Category Archives: Historic garden restoration

The world’s top ten gardens

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With Top Ten lists becoming img_9392popular, 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?

Will Alsop Martha Schwartz debate landscape architecture

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Having criticized Martha Schwartz and long considered Will Alsop the ‘Clown Prince of Architecture’ I was curious to hear them discuss Alsop’s philosophical notion that ‘No landscape architect should ever get hold of these [landscape] commissions because they have completely institutionalized the idea of public space’. As you can see, Alsop’s main complaints against the landscape profession are (1) there are too many about  (2) they do not know their trees (3) they are doing too much urban design and master planning (which Alsop would rather do himself?).

Schwartz does a passable job of defending her turf but eventually blurts out the truth ‘You and I are very much alike in how we work’. It would also be interesting to hear Hitler and Stalin debating the philosophical notion that ‘Dictators should never be allowed to run countries’. They might even have agreed to design a Satellite Town – in Poland.

I was sorry to hear Schwartz slagging off garden design. It is a fine art of the highest order and it has laid the basis for the world’s most admired urban designs: Isfahan, Rome, Paris, Georgian London, Beijing and Washington DC. I would also like to refer them both to my proposed definition of landscape architecture.

Can anyone dispute that buildings must be designed in relation to landform, water, planting, and paving? Or that outdoor space should be beautiful, ecological and and socially useful? Are architects or landscape architects able to achieve this? Some are; some are not. Martha Schwartz seems better at aesthetic composition than at dealing with social and ecological issues. Alsop is a bozo: all sop with a dash of pop.

Graffiti in the garden

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Kelburn Castle. Images by flickr user guinavere.

Kelburn Castle. Images by flickr user guinavere.


My local council detests graffiti artists. A rapid response team in CBRN Suits (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) soon arrives with tanks of noxious chemicals. Understandably, allowing citizens to paint wherever they wish without permission is an unworkable situation and definitely not one I am going to argue for.

However, sometimes I feel too little thought is put into whether the environment has actually been improved with the odd dash of new paint here and there. So, I was delighted to find a more-enlightened attitude on the Glasgow Riviera. Kelburn Castle has been in our Garden Finder for ages, without being on many people’s must-see garden lists for Scotland. Then they employed Brazilian Graffiti artists for a paint job. Now it’s a real spectacle. On cold winter days Kelburn blazes on the landscape as though on fire.

Is it Art? Or should someone call the CBRN guys as soon as possible? Peronally, I love it.


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.

See also Mass Protest against Greenwich Olympic Equestrian Event

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

October 2009 Revised plan for the equestrian route

Bougainvilleas taking over the Stupas

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I came across this attractive photo and wise caption on Flickr. The Archaeological Survey of India (AIS) was set up by the British in 1871 and it looks as though their gardening staff still do apprenticeships in Britain’s parks departments. Great Indian works of art are treated with lawns, rose beds (Hybrid Teas preferred) and Bougainvillea – a native of South America. One could argue that Sanchi, as the best-oldest Buddhist site has had a massive influence on garden design, and therefore deserves this treatment. But I would rather use the photo to argue that there is an enormous need for garden designers and landscape architects to become involved with appropriate design for archaeological sites. It is far too serious a matter to be left to the whims of archaeologists, garden managers or tourism ‘experts’.

Lumbini Garden – Buddha's birthplace

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I came across this drawing of the Buddha’s birthplace recently and it reminded me what a cruel thing Kenzo Tange did at Lumbini. Like Corbusier, Tange was a gifted designer and a terrible planner.

An ability to design objects (eg buildings) sometimes goes with an understanding of outdoor space, and gardens, but in the case of these two leading architects from West and East it did not. ‘Baroque Buddhism’ is as unwelcome as ‘Baroque Communism’, in politics and in design.

The illustration shows the scene which Fa-hsien described in c400 CE:
“Fifty li east from the city (ie from Kapilavastu) was a garden, named Lumbini, where the queen entered the pond and bathed. Having come forth from the pond on the northern bank, after walking twenty paces, she lifted up her hand, laid hold of a branch of a tree, and, with her face to the east, gave birth to the heir-apparent. When he fell to the ground, he immediately walked seven paces. Two dragon-kings appeared and washed his body. At the place where they did so, there was immediately formed a well, and from it, as well as from the above pond, where the queen bathed, the monks even now constantly take the water, and drink it.”