The Loudon's home: Porchester Terrace Bayswater

'The wedding breakfast was in No. 5 Porchester Terrace, with the room looking like a florist's shop. The menu was soup, fish, duck, cake and wine. There was merriment but not the music and dancing enjoyed by younger couples. John had never danced in his life.' This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024). 

John Claudius comments on his own house and garden at Porchester Terrace

The object was to build two small houses which should appear as one, and have some pretensions to architectural design; being, at the same time, calculated for invalids, and, therefore, furnished with verandas extending nearly round the whole building, for taking exercise in during inclement weather. The houses form part of a row of detached dwellings lying parallel to a street (Porchester Terrace, Bayswater) running north and south. According to the principle we have laid down, the diagonal of the square ought to have been parallel to the street, instead of one of its sides; and we should have placed the building in this manner: but, on stating our intentions to the surveyor of the estate, from whom we took the ground on a ninety-nine years' lease, he objected to it, as it did not appear probable that it would be generally followed in the other buildings in the same row, and, therefore, was, in his opinion, likely to disfigure the street.

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Soil & Walks. The whole of the ground, except the part on which the house stands, was trenched 4 ft. deep; the surface soil of what was excavated for the foundation and basement story of the house, and the half of the surface soil of the road, being previously distributed over the garden in such a manner, as to raise the ground at the house 2 ft. higher than the footpath in the street. Round the house the ground was kept nearly on a level for some feet distant; after which it was made to decline equally on every side, till at the front entrance it was higher than the gravel of the public path by the depth of the sill of the gate; and at the back entrance it was on a level with the path of the public lane. Before trenching, the ground was also limed, and thickly coated over with the best London stable dung. The lime was introduced, not only for the sake of adding calcareous matter to the earth, but for forming a comparatively insoluble compound with the dung, in order to prevent it from being all employed by the roots of the trees at once. By a part of it being rendered comparatively insoluble, there will be, as it were, a reserve of nourishment in the soil for many years to come; because it is well known that time and the soil gradually dissolve such a compound. The trenching was performed in autumn, and in the following spring the walks were hollowed out, the edgings firmly beaten, and planted with box, and the walks laid with gravel, and immediately after very heavily rolled.

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Outdoor Arrangements. The front gardens are divided by a light wire fence, in the centre of which is the pedestal o, surmounted by a handsome sculptured vase of Coade's artificial stone. The back gardens are separated by a flued wall, which, though only 10 in. thick, yet, being built with bricks set on edge, and not having the ends of the bricks quite flush with the wall on the north side, has a flue left in it 4 in. wide. The wall on the north side is chiefly covered with ivy; and, consequently, the surface of its brickwork is entirely concealed. At the lower end of the back gardens is a double shed; and on the south side of the party wall is a hot-house, and a greenhouse, or glass case (), for green-house plants, which are trained to upright wires against the flued wall; one species to each wire. Over each rafter of the hot-house is an iron rod, placed so as to be about 4 in. from the glass, and connected with light horizontal rods for the purpose of supporting a canvass covering during the winter nights, or in very hot weather in summer, when shading is required. This covering, when not in use, rolls up by means of a pulley, on a rod which extends the whole length of the house, so as to be completely concealed from the sight, and secure from the weather. 

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It will, perhaps, be difficult to find any person but ourselves, to whom a garden treated as ours has been would be suitable; because the end that we had in view was scientific knowledge, rather than ordinary enjoyment. We allude to the great number of changes which we made, in order not only to have a great many plants in the garden under culture at the same time, but to prove the culture of the different plants, and to familiarise our minds, as much as possible, with the aspect of all the plants, useful and ornamental, of the hardy kinds, which can be grown in British gardens. In particular, we were desirous of becoming, as it were, intimately acquainted with all kinds of hardy trees and shrubs adapted for enriching pleasure-grounds; and in this we certainly succeeded in an eminent degree. Had we confined ourselves to herbaceous plants, instead of growing 2000 species at one time, we might have had 10,000 in our limited space. A calculation is made, by which it is shown that 1800 species may be grown on the tops of the boundary walls of a garden very little larger than ours.

See also: Gardenvisit.com appreciation of John Claudius Loudon.