Category Archives: Garden Design

Tour of English gardens around Windsor and Bath

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West of London garden tour

The country between Windsor and Bath has long been popular with people who are ‘tired of London’ and many of them have charming gardens made by famous designers. The Windsor to Bath Sisley Garden Tour provides opportunities to see them without the hassles of driving or finding places to stay. The route passes through beautiful countryside, lovely villages and cherished market towns, including Bath, Windsor, Marlborough, Malmesbury and Shaftesbury. The garden tour starts with a pick up from London Victoria Train Station or Heathrow Airport. The week includes visits to:-
Windsor Castle was built after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Set in a great hunting forest, now called Windsor Great Park, it became one of the royal family’s best-loved country homes.
Munsted Wood. This famous garden was the home of Gertrude Jekyll, the most famous Arts and Crafts garden designer and the author of many ever-popular books on planting design. The house was designed by Edwin Lutyens.
The Manor at Upton Grey. Designed by Gertrude Jekyll for a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts movement, the garden is particularly interesting for the planting, which was fully researched and restored by Rosamund Wallinger.
Bury Court. It has a courtyard garden by Piet Oudolf, working with the owner, and a front garden by the minimalist garden designer Christopher Bradley-Hole.
West Green Garden. An old manor house with an admired twentieth century garden by Marylyn Abbott.
Bowood House is one of the best surviving examples of  Lancelot Brown’s Serpentine style of garden design. The serpentine lake and encircling tree belt can be seen from the Italian Garden – which was designed as a stage from which to view the surrounding landscape.
Iford Manor was designed by Harold Peto, an Arts and Crafts architect and garden designer. He owned the house and spent many years collecting statues and other features in Italy. The garden is beside a river in a remarkably tranquil, beautiful and isolated valley.
Stourhead is rightly famous as the best example of a ‘landscape garden’ designed to recreate the ‘landscape of antiquity’ as envisioned by Claude Lorraine and other great landscape painters.
Shute House Gardens were designed by Geoffrey Jellicoe, the most famous English landscape architect of the twentieth century.
Abbey House Gardens were designed by a well-known designer who promoted postmodernism in gardens: Ian Pollard. It formed part of Benedictine monastery before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and is now a remarakable integration of new and old.
Though not part of the Sisley tour, it is easy to make a post-tour visit to Hampton Court  Palace Garden and the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show.

Bath, in the west of England, could well be described as a 'garden city'

Pinjore Yadavindra Mughal Garden

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Pinjore Gardens deserve more recognition as an example of the Mughal style. There is much more which could and should be done but the restoration work already carried out is good and the water features work most of the time. The lower section of the garden is of particular interest and with more work could become India’s best example of the ‘fruits and flowers’ approach to planting design which was once the predominant character of Indian gardens. Constance Villiers Stuart, who made the first serious study of Indian gardens, was well aware of this and wrote about Pinjore in her book: see C.M Villiers Stuart Gardens of the Great Mughals .

Edwin Lutyens read Villiers Stuart’s book when working on the design of New Delhi and Le Corbusier visited Pinjore when working on the design of Chandigarh. She surely influenced Lutyens design for the garden of the Governor’s Place in Delhi – and Corbusier might have done a much better job of Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex if he had learned more from Pinjore.

 

 

Dry stone walling in Crossbones Garden, a 2015 Chelsea Fringe event

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Dry stone walling is flexible; it does not use mortar; it is good for wildlife; it is a sustainable. The only minus points arise if fuel is used for quarrying and transporting the stone.
This video is of a Chelsea Fringe event in Crossbones Garden, near London Bridge Station. Participants receive a certificate of attendance at the end of the session. John Holt is a great teacher.

Review of the show gardens at the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show

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Please see this page for video reviews of selected show gardens.
I’ve been too hot at Chelsea and I’ve been too cold. On Press Day, in 2015, I was too wet and too windswept. When the sun came out in the afternoon, the Press had to leave so that the Royal Family could enjoy the show. I’m not a republican, yet, but the rain did fall like stair rods. So what of the design quality of the Show Gardens? I thought some of the Fresh Gardens, on Royal Hospital Way, were better than most of the large gardens on the Main Avenue – some of which could be described as Stale Gardens.

Great Garden Design by Ian Hodgson – review

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Ian Hodgson Great Garden Design book jacket

Ian Hodgson Great Garden Design book jacket

The Society of Garden Designers has produced a very good book on garden design. I commend it to anyone commissioning a garden and to future historians of garden design.
The section I like best, on Outdoor Experiences, deserves to become a book in its own right. There are only four sections, on Relaxing, Dining, Playing and Bathing.  But there are subsections, so that Dining includes Cooking Outside, Keeping Livestock and Growing Your Own.
This approach to garden design comes, in the UK, from John Brookes. His Room Outside, first published in 1969, launched British garden design on its profression from the Arts and Crafts Style to Modernism. In his introduction to Great garden design Brookes draws attention to the way in which ‘this book breaks down the overall plan of a garden and deals with the various sections and functions it may include’.
A failure to grasp the key principle of Modernism hindered, and hinders, the development of garden design. ‘Form follows function’ is the most convenient summary of Modern Movement principles but caused problems for garden designers. ‘What’ they wondered, ‘are the functions of a garden?’ My criticism of Great garden design is a weakness in the history and theory of garden design.
After Brookes’ Forward and an Introduction by Ian Hodgeson (the author) there is a chapter on Contemporary Garden Styles. A section on Sourcing Inspiration is followed by a section on Choosing a Style – which struck me as a return to the high Victorian eclecticism of Edward Kemp and the Mixed Style. It is followed by a menu of styles. Their names are Contemporary Formal, Urban Chic, Cottage and Country Style, Natural Style, Water Gardens and Subtropical Style. This is a departure from Modernism but I would not call it Postmodern and nor do I think the categories will be of use to those future garden historians who come across this useful and very well-illustrated book.
Great Garden Design was published 5th March 2015 by Frances Lincoln www.franceslincoln.com.

The Manali to Leh Highway & Landscape Change in Ladakh

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Taking the footage for this video, in September 2014, was a good opportunity to reflect on landscape change in a hitherto remote region of India: Ladakh. There are many considerations:

  • Ladakh was an important sector on the of the Silk Road Network, particularly for north-south trade and travel between India and China. The video uses quotations from European travelers who undertook the journey c1850-1950.
  • Travel between Ladakh and Pakistan ended with the partition of India in 1947.
  • Travel between Ladakh and China ended with the closure of the border, by China, in 1949.
  • India responded by closing Ladakh to all travel and tourism
  • From 1949 until 1974 Ladakh was cut off and isolated as rarely in its history
  • Since 1974 Ladakh’s economy has become dependent on the army, which invests in roads. The military population of Ladakh is now greater than the civilian population but the army keeps its personnel largely separate from the local people.
  • Ladakh’s other post-1974 economic prop is tourism. In summer there are more tourists than locals in the regional capital, Leh.
  • Westerners, in the main, want Ladakh to remain an undeveloped and traditional region.
  • Ladakhis, in the main, want to experience the ‘luxuries’ of western civilization.

So what should be done? I think Ladakh would have done better, if it could, to have followed the development path of Bhutan. This involves a very cautious approach to development and a concentration on the luxury end of the tourism market.
As things stand, the best approach is probably the adoption a forward-looking development policy as firmly rooted as possible in the principles of context-sensitivity and sustainability. This policy is exemplified by the Druk White Lotus School and its Dragon Garden.
Romesh Bhattacharji, an Indian who knows Ladakh very well, wrote in 2012 of the new roads which will open up Zanskar that ‘Many people, all outsiders typically, I have met, however, also moan about the loss of the traditional way of life of the people of Zanska. The latter want a better way of life than just being museum relics for tourists’ It is a well-aimed criticism. But ‘traditional’ and ‘development’ need not be in opposition: a Middle Way is also possible, by design. The Druk School and Dragon Garden make a cameo appearance on the above video and are explained in more detail by the videos on the DWLS Dragon Garden Playlist.