“I would like to begin my reply to Bridget’s response by quoting Stendhal …….. ‘what we find beautiful is the promise of happiness’. As we all know, the pursuit of happiness is not only a deeply personal one but also highly elusive and ever changing due to the complex world we live in. Therefore there are as many styles of beauty (or gorgeousness!!) as there are visions of happiness.”
Andrew Wilson responds to Anne Wareham’s article on gender and the garden world.
Jo Eliot comments on Anne Wareham’s article on gender and the garden world.
“In response to Bridget Rosewell’s comments on the need for a balance between structure and the looser floral elements of a garden, I think she has made a very important point. Balancing the two will bring harmony to any garden…”
by Bridget Rosewell.
“I am not interested in girly – give me gorgeous though. I would describe the Ann Pearce garden as ‘impressive’ and ‘striking’ but not ‘gorgeous’. Gorgeous implies something more?”
by Anne Wareham.
“Carol Klein: ‘Many viewers assumed that I’d turned down the job but in fact I was never offered it. Had I been asked, I would have loved to have done it.'”
by Peter Thomas.
“…Within the field of garden design this concept is expressed through the use of a limited palette of materials and colours, and an emphasis on the functional — a format that is still prevalent today.”
by Tim Richardson.
“….In such a view, gardening is innocent, guileless and healthy, while garden design is cynical, unncessary and corrupted by too much knowledge and thought.”
by Roger Phillips.
“It is a sculpture in which you can walk, sit, drink or sing. In other words it encourages the visitor to play an active role. He or she becomes a part of the garden…”
by Bridget Rosewell.
A response to Peter Osbourne’s series of articles adressing some of the problematic aspects of reviewing/criticising gardens.
“I love gardens in winter (not winter gardens). When the palette is muted and the bones show, and it is not wise to sit for too long, the good garden gives a frisson all of its own.”
The third of three articles by Peter Osbourne.
“…But most people would, I think, recognize some different basic levels of value. A parallel in art would be to agree not to replace a Leonardo on the National Gallery wall with your 2-year old’s latest, that the average amateur artist is not up to Cotman, nor he up to Leonardo.”
The second of three articles by Peter Osbourne.
“…This formal vocabulary, together with garden-specific terms in any good glossary, is sufficiently objective and well-established to provide an analytical basis for garden criticism, but is not an evaluative language.”
The first of three articles by Peter Osbourne.
“The immediate problem is that the question of what is a garden, especially a good or great garden, has become embroiled in the discussion about different types of garden…”
‘I find much to agree with in the ‘trialogue’ on Allusion in Gardens by Noel Kingsbury, Yue Zhuang, and Anne Wareham, but I’m disturbed by heavy emphasis, particularly Noel Kingsbury’s, on the need to find new languages (garden languages) to speak to the present. Of course, we do need to do this, but not to the exclusion of rich allusory experience…….’
I love my garden, I do. It’s at the heart of my life. But just recently I’ve been drawn back and back to a windowsill with some sweet dwarf pelargoniums.
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.
