It was also lovely to have time to indulge in some painting and drawing of my own, which I thought you might like to see. 

Though I was high up in a mountain village, I could hear the sound of water, so followed it down into the valley one day and found this beautiful stream with abundant grasses, ferns and lichens; dark rocks, white trees and magenta-coloured pinks.

This was the view across the valley to a slightly higher village whose church clock chimed anything from half a minute to several minutes before our own.  The shades of green from sweet chestnut and firs, and the play of light from sun and shadows, made for a constantly changing set of tones.

This was my favourite view though, just a little to the left of the one above, but very different in character.  The hillside was a mix of parched grasses, woodland and rock, creating patterns with colour that I found fascinating to try to capture.

Christopher Tunnard, influencial designer working from the 1930s, aired his frustration that Chelsea gardens showed nothing new or original and that English garden design in general fostered the ‘traditional’ formal garden, inappropropriate, in his opinion, with the culture, architecture and lifestyles of the time (how little has changed!).  He was frustrated by the English resistance to Modernism, which, with the notable exception of John Brookes’s Mondrian inspired garden for Penguin books in the 1960s, did not begin to take a proper hold in the UK until Christopher Bradley Hole’s modernist garden at Chelsea (‘the Latin Garden’) in 1997.  What was significant about this garden was the fact that it took Best in Show, beating its neighbour – a ‘contemporary’ Arts and Crafts garden created for the centenary of Country Life – and marked the first time that Modernism really began to take a hold in the English garden psyche.

I share Christopher Tunnard’s frustration at the English resistance to contemporary garden design, which is still on-going.  While exciting and innovative private gardens are being created, it is still the Arts and Crafts variety that win the people’s choice at Chelsea.  Even this year, with Andy Sturgeon’s beautiful contemporary garden, full of vitality, drive, energy, calm, colour and space, the people’s choice went to a ‘traditional’ garden created by Roger Platts – expertly executed but showing nothing new.

 
It’s not that Arts and Crafts gardens aren’t beautiful, or worth preserving and enjoying (they are, as you can see from these pictures, all taken on the tour and shown in chronological order!), it’s that they should be seen in context; the context of an era that created them that is so far removed from our current times.  They should not be the model, nor the ’ideal’, for contemporary living (nor can they be – Gertrude Jekyll employed 16 gardeners at her own garden of Munstead Wood).

I find it doesn’t take much to inspire people to contemporary gardens; you just need to open their eyes to what current design is all about, break the way of thinking that the ‘best’ garden is on the English Arts and Crafts model and we-should-all-be-aspiring-to-it, and show them a contemporary planting (such as the Piet Oudolf borders at Wisley).  But the most important of those is being open.

So I feel I have achieved my mission for that week – to have had a highly enjoyable time in the company of interesting and interested people; to have seen some fascinating historic gardens (and put them in their context!); to have taken in some inspiring contemporary design; but most importantly, to have opened just a few eyes to the fact that what garden designers are creating now is even more exciting, even more relevant, than any ‘traditional’ English garden – however beautiful – can be at the beginning of the 21st century.

The gardens shown here are Athelhampton www.athelhampton.co.uk
Cothay Manor www.cothaymanor.co.uk
Mapperton www.mapperton.com
Wayford Manor (private Harold Peto garden open occasionally under the National Gardens Scheme)
Tintinhull www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-tintinhullgarden 
Stanbridge Mill (private Arabella Lennox Boyd garden open once a year under the NGS)
and a private garden designed by Dan Pearson, not open to the public.

The tour was designed and led by me for Martin Randall Travel www.martinrandall.com (specialist in cultural tours and Travel Company of the Year for three out of the last four years).  I hope very much that we might run it again in 2012!

Cothay hadn’t changed at all; it is one of those lovely, timeless gardens – though of course it isn’t timeless, it is rooted firmly in the 1920s.  It was designed by Reggie Cooper, who should hold a higher place in our awareness of garden history, as he was friends with both Lawrence Johnston and Harold Nicholson and influenced both in their subsequent creations of Hidcote and Sissinghurst – Cothay came first!  You can see, below, how directly an influence he was – I bet if I hadn’t told you this was Cothay you’d have thought it was Hidcote! 

Cothay is full of fine detail, including this beautiful retaining wall (below) created from random stone set on the diagonal.  The ferns and valerian growing through the gaps in the wall add that lovely air of slightly overblown decadence, so redolent of the period – or at least of our perceptions of the period – seeing it, as we do, with the hindsight of knowing what a short, privileged time this was.

My favourite part of the garden is the Walk of the Unicorn (below) -  a simple, restful space with an avenue of Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Umbraculifera’ – not the bright yellow leafed one seen rather too often in suburban gardens, but a rather more elegant variety, more often seen in French squares than in England.  These trees have been underplanted with massed tulips followed by Nepeta, and have a simple centrepiece of a rather splendid unicorn (it couldn’t have been anything else, given the name of this garden, could it!).  If ever one needs reminding not to overfill or over complicate a garden it would be wise to wander here for a while!

As well as the formal gardens, the natural garden that borders the River Tone is full, as one might imagine, of frothy cow parsley, the droning of insects and a general air of abundance.  I particularly like this simple wooden bench (below)

When I was there, some gorgeous oriental poppies were in flower – just have a look at these!  They don’t last long but are so spectacular!  If you want to grow them in your own gardens, it’s worth planting something that will flop over the poppy foliage which gets a bit scruffy after flowering and needs cutting back – Crambe cordifolia would be a good choice for this, with its mass of white flowers, a little like gypsophila.

They won’t still be in flower when I come again in July, but I know there will be other beauties waiting for me!

http://www.cothaymanor.co.uk/

A few years ago, the gardens were brash and colourful; in your face, confident, transient.  Over the last few years, as recession bites and a deeper ecological conscience has emerged, these gardens have reflected our changing mood.  We have seen less colour and more permanent planting (trees and evergreen shrubs over perennial fluffiness).  Tom Stuart Smith (Laurent Perrier garden, above and below) has created a calm, elegant space, using limited materials and a colour palette of green with soft white.  We’ve seen gardens like this from Tom before, but he does it very, very well.

This year, what I really noticed was how many of the gardens are enclosed – even from visitors.  It’s as if we need not just introspection but also nurturing – a collective nesting instinct where a garden provides us with a safe haven.  In some gardens this has been done by creating physical barriers (Andy Sturgeon’s corten steel columns); but in most it has been through planting – Tom Stuart Smith’s high and deep cloud-pruned box hedges, Mark Gregory’s shrub planting  (which included a very beautifulViburnum plicatum Mareisii), and even the exotic planting framing the Malaysian garden.

I loved David Cubero and James Wong’s Malaysian garden (above).  David, James and I were all Show Garden virgins at Hampton Court in 2008, and our gardens there were both project managed by Arun Landscapes.  I’ve enjoyed watching their style develop since; all their gardens have featured bold landscaping over water, but this is by far their most accomplished work – simplifying the design to its core elements and with a great use of texture.  There are no flowers here but it is nonetheless packed with interest and excitement.

The Two Moors garden (above) is close to my heart as it features the landscape just a little west of me, namely Exmoor and Dartmoor.  Recreations of regional geology and flora have been seen so often at Chelsea that they’re in danger of being a cliche, or pastiche, but this garden was so well made, and the yellow and white colours of the planting was so soft and appealing, that it easily deserved its Best Courtyard Garden award. 

I thought this little detail from the Pine and Conifer Enthusiasts Garden was charming -

- it’s also refreshing to see conifers, generally viewed as lacking in movement and seasonal variation, seen in such a contemporary setting, being set off, as you can see here, with Festuca grasses.

I’m in two minds about Robert Myers Cancer Research garden – partly perhaps because it felt like two separate gardens that didn’t quite fit together.  At the front was a simple woodland garden, a little bit fluffy, prettily planted.  At the rear was a vast slatted canopy, reached by a ‘cloister’ (above), and planted with structural box cubes of different heights, which married with the differing surface levels of the pale stone of the cloister wall.  What was good about it was the deliberate use of shadows created by the open structure – particularly in the cloister where the shadows were distorted by the gravel path.  I would like to have seen a little more unity between these wonderful light capturing and very strong elements and the pretty surroundings – somehow they didn’t quite fit together.

I’m ending my Chelsea thoughts on my favourite garden, Andy Sturgeon’s contemporary and contemplative space created for the Daily Telegraph.

I really enjoy Andy’s work because he always comes up with something unexpected – and that, to me, is what Chelsea should be all about.  Corten steel, used for his columns, came to public notice in Tom Stuart Smith’s 2006 Chelsea garden.  It’s a form of rusted metal, where the rust forms a protective coating – a wonderful material for a garden, giving an air of age, and enhancing the colours of the planting.  Open columns give wonderful shadows, but are simple enough not to detract from the planting, or deflect the eye from the planting – but instead to gently enhance.  A simple dark background around the garden keeps the focus firmly within, allowing the light colours of the planting to glow, and tall dry stone walls give the garden additional structure.  This clever use of horizontals and verticals leads you in a slow progression through the garden, which has a perfect balance between quiet and busy space.

Andy always manages to put together a planting scheme that shouldn’t work – a jumble of textures and colours that break all the rules – but somehow he gets away with it and challenges  our ideas on how we can use plants.  I’m sceptical when I hear of his plant lists until I see the results, and I’m delighted that this garden has been recognised with a Best in Show award.

This year, not surprisingly, it’s been the weather that has been the main topic of conversation.  I was reminded of a book I used to read to my children when they were young, where an alien is describing Earth to his own people and he says that there are four types of weather – “too hot, too cold, too wet and too windy”.  Having struggled with the cold to get plants into flower in time for Chelsea, many gardens then struggled to keep the sun from destroying them.  As you can see from the photos below, all sorts of methods were used to give some protection!

The 40 year old pine being protected above is in the ‘Kebony naturally Norway’ garden, but even James Wong’s tropical plants (below) were not immune to the heat.

However, it’s not all tough – Mark Gregory and Adam Frost decided to give their pond in the Children’s Society Garden a final clean-up from the inside!

Press Day itself is always a bit of a spectacle – lots of celebs, champagne and general merriment.  I was honoured to shake hands with punk poet John Cooper Clarke, who read some of his poetry and a bit of Candide in Tom Hoblyn’s Foreign & Colonial Investment’s Garden -

while Jamie Oliver made my breakfast in the Children’s Society Garden (very good it was too!)

I’ll post some photos (and thoughts) on the gardens tomorrow, but I’ll leave you tonight with my tip for Best in Show – which is the Daily Telegraph garden designed by Andy Sturgeon (seen in the garden, below, with Alan Titchmarsh).  Perfect proportions, a lovely play between light and dark, shadows and sun; and Andy’s trademark bold planting – gorgeous.

Some years back I created a sort of contemporary parterre for my front garden, with sleeper and granite sett patterning on the ground, and brick beds with box edgings.  The central square bed was going to have box balls, one in each corner and one in the middle, but a year ago I decided to make them a bit more interesting and so have been clipping them into the shape of birds – with an upturned tail like a wren and a quirky beak.  At least, I thought it was quirky, everyone else told me it looked like a pacman.  My daughter had a go at the next one and made rather an elegant beak - clipping is down to her now.

Initially I grew stipa gigantea in the beds but I changed this a while back to a scheme with white foxgloves and roses; I miss the movement the stipa provided though they were too large to allow for anything else at all in the beds, so I think I’ll be putting some kind of grass in the bed – I’m not sure which yet though. 

In the mean time, I planted these black and white tulips last autumn - Black Hero (which is a double form and sport of the famous Queen of the Night) and Mount Tacoma, which is white with occasional green streaks.  Set against the flush of the new box growth it’s a pretty unbeatable combination, a bit classy, and a bit blousy while still being a bit restrained – perhaps it’s as well I have replaced my pacman with a wren!  Now where did I put my clippers?

It’s funny how you get so used to your own things that you can’t see them clearly any more, and one of the many advantages of getting a designer in is that they will come to a site fresh and with no emotional tie to it.  (As a matter of interest, if you want to try to ’see’ your plot fresh, a quick tip is to take a photograph and then, making it as large as you can print it, have a look at it in a mirror.  For a very brief moment you will see it with new eyes and it may well be that you can identify straight away what’s working and what’s not).

When I first saw saw this house, I knew immediately that I wanted to create a level area in front of the house, which would involve dropping the levels on the far side, and raising them towards the entrance gate.  I also wanted to create something that was more in keeping with the period house, simple but grander, and create a sense of enclosure and arrival (yes I know, front doors again!).  The mock-up that I produced (above) shows the design, with a beech hedge creating the enclosure, raised brick beds either side of the front door, and a simple circular lawn.

We’re now into about the 4th week of construction, and you can see already how much better the house looks.  The levels have been sorted, the new brick beds are pretty much made, and the drive foundations are down.  

I am now working on the planting design!  As you can see from the plan, I’d like the curved-edged beds at the top of the drive to have some formal specimen trees – to give enclosure to the upper drive, but more importantly to reinforce the new grander approach to the house.  I haven’t quite decided what these trees should be yet – I’m toying with either evergreen Prunus laurocerasus Otto Luyken, a pretty laurel with large white flowers in spring, or perhaps more of an ‘avenue’ tree – Corylus colurna (the Turkish hazel) though I think this might get too large.  Either way, I want to underplant with green and white foliage and flowers - white daffodils, wood anemones and pulmonaria for spring, white edged hostas with japanese anemones and posh cow parsley (Anthriscus ravenswing) for later in the season.   

My garden in Bow was very much the smallest of all the gardens in the Trail (at one stage we had people queuing outside the front door, waiting for there to be room to enter!) and we had a lot of comments about how useful people found it in giving them ideas for their own similarly sized plots.

I’m going to include a before shot here, as this shows just how tiny the garden actually is (though you should have seen it before the wall went in – tiny and oppressive!).  You could probably cover the distance from the top of the steps to the back boundary in just two strides – the chairs you can see are piled up against the boundary.

I used a few very simple tricks to make it appear larger than it is.  Firstly, I ‘lost’ the back boundary in a haze of green, allowing you to think it goes back further than it does.  There wasn’t space for a hedge, so I used a product called Mobilane Green Screen  www.mobilane.eu/  This consists of wire mesh panels, 6′ high by 4′ wide, each containing 60 ivy plants in a biodegradable trough.  An immediate inpenetrable green boundary and less than an inch thick – very useful in a small space. 

The garden is south-facing so the light is gorgeous – we were very lucky yesterday that apart from two brief showers it was sunny all day.  It doesn’t photograph well when it’s so bright so you’ll just have to take my word for it that the light through the Anemanthele lessoniana (previously known as Stipa arundinacea) and Nandina domestica (heavenly bamboo, though it’s not a bamboo) was indeed heavenly.

As well as these light-catching plants, the central space is filled with large plants including bamboos (real ones this time) and a Trachycarpus fortunei, allowing you to see that there’s something beyond and enticing you to go and see what it is (and another trick to increase the sense of space).  It’s always sensible to ‘reward’ the effort of walking any path, however short its distance, and so there’s a larger deck circle here with a seat.  Visitors asked my clients if their children hid there but no – “the other way round – we hide from the kids!”

see http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/html/features/gardentrail2010/index.html

This anticipation is particularly true of Amelanchier lamarckii, of which I have two multi-stemmed specimens in my garden.  The best thing about this plant is the way it captures light (a hot topic of mine, which you might have noticed from previous posts!).   The flowers, which were just opening when I took these photos a couple of days ago, are a dazzlingly bright white, which contrast brilliantly with the copper coloured leaves.  The leaves don’t stay copper, but turn a bright green after opening (and scarlet, albeit fleetingly, in autumn), and the white flowers are followed by black berries that the birds relish.

I was in two minds whether to try to grow Amelanchier, as my soil is alkaline and generally Amelanchier’s prefer a lime-free soil.  But I saw one growing, surprisingly, on a verge near me, and so thought it worth a try.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s light chalky soils that they don’t like, and that they’ll cope ok with an alkaline soil so long as it’s clay.

There’s always something new and exciting to see or feel at the coast which is why it’s often the sea that draws me if I need re-charging, but Monday was particularly special.  Not quite as dense as a sea-haar, a layer of low mist created an indistinct band that blurred a deep swathe of the vista merging the water and the sky.

Above the mist, the sky was clear, a deep azure blue with emerging stars and a crescent moon.  Below, the ripples of the waves gave a wonderful contrast to the stillness of the mist, ever more beautiful as it coloured with the setting sun.

I feel incredibly lucky to live so close to such an inspiring coastline (good fish and chips too!…)