FESTIVE NEWS • DECEMBER 2016 • PAGE 37
SIR ROY CHOSES HIS CARDS
When Sir Roy Strong officially opened the Cards
for Good Causes charity Christmas shop in All
Saints Church he quickly found the cards he will
be sending this year to family and friends.
They were from the collection of the Perennial
Gardeners Royal Benevolent Society to whom he
has bequeathed his renowned Laskett Gardens at
Much Birch.
Sir Roy, 81 and former director of both the
National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and
Albert Museum, together with his late wife Julia
Trevelyan Oman, a theatre designer began
creating Laskett Gardens out of an empty four
acre field in 1974. It would become one of the
largest private formal gardens built since the end
of World War 2.
He was devastated when the National Trust
rejected his offer to give it to the nation on his
death, together with a very large endowment to
maintain it. But now, the Laskett Gardens,
certainly the most stunning in Herefordshire, will
be his final legacy to the nation after agreement
about the gardens future was reached with
Perennial, a charity founded in 1839 to support
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