Do you visit art galleries and museums? Do you enjoy theatre and concerts?
As a garden writer and garden maker I deeply regret that my audience for both appear to be almost exclusively gardeners.
It is as if the works of painters and sculptors were only ever seen and discussed by painters and sculptors. As if theatres only played to playwrights and music of all kinds was only ever played and enjoyed by musicians. Gardens which open to the public are now perhaps expected to showcase plants and provide ‘inspiration’ to – gardeners. Or perhaps to be nature reserves for our desperate wildlife. And, increasingly, gardens are declared to be good for mental health. The mental health of the gardener.
The garden at Castle Drogo is said to have been designed so that the walk up the garden echoes our path through life. There is no longer any mention of that meaning in the information about it now.
We might think that gardens could equally benefit the mental health of the garden visitor.
A great garden may offer beauty, peace, intellectual stimulation, pleasure for all the senses and excitement in exploration and discovery.
Or a great garden may offer discord, challenge, a confrontation with banal expectations. Ian Hamilton Finlay cautioned “Superior gardens are composed of Glooms and Solitudes and not of plants and trees.”
Little Sparta. Gloom and solitude.
In the 18th century gardens were considered a great art form. Horace Walpole said:
‘Poetry, Painting and Gardening, or the Science of Landscape, will forever by men of taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the Three Graces who dress and Adorn Nature’. (Horace Walpole).
Garden visiting has not changed as much as you might imagine. Horace Walpole’s request of visitors.
I think we may have lost both men and women of taste, and poets too will be lamenting their loss of status. But you may be missing something if you think gardens are just plant zoos, mini farms, or wildlife sanctuaries. They can be so much more.
But if you decided that a great garden might be worth your attention, or wanted to demonstrate that to a non gardener, how will you find one which will reward your visit well?
Americans will have to tell me – I know it is very problematic in the USA. Try The Garden Conservancy? I can’t speak for that. How are those selected?
All British gardens are described as ‘lovely’. It wouldn’t help much to take a skeptical non gardener to visit a garden of random planting.
You may try to shove your way round Chelsea Flower Show. But that is a travesty of what a garden visit should/could be.
You may try a search on the National Gardens Scheme, intending to do a little for charity. You will find that all are described by their owners, which may not be the most objective review.
In the UK you could also try the National Trust or the RHS gardens, but on the whole you’ll find there that the creating spirit of the gardens in question is almost inevitably gone.
Wisley has a worthy exception – the new borders at Wisley designed by Piet Oudolf.
It has the enormous advantage of not being a dead man’s garden. It is original and contemporary. It lacks the immersive quality of some of our best gardens but it is full of life. It may challenge your notion of what a garden is and thereby take you to other new and exciting gardens.
Suggestions for other exciting gardens (besides Veddw!) welcome in the Comments. In the UK there is a long list – so with inevitable weaknesses and inevitably mostly of dead people’s gardens, – in Great British Gardens.
Perhaps if you are a gardener reading this, you might do one good thing for our depleted culture:
Send or take someone you know who is not a gardener to a great garden that you know is worth their serious consideration.
And if, somewhat accidentally, you are not a gardener and have stumbled upon this post – visit a good contemporary garden and discover what this garden world has to offer. And maybe tell us about it?
This reads: “There is a taut balance in a shallow curve that other shapes cannot match.”
