I suppose it shouldn’t be an enormous revelation, but you really can learn a lot about a garden designer by having a look at their own garden.
As a designer myself, I’m a little nervous about proclaiming this – well aware that the area of rather unkempt vegetation the other side of my window might give too much away. The fact remains that writer Clare Coulson has hit upon a fascinating subject for her new book, Wonderlands, which explores the private gardens of 18 of the UK’s best designers, beautifully photographed by Éva Németh.
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A designer’s garden should be more of a slice of real life, removed from the fast-paced, deadline-squeezed world of their clients’ projects. Instead, Coulson suggests, they are places of refuge, reflection and domestic bliss. For Butter Wakefield – one of the 18 featured – her meadowy London garden is a ‘therapeutic space, forcing me to slow down’.
They can be, as for Arabella Lennox-Boyd at Gresgarth Hall, ‘a portrait of her interests and loves.’ But perhaps the most exciting of all are the designers’ gardens that are arenas of experimentation.
This beautifully photographed book on designers’ own gardens is a fascinating insight into some well-known designers’ working practices, says Charlie Harpur from which they have learned, grown and then fed back into their work. Sarah Price, for example, describes her garden in Monmouthshire as ‘a library and a sketchbook’, and Nigel Dunnett plays with bioswales and mini meadows in his Peak District garden.
By making their garden in Powys, Harry Rich realised that he and his brother David have ‘learnt more about who we are as designers’, and at Hillside, Dan Pearson’s captivating garden in Somerset, Dan admits that he is constantly pushing his own boundaries.
A designer’s garden should be more of a slice of real life, removed from the fast- paced, deadline-squeezed world of their clients’ projects.
By interviewing the designers in their own gardens, Coulson is rewarded with a relaxed openness, which makes for enlightening and intimate biographies, each of which are given their own chapter. Some of the faces and gardens in the book are more familiar than others, but Németh’s photography presents them through a refreshing lens, capturing charming details that perfectly illustrate the designers’ (and their families’) sensibilities.
Wonderlands: British Garden Designers at Home by Clare Coulson Hardie Grant Books, £40, ISBN 978-1784887940
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Perhaps they have lived there for decades and steered the garden’s gradual evolution, such as at Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden in Hertfordshire. He planted the now-iconic cloud-hedging at The Barn as tiny whips, re-used elements of previous Chelsea show gardens, and has now expanded the garden into a community learning resource at The Serge Hill Project for Gardening, Creativity, and Health.
Or maybe they are more recent custodians, such as ‘serial doer-uppers’ Isabel and Julian Bannerman, who have created their latest garden at Ashington Manor and are already dreaming of the next project. (And what a legacy they will leave, too.) Whatever the history or scale of the garden (and Coulson treats us to a good range) what is revealed in this book is the approach of the designer, not only in terms of things such as characteristic planting combinations and built details, but also in terms of gardening.
After all, a designer with earthy hands is reassuring, as it demonstrates a genuine understanding
of the dynamic process of gardening. This ‘everyday watchfulness and the kind of tiny changes you make if you’re a gardener’ is what most interests Mary Keen, whose garden in Gloucestershire is all about such close observation. Of Arne Maynard at Allt-y-Bella, Coulson identifies his quest to continually refine and edit, ‘free of usual time restraints where things have to be finished.’
Coulson is rewarded with a relaxed openness, which makes for enlightening and intimate biographies, each of which are given their own chapter.
Coulson has gravitated towards the rural and the rolling, with the inspiring London gardens of Emily Erlam and Butter Wakefield being noteworthy exceptions. I suppose if space allowed, it would also be interesting to see something a little more urban, like a balcony or roof terrace, but perhaps that is not what some of the UK’s top garden designers are aspiring to, with the irresistible draw of space for trying things out being too great. And that’s what this book is all about – it’s a beautiful, sensitive exploration of formative havens that have allowed designers to develop and understand themselves.
Wonderlands: British Garden Designers at Home by Clare Coulson Hardie Grant Books, £40, ISBN 978-1784887940
SQUIRREL_13209911