The New English Garden - in pictures
The New English Garden is a new book surveying the most significant gardens in England today. Below is a selection of some of the 25 gardens picked by garden writer and historian Tim Richardson. Photographs by Andrew Lawson
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The hot borders at Packwood House, Warwickshire, designed by
Mick Evans.Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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The grass garden at Bury Court in Hampshire, designed by
Christopher Bradley-Hole.Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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James Alexander-Sinclair's terrace borders at Cottesbrooke
Hall in Northamptonshire. Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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The Exotic Garden at Great Dixter, East Sussex, famously the
site of the old rose garden, still stands as a pioneering exemplar of
devil-may-care horticultural exuberance, with its large cannas, yuccas,
gunneras and other operatic stars. Dixter is gardened at a connoisseurial level
that is probably unmatched worldwide, the result of a continuous programme of
aesthetic appraisal and alteration which was developed by Christopher Lloyd and
head gardener Fergus Garrett, and is now continued by Fergus and his team
[since Lloyd's death in 2006].Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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The walled garden at Scampston Hall, Yorkshire, designed by
Piet Oudolf.Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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The Manor House, Armscote in Warwickshire. Designer Dan
Pearson gives a conventional lawn with an Arts and Crafts corner pavilion a
modern appeal by simple fringe plantings of Alchemilla mollis and a distinctive
wavy-topped edge.Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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The lower parterre at Trentham near Stoke-on-Trent in
autumn, with Piet Oudolf's flanking plantings in the foreground and Tom
Stuart-Smith's beyond. Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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Mount St John, Yorkshire designed by Tom Stuart-Smith. Here
the big views are complemented by big-scale plantings which bulk up in late
summer. Halfway down the slope a lateral pool breaks up the space and invites
the visitor in.Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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The Cotswolds goes cosmic at Througham Court, a lovely stone
farmhouse set on the edge of an enviably obscure Gloucestershire valley. Here,
designer-owner Christine Facer - whose work could best be described as of the
Charles Jencks School of Cosmic Gardening - has created a garden which is in
part a homage to Jencks's original Garden of Cosmic Speculation in Scotland.
Pictured here is the Arts and Crafts Sunken Garden designed by Norman
Jewson.Photograph: Andrew Lawson
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Redesigning gardens: when old favourites become new again
Timeless English gardens are always changing, says author
Tim Richardson.
By Tim Richardson7:00AM BST 20 Sep 2013/
Entitling a book The New English Garden (my latest) was
always going to be somewhat controversial. But I stand by the premise that all
25 gardens in it have been "made or remade" over the past 10 to 15
years. Gardens naturally regenerate themselves, of course, and gardening is a
notoriously and gloriously unstable practice.
Which is not to say everything has to be swept away in order
for "newness" to reign. An established structure, especially hedges
and old brick walls, is gold dust to any garden maker. Great Dixter is perhaps
the best example; Christopher Lloyd always insisted on recognition of the
topiary and hedge system his father installed with help from Edwin Lutyens, and
which provided the frame for his own horticultural exploits.
Some of the most fascinating elements of the gardens I
selected are features retained from a previous era, remodelled to suit the tone
of the new garden.
The 'Italian' sunken garden
This classic Arts and Crafts feature from the early 20th
century can be found at scores of English gardens, often in a slightly
dilapidated state. In its heyday the sunken garden was a glamorous spot for
whiling away the pre-dinner hour with a cocktail. Today's gardeners have been
exploring the horticultural possibilities of the space. At Packwood in
Warwickshire, the sunken garden has been given a new identity with dramatic
Mediterranean and South African exotic-themed plantings – kniphofias,
euphorbias, eryngiums and succulent echeverias and sedums. Poppies and white
verbascums dotted about complement the unbuttoned feel of what was originally
conceived as a romantic but "formal" feature.
Dan Pearson has taken a similarly irreverent approach at
Armscote Manor in Oxfordshire, where an enclosed Twenties sunken pool garden is
now pleasingly overrun by Rosa rugosa, reinforced by the more delicate
varieties 'Roseraie de l'Hay' and 'Blanc de Blanc'. Purple and white verbascums
surge between them and balls of clipped evergreens in informal groups add a
different note, reinstating a sense of structure while also undermining the
original fearful symmetry.
The herbaceous border
The prime showcase of the gardener's art throughout the 20th
century has gone through a sea-change over the past 15 years, as naturalistic
planting styles have become more popular.
At a garden such as Cottesbrooke in Northamptonshire, the
main double border exhibits none of the "pictorial" qualities of the
classic Arts and Crafts border, with a beginning, middle and end, and perhaps
even a clear development in terms of colour. Instead, James Alexander-Sinclair
offers a more immersive experience, with multiple repeat plantings of tall
perennials including sanguisorba and white corncockles threading through. Tom
Stuart-Smith aims for something similar in his gardens, such as Mount St John
in Yorkshire, or the revamped Trentham in Staffordshire, where favoured plants
include thalictrum, phlomis, eremurus, eupatorium and veronicastrum (you know
you are in a modern garden if you spy lots of these). He likes to think of his
gardens as a continuum, surging and receding like music.
The rock garden
The rock garden has fallen from favour in recent years. The
idea of a mountainside in suburbia evidently proved too kitschy even for
English sensibilities. But there is life in alpine or rock gardening because
the plants are so beautiful.
Keith Wiley was the moving spirit behind the acclaimed
Garden House at Buckland Monachorum in Devon for many years, and in 2004 began
his own garden, Wildside, just down the lane. His energy and ambition are
extraordinary, the new garden consisting of several acres which he first
reformed by extensive use of a mini-digger, very much in the mountain-moving
spirit of Edwardian rock gardening.
The resultant ridges, berms and pool areas create a good
habitat for many of his favourite plants, which he has arrayed naturalistically
in swathes and large unruly groupings. Troops of kniphofias, crocosmia and
agapanthus provide a flavour of the Cape while erythroniums, asters and
eragrostis grasses drift on through unhindered. Rock on, Keith!
Kitchen Garden
Growing "edibles" (as young gardeners now like to
dub vegetables) is all the rage of course, but at larger properties it is now
all but impossible for owners to keep a garden in High Victorian style. There
are a handful of astonishing exceptions, notably West Dean in Sussex, but many
owners choose to update the look of the traditional walled garden. One fine
example is Daylesford Manor in Gloucestershire, where Rupert Golby's floral
interventions, jaunty topiaries and clever fruit supports in woven hazel and
willow create an atmosphere of fun-loving fecundity. This is a large scale
kitchen garden which nevertheless feels like a garden in its own right, not a
service area.
Piet Oudolf pushes the idea even farther at Scampston Hall
in Yorkshire, where he has turned the old walled garden into a compartmented
extravaganza, with his trademark perennials-and-grasses plantings at the heart
of it all. Flower colour is by no means anathema in old kitchen gardens, of
course, since up to a quarter of the space would traditionally have been used
for growing flowers for the house.
'The New English Garden' by Tim Richardson (Frances Lincoln,
£40), is available from Telegraph Books (0844 871 1514) at £36 + £1.35 p&p.
What stunning images I must order this one!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing,
Karolyn