The Corner Garden
Listed on March 7, 2015 in Blogs!
Work has now started on our latest exciting development, the creation of a new garden in the sunken area to the side of the Mews. This has been made possible by an extremely generous donation by someone very close to Dillington who wishes to remain anonymous. The garden will be called the CORNER GARDEN in memory of Tony Corner – an eminent Oxford mathematician. Tony Corner was born in Shanghai in 1934 and had a secure childhood until the Japanese invaded China. They confiscated the family house and interned everyone in a concentration camp for three years until liberated by the Allied forces. By this time they were starving. Once back in England Tony was educated at Eastbourne College, discovered a gift for mathematics and went up to Corpus Christi College Cambridge. After graduating he was elected a Fellow then moved to Oxford where he taught for forty years. He was a ‘pure mathematician’ specialising in Abelian groups and proved a theorem named after himself: The Corner Theorem which is the basis of research in many universities worldwide today. He was a lively and entertaining companion with a gift for languages and was once discovered reading Winnie the Pooh in Turkish on Oxford station! He had thorough knowledge and love of opera and classical music. He retired to Exeter and died in 2006 after a long illness which he bore with courage, dignity and a wry sense of humour.
The garden is going to be divided into three linked but quite distinctive areas, one of which will be a poetry garden with birch trees and a bench for quiet contemplation. The path that runs down through the orchard is a separate garden enclosed by a beech hedge and the other garden will contain spring bulbs such as crocuses and snowdrops. There will also be a screen of pleached lime running along the existing historic wall with an under storey of beech. The design work has been done by Somerset garden designer and historian, Michelle Martin, the construction works will be by Neil Dopson and the planting by Dillington head gardener, Ben James.
