asks John Fletcher

I put this serious question to all horticulturalists. It has baffled me for years. Is it two separate rows of separate yew trees, marching down either side of a path, such as Ionicus incorporated in his endpaper to Sunset at Blandings? Or is it two parallel yew hedges, close-clipped topiary, solid rectangles, no roots or trunks visible, such as you can see at Sudeley Castle?

I do not know of any other garden, real or fictitious, claiming to have a "yew alley". Has anyone got a monograph on "Yew Alleys through the Ages" or "How to Grow Yew Alleys" which might shed light?

I returned to this problem when I read an article about Sudeley's romantic owner, Henry Dent-Brocklehurst, in a pre-Christmas number of the Sunday Times. It was a good article, not like those comments we have been getting from The Times diarist who thinks Blandings Castle featured in the Jeeves and Wooster novels. Eleanor Mills, who admitted writing the Sunday Times article, correctly reported two of the characteristics Sudeley shares with Blandings, apart from both being Castles. Both were at the bottom of a hill, and both lacked a moat. But she added that both were "behind a yew hedge". This insults them both. Only an insignificant or toy  castle could fit "behind" a yew HEDGE. More to the point, Blandings has, in the famous story "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend", a yew ALLEY, and the argument between Emsworth and McAllister is about whether the path down it should be mossy or gravelled. A yew hedge, such as you might have round the perimeter of a garden or field, hardly allows a path. A yew alley requires at least two hedges in parallel, and the space between, the alley, is naturally some kind of path.

To discover exactly what a yew alley was I have read widely and asked several people who looked as if they knew more than Lord Emsworth and possibly as much
as McAllister, but their answers were indecisive. I have three reasons for favouring the topiary or Sudeley solution.

First, the only illustration I can find to "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend" is on the cover of a recent large Penguin, Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (see right). In the foreground is Lord Emsworth and the girl friend; in the background is a section of the Castle; and between them are tall rectangular cut yew hedges. Clearly this artist, Chris Riddell, thought that was the right answer. Neither of the two original magazine articles, Tony Ring tells me, illustrated a yew alley, as though the artists were also not sure what it was.

Second, the Ionicus drawing (below) in Sunset at Blandings does not convince. Yew trees are those aged and gnarled poisonous evergreens growing untidily in graveyards. Ionicus's trees look nothing like yews. They are tall and thin like poplars, straight out of a bleak French country scene, except that in France the rows would be straighter. No doubt there could be a path between the rows, but on the Ionicus drawing it would lead from nowhere to nowhere else.

Third, the Sudeley Castle yew alleys, close-cropped, are most impressive, as those on the Pilgrimage may remember. Each yew hedge is about forty feet long and about nine feet high (see left and below), and is one of a pair. There are two such pairs. The inevitable paths between the hedges could easily be either mossy or gravelled. They are in the north shade of the castle, a great feature of the Sudeley garden.

So with the weight of evidence going this way, I believe the Sudeley yew alleys prove (if proof be needed) that Sudeley is a strong basis for Blandings. I also believe that because Sudeley is Blandings, a yew alley is not just two parallel rows of yew trees. But is this a circular argument, I ask myself? Can anyone tell me authoritatively and definitively what a yew alley is?

The Irish Yew

contributed by James Hogg

I have not been able to find an illustration of a yew alley, but in her book "Private Gardens of England" Penelope Hobhouse shows a beech alley, which amounts to the same thing give or take the species, at Jenkyn Place, Bentley, Hampshire. The beech hedge on either side of the lawned alley is clipped in the rectangular formation so often seen in yew hedges. There is another beech alley at St.Paul's Waldenbury, Herts, home of the Bowes Lyons and birthplace of the Queen Mother. Yew hedging is so prevalent in English stately gardens that I feel certain there are examples (in addition to Sudeley) of double planting to enhance a particular vista, creating an alley of whatever width will draw the eye most effectively towards the feature at the end --usually either a piece of statuary or a an arch giving onto an extended view beyond.

The Ionicus illustration shows the alley to be planted with Irish yew, which is a staccato growth rather like an exclamation mark. According to Vita Sackville-West in "The Illustrated Garden Book", the Irish yew appeared as a chance seedling of the common native yew at the farm of a Mr Willis in County Fermanagh over two hundred years ago. The Irish yew surviving at the house of his landlord, Florence Court, is the matriarchal ancestress of every Irish yew since. Whether Ionicus knew about this and was thus inspired to Hibernicise the Blandings alley we may never know.