“Anne Wareham states that conceptual references “only evoke a feeling response if they draw on images and ideas which are already part of the psyche”. I would agree, but I also think that the best of our contemporary creativity draws heavily on our long tradition of the Arts without us necessarily being aware of it,…”
“I certainly feel that we have lost the familiarity of looking for meanings in landscape and for understanding the language of ornament, and this hampers us from moving forward.”
“Indeed, I do invite intellectual engagment and I would love that discussion to begin. So far it hasn’t – and perhaps that might once been for lack of a place to have such discussion. But now we have thinkingardens, where uninhibited debate and discussion can and does happen.”
“As an assessor and judge for RHS show gardens for the last 12 years, I found myself perplexed by Germain Greer’s response to this year’s Chelsea Flower….”
by Anne Wareham.
On Beauty and Gardens –
“….So often when I visit a garden I am confronted with the horrifically ugly, and that seems to me to make a mockery of our materials, which are the best the world can offer.”
Andrew Wilson responds to Anne Wareham’s article on beauty and gardens.
by Germaine Greer.
“Most of our best-known, most-visited gardens are merely pretty, or, worse, picturesque…”
with responses by Anne Wareham, Andrew Wilson, Leigh Hunt, Amanda Patton.
Many years ago The Financial Times sent me to do a feature on the RHS ‘Flower Show’ at Tatton Park . I was totally naïve and had no idea what I was supposed to do or to write about. So my excitement was tempered by acute anxiety. The term ‘imposter syndrome’ could have been invented for me. […]
In the UK, right now, the horticultural world is about to drive us all mad with snowdrops. Pictures of. Articles about. Gardens with them. Anything people can think of to bash us over the head with snowdrops.
Recently we made a visit to Brecon. This is not far from us, in case anyone was getting over excited about the possibility that I might have been travelling again. It’s in Wales, in the Brecon Beacons, recently re-christened Bannau Brycheiniog.
Charles made a complaint recently when we were walking in the garden.
When I complained about him complaining he told me that it was good for me to have complaints about the planting.
I am discovering more and more often that it is important to have a great many seats in the garden. In fact there should probably be one every three feet or so.
