British Garden Trends and Gardens of Interest
talk by Susan Sherk, February 5, 2019
On February 5, Susan Sherk presented a talk on recent and ongoing British landscape garden trends. This talk was based on her visitation to more than 80 private and public gardens, most of which were in England and Scotland, over a seven year period (2012-2018). Such in-depth visitation was possible as a result of a multi-year tour organized by two friends of hers with strong backgrounds in garden design and with close connections to some of Great Britain’s most famous garden owners and designers.
Susan’s talk was divided into three parts: current 2019 gardening trends; 2010 and beyond trends…focusing on two of several important landscape themes, and personal favourites. For each section, she showed personal pictures of 22 gardens that supported the trend or illustrated a particular aspect – good and problematic – of that trend.
The 2019 garden trends according to the English Garden Company are four: climate change gardening, interior meets exterior, wild and loose and colour (vibrant and hot). Susan cited nine gardens in total for each of these categories, but Pensthorpe Nature Reserve in Norfolk, a garden designed partially by the great new perennial movement guru, Piet Oudolfe, demonstrated some of the best practices and results in three of the current trends: climate change gardening, wild and loose and colour. The Oxford Botanic Garden, the oldest botanic garden in Great Britain, was unquestionably the leader in vibrant and hot colours.
Susan then focused on two prominent and ongoing landscape design trends; the new perennial movement and land form art. The new perennial movement, which encourages a convergence of design, ecology, and architecture, is based on using a range of herbaceous perennials and grasses planted in drifts with very little space between them to invoke a naturalistic look. The challenge is to create a garden that neither looks messy nor neglected, but rather retains its original shape and form. Again Piet Oudolf’s contribution to the new perennial movement figured prominently in her talk with a brief discussion of four of his English gardens (Scampston Hall, Yorkshire; Bury Court, Surrey; Hauser and Wirth, Somerset; and Pensthorpe Nature Reserve, Norfolk). Other gardens discussed as excellent examples of the new perennial moment included: Gravetye Manor, Sussex; Maverlys, Hampshire; Cottisbrooke, Northamptonshire and Boughton, Northamptonshire.
Landform art as a trend expands boundaries of art by the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials often used are natural (e.g. soil, rocks, vegetation and on-site water) and the sitings are usually rural areas. As a result, photo documentation is commonly used in urban art galleries to show the works. Charles Jencks is to landform art as Piet Oudolf is to the new perennial movement. Susan discussed and showed photographs of three of Jencks most well-known landform gardens: The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Scotland; Crawick Multiverse, a former coal mine in Scotland and Landform Ueda at the Edinburgh Gallery of Modern Art in Scotland. Other landform art of note that Susan discussed included Houghton Hall, Norfolk; Boughton House, Northamptonshire and Great Fosters, Surrey. She showed through photographs the challenge of creating successful land form art if insufficient knowledge of the terrain, design and money is used.
The final portion of Susan’s talk centred on some her personal favourites that fell into one of three categories: historic and romantic, contemporary and individualistic. Rousham in Oxfordshire, while built in the mid-1700s and is one of England’s great historic gardens, has successfully maintained a timeless contemporary feel plus a large walled garden is reinvented every few years to show new trends. Gresgarth Hall, Lancashire is a beautifully planned romantic garden complete with planted terraces, herbaceous borders, a lake, wild and bog gardens, a walled kitchen garden, nuttery and orchard. Iford Manor, Hampshire, is a perfect classical Italian garden in a romantic rural English setting.
Susan chose three gardens as her contemporary favourites: Broadwoodside in Scotland, which is a small almost graphically designed colourful garden; Farrs in Dorset, which is the creation of John Makepeace, the noted furniture maker, who has created large carved contemporary-shaped topiary hedging set off by a large Mobius sculpture and Veddw in Wales, which startles the mind with its striking interlocking precision hedges set against the wild Welsh countryside.
Susan chose three gardens to demonstrate a very individualistic approach to landscape design: Plaz Metaxu, in Devon, which is the creation of one man, Alasdair Forbes, where the mind engages with ideas as much as with plants; Stavordale Priory, Somerset, which is the property of Cameron Macintosh and his partner, Michael le Poer, who has turned a 16th century priory into a work of natural art. And finally, but by no means least, Little Sparta in Scotland, which has been described by some as one of the wonders of the 20th century. A combination of avant-garde experiment and Scottish wit and whimsy, it’s set within the tradition of an English landscape
In a brief hour Susan covered three hundred years of gardening, 22 gardens and brought the horticultural attendees up to speed on recent landscape gardening trends and two of the major landscape gardening trends of the last ten years.