Author Archives: Tom Turner

Attitudes to life, death and trees in western culture and 'civilization'

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Attitudes to trees in Ancient West Asia and Early Christian Europe

Attitudes to trees in Ancient West Asia and Early Christian Europe

The illustrations show a Tree of Life (above left) in ancient West Asia, the felling of a Sacred Tree by St Boniface (Thor’s Oak, above right) and a Hanging Tree during the 30 Years War (below).

Jacques Callot, The Hangman’s Tree, 1633,

Jacques Callot, The Hangman’s Tree, 1633,


What do the illustrations tell us about changing attitudes to trees in western civilization? Here are some possibilities:

  • the ancients saw trees (and forests) as symbols of the natural forces which control the world
  • the early Church regarded tree-worship as idolatrous, because there is only one true God
  • both trees and people were destroyed in the religious wars of the seventeenth century

In clearing and ‘managing’ what is left of the world’s forest cover we may be marching in the path of the Easter Islanders. At present, the most densely wooded countries are Finland (86% of the total land area), Sweden (57%) and Austria (47% ). Australia, suprisingly, has 20.1% forest cover. The European countries with the least forest are Ireland, with 8% of the land as forested and the United Kingdom with 11%.

Dutch Baroque Gardens

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Honselaarsdijk © British Library

Honselaarsdijk © British Library

The British Library is making some  of its most important books available online with its Turning the Pages technology. The first garden book in the series was published as Tonneel van Nederlandse Lusthooven which translates as The Theatre of Dutch Pleasure Gardens.  There are high-resolution colour imges and accompanying audio. It is a brilliant production. But the title  Dutch Baroque Gardens is questionable. France was the country which set the standard for High Baroque gardens and the examples in this book have a different character. A Dutch friend suggested the classification Dutch Classical Garden for the style of Honselaarsdijk – and I think he had a very fair point. It is unlike Versailles – and if Baroque is ‘the style of the Counter-Reformation’ then it is not very appropriate for such a Protestant country as Holland.

Is this the landscape of future architecture?

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Should one call this architecture or landscape architecture or neither or both? It is a competition entry for 2010 Competition Entry for International Business Center with an Intercontinental Hotel in Yerevan. The designer explains: ‘Instead of a towering Iconic image, disconnected from historic, horizontal Yerevan, Lace Hill stitches the adjacent city and landscape together to support a holistic, ultra-green lifestyle, somewhere between rural hillside living and dense cultured urbanity’. The images are good but, if I were one of the judges, I would want to see some cross-sections and floor plans before awarding a prize.

image courtesy Forrest Fulton

Please can we have more houses with happy smiling faces

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It could be a normal request in briefing letters to architects: ‘Please give my house a happy and beautiful face’. The house in the above photograph is not convulsed with laughter but I read the slightly raised eyebrows as a sign of good humour – and the face of the house shares a beautiful simplicity with Botticelli’s face of Venus. I would like the house to have flowing tresses of vegetation and some beautiful steps could symbolise lips. Can the faces of buildings be classified as masculine and feminine? .

Patrick Blanc green walls are beautiful – but are they sustainable?

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Patrick Blanc has made a great contribution to the technology of green walls, with beautiful results. But do they make useful contributions to environmental and sustainable design objectives? I do not know and would like to hear of any scientific evidence and environmental impact assessments. My guesses are (1) Patrick Blanc’s green walls use more energy for pumps/materials/manufacture than they save through insulation (2) more of Patrick Blanc’s green walls use tapwater than use rain which has fallen on the site (3) Patrick Blanc’s green walls make useful contributions to noise attenuation and dust capture (4) the contribution of Patrick Blanc’s green walls to biodiversity is negligible (5) one could achieve more environmental benefits, though less beauty, by using climbers.
The above example is on the Athaneum Hotel in Picadilly, London.
Stephen Alton shares my scepticism.

Garden designs at the Hampton Court Flower Show 2010

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Happy hippos at Hampton Court Flower Show 2010

Happy hippos at Hampton Court Flower Show 2010

One does not see too many Hippo Gardens, and they don’t win many awards, but at Hampton Court in 2010 we were pleased to find ourselves much more in agreement with the garden design judges than at many shows. It confirms our usual advice to clients: if you want a good garden design then you should employ a good garden designer. Such people may have no training or any training – but more often than not you will find that they have, like the 2010 winners, completed educational courses in landscape architecture or garden design.