Like Gravetye Manor, also with a notable Arts and Crafts garden, Great Fosters is a Country House Hotel, in fact it was England’s very first, opening to the public in 1930. To see the garden today you have to book a stay, or at least take tea, which is served pretty much all day from around 11am, either at a table or brought to you in a picnic basket anywhere you like in the grounds. If you come for the gardens don’t worry about time limits – you will be able to stroll at your leisure both before and after your meal. This year however, you will have had to visit with a generous spirit and come prepared to use your imagination because, like many major gardens, Covid19 and the Furlough Scheme have left their mark. The challenges this place has had to face in its long history are endless, something I came to understand only after my visit – changing my viewpoint and informing this introduction.

Early Residents: People have liked it around here for a very long time. Records show the de Imworth family lived there in 1224 and probably built a Manor within the confines of the Saxon Moat which survives today and dates from around 500AD. What an amazing thought that this strip of water, hand dug and the pride and joy of people more than 1,500 years ago, is still with us; somehow surviving all the vicissitudes of time. That is what I love about history – reading about what has happened here through time has the power to transform a pretty garden feature into something which speaks of generations of local people. When you understand what it is you are looking at while sipping your tea, the experience is soaked in meaning. A fairly detailed leaflet outlining the stream of ownership is available at the hotel showing how the place today is a palimpsest of past lives. It is that layering of personal ambition, dreams and foibles, lived within the confines of politics and social norms which is written on the house and gardens today.

The earliest mention of the site as ‘Fosters’ dates from 1521 and there are pretty good records relating to subsequent ownership. William Warham, who built the oldest surviving part of the Manor house, lost the house in debts to a money lender. The house was at the centre of several subsequent ‘deals’ and unpleasant shenanigans until, in 1604, it was sold to Sir John Denham who remodelled it to become the foundation for the substantial building it is today. Henry VIII used it as a hunting lodge, as the grounds were once part of Windsor Old Forest, as did his daughter Elizabeth I, and there are personal crests in the house belonging to Anne Boleyn – so this was a Tudor house with strong royal connections. Family feuds, neglect, avarice, uprisings, treason and madness all affected the interests of the estate. In fact, Great Fosters was a lunatic asylum in the early nineteenth century when it belonged to Sir John Furnival, and almost certainly welcomed King George III here during his treatment for insanity. On the doctor’s death in 1846 the house was treated to lots of money and a thorough refurbishment but was again in trouble by 1902.
Twentieth Century Life: The Hon Gerald Montagu, who made his fortune in poultry farming, bought the neglected estate in 1918 and sprinkled it liberally with fairy dust. I can imagine that, after the trauma of war, the comfort of owning an old house resonant with the greatness of the Tudor dynasty would have been a draw for Gerald. Who can blame him if he was nostalgic for the certainties of a past, (albeit fantastical), Golden Age? Nostalgia and neo-Elizabethan pastiche were exactly what his chosen architect, W H Romaine-Walker ARIBA (1854-1940) was known for; that, and garden design in the ‘contemporary’ style, which is known to us as Arts and Crafts. Montagu asked Romaine-Walker and his assistant Gilbert Jenkins, to design ‘such a garden as would recreate the old-world charm of the place and be interesting all year round’. And that is what he got: a Tudoresque Parterre, a Sunken Rose Garden, a Pergola and hump back Oak bridge connecting the two. Plus, just beyond the formal gardens on the east side of the house, a Thatched Pavilion for lawn archery as a nod to Ye Olde England.

The Parterre Garden: was laid out in the rectangle of land on the east façade of the extended house which is defined by the Saxon Moat. The four hedged compartments follow a traditional design of knots with box edged beds and yew topiary, including sculpted peacocks, each with a sculpture in the middle representing one of the four seasons. The centre point of the whole design is marked by a monumental stone sundial, probably created by Nicholas Stone the elder, and acquired by the then owner, Sir John Doderidge, one of the first members of the Society of Antiquaries – although it was possibly a donation by Sir Francis Drake. This is the spot where real Elizabethan history meets nostalgia but it works for me: the Arts and Crafts mash-up of our garden history has touched a deep chord in our national psyche, has surreptitiously crept under our skin, inoculated us with a certain way of seeing that has become second nature. It is as difficult to see a stone mullioned window without the silhouette of yew topiary somewhere close by, as it is to see sunflowers, without thinking of Vincent van Gogh.

The Sunken Rose Garden: is the companion piece to the Parterre. It really is not my thing as I find rose gardens in general are ugly things which isolate this beautiful shrub from the rest of nature and blindly hope to showcase their superb blooms while choosing to ignore their less-than-beautiful carriage. Roses, in my opinion, are best shown in a harmony with other plants where they sing in tune with the group. There are some rose gardens which I think achieve this but this formal Edwardian design leaves me cold. The focus is a circular lily pool and fountain (I read that this was innovative of Jenkins’ but I am doubtful on this point). Eight evenly spaced sets of steps radiate up through a ring of iron hoops and trelliswork – who cannot think late Repton? Lavender and York stone paving complete the look – which many people admire.

The Pergola & Bridge: Joining these two areas is a wooden pergola which runs parallel to one arm of the moat and embraces a hump-backed bridge. This classic Arts and Crafts garden device leads out from the house into the parkland beyond while hinging the two main garden events by way of a hump-backed bridge. Today this is covered in wisteria and recalls the Japanese bridges made famous by Monet’s paintings of his water garden at Giverny. The rockwork in the moat, on the side flanking the pergola, was designed by Gomez Waterer (1867-1945) of John Waterer Sons & Crisp, who also supervised early planting of the moat.

A Country House Hotel: The house and garden were in the game again with their new old-style makeover fit for the coming century – but in 1930 it was all change again. The new owner, Sir Harold Sutcliffe, a Conservative politician, turned Great Fosters into England’s first Country House Hotel. I would love to know more about what inspired him, where did the idea come from and what convinced him to put so much energy and money behind it? Whatever the reason, the idea was a resounding success – for a time at least. The new hotel hosted stars of stage and screen as well as debutantes, politicians and bon viveurs from old money – a visit by Queen Mary in 1931 was the icing on the cake. Such was its success that the old dining room was replaced by the larger Elizabethan tithe barn imported from Ewell Manor. I can imagine the gardens full of guests, playing tennis, gossiping in the Parterre and perhaps having a go at croquet and archery on the lawns.

The Sutcliffe family held on to Great Fosters for over ninety years until they sold to the current owners, Alexander Hotels in 2018. They remained in place longer than any family in its entire history. They continued to make improvements throughout their tenure but did not have an easy time of it. In the 1960s the entrance driveway, which had never been long, was truncated further when the line of Stroude Road was altered. In the 1970s land was compulsory purchased and the new M25 brutally swept away a third of the Lime Avenue on the east of the property. This avenue leading the eye away from the formal gardens and linking the informal parkland was an important design feature which now was a bleeding artery, letting in the noise and pollution of heavy traffic. When the great storm of 1987 was followed by another in 1990, destroying many of the protecting old trees, it must have seemed like it was time to just give up and let the house and garden go. In the face of a stark choice – more money, energy and a rescue plan, or give up, the Sutcliffe family chose to find a positive solution.
Twenty-First Century Rescue: It must have been an agonising decision for the Sutcliffe family but they were bold and brave and commissioned Kim Wilkie, who at the time had just set up his own landscape practice, to work with them to resolve the existing issues and also create new interventions which would consolidate the designed landscape around the house. Wilke is well known today for his particular approach which, as he says, is ‘to listen to the stories and then continue the tale, allowing the memory and imagination of what has gone before to inspire fresh design in the evolving pattern.’ It must have been this quality which inspired confidence in the Sutcliffe’s when they began their association in 1990. The objectives are summarised on his website in a clear voice so I am borrowing it:

• Restoration of the historic approaches and listed formal gardens around the house; extending the formal gardens with new and complementary designs.
I admit to having been a bit sniffy about the Romaine-Walker Parterre Garden. The hedges were shaggy and the underplanting of salvia, Alchemilla, purple sage, ‘Hidcote’ lavender, catmint and geranium was patchy, leggy and not ‘billowy’ enough. I quickly realised that this must have been due to the lack of working gardeners during lockdown but I would never have guessed there had been an immense restoration work programme without which this would all have been completely lost. It is only by doing some background reading that I discovered that by 1990 this listed garden was derelict with the yew hedges lining the pathways grown so thick as to be almost joined up. The yews were cut back to the wood and over time the right balance of shape and size, crisp outline and fulsome silhouette was achieved again.
Many of the historic approaches to the house had been obscured too and these were given attention, as was the south side of the house where Wilkie wrapped new formal extensions around the building by creating compartments of crinkle-crankle hedges, some waist high in wild flowers, others shorn to suit the sculptures which inhabit them.
I also particularly liked a quartet of little gardens designed by Wilkie which, to my mind, are little vignettes of historic garden forms: an Arts and Crafts herb garden, full of artfully relaxed charm; an evocation of a seventeenth century Wilderness (trimmed bushes replaced by daisies); An Elizabethan Mount; and a Victorian fantasy ‘Dell’. That’s my interpretation but they are formally described as the Secret Gardens of Peter Pan, the Armillary Sphere, The Mound and The Dell. I think they are clever and intriguing but, again, they were suffering from the effects of Covid19 and I found a gardener working in one who was clearly distressed at the state of the planting and the loss of what she described as seven years of her work.

• Reacquisition of the original grounds and creation of a new lake; regenerating existing oak woodland and stream corridors.
Wilke is known for his passion for the environment and, together with his belief in the historic memory of place, he was able to make the case for enlarging the estate to allow it to breathe and develop a healthier ecosystem. He persuaded the Sutcliffes to buy forty-six adjoining acres of derelict land which he would nurture to reflect the old forest, create a lake to extend habitat and resurrect old ponds and streams which he saw as vital arteries of life for the landscape. Today this area looks so natural it is a victim of its own success as no-one would think to praise all the effort and drive required to make something which should have been there all the time – but wasn’t. Particularly moving are two ancient oaks, the last remnants of the ancient forest, which stand out as two towering personalities supporting a whole raft of animal and vegetal life.

• Protection of the land from the intrusion of the M25 motorway with 6-metre-high earthworks and a formal turf amphitheatre.
The local Highways Agency had a nickname for the man who rang them every month for six years to progress his planning application – ‘Persistency Wilkie’ – but he got there in the end. The Lime Avenue stretching out from the Elizabeth East façade used to be 210 meters long but in 1971 it was severed by the new M25 road and reduced to 125 meters. The noise and pollution was horrendous and solving this problem was at the top of the list if the garden was to be saved. Wilkie is known today for his large-scale sculptural landforms, based on the eighteenth-century landscape garden tradition. At Great Fosters he clearly was inspired by the great grassy amphitheatre designed at nearby Claremont by Charles Bridgeman for the Duke of Newcastle and built in the early 1720s. It took much longer than anticipated to gather the funds and secure the permissions but at last Wilkie was able to build half a mile of protective earth bunds and a six-metre-high grass amphitheatre which serves as a practical device to protect against noise but also as a splendid focal end to the axial vista. It is a feature of great bravura which I enjoyed very much but, my goodness, the roar of cars on the road beyond is still distressing.

While Great Fosters is not the most beautiful or enjoyable garden I have visited, it has touched me in a way that that is sometimes missing in a perfectly lovely place. It showed its vulnerability, the scars of misfortune and abandonment, its struggle to be properly funded at various times as well as the love and care it has had lavished on it. Today it fells like a place which is marooned with all exits blocked off and little space to breathe. However lovely the experience provided, the constant roar of traffic is heard outside, and in normal times the noise of air traffic overhead must be horrific. But what to do? At what point do we admit defeat and let heritage gardens slip away. What price is a garden worth? Having taken the time to get to know it a bit better, I have come to think of Great Fosters as a great ship which refuses to go down despite stormy seas, which is funny really as a shot of the entrance façade was used in the 1958 Rank Organisation film about the Titanic. ‘A Night to Remember’. At this difficult time, the hospitality industry is facing disaster and unthinkable closures which will affect the destiny of some of our major gardens. I don’t know if the gardens at Great Fosters will be able to weather this storm but hopefully it will thrive again so that the lines in Noels Coward’s play, ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ will ring true again:
‘Really darling, you’re lounging there sipping vodka as though you were at Great Fosters’.

https://www.alexanderhotels.co.uk/great-fosters
https://www.kimwilkie.com/uk/

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It all starts with the big bang; there is no way to avoid the box garden. If you imagine the site as caterpillar-shaped, the pointy head is the entrance and the Buxus parterre of the Bastion are the large, dominating eyes. (Talking of caterpillars, the garden was saved from the threat of the south-east Asian box-tree moth Cydalima perspectalis by the use of Bacillus thuringiensis var Kurstaki, a natural bacterium, not a chemical insecticide.) It was Bertrand Vernet de Marqueyssac who made it possible to grow a garden on this rocky site by building rampart-like walls to support its four main terraces after he acquired the chateau in 1692. Rumour had it that he called in André Le Nôtre to design the gardens but this has been debunked. It was, in fact, a pupil of the great man, a Monsieur Porcher, who worked on the design, basing it on his master’s for the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in a similar setting above the Seine. A new chateau was built by Bertrand’s descendants on the eve of the French Revolution, incorporating part of the older one. This building survived that period of turmoil and was designated a ‘Monument Historique’ in 1948 for its façade and amazing roof, tiled in local limestone flags weighing over five hundred tons, a style known as lauzes. As in all the great houses, each generation adds something, but every now and again someone of real energy and talent comes along and transforms the place. In the case of Marqueyssac, that person was Julien de Cérval (1818-1894).

One of the advantages of writing about gardens is that I am sometimes invited to come and enjoy it out of normal hours. It is such a privilege to be alone in an historic site and my arrival in Marqueyssac in early June, at six thirty in the morning, was extraordinary. It occurred to me that Julien de Cérval would have experienced the fantastic mists that rose from the river, shrouding the garden in a ghostly veil, muting its colours and diffusing the light. Spider webs decorated the topiary like spun bunting and a whole galaxy of tiny snails, their shells swirled with vortex markings in shades of white, pink and brown, studded the space between. Something of this magic, half horror – half enchantment must have inspired him to infuse the site with ideas from the European Romantic style when he inherited Marqueyssac in 1861. Much of him, however, was devoted to Italy and the gardens he had studied there having joined the Legion Romaine in 1849 to defend the Pope’s estates – a group often known as the nineteenth-century Crusaders. The garden demonstrates these two influences, plus Cérval’s passion for, and deep knowledge of, agronomy.

The team of gardeners arrived just before 7 am, dressed smartly in their uniform and each carrying a rucksack containing the tools of their trade, including their dedicated pair of shears which they take home every night to clean and restore to razor-sharp perfection. By 7.30 am feet could be heard crunching on the gravel paths and the tap-tap of hand shears at work began for the day. Julien de Cérval was somewhat obsessed with Buxus and planted tens of thousands of them throughout the estate, some in the parterre, others bordering long walks or forming green tunnels, and some growing freely through informal woodland. The amazing box garden which wows visitors today replaced the old potager of the Bastion area as a ‘terrasse d’agrément’, an ornamental space with serpentine paths passing through beds of undulating box forms, punctuated by the strong verticals of cypress and pines. I can see how walking through this wonderland for the household would have been a distraction from the real world, with constant small changes wrought by the weather, season or time of day keeping the experience fresh.

Mention is often made of the Italian influence here, but it is not the symmetrical, formal Italy of Medici Villas; the feel for me is more of the Romantic Italy of Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Perhaps the informality of the box shapes recalls ancient hedges which time has sculpted – Cérval would have known that the Emperor Augustus had box hedges and topiary in his gardens in Rome around 27BCE. He would also have been aware of the opening in 1867 of the new Parc aux Buttes-Chaumont in Paris with its many sinuous paths, Temple of Sibylle perched atop a cliff fifty meters above an artificial lake, and its relaxed, informal box hedging clipped in waves. Unfortunately, we have no archival evidence to back up any of these theories – Julien didn’t even leave a note of the gardens he particularly admired – however the Bastion Garden with its roiling forms says it all; you are in a place dedicated to the emotions. Scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic glades, and rustic retreats suitable for solitary contemplation –  Marqueyssac has all the features of a garden created in the late Romantic spirit.

The garden divides quite neatly along the length of the caterpillar shape into two ‘atmospheres’: one which is hot and dry and Mediterranean in character along the south flank which follows the line of the river; and the other is much more humid and temperate. I like to take the path along the hot and dramatic cliff walk, passing the little chapel where members of his family are buried to this day. The chapel had been built by a previous owner but Julien gave it a gothic makeover and dedicated it to, (I am tempted to say himself), Saint Julien, considered the patron saint of lost travellers, ferrymen, innkeepers and circus performers – I wonder which of these appealed most to him. A rustic gate sees you through to the dramatic cliff walk with its overhanging viewing platforms, one of which is the start of an even scarier walk known by the Italian name, Via Ferrata, ‘a mountain route equipped with fixed ladders, cables, and bridges in order to be accessible to climbers and walkers’.

The chalk escarpment is populated with a limited number of species which have made themselves at home here, including Acer campestre, Quercus robur, Quercus ilex and Arbutus unedo, the strawberry tree. The dark leaves of the Holm oak, common in the region around Sarlat, have given the area its name; the ‘Perigord Noir’. Here, they stand out in contrast to the pale rock – conjuring menace and a frisson to add to that of the sheer drop to certain death on the other side of the path. What a gift this topography is to anyone wanting to induce the fear and awe essential to a garden of the emotions. Think Gothik Horror film with the innocent beauty taking this percorso pericoloso to meet her lover by moonlight, with the frightening shadows of dark oaks chasing her, and the mists rising from the river below. Today, discrete Perspex signs ensure you won’t get lost and give a bit of botanic guidance, remarking plants such as Helianthemum vulgare – Rock rose, and education for children about the geology and fauna.

Pathways string ‘event’s together like coloured stones on a necklace. Viewing platforms, sculpture or built structures such as a Cabane en Brande (hut made from heather), the Asile du Poète (poet’s retreat) or the Cabane en Cloche, a wonderfully constructed traditional dry-stone shelter with a bell-shaped roof, are the reinvention of the eighteenth-century practice of creating temples and grottos. Steps and linking corridors encased in arched box connect the dry and dramatic south-facing side to the damper and cooler north. This cooler, more humid micro-climate allowed Cérval to work with a different palette of plants and trees such as Elms, Laburnum anagyyroides, Platanus x hispanica and Cercis siliquastrum. In fact, he cleverly cools the whole design down too, culminating in a four-metre wide, completely flat and straight, (one might say Cartesian), ride, flanked by shady trees and on one side a rock face wall of hewn blocks hosting moss and ferns. Which brings us back to the chateau.

It also brings us to another energetic and exceptional person, the current owner of the site Kléber Rossillon, who had the vision and energy to completely renovate Marqueyssac from its post-war state of total dilapidation to what we see today. It opened to the public in 1997 after a number of years’ work. He is also responsible for Castelnaud, the marvellous medieval chateau-fort (castle), on the other bank of the river. Rossillon’s story is worth a detour on google but it is his design for a modern topiary artwork which we come to at the end of the circuit which I will finish with. Le Chaos is said to have started life when a box of the rectangular sugar cubes popular in France spilled onto the breakfast table. I don’t know how true this story is but I would love it to be. A number of scrubby trees were cleared on the slope behind the chateau, yet more Buxus planted and frames were installed to guide the topiary. Today it is fully grown and an interesting, crisply geometric, juxtaposition to the curves of the old parterre.

As usual, I have left features and aspects of the garden for you to discover but, if you intend to visit, I think this is  garden worth getting up early for, or seeing on one of their candlelit evenings in summer – or indeed at any time of year because this is truly a garden for all seasons, and deservingly listed as a National Historic Monument.

Address: Les Jardins de Marqueyssac, 24220 Vezac, France

Phone: +33 5 53 31 36 36

https://marqueyssac.com/?lang=en

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Modernist Greens or Eco-Pragmatists – people have been concerned about our impact on the earth since forever so it’s hard to put a date on the start of the green movement. However, when you hear talk of Modernist Greens it is in relation and reaction to the activism dating from around the 1960s. In 2005 Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger wrote a swingeing essay, ‘The Death of Environmentalism’, in which they criticised the Green Movement as being stale, ineffectual and woolly headed, clinging to a tree-hugging worldview which idealises wilderness as being the Holy Grail of ‘true nature’ and presents humans as the scourge of the earth. Modernist Greens beg to differ. They say that there’s no point clinging to a romantic vision of some Arcadian past. We are firmly in the Anthropocene age where man has changed the world significantly and there is no going back – so let’s go forward in the best way for all the stakeholders of the planet, including ourselves. This isn’t a marginal group – they include some really respected environmentalists like Mark Lynas who champions nuclear power and genetically modified crops as essential for a sustainable planet, or Peter Kareiva, formerly Nature Conservancy’s chief scientist, who has made it his mission to loosen nature’s grip on the green movement. There’s no argument that we are in an ecological mess – it’s just about how we get out of it. We are where we are and humans are here to stay so it is time to reconcile human needs and the needs of nature.

Phenology – is the study of plant (and animal) cyclic events and how these are affected by the seasons or annual variations in climate, as well as habitat changes. Sounds a bit technical but people have been intuitively reading signs in the natural world for centuries as a way of understanding when best to plant. When I lived in rural SW France, we waited for the overhead clamour and v-shaped formations of migrating cranes to celebrate the arrival of spring. Later in the year their return journey heralded the beginning of winter. In the garden, phenology is all about timing – for instance, it’s generally thought that it is safe to plant potatoes once you see that dandelions are in bloom. It’s an interesting subject with its own historical documentation as well as annual calendars still produced to guide the gardener in different climate zones today.

Deep Ecology – this is an interesting one which will be talked about a lot in the coming years. It describes an environmental movement and philosophy which knocks humans off the top of the pile and treats us as one of many equal components of a global ecosystem.

Biophilia and Urgent Biophilia – love this one, coined by biologist E.O. Wilson, his theory says that humans have an innate and genetically determined affinity with the natural world. When we are in deficit this need to connect with nature becomes ‘urgent’.

Lunar Gardening – nope, it’s not about gardening on the moon but rather gardening in relation to the phases of the moon – sometimes called Moon Gardening too. This is very popular in France where I first came across the idea, but there are lunar gardening calendars produced in the UK, North America and elsewhere, so it’s a fairly widespread practise. It is one of the things I have been able to give my time to understanding lately and I am grateful to John Harris, head gardener at the Tresillian Estate, for his lucid writing on the subject. There’s nothing particularly outlandish about lunar gardening, it’s just about harnessing the powerful gravitational force of the moon on our planet which, as we all know, causes the sea to move tidally. To a much smaller extent, tides also occur in lakes, the atmosphere, and within the Earth’s crust. High tides happen when water bulges upward, and low tides occur when water drops down. In the case of the garden it draws water in the soil upwards or causes it to drop back down again. It makes sense to work with these rhythms, planting when the soil is going to be in a damp, upward phase, or turning over the soil to allow in air and warmth when it is in a drier downward phase. Mr Harris says it saves the estate a huge amount of money as it maximises his efforts, therefore requiring less material input and man hours too e.g. fertiliser is made much more effective when spread at a time when it will be taken down by the action of falling water levels so you need much less of it. There’s a lot to learn with nearly everything from sowing to harvesting being better if you understand the gravitational pull of the moon on liquids.

Plant neurobiology – this is an area of study which is really hot. Broadly speaking, it asks can plants ‘think’? And it is really troubling when you add – and do they have ‘feelings’? Obviously, they don’t have brains like we do but there’s the rub – research has been anthropomorphic in essence, therefore sometimes missing the point. But that it changing. I went to a lecture by Paco Calvo from the Minimal Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Murcia and he demonstrated some pretty strong evidence for, at very least, a need to adjust our point of view. He points out that traditionally one important element of intelligence has been defined as the ability to move – plants are rooted so do not possess intelligence. Furthermore he points out, that just as we are unexpectedly conceding that certain animals are so like us that we are allowing them into our club, such as the octopus – we may in the future find plants to be sentient beings and, if so, the whole basis on which ethics is founded will have to shift. A fascinating subject.

Mycorrhizal Networks – While we are very familiar with mushrooms, the fruiting bodies of fungi – their life beneath the soil has been less well-known but we now are beginning to realise it is quite amazing. In fact, most of their body is made up of a mass of thin threads, known as a mycelium, which reach out across huge land masses, partnering up with roots of plants in a mutually beneficial relationship. Research has now revealed that around 90% of land plants are in one such mutually-beneficial relationship with this network of mycelium, which some people have dubbed ‘the wood wide web’, but which gets its official name from the work of the 19th-century German biologist Albert Bernard Frank , who coined the word “mycorrhiza” to describe these partnerships, in which the fungus colonises the roots of the plant bringing it nutrients in exchange for moisture.

But that’s not the end of it – further research suggests that plants ‘support’ each other through this network. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver believes large trees help out small, younger ones using the fungal internet. Without this help, she thinks many seedlings wouldn’t survive. In a 1997 study, she found that seedlings in the shade – which are likely to be short of food – got more carbon from donor trees.

Furthermore, other researchers have found evidence that plants can go one better, and communicate through the mycelia. In 2013 David Johnson of the University of Aberdeen and his colleagues showed that broad beans also use fungal networks to pick up on impending threats – in this case, hungry aphids. He found that broad bean seedlings that were not themselves under attack by aphids, but were connected to those that were via fungal mycelia, activated their anti-aphid chemical defences. Those without mycelia did not. “Some form of signalling was going on between these plants about herbivory by aphids, and those signals were being transported through mycorrhizal mycelial networks,” says Johnson. Wow – seems an appropriate response.

Stuplimity – the aesthetic experience in which astonishment is united with boredom. Benjamin Vogt in his book, A New Garden Ethic (2019) quotes author Robert Macfarlane when talking about a world biodiversity crisis, ‘we register that crisis… as an ambient hum of guilt. Easily faded out. Like other unwholesome aspects of the Anthropocene, we mostly respond to mass extinction with stuplimity… in which astonishment is united with boredom such that we overload on anxiety to the point of outrage-outrage’’.

Unethical Amnesia – Related to stuplimity, unethical amnesia is driven by our desire to eliminate the distress that comes from acting unethically and to maintain a positive self-image as a moral citizen. How does this relate to gardens? As Vogt says, many of us know that we should be changing our habits to help mitigate the ecological damage we have caused. But we keep repeating the same behaviours such as ‘privileging one species over another through vast stretches of lawn, ill-timed mowing, monocultures of exotic plants…’ It is a feeling I recognise in myself when I buy a plant in a plastic pot or ‘give in’ to my desire for tidiness in the garden, or choose a species that isn’t as supportive of a healthy garden ecology over another which doesn’t perform quite so long.

Japanese – two words that I like in Japanese because they express feelings that we are familiar with but have no similar one-word way of expressing them. Yūgen – a wonderful word meaning a profound awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and mysterious for words. Kokoro – a word which expresses the undivided wholeness of mind, body, spirit and heart. In Japanese culture these things exist as one – there is no division as there is for us. I would love to have an equivalent word in English – it would be wonderful to create a Kokoro Garden, wouldn’t it?

Phytoremediation – use of plants to clean soil and water.

Landrace – a domesticated, locally adapted, traditional variety of animal or plant that has developed over time, through adaptation to its natural and cultural environment of agriculture and pastoralism, and due to isolation from other populations of the species. In plants this means a local variety of a domesticated species which has adapted largely to the natural and cultural environment in which it lives. It differs from a cultivar, which has been selectively bred to conform to a particular standard or characteristic. This is an important distinction which is an ingredient in the heated discussion over whether native plants are always the best choice in gardens and designed landscapes. I could have included a paragraph about the natives v exotics debate in this list – which starts with the question, ‘what is a native plant?’ I chickened out!

Summary – so that’s it – my little list of words, some of which encompass mind-blowingly large concepts and possibilities. There is so much rich debate and thought about ways in which gardens and gardening can help nurture both healthier people and a healthier planet. I am in awe of the people who actively spend their day researching better ways to be – power to them.

N.B. If you are worried about ordering books online at the moment during the Covid 19 crisis may I recommend the wonderful John Sandoe independent bookshop – which you can trust to be careful and considerate in the way they work: https://johnsandoe.com/

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If ever I have taken my garden for granted I apologise to the Universe. It may be small and it may be urban but it has been a source of joy, and at the moment, while the world is trying to manage the spread of the Covid 19 virus, it is a luxury beyond words. The Jardin de Curé, or Curate’s Garden, is an eighteenth-century French garden type born out of the crisis of its Revolution. It was intended to give succour to the village priest, not only in the physical sense but in the intellectual and spiritual realm too. It has been neglected in our modern world but it is beginning to make a comeback as people recognise its virtues. Last summer I visited a wonderful reconstruction in the garden village of Chédigny in the Touraine region and this seems to be an apposite moment to write about it.

The Touraine is endlessly garlanded with superlatives: often referred to as ‘the Garden of France’, it has more than its fair share of great cuisine, brilliant cheeses, amazing, world-famous chateaux and, of course, the ‘best’ accent in the whole of France. Difficult then for a pretty little village among other beauty spots to make its mark, but Chédigny has done just that by transforming itself into the first, and as yet only, village to have been designated a ‘Jardin Remarquable’ in its entirety. Pavements have been removed, parking moved out from the centre of town and homes smothered with a collection of 1000 climbing roses, supported by a choir of flora which in summer makes the whole place sing. It may be famous for its Rose Festival, held on the weekend of French Mothering Sunday, but Chédigny has something much more important to offer – its very special Jardin de Curé, which it believes to be unique in France.

Go to the centre of the village and follow the path around to the back of the church where you will be greeted by an outstanding specimen of a lime tree striding the space between the church and the old presbytery. The ground floor of the Curé’s home is now a lovely little restaurant and tearoom with a terrace which overlooks his old garden. It is a delightful spot and, as the garden was closed for lunch, a brilliant opportunity to sit and enjoy the scene from what would have been his everyday point of view. Then make your way through the little greenhouse entrance to the wonderful historic reconstruction created by this imaginative community.

If you hadn’t heard of a Jardin de Curé before you may feel you have walked into a veg garden, with herbs and flowers and some other bits and bobs, set in a rather formal framework, but giving the overall impression of a joyful, abundant and somewhat haphazard potager. And, on a level, that’s what it is – perfectly lovely too. What elevates this garden type for me is the intention behind it; the subtext. It is indeed a garden to feed the body but it aspires to be so much more. It is a garden for thinking, a garden of messages and iconography, for learning and teaching, for medicine, horticultural experimentation, curiosity, biodiversity and spiritual celebration and reflection. I think of it as a garden designed to feed mind, body and soul, and at this moment in time it has great appeal, especially since it flourished in a time of particular need.

The village Curate always lived a fairly modest life-style and did not share in the enormous wealth of the Church or the collection of local tithes; a kind of taxation requiring about a tenth of all agricultural production be given to the church as a ‘donation’. He had to keep to a strict budget to keep all the expenses of his office within his means. Things were tight enough but, on the 4 August 1789, during a night of sweeping reforms, tithes were abolished and the State took over Church funding. The following year the French State slashed the income of the local Curate; from now on he had to find his own way to stretch his income – and the presbytery garden was to be a godsend.

The Jardin de Curé is alive and well today as an expression in the French language which, very loosely, refers to a bit of a disorderly jumble of a garden; but the actual historic gardens are rare and misunderstood. Situated behind the presbytery, the basic design follows that of the Roman, Greek and Persian gardens described by much admired writers such as Pliny the Elder. At their simplest they follow the form of a Greek or Roman cross with paths dividing the space into four planting areas, usually defined by a box border. There can be extensions to this format, as there are at Chédigny, but the cross is always at its heart with a water basin or crucifix at the node. Each quarter had a specific purpose; different plantings were directly related to the needs of the Curate and his work:

Flowers – to this day the Catholic Church is very specific about the role plants and flowers play in the liturgy of the sacred year. They are there to highlight the different feasts and festivals and not as general horticultural adornment. For instance, during Lent no flowers should be used, although leaves and branches are permitted but then, on Easter Day, there should be a profusion of yellow and white blossoms symbolising the light of the risen Christ. The Curate would have had a profound knowledge of the symbolic role of flowers and he would have grown these in one of the ‘quarter beds’ to decorate the church all year round.

Vegetables – would have been for his personal sustenance to supplement his salary. His parishioners would have donated plants and seedlings and it is thought that they had a hand in planting them too, wherever they found a space in the vegetable bed. It is this community planting which, it is thought, led to an informal arrangement as one seasonal speciality followed another at the pace dictated by the Curate’s appetite.

Herbs and Simples – were also essential, not just for supporting the health of the Curate but for his work in healing the sick among his flock and other tasks such as embalming the dead. Of course, they weren’t just for medicinal use but were valued for their flavour and for making oils and waters for household and personal use, such as insect repellent or lavender water. He would have been keen to grow new specialities to extend his repertoire and in the Chédigny garden they have illustrated this with unusual plants like cardamom.

Vines or Soft Fruits – if it was at all possible, grapes to be made into communal wine were grown in the final section but fruit was also very important, both for its symbolic value in the church and for eating. The enclosing boundaries of the garden were festooned with trained fruit trees of all kinds. The Curé performed an important role in the community, being one of just a few people with access to the sophisticated libraries of the old abbeys and monasteries. These libraries were an important source of information on the latest and most interesting discoveries on botany, and cutting edge, experimental methods in horticulture. Remember, most people did not travel too far from their home, so getting hold of new varieties of fruit and vegetables was a really exciting event. It was often the Curé who had the knowledge and experience to multiply these new varieties through grafting and division.

Part of his job was to be a thinker and these gardens were also designed to enhance reflection and the contemplation of the life of Christ. At Chédigny fourteen evergreen Euonymus japonicus shrubs have been planted equidistant to each other to represent the fourteen stations of the cross – an open-air ritual, following the passion of Christ in vegetal form. There is also a little corner dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which in past times may well have been decorated with plants and flowers with Marian connotations. The pathways would have been mindfully walked to practice the Breviary and provided a framework in which to pass some of the canonical hours. Very young children would have had their first religious lessons in this space, with the garden used to illustrate the wonder of nature and God’s power of creation.

Nothing comes of nothing, so although I have talked a lot about the Christian symbolism behind everything in a Jardin de Curé it is important to note that much of its exuberance and everyday pragmatism comes from an older, secular tradition – that of Le Jardin de Grandmère, or Granny’s Garden. These have something of the romance we associate with the Cottage Garden, but whereas we rather invented the concept in sentimental fashion during the Victorian period, the Granny Garden was a reality; a practical working space, combining food, medicine, decoration for the home and a place to exchange a delicacy with a dollop of gossip on the side. I imagine that the Curé would have had many a private chat with troubled villagers in that special state one assumes when gardening. If you are visiting one of the grand chateaux of the region, I would recommend a detour to this lovely little spot to spend a moment in a humble, but inspirational garden, which just may speak to you too.

https://www.touraineloirevalley.co.uk/the-village-garden-of-chedigny/

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The charming little sea-side town of Étretat is renowned for two things: its stunning coastal scenery, which attracted Impressionist painters, most notably Monet; and the oyster-beds created here at the behest of Marie-Antoinette, famed for her delight in these molluscs. And now there is a third; the garden. I say, The Garden because that really is enough to get you there. Drive to the town and then follow signs up the steep incline to the cliff top. You have to park wherever you can at the side of the road because there is no car park as such, and then walk up a lane, past a few Belle Epoque villas hidden in the trees, to a windy, natural viewing platform with a 1950s chapel and a contemporary art gallery, plus the entrance to the garden of the Villa Roxelana.

It’s a dramatic spot for a garden. The site is fairly narrow and steep with a spectacular view of the sea and one of the three famous chalk arches, the Porte d’Aval. I had seen images but was still rather taken aback by the real thing. Garden magazines had been pressing the point that this is a garden designed on Neo-Futuristic principles which call for the blending of art, technology, ethical values and nature to the benefit of future generations. My first impression was that someone had taken a big, fat, felt pen and drawn swirls and sweeps and parallel lines all over the landscape and then magicked the doodles into topiary. It was amazing and thrilling, claustrophobic, despite its elevated position, mad and, in places, flirting with kitsch. And I think its creator, Russian born landscape architect, Alexandre Grivko, would be quite happy with my reaction because one of his principle aims was to elicit emotion from the visitor. Mine were certainly in a jumble, ranging from irritation with the ‘singing’ trees to rapt admiration for the artistry in the topiary.

Grivko is co-founder and chief architect of the international landscape design company, Il Nature, based in London. Take a look at his portfolio and it is clear that he is deeply influenced by both French and Italian Renaissance and Baroque gardens plus, in certain projects, there is a hint of the Belgian Style, epitomised by Jacques Wirtz, combining structural shrubs and trees with fluid country-style planting. He describes Étretat as his ‘laboratory’ of ideas and best practice which will provide a template for future projects, especially, one suspects, those which have an historical aspect. Indeed, Étretat won the European Garden Award 2019-2020 for ‘Best Development of an Historic Garden or Park’. Grivko knows this part of France well and when he heard the site was for sale he jumped at the chance to work with the splendid view, the environment and with the history of the place.

The house and garden were built around 1905 by a famous Parisian actress, Madame Thébault, friend of Monet and lover of orchids. There was no real ‘historic’ garden here one suspects but Grivko has extended his sensibility to include both the cultural heritage and natural history of the general area. However, as he says himself, one of the advantages of a public garden of your own is that you can really experiment and take risks which you cannot do when working on the private gardens of clients. The site consists of seven named garden areas which flow one into the other in no particular order, allowing the visitor to make their own cocktail of sensory experience, including auditory ones, provided by various art installations like ‘the Clockwork Forest’, where the public can turn a key to start the music. Topiary inspired by the past is married to the fantasy world of Alice in Wonderland in the Jardin d’Aval, and references the local oyster beds on the beach in the Le Jardin d’Émotions where it is partnered with humanoid heads made from polyester resin and aluminium powder by Spanish artist, Samuel Salcedo, (not my cup of tea but people seemed to be loving them). Then there is the Jardin Zen, which may represent the harmonious union of man and nature, but does it through the rather exotic lens of a Buddhist warrior monk. It’s all here – a full-throated mix of Versailles and Alice’s Wonderland.

The Neo-Futuristic label gives me the most pause for thought. Grivko says he has been influenced by the 2007 Neo-Futuristic City Manifesto of Vito di Bari, which calls for urbanists, architects, designers and artists to believe in cities releasing emotions, driven by eco-sustainability, ethical values and the implementation of new materials and technologies, to provide a better quality of life for city dwellers. Think Zaha Hadid and I get it, but it is not so obvious in the context of this garden. It is a conversation I would love to have with the designer. The sculpture situated all over the garden certainly adds another layer of emotion to the design, not always positive I must say, and perhaps the amazing flow of the topiary design has been computer generated, but I am not sure how this garden is ploughing a new furrow. The species he uses to create his amazing sweeps of topiary are really interesting, reviving old favourites like the Georgian superstar, Phillyrea angustifolia, which John Evelyn referred to as, ‘incomparable verdure’, and introducing new possibilities like Elaeagnus x submacrophylla (formerly x ebbingei), a native of Normandy, whose grey leaves reflect the colours of the cliffs and the sea. And fringing the long sweeps of hedging with delicate Muehlenbeckia complexa is inspired. In fact, it will be very useful to observe how the choice of plants to suit this rough and tough costal environment stands up over time. Maybe this is one aspect of the work being done here which fits the future-ready label. Look out for a fuller discussion of this garden in the Hortus Journal later in 2020, but do go and see it if you can as there is much to enjoy and quite a bit which gives pause for thought.

If the garden at Étretat is looking to a brighter future for society based on a set of ideals developed by the creative professions, down the road there is another garden which, in its day, was the product of another group of thinkers and creators who were convinced they too had the recipe for happiness. Les Bois de Moutiers, built on the coast at Varengeville-sur-Mer, is the very first collaboration (and the only one in France) of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens, perhaps the most famous partnership of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Moving on from one garden to the other in a single day makes both visits more interesting and the contrast in emotional response is marked.

Where Étretat is full of edgy drama right from the start as you sidle the car up to the edge of the cliff to park, Les Bois de Moutiers is all gentle bucolic order. Although the grounds here meet the same coast, you don’t get a sense of this as you approach through well-groomed, little country hamlets wrapped in deep green cloaks of hedges and deciduous trees. All is orderly when you arrive, with a symmetrical view through a confident gateway, framing generously planted borders in tasteful shades of pale, which flank a wide walk focussed on the romantic face of the house. There is a spacious and convenient car park, elegantly screened by trees planted on mounds which hint at the romance of an English country holloway. I have to admit that I immediately felt at home in a style of garden whose rules I have absorbed since childhood. The radical vision of the Arts and Crafts Movement grew from a rejection of the Industrial Revolution and was based on a romantic and sentimental vision of a Utopian, rural past, when all were happy in their creative and fulfilling roles within a wholesome community. People should be living a simple but ‘good’ life where everything is either useful of beautiful. Emotion, truth in architecture which reflects the human experience, a desire to make the world a better place through design, these are common ideals which have shaped both the twenty-first century garden at Étretat and Moutiers, its respected elder. Interestingly both embrace an element of fantasy and deliberate dislocation with the real world, in order to express ideas aimed at changing society for the better.

Frenchman, Guillaume Mallet, was thirty-eight when he fell in love with the site at Les Bois de Moutiers. An anglophile from a wealthy banking family, he was deeply affected by his stay on the Isle of Wight as an eleven-year-old boy, where he experienced a gentler way of gardening which embraced nature. As an adult he developed a large circle of artistic, literary and musical friends on both sides of the Channel and was well acquainted with the work of William Morris. He met Edwin Lutyens in 1898 in Paris and, sensing his exceptional abilities, commissioned him to build a house in this beautiful spot. House, garden and park were designed to work in harmony, with Jekyll called in to help Mallet decorate and soften the structure with romantic and billowing planting.

Where Étretat has its Alice in Wonderland theme, encouraging fantasy and flights of the imagination, it is small and hemmed in and has to make a big impression in a short space of time. Moutiers is also considered other-worldly but it has the space to be more subtle about it, and perhaps relies more on our ability to self-generate this spirit. The twelve-hectare site allows the house room to breathe, protected by its little coterie of domestic gardens, set off by an apron of gently sloping lawns, beyond which mixed woodland with planted interventions, all by Mallet, make their way down to the sea. It was experienced as a magical, fairy tale place with ever changing atmosphere depending on the light and the season. The young poet Jean Cocteau visited in 1913 (the date of his friend Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’) with André Gide and wrote:
‘have you forgotten that park?… I’m certain that I went walking there one evening with you. It went right down to the sea… a huge estate, at dusk: the dawn of the night. We couldn’t hear the sea… We were going through, if I remember rightly, four small walled gardens like Italianate cloisters…I count seven steps. We could hear a piano playing.’

Today, the building is quite a surprise; romantic in its fairy-tale features from the front but in a dreary state of disrepair to the rear which rather breaks the spell. The gardens too are unevenly kempt, with the principle courtyards near the house in best repair, but other areas are clearly struggling for care, attention and money. I hope a plan is in place to find the funding needed, not just for vital repairs but to allow for the correct plants to be restored to their rightful place and to let the garden shine again. I would have loved to have the chance to see the interior but this was not possible on my visit – all Arts and Crafts gardens are ideally designed to relate to the principle views from inside the house. House and garden really exist hand in hand.

Walking through the chain of gardens around the house it is a pleasure to pick out features which grew to be typical of a Lutyens-Jekyll garden: crazy paving, rounded ‘landings’, a pergola with stone piers and wooden cross beams, the typical ideal of a progression from formal areas around the house, gradually fading out to meet a completely naturalistic outer belt blending with the wider landscape. The principles of the Arts and Crafts garden have had a profound effect on garden making in Britain ever since, and I believe they still are the single most powerful template for garden designers, informing many of their decisions. The theory of an ideal society based on a kind of pseudo-medieval guild model may be risible t many today, but the desire to live a more harmonious life with nature as an inspiration is still with us – and I think this same desire informs the Neo-Futuristic movement. It is a bond, a common thread which links these two very different gardens and that is why they stand out for me as twin stars, the Castor and Pollux of the Alabaster Coast.

http://etretatgarden.fr/
https://www.boisdesmoutiers.com/
https://www.dieppetourisme.com/

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This summer I was able to visit a few gardens in France which had been on my mind for some time. The Gardens of the Imagination were high on the list, but I wasn’t really expecting to enjoy them as the images looked disappointing and the descriptions somewhat lacking. The element of surprise certainly helped me enjoy the site and so I don’t really want to give a blow by blow description, but rather to take a ramble through the parallel space which accompanies the physical design, that is, the ideas.

People used to just pass through the pretty town of Terrasson-Lavilledieu, on their way to bigger and better things. How could it compete for tourist attention with the celebrated, prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux a few minutes away, or the famously enchanting chateaux of the dramatic Dordogne valley within easy reach?  That was the question the town’s exceptional mayor, Pierre Delmon, asked.  And his answer was – build a garden. Not just any garden, but one with grand cultural ideals at its heart; a visionary garden which would nurture civic pride and become the engine for a whole raft of restoration projects. In 1996 the idea became a reality and Les Jardins de l’Imaginaire was inaugurated; a six-hectare, terraced garden, designed by the renowned Franco-American landscape architect, Kathryn Gustafson.

His idea has worked, people come because of his project and stay to enjoy the pretty town he has been instrumental in beautifying. But don’t come expecting to enjoy a stroll through pretty gardens, maybe take tea, and leave with a few ideas for your own Eden because you will be disappointed. This is not a garden as such, but more of a kinetic evocation of mankind’s relationship with nature and the elements, and the constant engagement we have with the natural world, reflected in the history of garden making. It aims at epic storytelling, a journey through history using your senses and the raw elements of the hillside on which it is written. It’s such a big idea that you may miss the point so you are taken in groups, on a guided tour, climbing slowly up through thirteen tableaux, each expressing a different aspect of garden history, but united in the presence of constant elements such as stone, wood, trees, water and wind. It is a little like a dot-to-dot drawing, in which you need to join up the points indicated to get the full picture. The guide is informative and attractive and, a bit like many modern works of art, the visual object itself probably needs to be supported with words. They do their best and after that it is very much up to you to get it, or not. You are part of the tableaux, the human element, the shifting spirit of the place.

Gustafson has created a contemporary garden to express a timeless truth about our relationship with the natural world. She has been influenced by the ‘biomorphic’ movement which emerged after WWI in which an artwork’s elements became modelled on naturally occurring patterns, biological forms, and shapes. This fluid way of creating art from emotion is reflected in her way of working with slabs of clay in which her hand is directly connected to the emerging forms in the earth. There is intellectual depth to her work which, in this case, has responded to the region’s exceptional qualities, both physical and historical. The Dordogne river basin has been named a UNESCO biosphere and the prehistoric sites and decorated caves of the Vézère Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The land has been scribed both by natural forces such as water and a long saga of human habitation.

As VS Naipaul says in, The Enigma of Arrival, ‘Land is not land alone, something that simply is itself. Land partakes of what we breathe into it, is touched by our moods and our memories.’ This probably has more relevance here than in most conventional garden visits. I booked myself on the first tour of the day, the weather was lovely, the group small and respectful and I had no expectation for the garden to live up to. I really enjoyed the ebb and flow of the tableaux. I was happy to enter into the spirit of the journey and listen to the story. I wonder what I would have thought of it on another day, in different company, or in less pleasant weather. Is it a great garden? Is it a garden at all? I don’t think so, but then, I don’t think that’s the point; I think it takes its own path and is unusual and intriguing, a morphological essay on our love affair with nature – and that’s worth a visit isn’t it?

If you think you may like to visit this place for yourself you may choose not to read the following brief description of the thirteen gardens. Having said that, I am certainly going to revisit, and I can reveal here that there is a plan to extend the gardens and perhaps even allow people to go it alone, and take their time, without any guide save their own imagination.

1. The Sacred Wood – since the beginning of time the woods have been the home of spirits. Here 2,500 box plants cast their spell among the trees, bells and running water.

2. The Green Tunnel – a scented vaulted ceiling of hops, jasmine and wisteria takes you from reality to the world of the imagination.

3. Elemental Gardens – express a balance between wild nature and cultivation. A golden thread in the trees represents the imagination.

4. The Terraces – ruins of old walls covered in moss is a reminder of a time when the region was full of cultivated terraces.

5. The Green Theatre – a link to ancient amphitheatres and to the eternal play between ourselves and nature.

6. Axis of the Winds – giant whirligigs on high posts amplify the presence of the wind.

7. Views – flowers are the key elements in this intervention – always blue and white to reflect the colour of the town and its insignia.

8. The Water Gardens – water in all its artful forms, as seen in gardens through the ages.

9. The Rose Garden – Classically romantic but modern too – the rose is an emblematic flower.

10. Fountains Way – a serpentine path, along the length of the hillside is punctuated by five springs.

11. The Topiary Garden – A classic green garden with man in charge – brings us back to connection with the gardens of the town.

12. The Rivers – The course of the five major rivers of the world is engraved in stones which remind us that the whole planet is also our garden.

13. The Green House – designed by the British architect Ian Ritchie and won the Stephen Lawrence prize in 1999. It is the only covered space in the garden and is used to hold exhibitions.

The Gardens of the Imagination in Terrasson-Lavilledieu, in the Dordogne Department of France, is a public park and contemporary garden, classified by the Committee of Parks and Gardens of the Ministry of Culture as one of the Notable Gardens of France.

Address: Place de Genouillac, 24120 Terrasson-Lavilledieu, France

http://www.jardins-imaginaire.com/en/

https://www.ville-terrasson.com/

http://www.gp-b.com/kathryn-gustafson

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It’s August – holiday time, so here’s a light-hearted little piece filled with summer scent.

Lavender gets plonked in all my gardens; I couldn’t be without it, so in it goes with my fingers crossed that it will survive the claggy clay I garden on. I suppose it’s a scent of childhood: of garden visits; older women proffering tea and cakes; and, strange though it may seem, the excitement of exploring other people’s homes with dressing tables and bathrooms laden with lavender products in pretty boxes by Yardley. A lost world of thoroughly old fashioned, Miss Marple-ish, English lavender. Until suddenly, this summer it’s back, ubiquitous and not at all fuddy-duddy. English fields of purple lavender are heaving with visitors all wanting the same thing – that perfect selfie for Instagram.

Of course, English grown lavender is nothing new; we’ve been doing it for centuries but it became increasingly commercially nonviable and almost disappeared for a while. Now people are finding new ways to make it pay and there are a scattering of farms across the country. My sister sent me the images above from her visit to Yorkshire Lavender, a dramatic sixty acre site, three miles west of Castle Howard, now celebrating twenty-two years in business. And shortly afterwards I spotted another family related lavender visit, this time by my niece, who took a wonderful image of her two little girls running along the rows of Mayfield Lavender Farm with a dramatic and menacing iron-grey sky threatening a deluge. This image was so alluring that I went to have a look for myself, making the trip across London to Banstead in Surrey by public transport, which obligingly dropped me right outside the entrance. I had never seen lavender growing commercially before – it wasn’t quite what I expected.

The first thing to hit me was the scent – it filled the bus before the doors even opened, but it wasn’t quite the scent I had in mind. Lavender is such a powerful plant in our culture that, to quote the famous Culpeper from his book of 1652, The English Physitian – lavender is ‘so well known, being an Inhabitant in almost every Garden, that it needeth no Description’. I would have agreed with him except sometimes our expectations are challenged, and here was an example. The leaves of lavender are pungent and produce a green and woody base note. Standing in the midst of 25 acres the leaves sang out loudly, along with the sweeter flowers. I have since found quite a few recipes which replace rosemary with the narrow leaves of Lavandula angustifolia – worth a try.

The second notable thing, which I was unprepared for, was the realisation on entering that I had arrived at a veritable event. Mayfield cultivate twenty-five acres of green belt land and because of this designation are not permitted to erect any permanent structures. The only way to welcome visitors has been to erect a kind of mini tented-village which offers a shop and somewhere to sit with food and drink bought at the café. There are also portable loo units, and parking of course. It’s a jolly affair with an air of a summer fete. And then there is the lavender – stretching up to the horizon and dipping away. How were people engaging with the sheer singular power of it?

The answer to that question is that they fell into two groups: those who remained close to the facilities and those who wondered to the far reaches of the site. Mayfield have thoughtfully provided some points of added interest for the first group: a shiny red tractor; a shiny red telephone box; a shiny metal vintage Airstream; and a little further away, an open sided wooden pavilion. It quickly became clear that all of these were being used and appreciated by people intent on the taking of photographs; particularly selfies and Instagram worthy portraits.

This was probably the most demographically varied group of people I have ever come across in a horticultural environment. They posed in groups, in couples, in families; there were a few professionals with all the gear, as well as the odd solo visitor snapping themselves on a phone. Whereas a ‘garden’ type outing is predominantly something for the middle aged, here age was no barrier to enjoyment and, indeed, there were many young people out for the fun of it – the Insta generation. While people-watching was very enjoyable, I wanted to see what the experience would be like from the other end of the field. For those who could be bothered to walk for ten minutes or so there was enough space to take a wide shot of the landscape with no-one else in it. You could easily pretend that this was a country walk and you just happened upon a photogenic crop. My walk along the rows was rewarded by the sight of young men cutting bunches of lavender to supply the shop, some new planting areas and a glimpse of someone exuding authority whom I suspected was owner, Brendan.  I was right.

Brendan is a frank and communicative man with disarmingly guileless charm and cool blue eyes. He was happy to chat to me answering my questions in what certainly appeared to be a straight and unrehearsed manner. His only hesitation was in discussing his future plans, which I promised not to divulge, so let’s move on back to the genesis of this business.  His story, briefly told, is that he was involved in fine fragrance, at the big business end. The lavender field was a marketing idea at a time when he was trying to revitalise the brand of Yardley for owners, Wella. Yardley had grown lavender here in Victorian times and there was an historic and romantic connection which he felt could be exploited to reach a new generation, if it was associated with something contemporary like a spa. Wella weren’t keen to own a farm so he went ahead and rented the land himself and, with the help of a local charity developed his idea. Events changed the amount of time he could spare for this project when Proctor and Gamble bought Wella and Brendan was given a challenging new role.  Travelling the world for work becomes wearing on family life so twelve years ago Mr Brendan Maye looked at the field he rented and saw a new business opportunity which would keep him at home, and he called it – Mayfield. By the way, did you know that Proctor and Gamble produce many of the huge perfume brands which we are so familiar with, along with our washing powders and less glamorous products?

As you know I love a personal story but it was of interest to hear about some of the practical issues. The farm is first and foremost a business which has to work for his family and, by extension, his employees. In order to make a profit he has to add value. The days when harvesting lavender as a crop and selling it on for satisfactory financial gain are long gone – if indeed they ever existed. ‘The only way it can work is if you don’t give profit away, which means you have to produce and sell lavender products yourself, directly to the public.’ The rise in visitor interest has been a surprising add-on with benefits for the bottom line but also a number of challenges. Brendan explains that essentially he is running four businesses, each with its own rules and problems: he is in agriculture; manufacture and retail; catering; and finally, events. Agriculture is the easy bit, he says. Dealing with the public is, well let’s just say it requires strength of character and bucketfuls of good humour. ‘When the car park empties after a busy day we spend hours picking up rubbish, including a trail of dirty nappies which people hide beneath their vehicles.’ People break plants too – stepping through rows or snapping off branches for a ‘special’ shot. They have even been known to dig up and steal whole lines of newly planted plugs. But they are there, in droves, spending money and all these things have to be managed.

I asked about the huge diversity of visitors and he says that the first to come were the Chinese. I presumed he meant whole coachloads on holiday from China but he didn’t, he was talking about British Chinese, especially Londoners. The next question had to be, why the Chinese? He had actually asked this question himself and the reply was simple, ‘we like lavender’. Mayfield has gathered a following from an increasing number of communities including people from the Middle East, Malaysia and South East Asia – we all love lavender it seems. The word spreads and so does the interest – it must be rather wonderful for the Maye family, as it was for me. My visit encouraged me to do some research on lavender, its history and uses, its cultural importance and geographic spread. It is a fascinating plant and II look forward to visiting again next year, perhaps taking a trip to another of our gorgeous lavender fields – I may even take a selfie for Instagram.

https://www.yorkshirelavender.com/

https://www.mayfieldlavender.com/

https://www.hitchinlavender.com/

https://www.cotswoldlavender.co.uk/

My thanks to Brendan Maye for taking the time to talk to me. To my sister Deborah for her images of Yorkshire Lavender Farm and to my companion of the day Linda for some of the images included as the lavender seemed to bamboozle the focus on my camera at times.

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The Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth – I first saw the one and a half acre Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth’s relaxed country homage to art, landscape and beauty a week after it opened to the public in March 2014. Newly made, after some of the wettest weather the county had seen for years, it looked pretty good; an ambassador for the Dutch New Wave approach to landscape design. The thing this picture of a site lacked for me was a frame and something to relate it back to the building: it bled out into the fields beyond and lost energy. So, it was a delight to revisit and see that the boundary hedges are mature enough now to keep the eye from wondering and that a pavilion, by Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, has been placed at the end of the garden which elucidated the whole composition. The sun was shining, the plants were flowering and everyone was enjoying the colours and scents of the 26,000 perennial plants which make up the design – but was this all the garden had to say?

Piet Oudolf was commissioned to design the landscape of the whole site by co-owner Iwan Wirth, an admirer of his work on New York’s High Line but who was also moved by a much smaller garden he created for the Hortus Conclusus Pavilion at the Serpentine in 2011, designed by architect Peter Zumthor. I too remember feeling the intense relationship between building and garden, nature and art – and there was a timeless quality to both. These are essential goals I suspect for both Wirth and Oudolf and is at the heart of their collaboration. It is interesting to note the contrasting treatment Oudolf gives to different areas of the site. The Interior Cloister is a good counter to the Perennial Field: in the Cloister the planting is a foil for art – the sculpture on display; in the Field the garden is the art. You could say that he demonstrates that gardens need to respond to place and function and can be quietly supportive or a cultural event in themselves.

The word art features a great deal; this is a site dedicated to it and the owners hold a real passion for it. The current exhibition, curated from Ursula Hauser’s personal collection, Unconscious Landscape, (on until 8 September 2019), shows how she has been viscerally drawn to art and artists from a young age. This sincere dedication to the visual arts informs what happens here and Piet was given complete freedom to create whatever he wanted. He says he was inspired by art, nature and time and that the design is like a giant artist’s palette: “It would work by itself, but I think it gets more sense of place when it is set in a wider context. In the gallery, there is beauty everywhere; then you come into the garden, which is part of the whole idea of everything that happens there.”

Whatever your personal response to the design of the garden, the broader message as I see it is that here is a garden which proclaims itself to be a work of art, responding to its physical place but also in the tradition of classical garden making, thus placing itself within the embrace of an historical context. It is of its time but is informed by the past, sharing old practices such as enlightened patronage, the romantic value of a folly, a desire to capture spirit of place and to surprise and delight. Interesting then in the next garden I visited, history would not simply be a delightful guest to invite in but a long-term resident with plenty of baggage.

The Newt in Somerset – many of you will know this place as Hadspen House; home of the Hobhouse family and the starting point for the long and illustrious garden career of Penelope Hobhouse. It was also the colour ‘laboratory’ for Nori and Sandra Pope whose book, Colour by Design, inspired many a colour-themed border at the turn of the century. However, it’s all change in the garden in an unapologetic and spectacular way; history, yes – baggage, no thank you. If you visit The Newt today come prepared to be amazed: there’s a new name in town with a new game, a clear raison d’être to the work. As the charming gardener who led the tour exclaimed, ‘everything here is a celebration of Somerset – with particular emphasis on the apple’.

I had never visited Hadspen before, though I had seen pictures of it. In many ways I am glad I came to it with little prejudice because this place is breathtaking in its scope, ambition, attention to detail and last, but certainly not least, incredible budget. No expense has been spared in the endeavour to realise a vision. I have never seen anything like it in a private project. It crossed my mind that this is what it must have been like to visit a grand Brownian project in the eighteen century after the formal grounds had been cleared and the land contoured, mature trees planted and a new lake created. Or perhaps it is more on the scale of Victorian grandeur; a new kind of wealth updating some old country estate with new buildings, a grand set of gardens to delight guests, a functioning kitchen garden and a host of busy workers all part of a well-oiled machine. It was fascinating to be banged on the head with quality from the minute you arrived in the beautifully planted carpark; an extraordinary experience.

As a show case for Somerset it is certainly intended as an ode to craftsmanship, to rural bounty and to beauty. I am not going to describe The Newt here because there’s an awful lot to say but I have to mention the restored apple-themed walled garden. Every conceivable way of training an apple is explored here, with tribute to many varieties and apple growing regions. It is quite a sight and will have layers of meaning as it develops, not least when it becomes a centre for horticultural education, including courses in the traditional ways of training and grafting fruit trees. Sticking to my theme of sensibility and response to the county I have to mention the owner and driving force of the project, Koos Bekker. He bought the estate in 2013 when it had rather run out of steam and was advertised for sale in Country Life. He and his wife Karen had been looking for an English property and originally intended to live in the house. However, in response to the estate, its history, its geography and relationship with the people who inhabited it, they have developed a vision for these several hundred acres of Somerset: care for the ancient woodlands, restore the extraordinary parabola of a walled garden and Tudor period gardener’s cottage and overlay a new design, built in local materials, enabling visitors to engage with the best of Somerset while on a journey through the different eras of garden history. And they have done all of that in just five years – bravo. I will be writing a piece on The Newt in Somerset (explaining that slightly awkward name and much more) later in the year but if you have a chance to visit grab it – and expect to spend several hours.

East Lambrook Manor – was home to the prolific and influential gardening writer, Margery Fish (1892-1968), who through her books and regular magazine contributions popularised the idea of the ‘quintessential’ English Cottage Garden style. I had long held a fantasy of Margery as a kind of Miss Marple figure, pottering around her pretty garden, seemingly innocuous but, in fact, possessing a fearsome intelligence with which she was guiding the nation’s taste without them noticing. I recognise that I had also built up a bit of a fantasy about what her garden would be like. Both fantasies came crashing down at East Lambrook – though I suspect I may in time recover the first.

Margery Townsend was secretary to six editors at the Daily Mail the last of which was Walter Fish. As he was leaving the office before retiring it is said that she asked, ‘will that be all Mr Fish?’ to which he replied, ‘yes, I think so, except will you marry me Miss Townend?’. All very romantic but actually he was a bit of a tyrant and when he died after they moved to Somerset to avoid the worst of the bombing she could get on with her life without his interference. She had never gardened before, but it was the architecture of the little Manorial Hall they bought together that made her think she wanted a simple and relaxed ‘medieval’ garden to match. There was no actual historical accuracy for her design she just held a vision of olde Englande being a more relaxed and floriferous place. A sense of history was as important in its own way in this garden as it had been in the other gardens I had visited. She worked long, physically challenging hours to realise her vision, melding little pools of garden, each with a slightly different feel, by way of intricate pathways, steps and low walls. WWII had radically changed the world and she, like many other people, could no longer afford a full complement of gardeners and domestic help. The relaxed way of garden making she talked about in her weekly column in Amateur Gardening hit the spot for many people who were drawn to her books and later to visit her garden when it opened to the public in 1950s – with a small plant nursery attached.

Somerset for Margery was fertile ground for her imagination to bloom, for her to be independent and to network with extraordinary fellow plant enthusiasts, and was the launch pad for her gentle guidance on horticulture and taste on a national level. Her garden was a passion and labour of love. The garden today is just a shadow of its former self and is a bit muddled, befuddled and sad – however, I was still very happy to have visited, and my companion came away with an armful of plants named after her all starting with the prefix ‘Lambrook’.

Tintinhull Manor Gardens – after the disappointment of missing the spirit of Margery Fish at East Lambrook Manor I was primed for a similar feeling at Tintinhull – where not one but two women had famously gardened. Plus it is a National Trust owned property, so I assumed it would inevitably be popular and filled to the gunnels with other visitors (when, of course, I should be the only one allowed to enjoy it). What a delight; the garden was a pleasure to behold; with a satisfying balance between formal and informal, exuberance and restraint, practical and impractical loveliness. And there was hardly anyone there, except a smattering of friendly and cheerful fellow visitors to share our pleasure with. I wondered whether it was responding to a sense of place and time too.

I chatted to a group of gardeners in the lush and vibrant kitchen garden, inspired to find out why several women were drifting along the pathways carrying a large head of lettuce complete with roots as if it was a bridal bouquet. They were the source of the overgrown lettuce heads by the way – and there was certainly some gender bias going on as all three staff were female and were only gifting female visitors. They told me that they felt there was palpably a special atmosphere here; one that was recognised by the Trust who are keen to preserve it in any way they can. The spirit of the place was vital to the health of the garden. Then it struck me that my response to Tintinhull may be something to do with being a woman – was there something about the woman who created it, the shy and sensitive Phyllis Reiss which resonated still?

Phyllis and her husband bought Tintinhull, a seventeenth-century, Grade I listed manor house, built of mellowed brick and Ham stone, in 1933. She created the strong garden design on Arts and Crafts principles, linking the various ‘rooms’ and vistas to the architecture and viewpoints from the house. While she was of her time and knew other fervent garden makers of the period, like Vita Sackville West – she also did her own thing too, ‘colouring in’ the structure to give maximum impact. She essentially wanted us to have an emotional response to her garden, for it to be a ‘happy’ garden and a place of tranquillity and peace. Her interest in the emotional impact of colour was reflected in the work of Penelope Hobhouse, who took on the tenancy of the manor and worked on her own ideas about colour, which she shared in her many books.

This is a garden which invites you to stay, to not feel any pressure to think too earnestly but to just be, safely held in its reassuring structure but free to observe your own mood and emotions, inspired by the colour and form of the plants.

And so I feel my garden visit came full circle; colour, painterliness, emotion through the art of gardening is where I began in the Oudolf Field where Piet describes his work as an artist’s palette. History too is undoubtedly a driving force, both the desire to recognise and pay tribute to the past as but also to create new paths which lead us forward, as at The Newt but actually all four gardens respond to this in their own way, Margery Fish adapting style to meet the challenges of a post war world and Phyllis Reiss wanting to cloth the spirit of her heritage home with a new kind of expressive planting. I am certain that you will find all these things in other gardens and in other counties, but I have never felt such common heart in a group of disparate gardens. It was an interesting experience, and for me each garden revealed something about the other by way of comparison, making me a little more conscious of my sense of the sensibilities working in each of them.

https://www.hauserwirth.com/locations/10068-hauser-wirth-somerset
https://thenewtinsomerset.com/
http://www.eastlambrook.com/pages/
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/tintinhull-garden
https://www.brutontown.com/

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If you ever visit Marrakech you may well want to take a trip out to the charming seaside town of Essaouira for a bit of a break from the intensity of the big city. It’s a fairly dull drive but about one hour into the journey the landscape changes and becomes a desert-like, rock-strewn moonscape, studded with small trees which look quite a lot like olives, only not as lovely. You probably will not realise it but you have arrived at the edge of a little known wonder, the great UNESCO Arganeraie Biosphere Reserve, created in 1998 to protect a magical tree whose fruits give the most expensive vegetal oil in the world.

That tree is Argania spinosa, the unique species of the genus Argania: its golden oil has suddenly hit the big time and is highly sought after by international cosmetic companies who think you are worth it. Only problem is, this stubborn little tree is not keen to leave home and is proving difficult to cultivate elsewhere; which, for the moment, is great news for the local Amazigh people who know exactly how to handle its bounty. If you have a driver, he may pull over near a ragged little wayside tree for you to admire the goats beautifully arranged and standing stock still in its branches. Funnily enough, the main event around here is not the men surrounding the tree showing off their trunk climbing charges. They are just a bit of a side show, exploiting the natural behaviour of local goats to climb up into the canopy to graze on their leaves and pick off their favourite argan fruits. They ‘train’ some individuals by lifting them into a position which is a bit insecure from the goats’ point of view, so that they stand stock-still because they are not sure of their footing. Then a cute little furry kid is produced for you to stroke and the show is over. However, the real stars are not the men with their savvy antics but the Amazigh women who are uniquely permitted to extract the magic that is argan oil.

The Arganeraie reserve extends over a bit less than a million hectares, between Safi to the North and the fringes of the Sahara to the south and bounded by the Atlantic Ocean with the Atlas Mountains to the east. It is known to have been around in the earth’s Tertiary Period, is native to this area of Morocco and used to grow wild throughout North Africa and even parts of Southern Spain. The Amazigh call it ‘The Tree of Life’ because every part of the tree is useful from its very hard wood, which makes excellent charcoal, to its leaves which are fodder for goats and camels, to its amazing green, olive-like fruits, which provide an oil which is not only very healthy but is a marvellous protection for the skin from desiccating Saharan winds. As if this wasn’t enough, it is now known that the long and deep roots of this tree have a symbiotic relationship with microscopic mushrooms, a process known a mycorrhization, which feed nutrients to the roots in exchange for moisture. This healthy root system binds the soil firmly and forms a barrier to the Sahara. It also creates the conditions for a healthy eco-system which supports a whole raft of species of fauna and flora.

All this has been under threat in the last decades from urbanisation and the over exploitation of the trees for timber and fodder. However, the work of one woman, Professor Zoubida Charrouf has been hugely influential in reversing this trend. Her scientific research confirmed what local women always knew, argan oil has hugely beneficial health and beauty properties containing both antimicrobial and antioxidant agents. She wanted to find a way of keeping this natural resource in the hands of local people so she set up women’s Cooperatives and gained legislative and financial support from the Moroccan government. Local women are now the only people within the biosphere to be legally able to make argan oil. I went to see how they do it.

The bright green fruits of the argan reach maturity during June and July. They look rather like an outsize olive of around two centimeters in length and are beaten off the trees with sticks and gathered from the ground. Then they are left to dry outside until they form a dark crust and are stored until needed. The women at the cooperative form a ‘production line’ seated on the ground in the traditional manner. The fleshy husk is removed and used as a feed for goats. To get to the kernels, women crack the nut open as it has been done for centuries, between two specially shaped stones. The discarded shells are put to use as fuel for fire. Sixteen times harder than a hazelnut, argan nuts rank among the hardest in the world, and this first stage, cracking them open, is the most difficult part of the process. It seems that machines designed to perform this task often fail and the traditional way of cracking them remains the most effective to get to the kernels.

The kernels are passed down the line where they are crushed and then pounded in a hand mill called an azerg. Argan oil is destined either for culinary use or for cosmetic purposes: if the oil being made is to be used for the table, the kernels are roasted before they are crushed to bring out the nutty flavour. The milled nut paste is then mixed with water and repeatedly kneaded and pressed by hand to extract the oil, which is brought to the surface of the mixture. It is a strange sight, a sludgy, muddy product, with the added water being counter-intuitive to the idea of oil production. At the end of this very arduous process you are left with what the women laughingly called ‘goat chocolate’, fist sized lumps of a dried, almost black substance which, apparently, domestic animals can’t get enough of. And, of course, the precious oil. The following statistic helps us understand why this oil is so expensive: one hectare or argan trees can produce 800 kilos of ripe fruit, which will yield 40 kilos of nuts, which will produce 18 litres of oil; each litre representing about twenty hours of work.

There was, of course, a shop at the end of the tour but no-one was pressed to buy and having just witnessed what it takes to make the oil the high price made sense. It is worth remembering – there is no such thing as cheap argan – so don’t buy anything sold by the side of the road or in a market at a knock down price, it will not be a pure product. I love using it and am very happy to buy it whenever I am in the area – even more so now I know the story behind its manufacture. The industry has really helped women of the region in many ways offering regular employment at relatively good rates of pay which in turn have given them purchasing power and access to better health care and education for themselves and their children.

So, what exactly can this miracle oil do for us? When lightly toasted the kernels give a wonderfully tasty oil, rather like a mixture of hazelnuts and sesame seeds with fruity notes. It seems that edible argan oil has sterols that are unusual in other vegetable oils, including scotenol which has antitumoral and anticancer properties, and spinasterol, a compound that reduces intestinal cholesterol absorption. It is also rich in vitamin E and is believed to lower cholesterol levels, stimulate blood circulation, help digestion and reinforce the body’s immune system. It is known to be much better for us than extra virgin olive oil. That is all good news but it is its amazing effect on skin and hair which is encouraging the race by international beauty businesses to find a way of growing it as a crop in other parts of the world. Experiments are being carried out in Israel and Argentina to name just two possibilities but, as yet, there has been little progress and Moroccan argan is in huge demand. Here’s why. Argan oil contains high levels of anti-oxidants which help prevent damage to the skin by free radicals that age cells and even promotes cell proliferation. It is also very rich in Omega 6 and Omega 3 – healthy fatty acids which are essential in keeping skin pliable and play a role in reducing inflammation. Other interesting qualities come from the presence of Tirucallol which has an important role in healing damage to skin and Beta Amyrine which stimulates cells to generate and synthesise new collagen. This last is thought to be helpful in alleviating the symptoms of psoriasis. Then there is Butyrospermol, which has a powerful anti-inflammatory effect, which may even help internal inflammation problems such as arthritis and Lupenol, which has a strong antiseptic effect. The list of beneficial qualities is seemingly endless – and, as a final flourish. let’s not forget, local people believe it to be a strong aphrodisiac – I rest my case.

Although I have come to know the argan tree only fairly recently our association actually goes back several decades. Many years ago, a palm reader predicted that my husband would make a fortune from a tree which dripped gold but was hard to cultivate as it only grew in the particular conditions of a very restricted area of the world. All he had to do was find that tree and make it grow elsewhere. Obviously, we dismissed this as nonsense but I have never forgotten her words and it is satisfying to have at least found the tree – however, the fortune bit is still shrouded in mystery, a work in progress perhaps.

Post Script: The three images above are of Dar Boutazert, a guest house about twenty kilometres south of Essaouira. Peter Jordansson has created a garden in the forest integrating as many of the argan trees he found on the site as possible. I visited in its first year and it is fascinating to see how quickly the trees have responded to regular watering and care, despite being made to withstand the toughest of conditions. Note the forest stretching as far as the eye can see beyond the garden walls in image three.

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One of the most pleasurable things about summer for me is visiting other people’s gardens: another, is lazing around in my own garden. If I am not careful, I can find that the season has slipped by without me making the most of it. So now I make a list in advance. It’s something I would recommend to anyone.  Last year top of my stops was Bryan’s Ground, a modern Arts and Crafts garden, set in the sweet spot where England’s Herefordshire meets Welsh Powys, near the charming village of Presteigne.

Bryan’s Ground is a garden of two halves: a three-acre collection of garden rooms, set formally around its Arts and Crafts house; and its counterpoint, a larger, landscape garden embroidered with designed events to the east of the house. It is the formal garden around the house I wanted to see because I am working on a thesis that the Arts and Crafts ideal has somehow wormed its way into the English psyche and has informed, in one way or another, pretty much all our garden making ever since. The garden here makes no apology for its antecedent but it is certainly not an historical reconstruction or a pastiche of another era – so what does it have to say for itself? I was really looking forward to finding out and I knew it would be a great place to start my exploration of what it is about the Arts and Crafts style which has got under our skin.

I have to come clean at this point – Bryan’s Ground is owned by David Wheeler, who is the founder and editor of the garden journal, Hortus, and Simon Dorrell, an artist and garden designer who illustrates the journal and is the driving force of the garden. I write for Hortus, as does a garden historian friend of mine, so we made the trip up from London together and were graciously invited to spend private time in the garden, followed by lunch. It was a privilege which had my stomach fluttering, a little like a school girl meeting a pop idol.

The atmosphere was fulsome and golden as David let us loose in the early July sunshine and, with no-one else around except we two, we could fantasise that it was ours. This is a garden which has been written about quite extensively with lots of horticultural references, all of which are interesting and inspirational; but I wanted to look at it through a different lens. How was this garden typical of Arts and Crafts and how did it differ? I was struck by certain themes: the importance of anticipation and surprise; the visual and emotional impact of the hand-made; the interplay between inside and outside; the balance of formality and informality; and lastly, cultural literacy married to levity.

The Bryan’s Ground Garden Guide sets out the history of the house and garden and the story of how its current owners came to be here. It’s an excellent read but I like to experience a garden for myself first before knowing much about it at all, so I went home with this as an elegant souvenir. One of the reasons I don’t like to gen up is that you only get one chance to see something for the first time, with ‘innocent’ eyes, just you and the work of art in conversation. The other is that I love a visual surprise – and Bryan’s Ground delivers this as one ‘room’ opens into another. The idea of garden rooms is an old one, in fact, you could say that in medieval times that is exactly what a garden was conceived to be, an outdoor room where nature was civilised enough for you to be in it safely. This concept went through several iterations before the Arts and Crafts movement claimed it, organising the space to relate to the architecture of the house and its principal views from the inside out. This rule has been respected in the changes that have been made here but the flow from one room to another has been designed so we are treated by something new in each space, something unusual or surprising, one statement following another with an energy that makes the whole a lively dance. I liked the theatre of it.

I suppose the idea of the theatrical could be applied to some of the sculptural interventions and indeed, the garden buildings. Set builders in the old repertory troupes had to magic up scenic art every week and this model of hand built, evocations of the imagined seem to me to be present in this garden. The Arts and Crafts Movement valued the hand crafted and a visit to William Morris’ Red House at Bexleyheath, demonstrates how productive, (surprising given how much alcohol was consumed), a group of house guests in a weekend or two of decorating sessions can be. It looks like they were setting a scene, a backdrop for the kind of life they wanted to live. The Dovecote and The Sulking House both were collective projects, one built with the help of friends and the later a fiftieth birthday gift to David. They too set a scene; the former referencing the local vernacular, while the latter goes on a Grand Tour of the imagination. We could all do more of this rather than succumbing to the ready-made, bang-it-together shed because it is easier and instant. I remember my father in the 60s made quite a large structure in our London garden from marine ply, inspired by the crumbling pink and ochre palazzi he had seen in Florence. Could an element of DIY be a feature of the new Arts and Crafts garden, an update on the protest against the uniformity of mechanisation?

The dialogue between formality and informality which went on in the Arts and Crafts garden scene also interests me. At one extreme architect Reginald Blomfield loved strict formality, while William Robinson urged using nature and ‘wildness’ as a template. In the past the Sunk Garden, a classic Arts and Crafts feature with its quartered parterre and central circular lily pool, (all on the original architect’s drawings), would have been ‘well kept’. David and Simon have brushed some modernity over it, not only heeding Vita Sackville West’s advice that a garden should have the strictest formality of design with the maximum informality of planting but extending that idea to fit the lifestyle and ecological concerns of the twenty-first century. I fell in love with the abundant and self-seeding herb fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, in the Sunk Garden. The tension between the formality of the Irish yew (actually, I think Irish yew always look like they are longing to escape their straight jackets) and the other topiary is both thought provoking and amusing. It is as if a naughty child is messing up a perfectly ordered, grown up sitting room – reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously. Then there are the two ‘battalions’ of deciduous hawthorn obelisks which are both surprising and a little bit rebellious – deciduous topiary is bad enough but created in a very inexpensive species too?

Formality and informality, a thorough knowledge of garden history, and gentle humour walk hand in hand throughout the garden: Georgian railing dividing the garden from the meadow beyond is punctuated by a wonky gate; a straight-lined Dutch inspired canal is married to a crinkle crankle wall; and even in the formally proclaimed Dutch Garden the water pool is not the expected Dutch canal shape but has been inspired by a dog-bone. But this eccentricity never exceeds its remit. The boundaries are made clear, geometry rules and we know who is in charge here: formality is the head of the house but informality makes him or her a bearable companion and adds sparkle to the relationship. This is expressed in the planting à la Vita but also in the visual puns: a bed which will never be a resting place, ‘cannon balls’ piled like a game of giant boules and teasels, those ubiquitous National Trust tropes for ‘do not sit here’, planted next to an inviting place to sit. I wonder if a sense of humour, fun or irony can be added to the features to be found in a modern Arts and Crafts garden?

A classic element of the Arts and Craft garden is the relationship between garden and house, a conversation between interior and exterior. In fact, this is one of the few defining principles of the style upon which everyone agrees – most of the rest comes down to a sort of feeling. Bryan’s Ground was built with this relationship in mind but for most visitors today this isn’t as obvious as it might be – partly because the vegetation is mature but mostly because we don’t get to see inside this private home. One of the thrills of this visit was that I did get that opportunity – and pretty exciting it was too. Looking out into the garden from the principal rooms and experiencing the inside-out thrust of the Arts and Crafts home was the cherry on the cake, proof of the pudding. It all works as it should do. Perhaps the best experience of this from the outside is to stand with your back to the window at one end of the Rose Walk and appreciate the sight line extended through breaks in the hedge to the Formal Garden and again, through to the Pool Garden. Today, the desire to live an integrated life with the exterior has led to an explosion of bifold doors being fitted and ever-increasing areas of glass – the idea of our homes being connected to nature has never been more popular.

There was another sense in which we had an inside out experience too. We all ate lunch outside under a covered terrace but we ran a little late and the garden opened to the public and suddenly we became an exhibit, an interesting little vignette among so much visual splendour. We looked out at the peopled garden and it looked back at us – and that’s what Bryan’s Ground will for ever epitomise for me, a place of exchange of ideas and imagination, the twin joys of inside and out and a celebration of people, history and the natural world – The New Arts and Crafts Garden?

Useful information:

Bryan’s Ground,
Letchmoor Lane,
Stapleton (Nr Presteigne),
Herefordshire LD8 2LP

Open on Sunday and Monday afternoons, 2–5pm
From Sunday 21st April to Monday 29th July.
Groups welcome at other times by prior appointment.

Adults: £6.00
Children: £2.00
Teas and plants available.

Website: http://www.bryansground.co.uk

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