Another big planting scheme for Bristol City Council. This time at Brandon Hill, an early C20 park around a monument commemorating the fact that a Bristolian was the first European to land in the Americas (since the Vikings). So roll over Columbus. The existing planting is all very much overgrown dwarf conifers and once-fashionable shrubs. Nice atmosphere though, and a very much loved public open space. A whole bank of shrubs has been cleared away and the idea was for me to create a big perennial planting - slightly odd site though as there is little direct public path access to the site, but it is visible from a variety of angles - but with quite a distance.
So, I thought it needed something very visible and graphic, colourful obviously, but also strongly structural. And given that this is Bristol with a very balmy climate, I thought I'd go for lots of South African thingk like kniphofias, which will have the all-important graphic quality for months, crocosmias, agapanthus, plus lots other things but with a visual matrix of lowish grasses like Stipa arundinacea, deschampsia and the shorter molinias. So something that might look like a southern hemisphere montane grassland.
The general idea is for me to turn up before the planting crew, who arrive at 8am, set out as much as possible, and then hope we get it all planted in time. Setting out is very intuitive, I try to do all the larger and or very structual stuff first, filling in with less strongly structural. It is blended intermingled planting, virtually no groups of things, so quite difficult to get a large area done and then let the guys on to plant - you don't dare let anybody plant stuff before you have finished an area as otherwise you can't see what you have done and you cause a lot of confusion to the planting team. So you have to work real fast, and make instant and irrevocable aesthetic decisions.
very stony, had to use a pick axe in places but we managed to get 1365 plants done in 20 man hours.
We are all looking forward to what its going to be like in the summer.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Winter is here - garden still looking (not bad?)
Globe artichoke making new growth NOW! adding a touch of life to an otherwise wintery scene. Solidago rugosa to the right standing well. The first stages of a prairie planting behind - actually part of a septic soakaway scheme - same idea as a reedbed, soaking up nutrients.
Grasses (mostly Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' and perennials in November sunlight. Anything which has collapsed into a soggy mess by now has been cleared away - leaving things which should stand a few months more. I'm re-organising and re-planting around these surviving stems - so much easier working around landmarks than a site cleared of all above-ground growth, especially since these are all the good long-season structural elements.
Box blight - latest idea from Germany
Thought I had better pass this on. This is a summary of a letter to GartenPraxis which I recently spotted.
The fungicides Chlorthalonil and Prochloraz are carcinogenic and persistent enough to possibly present a danger to water supplies – both are in the process of being de-listed from the EU list of permitted fungicides
Acute cylindrocladium infections have been treated with a thick dusting of rock flour on the foliage. Apparently the results are surprising in their effectiveness. It is suggested that the high pH of the material is what is negatively affecting the fungus. The article goes on to suggest that soil acidity is detrimental to box health – it is a plant of calcareous soils.
From GartenPraxis 11-2008, p. 7
So – what the **** is rock flour?? Can I make bread with it?
Rock flour or rock dust is finely-ground rock which bio-dynamic companies are promoting – don’t ask me where you can get it. The bio-d brigade claim that soils are deficient in essential minerals after years of cropping which this stuff puts back in - fair enough, but since this gardening methodology is inspired by the quite honestly barmy Rudolf Steiner philosophy, there is an awful lot of guff about “life-force energy” in any of their literature. On this occasion though it looks as if one of their products may just do the trick.
The fungicides Chlorthalonil and Prochloraz are carcinogenic and persistent enough to possibly present a danger to water supplies – both are in the process of being de-listed from the EU list of permitted fungicides
Acute cylindrocladium infections have been treated with a thick dusting of rock flour on the foliage. Apparently the results are surprising in their effectiveness. It is suggested that the high pH of the material is what is negatively affecting the fungus. The article goes on to suggest that soil acidity is detrimental to box health – it is a plant of calcareous soils.
From GartenPraxis 11-2008, p. 7
So – what the **** is rock flour?? Can I make bread with it?
Rock flour or rock dust is finely-ground rock which bio-dynamic companies are promoting – don’t ask me where you can get it. The bio-d brigade claim that soils are deficient in essential minerals after years of cropping which this stuff puts back in - fair enough, but since this gardening methodology is inspired by the quite honestly barmy Rudolf Steiner philosophy, there is an awful lot of guff about “life-force energy” in any of their literature. On this occasion though it looks as if one of their products may just do the trick.
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
To stake or not to stake
Whether to stake or not? Or give it the Tracy Chop.
This is our so-called big border, with in the centre of the pic, the plant that everyone always asks about. It is a form of Eupatorium fistulosum, originally from North Carolina. It always grows to 3.4m every year and never blows over or flops - wonderful architectural plant. But the Sanguisorba tenuifolia to the left is embarassingly over - which it always does, and did in the last garden too. I have decided that it is one of those things for whom border conditions are simply too good, and it grows too well and cannot support its own weight. This winter I intend to dig it up and move into the meadow and see what happens; I assume competition will reduce its growth and height and it should stay upright.
The sanguisorba is probably not a candidate for the Tracy (DiSabato Aust) chop, as I think it would just produce lots of flower heads lower down and look a mess. The infamous flopper Campanula lactiflora however has done very well with a Tracy chop, bushing out and flowering for more than 2 months. But the rain will have helped.
This is our so-called big border, with in the centre of the pic, the plant that everyone always asks about. It is a form of Eupatorium fistulosum, originally from North Carolina. It always grows to 3.4m every year and never blows over or flops - wonderful architectural plant. But the Sanguisorba tenuifolia to the left is embarassingly over - which it always does, and did in the last garden too. I have decided that it is one of those things for whom border conditions are simply too good, and it grows too well and cannot support its own weight. This winter I intend to dig it up and move into the meadow and see what happens; I assume competition will reduce its growth and height and it should stay upright.
The sanguisorba is probably not a candidate for the Tracy (DiSabato Aust) chop, as I think it would just produce lots of flower heads lower down and look a mess. The infamous flopper Campanula lactiflora however has done very well with a Tracy chop, bushing out and flowering for more than 2 months. But the rain will have helped.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Not really a gravel garden but a load of subsoil covered in gravel
Looking towards the Pavilion, across the so-called gravel garden. This was quite a nice gravel garden, installed by the previous owner, until the builders trashed it. Trouble is though, it had been installed over terrible heavy subsoil and a variety of weeds (horsetail, creeping thistle, bindweed). A classic example of ‘instant garden design’ – cover soil with geotextile, plant through holes, send in invoice, scarper. The weeds won’t appear for a year, and not become a real problem for 2 years. Which is when we bought the place.It’s a slow process re-making a garden here. I’ve decided to rely on self-seeding. Stipa tenuissima just about does it, Verbena bonariensis does a great deal, Deschampsia cespitosa comes up from the soil seed bank (classic Welsh borderlands). California poppy does well, Knautia macedonica. Lot of other plants here just linger. So, I don’t really know how it’ll turn out. A case of slowly working with what works, if you know what I mean.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
GARDENS FOR THE MIND
I
Having just visited Little Sparta (for the second time) and The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, and been twice to Plaz Metaxu in the last year, now is a good time to reflect on the distinctly off-beat pursuit of the garden which tries to be seriously intellectual. And to think about all three at once.
Little Sparta (LS) is probably the best known of the three, created by Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (GCS) has been made by architectural and cultural critic Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie Keswick (and landscape architect). Plaz Metaxu (PM) is in Devon. The first two are well-known from articles and books, the latter only from one article in the Feb.2008 issue of (British) House and Garden magazine; its owner/creator is an intensely private man who wishes to have no more publicity; I rather feel I flushed him out into a too-bright glare of publicity, while inept handling by some colleagues has resulted in his desire to resume the life of an immensely thoughtful recluse.
To summarise, almost barbarously briefly: LS is about poetry and text, GCS an illustration of the principles which underlie the universe and PM about a personal philosophy which ranges from the metaphysical and spiritual through to the literary and psychoanalytic – that each part of the garden is named after a Greek deity is only the beginning. OK – I have used far more words to describe PM than the other two. Why is this? Because its actually got a lot more to say than the other two – indeed it makes them feel almost shallow in comparison.
The first thing which strikes me about these gardens is their privacy. LS was never easy to get access to, although the trust which now runs the garden has made it much easier, GCS is made very difficult to get to (you have to know people in the business to get the magic entrance documentation) and PM can be visited by appointment only. Inevitably these intellectuals are not directly addressing the (general) public, although Charles Jencks has written an exhaustive (and exhausting) book on his garden – one almost feels that he and Maggie made the garden to be photographed and filmed, but never visited. Finlay at least made his work available for exhibition. PM as the most private of the three is very much one man’s intimate working out of a personal philosophy, one too personal to be publicly engaged.
Related to a seeming lack of concern for direct public access is the lack of obvious routes in all three. There is nothing remotely dictatorial in how these three intellectuals wish their visitors to see their gardens. Which, given that visitors are not who these gardens are made for, is not surprising. At PM, it is easy to wander around, there are paths and obvious routes, there is a lot of lawn and grassland and the feeling of the place invites exploration. It melds beautifully into the countryside – it is actually a visitor friendly place. There are also some deliberate linkages across from one area to another.
Being at LS feels like walking the pages of the poet’s notebook, it is a complete jumble, stuffed with inscriptions, dotted at random around the garden with no seeming relationship to each other and only very rarely to the surroundings. But this is to take the garden on as an art-object – which it is not. It is a very personal garden which was not necessarily designed to be viewed by others – as such it creates a feeling of intimacy and spontaneity, of a privileged look into the mind processes of the poet. Apart from the one much-photographed view, where a quotation from the architect of the French Revolutionary terror Saint Just, is laid out in stone in front of a pool, with the Lanarkshire hills behind, this garden tends to look inward; much of Finlay’s work is overshadowed by the trees he planted to fend the wind (and sight) of his patch of blasted heath. There is the feeling that this garden is not meant to relate to its surroundings.
GCS provides remarkably little in the way of routing from one area to another, at times we were floundering around in bushes or muddy grass. Which somehow encapsulates my feeling about this garden. That despite its awe-inspiring content, its courage, and its sheer inventiveness, it is utterly cold, designed as an intellectual exercise with no emotion whatsoever. It is not actually designed for real people. But as a physical illustration of the mathematical workings of the universe it has extraordinary power.
Both LS and GCS have attracted comments such as “the most important garden of the 20th century”. In fact, what this illustrates is that the person concerned has shown themselves up as having very little knowledge of gardens. In a peculiar way, none of these three feel like gardens. LS in particular seems to alienate gardeners but entrance everyone else. None of these three have much plant interest (PM has the most), none really address the central intellectual nexus of the garden – the relationship between art and nature, although PM does relate very strongly to art and cultural landscape (ie. farmland). LS is a garden as space for poetry – I suspect that if Finlay had beached up making a garden in Mustique, it would not have been that different. GCS is a garden as a vehicle and site for illustrating and making concrete equations – again, if Maggie Keswick had inherited a slab of Hong Kong instead of Scotland (it was in HK that her ancestors made the money which enabled them to create and maintain what must have been/still is a phenomenally expensive project) then we would have had a tropical version, which would have looked very much the same.
By the way it sounds like I don’t like LS – in fact I do, but not as a garden; it makes me think and gives me ideas, and many of the individual works are marvellously creative and witty. All three of these gardens do that. And make you think, which is far more than most gardens do.
Having just visited Little Sparta (for the second time) and The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, and been twice to Plaz Metaxu in the last year, now is a good time to reflect on the distinctly off-beat pursuit of the garden which tries to be seriously intellectual. And to think about all three at once.
Little Sparta (LS) is probably the best known of the three, created by Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (GCS) has been made by architectural and cultural critic Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie Keswick (and landscape architect). Plaz Metaxu (PM) is in Devon. The first two are well-known from articles and books, the latter only from one article in the Feb.2008 issue of (British) House and Garden magazine; its owner/creator is an intensely private man who wishes to have no more publicity; I rather feel I flushed him out into a too-bright glare of publicity, while inept handling by some colleagues has resulted in his desire to resume the life of an immensely thoughtful recluse.
To summarise, almost barbarously briefly: LS is about poetry and text, GCS an illustration of the principles which underlie the universe and PM about a personal philosophy which ranges from the metaphysical and spiritual through to the literary and psychoanalytic – that each part of the garden is named after a Greek deity is only the beginning. OK – I have used far more words to describe PM than the other two. Why is this? Because its actually got a lot more to say than the other two – indeed it makes them feel almost shallow in comparison.
The first thing which strikes me about these gardens is their privacy. LS was never easy to get access to, although the trust which now runs the garden has made it much easier, GCS is made very difficult to get to (you have to know people in the business to get the magic entrance documentation) and PM can be visited by appointment only. Inevitably these intellectuals are not directly addressing the (general) public, although Charles Jencks has written an exhaustive (and exhausting) book on his garden – one almost feels that he and Maggie made the garden to be photographed and filmed, but never visited. Finlay at least made his work available for exhibition. PM as the most private of the three is very much one man’s intimate working out of a personal philosophy, one too personal to be publicly engaged.
Related to a seeming lack of concern for direct public access is the lack of obvious routes in all three. There is nothing remotely dictatorial in how these three intellectuals wish their visitors to see their gardens. Which, given that visitors are not who these gardens are made for, is not surprising. At PM, it is easy to wander around, there are paths and obvious routes, there is a lot of lawn and grassland and the feeling of the place invites exploration. It melds beautifully into the countryside – it is actually a visitor friendly place. There are also some deliberate linkages across from one area to another.
Being at LS feels like walking the pages of the poet’s notebook, it is a complete jumble, stuffed with inscriptions, dotted at random around the garden with no seeming relationship to each other and only very rarely to the surroundings. But this is to take the garden on as an art-object – which it is not. It is a very personal garden which was not necessarily designed to be viewed by others – as such it creates a feeling of intimacy and spontaneity, of a privileged look into the mind processes of the poet. Apart from the one much-photographed view, where a quotation from the architect of the French Revolutionary terror Saint Just, is laid out in stone in front of a pool, with the Lanarkshire hills behind, this garden tends to look inward; much of Finlay’s work is overshadowed by the trees he planted to fend the wind (and sight) of his patch of blasted heath. There is the feeling that this garden is not meant to relate to its surroundings.
GCS provides remarkably little in the way of routing from one area to another, at times we were floundering around in bushes or muddy grass. Which somehow encapsulates my feeling about this garden. That despite its awe-inspiring content, its courage, and its sheer inventiveness, it is utterly cold, designed as an intellectual exercise with no emotion whatsoever. It is not actually designed for real people. But as a physical illustration of the mathematical workings of the universe it has extraordinary power.
Both LS and GCS have attracted comments such as “the most important garden of the 20th century”. In fact, what this illustrates is that the person concerned has shown themselves up as having very little knowledge of gardens. In a peculiar way, none of these three feel like gardens. LS in particular seems to alienate gardeners but entrance everyone else. None of these three have much plant interest (PM has the most), none really address the central intellectual nexus of the garden – the relationship between art and nature, although PM does relate very strongly to art and cultural landscape (ie. farmland). LS is a garden as space for poetry – I suspect that if Finlay had beached up making a garden in Mustique, it would not have been that different. GCS is a garden as a vehicle and site for illustrating and making concrete equations – again, if Maggie Keswick had inherited a slab of Hong Kong instead of Scotland (it was in HK that her ancestors made the money which enabled them to create and maintain what must have been/still is a phenomenally expensive project) then we would have had a tropical version, which would have looked very much the same.
By the way it sounds like I don’t like LS – in fact I do, but not as a garden; it makes me think and gives me ideas, and many of the individual works are marvellously creative and witty. All three of these gardens do that. And make you think, which is far more than most gardens do.
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