As the editor of the Gardenvisit.com website, I regard garden design as an art – and share the art historians enthusiasm for interpreting works within the critical context of periods, influences and styles. But I am just as much interested in design commentary and analysis. Re Tim’s book, I like and have reviewed it recently (and also Monty Don’s tour of French gardens).

And that people’s disagreements should be/could be examined and discussed – and merit that discussion. Rapture may be a great start but ideally we might hear what the basis of it is.

I’m glad to see that Tim is offering some modest criticism of the English gardens in his recent book. We are, at last, moving in the right direction to take gardens seriously.

(and I think Monty praised some rather planty Australian garden in those kind of terms too – I think it’s a habit of his and we should perhaps not take it too seriously)

I have no doubt that Hidcote’s garden staff love ‘their’ garden, but it looks to me as if it suffering from a lack of love. For the high numbers they have I suggest washing the dust of the paths in hot dry weather.

Xx

Each and every individual is entitled to an opinion. In a free society that is unchallengeable. Further, we are all likely to have critics we tend to agree with – or tend not to agree with. I review Tim Richardson’s New English gardens recently and find him a critic I often agree with. So if he recommends a garden I am more likely to visit it then if he says it is a load of cobblers.
Re Piet Oudolf, I might have been a little put off by trying to visit his garden on Ascension Day (I did not know this is a public holiday in Holland) but since then I have seen some of his work – and have been disappointed.
Re Hidcote, I suspect the main problem is too many visitors. What is the National Trust to do? Can visitor numbers keep going up and up and up for ever and ever and ever? No. So when will the numbers be capped and how will it be done?

I also wonder if the loveliness issue is what provokes the critics we find at Anne Wareham’s thinkingardens. It seems they are attempting to say ‘actually it isn’t lovely’. My dilemna is that what I respond to isn’t necessarily what others do and visa versa, but do I have the right to assert my taste as being the correct one.

You make the point in comment 23 that critical debate is necessary. The query I have is to decide who can say what is good or bad, and what actually is good or bad. In establishing something definite , new trends will overturn it. Piet Oudolf, I think, demonstrates this in his style of landscaping compared to the traditional European styling one sees all over Holland.
As we all know Art regularly goes through upheavals thus kicking sand into the accepted ideas of good and bad art.

You make reference to Hidcote. Not that I have been there for a some time but it seems [judging by thinkingardens comments] it’s going through a low phase. Maybe the Head Gardener isn’t up to muster or the budget has been impractically reduced.

Thank you: I will put La Chevre D’Or on my list of places to visit – though it is too long for one lifetime. One of the problems with loveliness is that, like the weather, it changes. I saw Hidcote in lovely condition and with only a couple of other visitors there about ten years ago. Since then I have been back twice and it has been hard to fill my frame with a sufficiently appealing image to make pressing the button worthwhile. On one occasion the light was flat and grey. On the other the garden was glaringly dry and worn down by coachloads of tourists.

‘Lovely’ is normally a compliment for a girl. Vaux, Vesailles and Seaux are more masculine. Courances is unusual in having the loveliness of a beautiful young man. Would you hazard a comment on which gardens surpass Courances in loveliness? (I would be hard put to answer this question!)