it was rescued and repaired. For thirty years it was home to Harrison, and the location of his main recording studio, and his family live there to this day. 

The house must have hundreds of tales to tell, but this post is about the garden, which has been recreated in the virtual world of Littlefield Grid by Pete Clements, aka Mudpuddle Cleanslate, on a region called 'All Things Must Pass'. This picture, as with all the landscape images below, was taken in that place in the  metaverse.

The gardens of Friar Park were laid out in the 1890's to the specifications of Sir Frank Crisp.  In the unfair way that dullards often dub those people with more brains and wider interests than they have, Crisp is often termed 'eccentric' and 'madcap' in descriptions of the house and grounds, which makes him sound a bit of a fool. 

In reality, Crisp was a well-travelled, highly intelligent, multifaceted man with a rather endearingly youthful sense of humor.

Crisp was at the top of his profession, a noted solicitor and a respected amateur scientist who was very active in the Linnean Society. He wrote a two volume survey of Medieval English gardens and a detailed guide to Friar Park for the public, styled after the manner of an illuminated manuscript in best neo-gothic lettering.

 The grounds of Friar Park consist of over a dozen different features or gardens within the garden, all connected by a fine carriage drive and a score of walkways, paths and trails taking you from the Alps to Japan, back in time through the Age of Elizabeth to the Medieval era, and into realms of fantasy that rival the Lord of the Rings. The most important of these is perhaps the Alpine Garden.

In the late 1890's Crisp's alpine garden was the largest in England, consisting of three acres of Yorkshire granite, rising to a height of almost forty feet, with bridges, waterfalls, rare plants, and all the nooks and crannies such plants need to thrive. The rockery was topped by a scale model of the Matterhorn in snowy white quartz. Under the 'mountains', and elsewhere in the grounds, he created various caves, including an ice cave modeled on the ones at Grindenwald.  All this, and garden gnomes.

This wonderful map from the 1914 Guide Book gives you a glimpse at how much variety Crisp managed to fit into his fantasy world, the parterre gardens, a collection of topiary, woodland walks, a kitchen garden and orchard, numerous ponds and a boating lake, this fascinating garden was meant to be enjoyed by the public as well as satisfy the personal ambitions and passions of a public man. To read more about the spectacularly punny and charming map, and to better see the details on it, read The Garden Trust's article on it here.

The kitchen garden, Mudpuddle style

A life in the limelight, and a love of the landscape. An appreciation for the wider world, and the desire to be surrounded at home by one's travels, a gentle, sometimes silly, humorous philosophy - all of this  were clearly shared by George Harrison. 

Here he is, gnomelike among the gnomes. He is said to have spent countless hours working on the grounds of Friar Park, and penned a song for his predecessor, the 'Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp', one of the tracks on the album 'All Things Must Pass'. The evening hours, when any imperfections are mercifully veiled by twilight, were said to be his favorite time to be out in the garden, able to enjoy the moment not stress over a to do list. How wise.

Enjoy also this wonderful video of the song 'Crackerbox Palace', filmed at Friar Park. If Youtube decides not to let your see the video embedded below, here is the link.

Pete Clements (known in Virtual worlds, and on YouTube, as Mudpuddle Cleanslate) is one of the finest builders in Opensim,  yet he is often overlooked by those less familiar with his home grid, Littlefield. A huge Beatles fan, Pete's Pepperland sims, based on the 1960 animated film 'Yellow Submarine'  are a popular attraction on Littlefield Grid - there's an unofficial Pepperland website and in 2018, to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie, Pete created and designed and typeset the entire book you can explore too, on Blurb Books - as is Arles, the beautiful region that allow you to walk through the places that inspired many of Van Gogh's best known paintings. Here is a video of that.

Arles on LFGrid, by Pete Clements, aka Mudpuddle Cleanslate

For some time, Pete Clements has been working on a replica of the gardens of Friar Park, and all the color pictures in this article are from the virtual environment. His extraordinary creations have the advice and creative input of the lovely Chelsea Louloudi, and this build is no exception, so congratulations to both.

The build is not yet finished (and a perfectionist like Pete may never admit he is completely done with the project, although he tentatively suggests this September as a finish date) but it's well worth visiting already, for Beatle-ologists and afficionados of music history, lovers of George Harrison's solo career, and of virtual art in general.

a short-lived cloudburst.

George Harrison was not yet 27 when he bought this house, it's worth reflecting on that fact. Clearly, he wasn't like most twenty-somethings, having had both wild success and staggering let-downs in his personal and professional relationships. Most of us are never confronted with the powerlessness of power, the reality that just because you're part of the elite, you can't fix the planet. This, then, was the kind of person who decided to save and revive Friar Park. All that plus a large dose  of spirituality from East to West, and a poet's heart added to the mix.

The balloon may be trying to 'burn out this desire'

The inworld version of the garden in Friary Park by Pete Clements is, of course, not meant to be an exact mathematical representation of the original. it's a different shape, to start with, and the house has been put to one side, as mentioned above, in a classy move - it is, after all, a private home.  

Naturally, this post does not attempt to show you all the treasures on show. Rather, it's an invitation to find for yourself the Drinking Stork, the Gloomy Glen and the piece of Petra. It's one of the most rewarding walks in the park you are likely to take in virtual.  Greenhouses, the many caves and grottoes, and the Japanese garden features have been in some places reimagined inworld, especially in terms of the ubiquitous gnomes. 

Garden gnomes occupy a unique place in the English garden tradition. Figures of dwarves were not unknown in the Renaissance gardens of England, but the true Gnome comes, of course, from the German tradition, and their use in the form we know today began when Sir Charles Isham introduced them into his garden at Lamport Hall, Northampton in the 1840s.

 Half a century later, Sir Frank was reputed to have an even larger collection of gnomes than Sir Charles, and even then as in the past half century, garden gnomes received mixed reviews, going through brief moments of vogue, and evolving in their look, yet tenaciously holding on to that cheeky grumpiness. Or should that be the other way around.. 

The use of statuary to represent supernatural creatures, deities, or attributes, this of course has a long history in the most prestigious gardens. But the gnome, so homely, comical, and some might say crudely formed, this is another matter. And it is just that explosion of the pomposity of the garden purist that seems to be at play here. Why should the guardian spirits of this land not be diggers in the earth, benign haunters of the mulch and stone, with hunched backs and brightly colored hats?  And why shouldn't they occasionally ride on a Vespa? 

The democratization of deity is a far kindlier mythology than most of the classical stories of hunters and destroyers that form the backstory to most Greco-Roman classical statues. 

There are three classic modes of landscaping - the formal garden, where nature is kept closely in check, the semi-formal, or 'English Garden' where nature is given a discreet helping hand to show its 'Capabilities', as our most renowned landscape gardener liked to say, and the Wilderness, or Park, where things are left largely to themselves. 

At Friar Park, the formal gardens include the Elizabethan Garden, the Herbaceous Garden, and of course the Dial Garden, particularly notable for the exotic topiary, in both RL and virtual (although, to be honest, keeping virtual topiary looking just right has to be a great deal easier). Of course it's hard to say if banana skins are allowed to lurk in the real park. Health and Safety, after all.

There is also plenty of space for the semi-formal, with meadows, paddocks, reedbeds, and pools, and vistas between secular trees. Places for contemplation of a wider, better, more peaceful life. 

For contrast, though, are the wild places. Friar Park has at its heart the entire miscellaneousness of the history of the Garden, stretching back in space and time, all the way to Eden.

Don't miss the woodland walks, above all. Friar Park has several, and in Pete Clements' imagined version, English icons abound, with some Tolkeinian touches, it would seem - the presence of gnomes making even the spookier parts delightful... well, still pretty spooky...

There are few builds that rise to the heights of this one, for both the erudition and the creative talent of the builder. It is the perfect place where you can, to quote the lyrics of the Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp,   "Let it roll down through the caves, Ye long walks of Coole and Shades Through ye woode, here ye rest awhile..."

To visit inworld, go to

lfgrid.com:8002:All Things Must Pass