Author Archives: Tom Turner

The world's first historic gardening experiment

Shukallituda is the first gardener known to history, because the world’s oldest literary texts come from Sumer. It is recorded that the raging winds smote his face with the dust of mountains and all the plants he had tended turned desolate. Shukallituda therefore lifted his eyes to the heavens, studied the omens, observed and learned the divine laws of nature. Having acquired new wisdom, he planted the Sarbatu tree in his garden. It gives a broad shade which lasts from sunrise to sunset. As a result of this horticultural experiment, Shukallituda’s garden blossomed forth with all kinds of green plants. The Illustration (Microsoft® Encarta®) shows a ziggurat seen across the Euphrates. The trees look like date palms, which were probably the most widely grown trees in Mesopotamian gardens. The area beneath the palms conveys something of the character of a Sumerian garden in the time of Gilgamesh. He was the fifth king of Uruk, ruling c2700 BCE, and boasted that his city was ‘one third gardens’ – by which he probably meant date and orchard gardens within the city wall. This part of Iraq is now completely arid, which is a blessing for archaeologists…. ‘ a landscape from which came some of the earliest and most important impulses leading to Mesopotamian civilization, a landscape dotted with urban ruins testifying to past intensive settlement, prosperity, and even greatness, today is virtually empty and wholly neglected’ (The Uruk Countryside Univ Chicago 1972, p.1)

History of Asian garden and landscape design book

10 Replies

Himalayas by Ilker Ender

Phew!

My ‘Tomfool Project’ to write a history of Asian gardens and landscape architecture is done: I have just posted the CS (computer-script) to the publisher. The main subjects are Ancient Garden Design, Islamic Garden Design, Indian Garden Design, Chinese Garden Design, Japanese Garden Design and modern landscape architecture across Asia. The text files, drawings and photographs fit on one DVD, so all I have done is re-arrange some binary code, unless you count taking over 100,000 photographs. The easier-to-write chapters drew on other work but the difficult chapters took a year each for research and travel. The sensible alternatives would have been not to have begun the project or to have started 40 years earlier by learning half a dozen Asian languages. But I enjoyed the work and will be a lucky man if the ‘royalties’ pay for the travel – so you could say the books will be sold at ‘cost price minus’. It reminds me of the advice I received from Arnold Weddle about 30 years ago. We were making use of adjoining urinals at the time and I think the conversation went like this:

‘Hi Tom, how are you and what are you doing’. Ignoring the obvious, I replied ‘Fine – I’m writing a book, actually it’s about Landscape planning‘. Arnold, who had recently founded the journal Urban and landscape planning, replied: ‘Hmmm. Don’t expect to make any money by writing books’

Weddle was a wise man and I often quote another of his remarks. In Techniques of landscape architecture he wrote that the landscape profession is distinguished from its related professions by looking beyond their ‘closely drawn technical limits’ and ‘narrowly drawn territorial boundaries’. Though not quite what he had in mind, I have taken his advice in Asian gardens by relating garden design to the religions, mountains, forests, deserts, social customs, art and architecture of Asia. As you can imagine, this has involved a number of topics in which I might wish to have more expertise. Ananda Coomaraswamy would have been a good man for the job, helped by one of his photographer wives and his ability to think in English, Hindi, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali, Persian and Chinese.

The world’s top ten gardens

14 Replies

With Top Ten lists becoming popular, we thought Gardenvisit.com should have a list of the world’s ten best gardens. But how should it be compiled? Democracy or autocracy? Here are the democratic results: top ten gardens generated from our garden reviews and rating system. But Winston Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” ( 11. 11, 1947)

So let’s try autocracy: here is Tom Turner’s Top Ten Gardens List, which you can think of a list of the gardens which should be, like the Temple of Abu Simbel, if rising waters were going to flood all the world’s best gardens, by which I mean those which would disappear when the Vale of Kashmir, and Shalimar Bagh, were submerged by global warming. The gardens are in no particular order:

If I had been to Columbus Indiana I think I would include the garden of the Miller house, though I do not know what I would delete from the list. So which is best: democracy or autocracy? – and would readers like to suggest changes to the list?

Sissinghurst Garden Design and Management

16 Replies

Photogaph Philippe Leroyer

BBC4 is showing a series of programmes about Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Here is a link to the first episode on the iPlayer – the link will not be active for long and there is a link to a BBC Sissinghurst webpage. Adam Nicholson and Sarah Raven live in the family house, because Adam is Vita’s grandson, but Adam’s father (Nigel Nicholson) gave the property to the National Trust. The programme presents Adam and Sarah as enlightened visionaries able to understand the past and present. But the National Trust staff are presented as obstinate blockheads able to say little more than ‘This is the way we do it because this is the way we have always done it and this it the way we will continue to do it’. Since the series runs to 8 episodes one can’t help wondering it the editing has been done for dramatic effect. Unless the National Trust Blockheads are going to be seduced by sweet reason, the series is going to end up portraying the Trust as a disorganised rabble which leaves decisions to junior staff.

Sissinghurst gives me the impression of being too commercial and of having too many visitors. It this is what the National Trust wants, they should avoid the cowpats Adam wants to bring back as an aspect of traditional farming. The BBC slipped in the titbit that Vita had over 50 lesbian lovers and the Independent (28.2.09) refers to ‘the site’s fascination for today’s educated lesbians’. Adam predicts that ‘By Easter, there will be rivers of lesbians coming through the gates’. It would be useful to know whether the return of traditional farming practices (‘cowpats’) would attract or repel the lesbians, and where Adam stands on the lesbian issue. I look forward to Sissinghurst holding its first Gay Pride day. As they say, ‘history repeats itself as farce’.

German garden design and garden tours

1 Reply

karl_foerster_garten_original Gardenvisit.com is most grateful to Marija Calden for help with adding new gardens updating Garden Finder entries for Germany. See for example: Karl-Foerster-Garten and Kloster Seligenstadt. Marija’s help is particularly welcome because German gardens attract less international attention than they deserve and, for example, less attention than the gardens of Italy, France and England, resulting in fewer German garden tours. Yet no one can doubt the country’s deep love of nature in general and gardens in particular, nor the technical expertise of Germany’s landscape architecture profession. And the design quality of the best German gardens (eg Sans Souci, Herrenhausen, Whilhelmshoehe) is very high. So what’s the problem?

My explanation is that too many German gardens are run by municipalities as public parks. As Jane Austen might have said “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that two old ladies can maintain a garden in better condition than a dozen youths with the latest equipment’. Love and knowledge are better tools than brawn or engines. Furthermore, a garden requires enclosure. If greenspace in towns is not fenced or walled it is not garden space. It is public open space. The example of Japan provides support for this explanation. Everyone knows of the matchless standard of care in Japanese Gardens. But what of Japanese public parks? Their management is slightly worse than in a typical industrial country: not as good as in most European countries and not even as good as in the public parks of Eastern China.

A garden is a special kind of place. It always has been and it always should be – different.

Updated world garden finder

1 Reply

usda_hardiness_map At last! We have published the updated World Garden Finder. The page has been re-deisgned and we have added some 1,500 new images since January 2009, bringing the total to over 5,000 images. The images come from photographic trips and other sources: we are particularly grateful to Karl Gercens for his enormous help with American gardens. Piet Oudolf once said that ‘America is not really a gardening country’ but Karl does much to prove him wrong. Every country needs to garden in its own way and Piet Oudolf would be on safer ground if he said that American gardens are different from North European gardens, much as the gardens of South Europe differ from those of North Europe. Two of the things which make American gardens different are the climates (as shown on the USDA Hardiness Zone Map) and the different social mores. In Europe, garden walls and fences are the norm. In America, it is considered an unfriendly gesture to put a fence round your front yard – despite the fact that ‘yard’ means ‘enclosure’.

Notes to everyone, regarding the World Garden Finder:

if your country is under-represented in the World Garden Finder, please contact us and advise what gardens should be included in the next update.
if you manage a garden which is already in the Garden Finder, please contact us to request a login, so that you can keep the opening details up to date and add your own Head Gardener’s comment (see for example: Chesters Walled Garden)

Garden Design and Landscape Architecture

Gardenvisit.com