Keeping Pace with Garden Design
It is might be difficult to imagine people getting ’het up’ over garden design, but there has been so much change in recent years, that views are strongly held on both sides of the argument. Gerry Daly reports.
Ten years ago, the ’twentieth century style’ was widely considered the most satisfactory model for combining the needs of the plant lover with those who wished for a strong structural design. As it has turned out, the style was well named - it started to go into a decline as the last years of the century rolled out. The twentieth century style combined strongly formal elements with soft lush planting. For instance, straight, formal paths combined with straight cut hedges and rectangular areas of grass were planted around with tumbling masses of interesting plants.
The strength of the formal layout was the perfect complement for the soft informality of plants and vice versa - a marriage made in heaven. Tracing its roots back to the early decades of the century, advocates of the style re-discovered and re-popularized Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll. Those names popped up innumerable times in books and articles on garden design.
There are examples of his work in Ireland notably the War Memorial at Islandbridge, Dublin and Heywood Gardens in Co. Laois. Incidentally both of these gardens were restored a few years, due in no small part to Lutyens’s renewed fame. Gertrude Jekyll was a renowned plantswoman and the doyenne of plant colour use.
Her writings were mined for ideas and her books reprinted. She brought to bear painterly skills in associating plants in coloured borders, using colour transitions of perennial flowers. She found many imitators, and influenced many who did not imitate her directly.
In mid-century, the greatest exposition of the twentieth century style was created at Hidcote Manor, Gloucestershire by Lawrence Johnston. He combined elements of the formal French style with the more plant-based English style and made an outstanding garden. In turn this influenced Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent. Both of these gardens had an enormous influence in defining the twentieth century style, which was furthered by many garden designers and, in fact, still is. It is a pretty style and suits many people, giving a strong layout with plenty of colour and planting overlaid. In many cases, and for a good many years, the trend was strongly towards pastel colours used in such a setting. But there were other influences starting to drift in from other parts of the world. For decades, American designers, such as Thomas Church from the 1940s onwards, had worked in a cleaner, sharper style. Formal yet fluid in the use of shapes, the influence of modern art was clearly visible. Much of this came from California where the superb skills of Japanese gardeners had wrought an influence from the 1920s and from the 1960s the influence of Mexican gardeners in that state began to be felt.
The treatment of gardens and planting began to change. In Brazil, the great modernist designer, Roberto Burle Marx, consciously sought to introduce the tenets of the abstract painting and sculpture with very abstract ground shapes and distinctive mass planting schemes. New perennial planting in Germany, Holland and Belgium began to use colours and forms in ways quite different from the twentieth century style. The use of grasses as an integral part of perennial planting is a signal marker of the style.
New materials such as decking, steel and glass began to make their way into the garden designer’s range. These materials would have been inimical to the older generation of designer who felt that metal only had a place in the form of cast iron and glass in conservatory or neat wooden greenhouses. The use of wooden decking was a direct American influence and despite the damper climate on this side of the Atlantic it has been widely taken up, even by the general public. These ’new’ materials need a more minimal treatment to bring them into the garden successfully. Their appeal is largely textural, surface-based and spatial and their use in design has dictated an appropriate use of plants. Hence, the widespread use of strongly structural plants, such as tree ferns, palms and bananas, even in places where these plants might not be particularly well suited in terms of local climate.
It is clear that the momentum for the use of exotic plants has come from countries of warmer climate. But garden design does not operate in a vacuum - it is greatly influenced by design in other areas, such as architecture, interior design, advertising and even fashion design. These design areas have also undergone a massive re-alignment of style. Extremely minimalist design and the use of strong colour is a keynote of modern interior architecture and design. The use of strong colour has become commonplace in garden design too.
