Category Archives: Garden Visiting

Hyde Hall RHS Garden in Essex

Hyde Hall RHS Essex Planting

The Hyde Hall garden was begun by Dr Robinson in 1955 and given to the Royal Horticultural Society in 1993. Dr Robinson was no designer and the RHS has been struggling with his legacy. They employed good consultants (Colvin and Moggridge) but the place is still disappointing. The planting is much improved but the underlying spatial structure is, as it always was, dreary. This summer I made my third visit since the RHS took over and the really surprising thing was how popular it has become. So the design is a success from this point of view, just as McDonalds is a very successful restaurant chain. But, from my standpoint, McDonalds needs a plenipotentary Chief Chef and Hyde Hall needs a plenipotentary Resident Designer. My strong impression is that good design consultants are not enough. The garden manager needs to be a trained designer, as well as a manager. This is how most of history’s great gardens were made: by owne- designers or by patrons who worked hand-in-glove with a designer, as Louis XIV did with Le Notre. Making a good garden is a hands-on job. You need drawings but you cannot do the job with drawings alone. You have to live in the garden, to see it every day of the year and to have the requisite authority to change the layout and the planting.

In Britain, most gardens open to the public are now managed by managers who are not designers. This is a great mistake. To create or maintain a good garden, or park, you must be a designer. A formal training is not essential, though it is a great advantage. But design talent is essential. It must guide every decision, from the smallest to the largest. Committees cannot possibly undertake this role and it is rare for someone with only a horticultural training to have the necessary skill-set.

Hyde Hall RHS Essex spatial and construction design

250 Congratulations to Kew Gardens

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Wildflower planting outside Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens are 250 years old this year and far more beautiful and interesting than at the time of my first visit. But if the quality is twice as good as it was, it still less than half as good as it could be. I was therefore delighted to learn that an excellent landscape architecture firm (Gross Max, of Edinburgh) has been appointed to advise on the development of Kew Gardens.

The change which has made the greatest difference, so far, is the adoption of a ‘sustainable Kew’ policy. You see this in the wildflower meadow outside the main gate (photo above, taken today) and you see it in the long grass under the trees covering perhaps 50% of the garden area. The other big changes are the restoration of old features (eg the garden of Kew Palace) and the creation of new features, including the Sackler Crossing and the Tree Walk.

The two missing elements, which Gross Max may be able to provide, are a connection with the River Thames and an overall sense of spatial composition. The latter problem is difficult, because so much of the tree and shrub planting is ‘spotty’ and the new features are being dotted about like rides in a theme park. But the problems are not insuperable and I much look forward to seeing them resolved.

One other point: the increase in quality has has been accompanied by a rise in the entry price from one penny to thirteen pounds sterling. There being 240 old pennies in an old pound, this equates (see comment below) to an increase of three thousand one hundred and twenty percent. Kew will be a very great garden when the visual quality has risen proportionately!

Nymans National Trust garden management

Landscape and garden interpretation

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Is this how we understand landscapes and gardens, natural and designed: through a friend’s camera reflected in our own glasses? sunglasses-flickr-cc-ducktourer-1187959439_dd7f0e0b7a_oa-a

Image courtesy Mark Hodges.

World Garden Finder Facts

Asian landscape architecture and garden design in the twentieth century

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Singapore skyline by Gyver Chang

Why were Asian garden design and landscape architecture such a disappointment in the twentieth century? There is much work which looks anti-ecological, anti-contextual, almost anti-human – and far too American or far too European (see note on Chinese context theory). Luckily, there are some exceptions, including the twenty-first century landscape designs for King Abdullah International Gardens and the Abu Dhabi Corniche. Instead of writing an essay (which is is in fact what I have done for the final chapter of Asian gardens) I offer the short statement that the problems with Asian garden and landscape design in the 20th century resulted from a poor understanding of design history and theory. There were lacks of appreciation:

by many landscape architects that their profession’s design theory was at least 4000 years old on 14 May 1863 ( Norman T Newton gives this day as ‘the first official use of the title Landscape Architect’ – he knew the art was older but his perception of the theory was post-1863)
by the Asian clients and designers who believed Asia should be ‘modernized’ by being ‘westernized’
by the World Bank and associated development agencies which were certain that western is better, because it is based on science , and because science is the ultimate criterion of truth
by a host of architects, engineers and planners who believed too fervently in ‘master planning’ and therefore fostered the tragedy of feminine design
by bankers and property developers who believed that calculation of short term profit was the way to distinguish good projects from bad projects
by the abstract and anti-contextual nature of international modern design theory
by an inadequate knowledge of Asian design history and theory

The corrective to these Seven Deadly Design Sins should be gulping that wonderful Asian virtue – HARMONY. History matters, theory matters, science matters, beliefs matter, profit matters, ecology matters, design matters, people matter -we all matter!

Garden Design and Landscape Architecture

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