Visionaries and ground elder

A visit to Waltham Place in Berkshire is a good opportunity to confront some of the dilemmas of the nature-inspired garden. Owner Strilli Oppenheimer employed the late Henk Gerritsen to help her ‘naturalise’ parts of the 1920s Percy Cane layout, all pergolas and walled and hedges and walled off garden rooms. Henk’s own ‘Priona Garden’ in eastern Holland had been her inspiration to get him over, as he was obviously good at gardening without making war on nature (although I don’t recall much food growing at Priona, I think it grew in the local supermarket where there was no nature to go to war with). Priona was wonderful for the balance between wildness and hedged and trimmed and mown order – a very Dutch balance, so it was right he should be involved at Waltham.

Ground-elder is a problem at Waltham, and since the garden staff cannot rid the garden of it using the bio-dynamic methods they are instructed to use (chemical warfare is actually little better either in my experience) the pragmatic decision has been taken to accept it. In one big courtyard area it is allowed in part (but heavily suppressed by lots of seriously big perennials) but kept from spreading by a cordon sanitaire of box, ingeniously Henk-clipped into a caterpillar shape – so much more fun than self-consciously trendy cloud pruning. In another garden it is allowed free-rein, but has to face vigorous perennials and so is too kept in check; earlier in June I think this is a very effective naturalistic perennial blend but by July it has gone over. A gravel garden is a riot of self-seeding, whilst the most successful part of the garden as far as I was concerned was an allee edged by walls, where shrubs and climbers had been allowed to spread just so, perennials to spread and intermingle and self-sow – the whole looks just so perfectly on the edge of tumbling into wildness. Head gardener Beatrice Krehl and her staff have managed to create a perfect embrace of the wild and the formal here.


Not all works, or has achieved such balance yet. A perfectly good terrace has been almost entirely lost to cistus and lavender and much other shrubbery in the final stages of the rangy senile decay to which many Mediterranean species seem to suffer, while a long border seems a long way from having a successful mix of species (nothing in flower in early July!). All in all, though, an immensely brave experiment in letting formality go to seed skillfully and gracefully.

Radical idea..... plant out some wildflowers in turf, maintain by "grazing like a cow" (Henk Gerritsen) - pulling up tufts of what you don't want and the add definition by deep edging between the wildy bits and the mown lawn.

A brief hop across the ditch

    I haven’t been to France for 7 or 8 years (I’m rather embarrassed to admit), but am on the way back from a visit to the Chaumont garden festival, where I took part in a conference on naturalistic planting design. Back in the mid-1990s there was a flurry of such events with a loose group called ‘Perennial Perspectives’ – with an event organised at Kew by Brita von Schoenaich in 1994 a notable watershed, as it introduced British gardeners to the astonishing virtuosity and technical skill of planting designers in Germany. The half-dozen or so PP get-togethers involved Brits, Scandinavians, German-speakers and Dutch. No-one from Latin Europe ever showed up, which on one level was a puzzle, as we all new that there were some individuals in France who were very keen on wild-style gardening, including of course the incredibly gifted Giles Clement; but on another level confirmed our prejudices about Gallic landscape dirigisme, and the very different garden traditions of Latin Europe …. yes it does involve a lot of straight lines, and a strangely obsessive desire to separate the garden from nature.

    So, an invitation to speak in France, alongside James Hitchmough from Sheffield University and Cassian Schmidt from Heremannshof in Germany was very welcome. But to us it felt like we were in a timewarp, with speaker number  one (president of the French landscape association) pompously describing a park project which supposedly involved nature – nature being confined to an inaccessible wilderness area and a few bits of unmown grass. What is it about French landscape culture which seems unhappy with any public space which looks empty with less than 5,000 people in it? Tired by endless slides of vast mown grass spaces and thrusting walkways, speaker number two (a garden journalist) addressed us with the kind of “love your weeds” hippy ramble which we last heard about 20 years ago. He did however end up with a spirited critique of ‘natives-only’ planting, reminding us of its fascistic history. Then it was over to me, and then James and Cassian.
      We all agreed that the Chaumont garden show this year was more planty than in previous years, although only one garden made us go “wow”. In previous years the boundary between ‘garden’ and ‘installation art’ was a pretty fluid one, with many of the gardens combining art-school abstruseness with a use of materials which bore little relationship to what anyone could achieve in a permanent garden. One of the show mottoes is ‘ideas to steal’, but whilst there was some good planting to inspire visitors, so much of the non-planted elements simply don’t have permanence : willow, willow, willow, and plastic, and while Corten steel is pretty damn permanent it is beyond most people’s pockets and (yawn) we have just seen so much of the stuff in show gardens of late.
   The Chaumont site however is fantastic, kicking any British garden show into the compost heap, as the show gardens are shoehorned into the landscape by hedges, and blocks of permanent perennial planting. The whole event is a delightful experience, and surprisingly intimate. All terribly tasteful and stylish and so very French.

       The whole thing though does reinforce my feeling  of many years that French garden style is very good at the cosmetic - the stylish but not necessarily durable, whereas what Dutch and German garden style is more about combining style with technical proficiency and practical longevity. I suppose we are in the latter camp, but scoring lower on all counts. The bedding schemes which French munipalities invest in may belong to the cosmetic camp, but oh, they are so good, very high quality, and there is clearly no problem with funding them; that any British town council would stump up such funds is sadly unthinkable.

This was jolly clever, on the edge of the parkland to the south east of the Chateau de Chaumont,  bedded out plants in ribbons so that when you see them sideways or diagonally on, there appears to be a field of planting.

       On to a night at a grotty hotel in Paris, and a meal in a pavement café with James in which we go into raptures about French food culture, and vengefully remind myself that escargots are merely a cover for butter and garlic. Dutifully set off for Parc la Villette, one of the most important parks made in the latter years of the 20th century. Trudged around, admiring the red steel ‘folies’ but cursing the grey gigantism of everything else, more spaces which needed 5,000+. Yes, there are some wonderful little corners too, and a fantastic variety of spaces, but not a perennial or a flower to be seen anywhere. The whole place feels oddly sterile. Came back to grumbling, I hope not too xenophobically, about French landscape culture: form over all else, a fixation with hard materials and straight lines, a general lack of softness. Lets hope the little signs of interest in wilder styles take root. I’d love to see a real French take on naturalistic planting.

The Wild Garden - June 2010

Here are some pics of our wild garden, early June. Click below:


photos

Cow Parsley gardening

    

        This year’s Chelsea Flower Show seemed to mark a return to horticulture, rather a relief after the show becoming increasingly dominated by sculptural assemblages (I’m trying to be polite here) or flocks of statuary. A lot of the gardens were just well planted, with a refreshing lack of pretentiousness. Andy Sturgeon’s winning Mediterranean Garden (for The Daily Telegraph) was a model of all that is best about British garden design – the classic balance between strong structures and exuberant planting – but all in a very contemporary style.

            No cow parsley though. I’d like to put in a bid to do a cow parsley garden. Queen Anne’s Lace to American readers (I think). This cream-white flowered umbelliferous plant dominates a vast proportion of British roadsides, seemingly able to compete with the grasses which, fed on nitrogen pollution, more or less suffocate the rest of our limited wildflower flora. In my last garden, I conducted an experiment in letting it seed one year, and then controlling by pulling up after flowering. It worked, in that I got a respectable amount of cow parsley but without it competing with anything else. So, now I’m repeating the experiment here.

            What I like about cow-parsley is the delicate flowers and, because it is such a common element of the British countryside, brings the landscape into the garden. The colour is also a buffer, toning down and blending the brighter colours of border plants. In theory I’d be quite happy for the stuff to distribute itself  around the garden, but only if it isn’t going to become a weed and out-compete my border plants.

            Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) is a biennial which survives year to year by seeding and apparently (though I have not verified this myself) by the production of bulbils at the base of the plant. It has a very narrow profile, doesn’t spread sideways or sprawl about, and dies from July onwards. Not something which could become a major problem then, and its reproduction can be controlled by pulling out before it seeds. Welcome to the naturalistic border!

The Rabbit's Eye View

                                                                                                    

  Doing a lot of teaching this spring. Groups of keen gardeners, garden design students or practising designers. English Gardening School, Society of Garden Designers regional groups, that sort of thing. Great fun, and terrific response from students. I love it. As for “teaching”, anyone who has to face a class of 30 inner-city kids five days a week is entitled to turn around and ask me to use a different verb – everyone is so keen and so appreciative. And always learn stuff from my groups as well.
    I’m currently pushing what I call the “rabbit’s eye view”, getting people down on their hands and knees looking at plants, really closely, trying to observe things they might not have seen before. It’s my belief that it is possible to predict how a plant will perform (spread, longevity, drought tolerance etc) from looking at key features of its shape, form, etc, and especially the bit where the stems join the roots. I try to pass this ‘reading the plant’ onto my students. Its about relating
    But they’ve got to get onto their hands and knees. You can’t observe plants from standing up. At the Hillier Arboretum, I have divided a group of 30+ up into groups of 4/5 to select plants to describe in their immensely long Centennial Border, “get on your hands and knees” I have to shout at some of them – this is where the sensible types get sorted out from those who brought unsuitable shoes or are afraid of tearing their tights. At least British students will work in groups. Did that with a group of mostly Chinese at Sheffield University once; as soon as you go to talk to one group they all sneak up behind you, and you turn around to see the entire class – ‘the teacher as the fount of all knowledge’ is so fundamental to them, which it isn’t to us.
    I studied adult education when I was teaching English as a Second Language back in the 1980s. The current dogma then was that a much as possible should come from the students, which is actually good, as it empowers classes and makes for a good interactive atmosphere. You don’t get a chance to nod off in my classes, there’s too much expected of you.
Photos Annie Guilfoyle, at West Dean, July 2009

Timelessly wandering in Spetchley Park

Cyclamen repandum and cowslips in grass by the lake at Spetchley

I’ve only recently got to know this delightful garden, www.spetchleygardens.co.uk

and will try to make repeat visits through the year. It’s one of those places which feels timeless: lots of big old trees, walled gardens, box-lined beds and paths which lead through a pleasantly bewildering variety of spaces, just full of wonderful plants. This is the perfect ‘plantsman’s garden’, lots of rarities, often very well-established, and very thorough labelling. You can just wander around, at random, crossing and re-crossing your previous routes through, getting different perspectives through the trees, continously finding little nooks and crannies. It is something of a miracle how the staff of four keep on top of it all, and it has to be said that a bit of an atmosphere of faded grandeur is all part of its very characteristic feel.

Owner John Berkeley was one of my customers when I had my nursery north of Bristol many years ago, as head gardener Kate Portman said to me, “I think he knows every nursery in the country”. There are some wonderful plants here, and some lovely combinations. What is particularly interesting is seeing sizable and very well-established examples of garden plants, the most spectacular being what must hundreds of square metres of partially-shaded lawn invaded by self-sowing Lilium martagon.

A total absence of modern design ideas or self-conscious fashion gives this place real character, and a very restful feel. Just as well, as any plant-conscious gardener is also going to be very excited by so much of what is growing here.

More Chinese travels

            Just come back from a two week trip to China, leading a Gardens Ilustrated tour group with a colleague from Sheffield, Lei Gao. I went to China last year (see blog **), so we re-visited all those places, but added a few more. One was the new city museum in Suzhou, designed by I.M.Pei – the central courtyard lake was stunning, especially this backdrop ‘rock garden’.

            Had a proper look this time at ‘Viewing Fish at Flowering Harbour’, though very crowded (a weekend), a park in Hangzhou by the Western Lake, designed by Sun Xiaoxing, China’s first really-acclaimed park since 1949, built in the mid-1950s to incorporate western and Chinese elements. Struck by how good the planting design was, a mix of unclipped and clipped shrubs largely.

  


The Western Lake at Hangzhou is really beautiful, but to appreciate it you need to be on the eastern built-up side, not the greener and much nicer western side. You could be on Lake Geneva, all very smart lakeside; you look across to the mountains with the clouds drifting between them. The Hangzhou Botanic Gardens include some good 1960s design, framed garden vignettes, between various buildings and walkways. Modern, but still invoking so much of the traditional approach to combining inside and outside.

            High point was going to Anhui. Lei’s home province. So green and lush. Mount Huang Shan was stunning although overrun with tour groups. Everyone in our group I think understood just where Chinese aesthetics comes from: the naturally bonsai pines, the dramatic rockfaces, the clouds. We were familiar enough now with Chinese landscape painting to feel that we had finally walked into the painting.

            Also in Anhui, we went to a couple of UNESCO heritage villages: Hongcun and Xidi, with some exquisite little gardens, all owned by local people (i.e. not Shanghai yuppies), some now run as B&Bs or restaurants, others were people Lei knew from research here years ago. Genuinely vernacular and made the famous Suzhou gardens look like museum pieces.