This is another re-issue, in this case to celebrate another new book by Noel = Gardens Under Big Skies
And then – many thanks to Noel for his agreement for us to use one of his blog posts here, in the hope of having some discussion about the issues he raises.
Please note: discussions about thinkingardens posts often end up taking place on Facebook. Sigh. But check out Dutch Dreams – always worth a look.
So – have you a new perennial/ naturalistic garden? Have you designed one? Have you been influenced by them?
Anne Wareham, editor.
Noel Kingsbury:
A recent blog post by Marc ‘le jardinier’ tries to provoke a discussion about whether the so-called ‘New Perennial’ movement has had much of an impact on British gardens. His conclusion is ‘not much’. The implication is that this should be a surprise. In many ways I agree with him but I don’t think it is a surprise. So, here I’d like to do one of those roundups where I look around and survey the scene and ask, “What has really changed?” Apart from the interest in this as gardeners and landscape designers, it’s an opportunity to think more widely about why we garden and about the way that cultural change happens.
The ‘New Perennial’ moniker is an annoying one anyway. Anything with ‘new’ in the title inevitably comes with a date stamp in the near future. It actually dates to 1996, when Frances Lincoln decided, in one of those moments of genius that made everyone else in publishing think “why didn’t I think of that?”, to use it as a title for a book project I had with her company.
What the ‘new’ and the ‘perennial’ flag up though is that there have been enormous changes in British, and American gardening over the last thirty years, and one of the biggest has been the revival of interest in herbaceous perennials. Looking back to the 1980s, it is actually hard to imagine how people gardened with so few perennials. Anyone who is too young to remember this time would be astonished now at how garden centres and nurseries almost entirely sold shrubs and bedding, with perennials a distinct minority interest. On a recent trip to the US (primarily Ohio) I was amazed by how many gardens featured perennials, mostly echinaceas and rudbeckias of course. In the past there would have been lawn and a square metre of pink phlox if you were lucky. A great sense of satisfaction, and pride, at having been part of the movement that has enabled this.
What people have done with the perennials is another thing. As with the grasses, which have been an even bigger shift since the 1980s (back then NOBODY in Britain grew grasses apart from eccentric prophets in the wilderness like Roger Grounds). On the whole they have slotted their geraniums, monardas and Carex testacea into the garden format they had before. Which generally means the borders around the lawn; the ingredients have changed but the recipe hasn’t.
For those of us, like the people reading this post, who are (and trying not to sound too superior here) part of the gardening ‘elite’, acting as opinion-formers etc., the mismatch between what we think people should do with ‘our’ plants and what they actually do with them, may be considerable. But take an analogy – think of the amateur art shows we have all been to, usually held in village halls. How many of the artists have done what the art elite seem to describe as art: smear mud on the walls, pile up bricks, carry in their unmade bed and leave it in the middle of the room? None. Elite thinking about art has not penetrated very far into popular culture (do I hear sounds of relief?). No-one in the real world seems to want to practice ‘conceptual art’. ‘Art’ for most people does mean: painting, beauty, colour, form, memory, landscape, portraiture, while Tracy Emin’s unmade bed at the Tate is little more than a provocation to chattering class dinner parties.
Am I making an analogy between conceptual art and ‘new perennial’ gardening? Only in as much as they are both elite concerns which have not penetrated popular culture. Personally, I think most conceptual art is crap and new perennial planting isn’t. But then I’m not a conceptual artist who’s just had a fat grant for hanging tampons on a washing line or whatever.
New perennial (-err ‘naturalistic planting’?) done properly -at Trentham Gardens.
Most people garden to relax, unwind and feel close to the sanitised version of nature that the garden presents us with. They are not interested in trends, concepts and ‘movements’. They want something that looks nice and makes them feel good. This means that gardening is one of the more conservative of the arts. And who are we to criticise what people do in their spare time?
And another thing – naturalistic planting is systems or community thinking. It’s about creating plant mixes and most gardeners do not think like that. They think only in terms of individual plants and how they like them, and maybe find good neighbours for them. They are driven by what looks nice down at the garden centre or the nursery. Fair enough. I don’t think we could expect otherwise.
Hauser and Wirth by Piet Oudolf
And another thing! Much of the naturalistic planting featured in garden magazines is large-scale. Its Piet Oudolf doing parks or those designers who specialise in large country gardens; some medium-scale and more ‘average’ gardeners certainly get featured, but there are surprisingly few who really carry it off. One who has tried is featured in the September issue of Country Living; Jo Ward-Ellison in Gloucestershire. Size puts people off. Unnecessarily I think. One of the virtues of naturalistic planting is that it is about building plant communities, which are scaleable and work over a range of sizes. Take a Piet Oudolf planting and in many cases you could chop a bit off and stick it in your suburban garden to replace the oh-so-boring lawn and with a bit of fiddling it would still look good. The main difference would be that you would be forced to be closer to a lot of the plants, so you would appreciate them in a different way to the ‘big picture’ view. Perhaps no bad thing.
More pointedly, I’d like to ask about how much designers and the landscape profession have taken on board ‘new perennials’ or as I’m going to call it from now on, naturalistic planting? There is no doubt that the range of plants has been massively increased, although there is still a problem about how you sell late-season perennials, as they generally look so awful in pots. The garden centre industry has never really tried although internet sales have come to the rescue to some extent. The huge growth in the garden design profession has gone hand in hand with the perennial explosion although for the most part perennials are used within those designs in a relatively conventional way.
Most garden designers still seem to be at the level of slotting individuals together than creating functioning plant communities.
The landscape profession, largely under pressure from clients anxious about the maintenance costs of what they pay for, have been cautious, understandably. For the most part, they also lack the plant knowledge to know how to use perennials. Many are anxious to learn, as I can see from the folk turning up at my workshops (www.gardenmasterclass.org and www.landscapemasterclass.com). Knowledge about the long-term performance of perennials is also poor; something I am endlessly banging on about, and which I try to address in the workshops.
The big change in British gardening, and one also increasingly being followed elsewhere is the ‘wildlife gardening’ movement. Supported by a strong grassroots interest in conservation and at what we might call the ‘official level’, i.e by the RHS, this has made a huge impact, and again it is difficult to imagine how this could have happened without the perennial revolution. It stresses diversity, that varied habitats are the best thing we can do for nature, something that the good old British ‘mixed border’ addresses rather well. Crucially, the wildlife gardening movement also does something else – it gives gardeners permission to be a bit untidy: weeds, dead leaves, unpruned shrubs. That has probably helped a great deal.
So, changes there have certainly been, for the better, but we still have a long way to go. Changes in garden practice can take a lot longer to take place than in many other spheres of human activity. More crucial than the largely aesthetic concerns of New Perennial gardeners are the impacts that gardening and landscape practice have on sustainability and wildlife. I’ll be considering that next and ask the question “is anybody out there actually doing ecological planting?”
Noel Kingsbury
Well, yes. There are many things happening here.
Firstly there is a strong impression that these schemes are only for large-scale plantings, and while planting can be scaled down for domestic sites it simply doesn’t look like the big gardens. Maybe what’s needed isn’t a scaling down but a reworking of the ideas for small spaces? That might make more sense to gardeners.
Secondly you have climate, and simply the fact that large scale perennial plantings can be challenging under grey skies, with rain battering the plants! Echinaceas really aren’t happy in the mild and wet South West (UK), although nurseries still sell them and people still buy them, thinking that the demise of their plant is their fault, not the fault of the climate. Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii will grow well but after summer storms will look terrible for several days. In the quest for ever tidier gardens you can’t have imperfection.
Thirdly is a matter of ideology; British gardens have taken a long time to get to where we are, and will take a long time to change. The ‘British Domestic’ style is still, on the whole, a miniaturisation of the big 19th century estate gardens. The lawn represents the great lawns of the big country houses, the narrow borders around the edge representing the big borders at Lord and Lady Fnar-fnar’s house. Even the pond, so loved for its ecological value now, is little more than a miniature boat lake, and the too-small-to-be-useful veg patch at the end of the garden is a pretend version of the large estate walled garden. We are breaking down this ideology but for many gardeners this is at the very least their starting point. Not because they have ideas of grandeur but because it’s almost ingrained in our psyche that this is how a ‘proper’ British garden should be.
You are right, of course. Love your analysis of the British Domestic style!
In the USA at least, I think the “new perennial” movement is transitioning into a “new nativist” movement. Native plants are a hot topic right now and many people who want a “natural” or “naturalistic” garden design want nothing to do with any plant, perennial or otherwise, that isn’t native to their particular area. For some it has reached a point of aggressive (even unpleasant) evangelism.
I’ve heard! The world gets more divisive by the day…..
Interesting post and comments. From a midwest US retail point of view: most explanations of “naturalistic planting” and examples of garden plans, as well as visiting the large spaces like the High Line and Lurie, depend on intensive planting of plugs for economical reasons and a wait of 3 years. My customers, even if they did have the space, would balk at that quantity of the quart size of natives/grasses that we sell ($8.95 and up) not to mention most perennials in gallon sized pots. No retail nursery sells plugs! and landscapers have to special order or come here to buy the big plants with a 15% discount. Not to mention waiting those 3 years… Most purchasers end up with groups of 3 to 5 at the most because we are basically selling instant gardens with our relatively mature plants. We love visiting Lurie and all, but it makes me think of the quote “The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.” Emerson had a horizon, we have a street view, driveway and the children’s swingset. We don’t live at Lurie, we live at home. And as tired “tradesman and attorney” come home and enjoy our tiny pieces of land with 3’s and 5’s of our favorites.
That’s a very interesting quote about horizons. (though I have one and do manage to get tired…)
You have summed up, for me, the contrast between the designer world I admire and read about and the realities of making a garden for a non professional. Even if waiting three years seems a luxury to me. And how many of us start with empty spaces?
But you can buy plugs in the uk if it makes any difference – meaning, if you can face the weeding and care they will take to establish. I need to hear more about these issues really.
Plugs in the UK are largely confined to those buying wholesale. Honestly why does no one else mention the sheer bloody cost of achieving the new perennial “look”! It’s utterly prohibitive. Nurseries are guilty of selling recently divided plants in 9cm pots that will never survive in a border environment without costly mulch, many must have plants cited in magazines and by experts who should know better are often costly and ill-suited. I’m talking various panicums, thuggish sanguisorbas, penissetums that die when planted north of Watford, I could go on! It’s a bloody racket, very occasionally one sees a garden update where it’s casually mentioned something hasn’t worked or died etc, but it’s rare, also in UK far too many south east centred eejits with limited real world experience, who have never gardened out with a city microclimate. Sheesh.
You are not allowed to be negative is why. It’s the law!
I am a back garden gardener.I come from a family of garden nerds; miners who would grow chrysanthemum to compete, who would hybridise dahlias. Spending time on one’s patch was a natural thing to do but I am of a different education.
I started to garden in the 1970’s. My knowledge was fueled by GW and visits to NT properties. When I came to develop beyond what the previous owner bequeathed I started with a collection of perennials from Alan Bloom’s nursery (Alan’s perennials were prominent in GW coverage of Chelsea and his catalogue came with popular gardening magazines in WH Smith) and I was inspired by an anonymous book, which I later realise was infused with the wisdom of Christo Lloyd and Beth Chatto, The Readers’ Digest Book of Creative Gardening. Everything else has been a refinement and an understanding of ecology – which I think Beth Chatto was the first to popularise.
I still think shrubs and small trees form a backbone but perennials paint the picture.
I visit a lot of NGS gardens. Although there are obsessive alpinists, orientalists, tropicalists etc. a profusion of perennials predominates. I am not alone.
This year I have taken particular interest in the development of the borders on the terraces of Bodnant. In spirit they are not new perennialists- I have seen a lot of intervention to maintain visitor interest of the the seasons- however when it comes to the appearance of the beds, there can be no doubting the influences.
I am glad I followed the advice of Bloom senior, rather than Bloom junior.
My brain has become a lot slower over the last few years – I fear it is shrinking – I take longer to consider articles now than I did in the past. Therefore I have decided to make a reply to this post on my own blog. Perhaps I am just a coward ? (After reading Noel’s article I feel I am not really meant to join in the discussion !)
Here is the relevant link – worth reading – http://artinacorner.blogspot.com/2018/09/conceptualism-and-eliteism.html
Would like to follow your blog, Paul, but cant find the link!
Try http://artinacorner2.blogspot.com/ ?
As Noel subtly pointed out, the ‘new’ in New Perennial garden has been around for 30+ years and is no longer new. As soon as something is called new it’s not.
There was a huge resurgence of interest in Gertrude Jekyll’s approach to perennial planting in the 1980s that drove garden interest in perennials and morphed into a spotlight on ‘naturalistic’ meadows and ‘native’ plants and then on to the mythical and mostly gone prairies of the American Midwest. All of these either need nature or a full-time gardener to maintain them. Few have those options. If we are talking about residential spaces designed and maintained by skilled professionals or enthusiastic amateurs that’s one thing, but the average person wants an outdoor space/garden that is simple to maintain, easy on the eyes, offers seasonal change AND space to use as for relaxation. Public spaces are designed to look at rather than live in and that is difficult to translate to a residential setting. Intensive plant communities take time to develop and care for and if, we are honest, only a very few lean that way. Most people who own property aren’t and don’t want to be gardeners. Perennials and grasses, no matter how much we love them, take work. Lots of work.
In my view the ‘new’ garden will address those needs They will not be the maximallist, artistic statement of large scale public spaces that are challenging and beautiful but never easy to maintain. Many in the generations coming fresh faced to property ownership don’t want the fuss and don’t have the means to have someone fuss for them. This ‘new’ garden can be wildlife friendly, relaxed and beautiful. It also has to be practical.
Two things spring to mind when thinking about ‘New Perennial’/’New Naturalistic’ plantings, one of which Noel has touched on, one he has not.
1) To be truly successful you must do these schemes with a decent amount of space, and although you can scale plantings down a bit there will still come a point where the space available curtails the ‘wow effect’ and your ‘NP’/’NN’ border/garden just becomes a collection of nice perennials.
2) The success of a scheme depends on a rich, in-depth knowledge of ecology, climate and local conditions, all of which will heavily influence the end result. Too few gardeners and designers have the depth of understanding and breadth of knowledge needed to create effective planting schemes in this style on different sites. You must re-write the rule book on every site; what thrives in one garden probably won’t in another a few miles away, and a difficulty with that one species will have knock on effects with other species, this discipline being about creating plant ‘communities’ rather than simply pretty colour schemes. You simply cannot look at existing schemes and say “that looks good with that” because the scheme you’re looking at will be thriving in one particular location, and unlikely at yours. Believe me when I say that life would be a lot easier if I could get Pennisetum to grow…!
Indeed that is the problem with my client in Somerset. Hauser and Wirth is a big site-imposed scheme on deep clay in full sun. Much of his site is in the dry shade north of a large ash tree, it is on light loam and initial irrigation has to be sprinkled – not enough water pressure for leaky pipes…and we would prefer it didn’t need watering at all. I can certainly cover the ground in the usual dry shade suspects but only Japanese anemone and luzula sylvatica will achieve a decent height and probably flop towards the light…and the historic site will look silly if we get the plant guilds wrong….the planning continues.
I embraced the New Perennial movement in a portion of my garden in spring a year ago after seeing the beauty of Piet Oudolf’s work. I’ve only owned the house I live in for 3 years so all of the garden is relatively new. After installing a variety of tall grasses mixed with native perennials, over the winter I read “Planting in a Post-Wild World” by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West and learned that design-wise plunking down a chunk of what Piet Oudolf does might not work scale-wise in a smaller garden. Of course, I didn’t know this when I planted my New Perennial grass-centric garden. I’m not yanking anything out, mind you.
The areas where I’ve made these plantings aren’t mature yet, and my instinct tells me that I can tinker with these plantings to make the areas look good despite the scale. While I’ve viewed many lovely gardens, only Piet Oudolf’s work and that of the English garden masters (Jekyll & Vita Saksville-West) have truly left me enraptured. I want what they have in my garden. I live in Texas where I’d hazard to say that few every-day gardeners even know who Piet Oudolf is. For me, It’s all a big experiment, not a “do or die” thing so if this style of planting doesn’t work for me, I’ll do something else.
to reply….I saw the New Perennials in Germany at the Bonn Bundesgartenschau in 1976, an unnamed revelation on how to plant in public spaces…huge blocks of perennials and grasses 2 decades before it became a Movement.
Back then my parents were gardening with many Old Perennials – I remember swathes of peonies, yellow loosestrife, hostas, oriental poppies, echinops ritro and phlox paniculata.
I am imminently planting a perennial garden for a client who totally loves Hauser and Wirth planting. Scaling it down to his size of garden and also accommodating the children’s trampoline and future play fort is the main challenge. Also the longevity…I have found that Salvia Caradonna fades away and crocosmias take over but oregano Herrenhausen goes on for years on our light loam.
Also the site is mostly in the shade of a large ash tree and most of the New Perennials are for sunny sites. Most shade tolerant perennials are short or tall and moisture loving…it takes sun and/or moisture to hold up a tall perennial. Japanese anemones may work ….I am experimenting with the Swan series and Andrea Atkinson. I am trialing plants elsewhere in the garden to see what will work which is frustrating my client no end. He wants to crack on with it but I am nervous of repeating The Great Geranium Disaster of 2004 when I knew everything and planted 48 2 litre G. Kashmir White only to have 47 of them eaten by rabbits with rare taste….awkward.
The sunnier end will not be much of a problem…Miscanthus China, Pennisetum Fairy Tails, Helianthus Lemon Queen, Rudbeckia deanii, sedums and Persicaria Firetail are doing fine in the experiment border. Other Old Perennials like peonies echinops ritro and agapanthus do well but may not look right here. We would like eupatorium and tall coreopsis but it may be too dry. The big planting will start after the lawn levelling groundworks this autumn. In conclusion inserting a full Hauser and Wirth planting into a domestic site is not straight forward…and could look hellish at Easter.
and perennials higher than a border is wide can look very silly….
See Facebook for the site photo.
Isn’t the essence of the trend (whether called New Perennial or Naturalistic Planting) one which truly requires not repetition but substantial drifts of perennial plants and grasses? Hence, there is a reliance on garden properties of some scale. That seems to be what Noel has chosen to showcase in his photographs. Drift planting is decidedly not the complex matrix which might legitimately labelled “naturalistic”, as nature alone interplants dozens of species within a square metro. However, this stylized drift planting strategy DOES allow us to see a soft painterly beauty in all moments through the growing season. So, for instance, drought might lead to yellowing foliage which might have previously signaled a rush for a fastidious gardener to break out hoses. However, our new predilection for drift plantings gives us an opportunity to see something elegant in nature’s survival response: a golden brush stroke through our planted fields. Where individual clumps of late season echinacea seed heads might pinpoint episodes of death (to be dead-headed?) in an English border scheme, an artfully composed drift woven together with another of Asters in or out of bloom or billowing grasses offers a delectable photo op when a feeding gold finch animates the scene.
I do believe these aspects of the N.P. movement: allowing an appreciation for all moments of the life cycle of a perennial plant, an acknowledgement of how wildlife enriches our gardens, and a somewhat more relaxed maintenance regimen are the relevant aspects of the movement’s gaining traction – at least here in American gardens.
My apologies – I must clarify that Noel’s piece came unillustrated and I simply agreed with Noel that Trentham and Hauser and Wirth would be good sources of pictures.