Category Archives: Garden Design

Global warming and cultivation of the grape vine in England

7 Replies

When John Harvey became President of the Garden History Society, in 1984, the great medieval historian suggested bringing back the grape vine as an ornamental plant. He explained that: ‘From very early times until the eighteenth century the vine was one of our chief garden plants, quite apart from attempts to make wine in England or to obtain dessert grapes – though both these enterprises had considerable success. As a climber, against walls or used to cover arbours and tunnels, the vine is outstandingly beautiful and, in several varieties, completely hardy in most of Britain. This is brought home to us when we realize that one of the largest and oldest vines ever grown was in the open air in the High Street of Northallerton, surely one of the coldest and draughtiest towns in England. The grape-vine was, and could be again, one of the greatest beauties of our gardens.’ (Journal of the Garden History Society, Spring 1984, p.5). The seemingly ever-warmer summers with which Global Warming threatens to bless England reinforces Harvey’s suggestion: Bring Back The Grape Vine.
The vine was probably introduced to England by the Romans and the image (courtesy Gauis Caecilius) is of a vine pergola at Fisbourne Roman Palace.

Gardening on the roof, don't pass on the past….

10 Replies

What can the past teach us about gardening in the present?

Undoubtably our ancestors were more agriculturally minded and more in tune with the rythmn of nature than we are today. The urban environments in which many of us live are climate modified, we buy our food from the supermarket and we heat and cool our living spaces. 

Perhaps by revisiting previous garden traditions – such as the zen tradition in Japanese gardens – we can begin to imagine a variety of ways of utilising our urban roof spaces for a variety of purposes.

The project to document Middle Eastern garden traditions is likely to provide a valuable source of inspiration for the future as well as potentially preserving and enhancing our knowledge of the past. Don’t skip the drawings.

The art of sketching and drawing can itself through film and projection techniques transform the urban landscape and create a virtual landscape….and a new way of thinking about ‘green’ surfaces.

A book for the landscape architect to die for is Sketch Landscape. There are many ways of communicating ideas, and this book  has 500 sketches and scribbles by some of the best.


Garden as setting for life's drama

6 Replies

Anna Gilman Hill’s ‘Grey Garden’ in the East Hamptons is the setting for a movie on the lives of mother and daughter Little and Big Eddie. Anna Hill has been described as “one of the world’s greatest feminine horticulturalists.”

Yet the women who acquired her garden were challenged by the legacy she left them.

The Grey Garden, and the women’s struggle to maintain a viable garden in a beachside setting, somehow parallel their lives as individuals.

http://www.whatweretheskieslike.com/2009/03/grey-gardens-from-garden-perspective.html

Garden designs at the Hampton Court Flower Show 2010

9 Replies

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.

The Renaissance Garden in England by Sir Roy Strong – book review

Leave a Reply
Covers of the 1979 and 1998 copies of The Renaissance Garden in England by Sir Roy Strong

Covers of the 1979 and 1998 copies of The Renaissance Garden in England by Sir Roy Strong

I have been slow to review this book – the hardback (left) was published in 1979. The paperback (right) was published in 1998 with a statement from the author that ‘I intend to rework the whole subject, incorporating all that has happened in the last twenty years’. So my comments may be of use to the author.
(1) Put dates on the front cover
The present title may be compared to a book on The Great War in which you have to read half the first chapter to discover that it is really a book on The Great War 1914-16. Strong writes on page 13: ‘In this book I am only going to take one period and one thread. The period stretches from the accession of Henry VIII (1509) to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 and the thread is the evolution, design and meaning of the palace and the great garden’.
(2) Revise the book to include the century from until 1642-1742 (or more)
This is when Renaissance ideas had most influence on English gardens – as shown by Kip and Knyff’s topographic drawings. One could be disappointed in a book on The Second World War which only covered the period from September 1939 to the fall of France on 22 June 1940. As Kip and Knyff show in Britannia Illustrata, English gardens in 1707 were much more ‘Renaissance’ than ‘Baroque’. They had aignificant ‘Baroque’ aspect but it was never dominant. The avenues in the Kip and Kynff drawings half-hearted additions to fundamentally High Renaissance plans.
(3) Prefer the cover of the paperback edition, despite its parenticidal cropping (see the original)
As Roy Strong notes, on page 211, the garden of Packwood House (as used on the cover of the 1979 hardback edition) is ‘long famous as a garden planted in the 1660s, it was in fact, a mid-Victorian re-creation’. Apart from the question of it being a highly dubious ‘re-creation’, even the original is outside Roy Strong’s period

(4) Remove the book’s silly dedication
It reads ‘IN MEMORY OF ALL THOSE GARDENS DESTROYED BY CAPABILITY BROWN AND HIS SUCCESSORS’. The most significant Renaissance gardens discussed by Roy Strong are Hampton Court, Whitehall, Nonsuch, Kenilworth, Theobalds, Wollaton, Wimbledon, Richmond. Hatfield, Ham House, Worcester Lodge, Dowsby, Northampton House, Twickenham, Chastleton House, Gorehambury, Moor Park Herts, Wilton, Arundel House, Danvers House. A little historical investigation, aided by a pocket calculator, could reveal that >10% of these gardens fell victim to the landscape movement.