Author Archives: Tom Turner

Garden design trends for 2010

Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year to every every garden. How would you like to see garden design develop in 2010? Personally, I would like to see gardens become more useful, more beautiful and better built:

More useful gardens: gardens should be used to grow more food.
More beautiful gardens: pay no attention to what is seen in garden centres (unless the garden centre employs talented garden designers to layout their stores).
Better construction for gardens: we like the idea of thrifty garden design: (1) DIY using local materials (2) DIY using recycled garden construction materials (3) being strict about ‘using materials of only the best quality’

Should every kitchen should have a window and every kitchen window should have a box for growing herbs?

[Images courtesy Stephanie Adamo]

Landscape architecture and urban design

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A friend with enviable portfolio of major projects, says that ‘We have to call ourselves urban designers to get the work. But we have to employ landscape architects to get the work done’. Another friend who spent many years teaching urban design to architects, planners and landscape architects remarks that ‘the landscape architects were the best’.

The Circus in Bath (UK) is a fine example of architecture+landscape but the idea (from John Wood) was of course inspired by Bramham Park (photograph of The Circus courtesy Casey Picker).

One can easily understand why the name ‘landscape architect’ is such a non-starter for clients. Most of them think landscape architects must either be garden contractors or the artistic inheritors of Capability Brown. So why should they be so good at urban design? I think it is because they are trained to think about SPACE rather than about the OBJECTS WHICH CONTAIN AND DEFINE SPACE (buildings, walls, trees, mounds etc). In urban design it is good practice to think about what type of space is required BEFORE thinking about what elements can be used to contain and define the space. As Laozi wrote:

Thirty spokes share a single hub,
Thirty spokes share a single hub,
And the central void makes the cartwheel useful.
Clay is moulded into a vessel,
And the empty space makes it valuable.
Doors and windows are cut out in the walls,
And these openings make the room livable.

Were Laozi to visit Bath he might comment that:

The central void makes The Circus useful.
Buildings are moulded into a vessel.

Or would he have noted that The Circus is more Visual Space than Social Space and remarked that landscape+architecture= urban design?

Ginkgo avenue in Japanese Meiji Shrine garden

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This brilliant photograph, by Masahiro Hayata, combines the spiritual glory of a gothic vault with the transcendent luminance of a stained glass window.

The avenue is formed with the oldest surviving tree species on earth, the only survivor from prehistoric times. The Ginkgo was widespread 270 million years ago but disappeared – except from a small area in Central China. The seed was taken to Europe, from a Japanese temple garden, by Engelbert Kaempfer in 1692. Kaempfer was a German naturalist, traveller and physician who wrote an important account of Japan and also made the first accurate drawings of Persian gardens.

The 300m Ginkgo Avenue is in the garden of the Meiji Jingu (shrine) in Tokyo. It commemorates the 1867 Meiji Restoration, which led directly to the astonishing modernization of Japan: the landscape architecture of this photograph involves many interests.

Graffiti in Berlin park design

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Berlin has more of a graffiti ‘problem’ than London. So much of the city is so dull that local artists are taking the problem into their own hands. But look at this: Sudgelande Natur Park, along with many other intelligent uses of public art, has let local artists adorn the ugly hunks of concrete left by engineers and architects. [Images courtesy Olivier Six and Jens Uwe Liepelt]

We are grateful to Grün Berlin for the recently uploaded photographs of Sudgelande are also pleased to have a Head Gardener’s Comment. We look forward to having Visitor Comments and Head Gardener’s comments throughout our Garden Finder Section. It had details of 2,440 gardens on 10th December and has 2,442 places on 11th December. New entries are always welcome and we worry that some countries (eg Israel) are seriously under-represented.

Cornwall gardens, hotels and tours

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Cornwall Gardens and Recommended Garden Hotels eBook

Only 12 days until the winter solstice: its time to be thinking about next year’s garden tours!

While planning a Cornwall garden tour, we produced an eBook on the subject. It is available for free download from our Gardens in Cornwall page. If any readers have further suggestions on where to go and which hotels have good gardens, please add a comment below! We would be pleased to include the information in a revised edition of the Cornwall Gardens eBook.

The eBook has information on eight top Cornwall Gardens – and also John Claudius London’s notes on his 1842 Cornwall Garden Tour. He was very ill and only spent a few days in the Duchy but his remarks are of considerable historic interest. Loudon was the most prolific garden writer who ever lived and perhaps the only polymath to take on the subject.

Greenwich Park Restoration after 2012 Equestrian and Modern Pentathlon Events

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Greenwich residents mostly oppose the plan to convert ‘their’ park into what the organizers call ‘A world-class venue on your doorstep‘. I support them but believe that, as at public inquiries, the objectors should also have a list of conditions to be imposed on the developers in the unwelcome event of permission being granted. For the horse riding events in Greenwich Park, this should include:

extensive protection and conservation of ALL historic landscape and architectural features
even more protection for the most ancient artefacts in the park: the remains of a roman temple and the Saxon burial mounds. The greatest possible care should go to the vestegial grass on the burial mounds: it may be the most ancient grassland in the whole of South London.
a full archaeological investigation and restoration of the Le Notre parterre. This is the only work in England by the greatest landscape designer of the seventeenth century and, some will argue, the greatest landscape architect who ever lived. The parterre is currently managed as though it were a football pitch. The lawn and its chiseled grass banks should be maintained with the precision they deserve.
the Giant Steps which ran up the axis from the parterre to the Greenwich Observatory should be restored using modern grass reinforcement techniques. They were the central visual component of the seventeenth century design for Greenwich Park. Restoration has been considered on several occasions. The proposed 2012 Olympic Equestrian Event creates an opportunity to act.

Unless the 2012 organizers can demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt their willingness to leave Greenwich Park in better condition than they find it, they should be thrown into the deepest dungeon in the Tower of London, thus creating what would undoubtedly be a popular tourist attraction. I will supply the salt beef and when dropping it in will ask “Why not use Charlton Park instead?”

Note: for more discussion see article on The Conservation of Greenwich Park.

A revised plan for the equestrian route was published in The October 2009 “Greenwich Park Venue Update”. It is shown below, on a Googlemap. Their plan shows it avoiding the Anglo-Saxon Tumuli but without a geophysical survey how can they be sure?

October 2009 Revised plan for the equestrian route

Garden Design and Landscape Architecture

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