Roy Strong, The Laskett, Much Birch, Herefordshire
MANY OF THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS of Arts and Crafts gardens are even more relevant in contemporary garden design. A selection of new gardens reveals the individual ways in which the basic tenets of Arts and Crafts garden planning are still meaningful. Many gardens have been conceived by artist-gardeners (homeowners and professional designers alike) who have created personal statements. Among the many innovative designers in Britain today, Isabel and Julian Bannerman, Jinny Blom, Christopher Bradley-Hole, George Carter, Mary Keen, Arabella Lennox-Boyd, Dan Pearson, Tom Stuart-Smith, Xa Tollemache, and Kim Wilkie bring new heights to contemporary garden design based on the Arts and Crafts design philosophy. Older gardens created during the Arts and Crafts era, notably Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter, William Robinson’s Gravetye Manor, and several of Edwin Lutyens’s private gardens (especially Folly Farm and Marsh Court), have been imaginatively recast with updated plantings by prominent designers and gardeners.
Veddw, Anne Wareham’s imaginative garden in South Wales, presents an array of dazzling borders and contemporary architectural features within a spectacular framework of hedges clipped as undulating waves. Roger Last’s Corpusty Mill and George Carter’s Silverstone Farm in East Anglia are noteworthy for their whimsy and restraint as well as an impeccable sense of scale and craftsmanship. At Wyken Hall, Carla Carlisle’s gardens surrounding her old manor house in Suffolk include a quincunx (five interlocking brick circles) inspired by a Gertrude Jekyll design and a period-inspired box parterre designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd.1 More ambitious undertakings, such as Prince Charles’s Highgrove in the Cotswolds (created in part by the Bannermans) and Charles Jencks’s Garden of Cosmic Speculation in Scotland, take the concept of garden rooms to new intellectual plateaus. In the end, none of these gardens replicates period Arts and Crafts gardens, but each one shows the value of their enduring lessons.
The Laskett, on the Welsh Borders in Herefordshire, is one of the most significant formal gardens created in recent years. It is the masterwork of Sir Roy Strong, who contributed his vast intellectual prowess in collaboration with his late wife, Dr. Julia Trevelyan Oman, the renowned stage designer. The garden, set out in a series of traditional interlocking rooms defined by clipped hedges, is a showcase for personal monuments and artifacts, statue-lined walks, small buildings, fountains, statues, urns, and benches, but few flowers. The gardens envelop the picture-perfect Georgian house that holds Strong’s incomparable art library and picture collection. The Laskett owes much to Hidcote, Levens Hall, and other Arts and Crafts models as well as classical gardens abroad, but the result is an entirely personal statement reflecting Strong’s distinguished careers as art historian, scholar, and museum director.2
East Ruston Old Vicarage is an architectural and horticultural triumph and one of the most important private gardens created in the late twentieth century. Located on a flat and windy site a mile (one-and-a-half kilometers) or so from the Norfolk coast, it consists of themed garden rooms surrounding an partially tile-clad Art and Crafts house built around 1913.3 “Horticultural extravaganza” does not entirely describe the gardens, begun in the 1970s by Graham Robeson and Alan Gray. “We try to be as original as possible with the planting combinations here, [some are] soothing [while others are] shocking, but that’s the fun of gardening.”4 The high caliber of craftsmanship in the pavilions and other architectural components is outstanding and a great complement to the exquisite plantings. Among the many features are peepholes in the hedges that provide views to the Happisburgh lighthouse and church framed in the distance. Nearly twenty garden rooms are intertwined around the house, ranging from a formal Dutch garden to the desert wash designed to resemble parts of Arizona where rain is infrequent, but heavy. Christopher Lloyd commented that the garden contained “one of the most effective deliberate cornfield displays that I have seen.”5
Bryan’s Ground, near Presteigne in Herefordshire, is a magical garden surrounding a Tuscan-toned half-timbered Arts and Crafts house dating from 1913, poised on the banks of the River Lugg on the border between England and Wales. An existing kitchen garden with high brick walls and a thick yew hedge as well as a sunken garden with a circular waterlily pool to the south of the house provided the underpinnings for a new garden that continues to grow. Since 1993, Bryan’s Ground has been the home of David Wheeler and Simon Dorrell, the editor and the art director of Hortus, a quarterly garden publication founded by Wheeler in 1987. The garden proper occupies two acres, the largest feature being the old kitchen garden that has been divided into quadrants, each with a different focus. A formal garden, serpentine-edged canal, topiary garden, and other areas have been developed, many of which have been named after a significant place or person: St. Anne’s (for Anne Raver, a reporter at The New York Times who first wrote about the garden), Standen (Philip Webb’s house), the George Walk (a beloved dog’s constitutional run), St. Ives (a timber potting shed), and the Lighthouse (a garden folly that was originally a domestic gas plant). In addition to the formal gardens hugging the dwelling, Bryan’s Ground also features informal areas on the outer edges of the grounds. The current orchard was replanted on the bones of an existing orchard with more than thirty different apple varieties set within ten-foot squares planted with carpets of Anemone blanda, followed in May by dense drifts of blue Iris sibirica ‘Papillon’. Equally ambitious is Cricket Wood, a new arboretum with some original specimen trees, such as a fully mature Sequoiadendron giganteum (the giant sequoia, or Wellingtonia). Dense plantations of new hydrangea cultivars add dazzling blue notes to the woods. Whimsical architectural features, such as the Belevedere, the Sulking House, and Simon’s lych gate embellish this enchanting ground.
Traditional herbaceous borders, which are the mainstay of many English gardens, continue to draw from Jekyll’s timeless harmonious color theories, but with new, more contemporary planting combinations. Coton Manor in Northamptonshire, which comprises ten acres of informal, yet atmospheric gardens originally laid out in the 1920s, is celebrated for its breathtaking borders: a red border, meadow border, and holly hedge border. Susie and Ian Pasley-Tyler have devoted decades to fine-tuning the gardens, which range from formal areas adjacent to the house to informal wildflower meadows and a stream garden with resident flamingos. The whole effect is one of a relaxed atmosphere, rather than architectural high drama and intensity. Maintaining and updating the borders originally created by Susie’s mother-in-law takes patience and experimentation, sometimes with surprising results. “It’s true that adjacent colours on the colour wheel harmonise, while opposites are stimulating and exciting, but overdoing the first can be dull, and too much of the latter is overkill,” Susie said.6
Wollerton Old Hall in Shropshire has been described as the quintessential English garden, but it is much more. The creation of Lesley Jenkins over a thirty-year period, the four-acre garden stands out for its luscious, contemporary plantings within a formal layout that was dictated to some extent by the old Tudor manor house. David Wheeler of Bryan’s Ground called it “a tight but logical layout, slackening at its limits where the garden appears to dissolve into the countryside.”7 Each garden room is beautifully conceived and imaginatively planted, and all interlock in such a way as to draw the visitor eagerly from one area to the next, similar to the experience at Hidcote and Sissinghurst. What makes the difference here is the high level of exquisite plantsmanship and color artistry. Walls and dense hedges (some rather whimsical) define each of the fourteen different areas. In the end, it’s less about the specific plants and more about the drifts of intermingling colors and textures. Jenkins is not afraid of color, blending intense purples and oranges in one area and softer sweeps of lavenders, pinks, and grays in another.
Jinny Blom, an unconventional designer who originally trained as a psychotherapist, is an expert at contemporary garden planning. She claims, however, that she has no style; she just wants to make gardens “that work for the place and the person.”8 Temple Guiting, a private garden in the Cotswolds, is a fine example of Blom’s work. Here she transformed a dilapidated medieval-era farmstead (in more recent years, a llama farm) into a contemporary interpretation with nods to the past, including whimsical farmyard topiaries. Her framework, which progresses from formal to informal, as dictated by the challenging site, consists of a series of walled rooms. The unforgettable centerpiece of the scheme is a canal garden surrounded by a variety of small compartments, each with a different theme. In early summer, pale lavender irises flank the pool under the shade of a line of pleached hornbeams. The long, narrow Granary Walk, once the local village road, is informally planted with clumps of pale blue and white flowers between columns of yew. Old-fashioned roses abound throughout the garden. The enchanting composition glows with an artist’s sense of romance and delight.
York Gate, in Adel, Yorkshire, is remarkable for its small scale, ingenious planning, and architectural detailing. Located in a quiet suburban community five miles (eight kilometers) from Leeds, the garden comprises less than an acre of ground. It was designed by the Spencer family, beginning in 1951: Frederick Spencer, a surveyor; his wife, Sybil, who oversaw the garden after his death; and their son, Robin, who was also a surveyor. The garden has an ordered geometry in its planting and detailing but is more informal in how the twelve or so compartments interlock imperceptibly with one another, creating both intimacy and the illusion of a far larger place. The planting scheme is architectural, with an emphasis on a diversity of foliage, texture, and form, mostly in shades of green, rather than a flowery confection. Linear waves of dark hedges, golden globes of yew, and spikes of evergreens balance water features and simple garden ornaments, such as a row of discarded lead cans, an obelisk, and a sundial. Most of the architectural elements, from paving stones to small buildings, were constructed from recycled materials.
Tony Ridler’s minimalist half-acre garden, near Swansea, Wales, is conceived as a series of defined spaces with an emphasis on hedges of yew, Portuguese laurel, and box and tightly manipulated companion plantings of santolinas, hostas, hellebores, and other plants with strong foliage interest.9 The tiny terrace house is nearly engulfed by the long, linear T-shaped garden (composed of several family allotments). Neatly clipped box spheres and spirals of yew are offset by the odd window in a hedge that provides a peek into the next area. Walls painted black and deep gray, plus other artful effects, reveal Ridler’s profession as a graphic designer. Beautifully executed and highly original, Ridler’s garden owes little to the self-conscious replicas of iconic gardens that more conventional designers revel in.
One garden deserves mention for melding a contemporary design within an Arts and Crafts setting. Througham Court, tucked away in a small hamlet in Gloucestershire, consists of a seventeenth-century manor house renovated by the Cotswold architect Norman Jewson in the late 1920s, surrounded by a traditional garden with clipped hedges and topiaries. Dr. Christine Facer, a biologist turned landscape designer, created three acres of new gardens on the sloping hill behind the house that are a tribute to the cosmic laws of the universe. Her hero, of course, is Charles Jencks, but Facer’s creation is more intimate by comparison and focuses sharply on mathematical and scientific theories, including a tribute to the Italian mathematician, Fibonacci. Serpentine walks, mounded landforms, and visual markers such as red flags fluttering in the wind signal an intellectual and highly individual garden-maker.
On the other side of the Atlantic, numerous gardens, in particular those under the umbrella of the Garden Conservancy, show the continuing relevance of lessons derived from Arts and Crafts gardens with many regional variations.10 They range from country house gardens designed by local professionals, such as Craig Bergmann in Lake Forest, Illinois, to larger, contemporary landscapes by the Oehme van Sweden firm in Washington, D.C. Personal gardens, such as Ben and Cindy Lenhardt’s immaculate parterre garden in Charleston, South Carolina, the late Tom Armstrong’s coastal garden on the Long Island Sound, and Caesar and Dorothy Stair’s Lutyens-inspired garden in Knoxville, Tennessee, designed by the late Ryan Gainey, are among the many outstanding gardens. In addition, there are numerous revitalized gardens and landscapes associated with Arts and Crafts houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and other period architects.
Perhaps the most ambitious garden of all is Les Quatre Vents, Frank Cabot’s extensive creation near Québec, Canada, consisting of two-dozen themed garden rooms, not unlike Hidcote in scale and scope. Some of the areas were refurbished from existing gardens (such as the White Garden) in the family compound, while others are fanciful creations directly inspired by Cabot’s extensive world travels. Its beautiful setting, near the St. Lawrence River in La Malbaie and remote from urban areas, is the equal of any English landscape. Naturalistic drifts of wildflowers and alpine plants complement more formal areas, such as the whimsical topiaries in the Guest Garden and Bread Garden. Several water gardens, such as Lac Libellule, the Watercourse (inspired by Geoffrey Jellicoe’s garden at Shute House in Dorset), and the Stream Garden (inspired by Hidcote), offset formal notes, such as allées, both green and perennial. Architectural features, including the Moon Bridge, Pigeonnier, Music Pavilion, and the Arch (inspired by Lutyens), are numerous and diverse. At Les Quatre Vents, the magnitude of craftsmanship, horticultural expertise, ornament, and wide-ranging influences in general transcend the intimacy of an Arts and Crafts garden, but the heady blend of influences all helped create this majestic garden.11
Some of the most interesting smaller scale gardens are those designed by artists, such as the late Robert Dash and his spectacular garden, Madoo, in Sagaponack, Long Island. Brilliant color hues, including a bright yellow door, a lilac-colored summerhouse, and a blue entry gate, reflect the personality of this important American Expressionist painter and poet. Nearly forty years in the making, Madoo (which means My Dove in Welsh) is highly personal and devoid of all the much-imitated quotations that bedevil many other new gardens. Garden hats hang on posts, box spheres lounge beneath fastigiate gingko trees like bowling balls, and ladderlike fences enclose the gardens. Dash was also a well-versed plantsman, propagating many of the plants himself and using them with an artist’s eye. In his book, Notes From Madoo, Dash wrote, “Foliant umbrage is silvery and cottony below and lanced, blunted, toothed, or indented; strap, ovate, and round; margined with white and yellow or speckled silver.”12
Bill Noble’s private garden at Bragg Hill, near Norwich, Vermont, is a proving ground for a noted horticulturist, preservationist, and lover of gardens of the nearby Cornish Art Colony. A sweep of towering Lombardy poplars encloses the outer boundaries of this superb plantsman’s garden, which has been twenty-five years in the making. Reusing a former owner’s vegetable garden, Noble created a series of garden rooms, where his knowledge of foliage, texture, and color come together. Purple-leaved barberries add structural notes to a color display from early summer through autumn. An eclectic collection of alliums, roses, peonies, Joe-pye weed, delphiniums, monkshood, rodgersias, rhubarb, and agastache offer their brilliant colors and varying forms through the seasons. As a dedicated plant collector, Noble seeks out new plants each year. His borders rival those at Hidcote and Great Dixter, where he has spent some time studying.
One of the most important garden undertakings in America is Hollister House Garden in a quiet corner of New England. The six-acre garden skillfully combines a spectacular setting, an ingenious layout, and storied plantings, as conceived by art historian and garden aficionado George Schoellkopf. Located in rural northwestern Connecticut, Hollister House is a connoisseur’s garden set within an eighteenth-century New England farmstead that includes an antiques-filled saltbox house. Schoellkopf’s love of antique American furniture and decorative arts complements his garden confection. Judiciously selecting snippets from his garden travels in England, such as Hidcote, Sissinghurst, and Great Dixter, he has created an American interpretation of an English garden, and more. As Schoellkopf says, “the garden unfolds in successive layers of space and color with delightful informal vistas from one section to the next.”13
This jewel of a garden is nestled in a hollow that overlooks the rolling Litchfield hills in the distance. Dramatic level changes provided the challenge in creating an architectural framework for the garden. Boxwood-edged stone paths, clipped yew hedges (some eight feet, or two-and-a-half meters, high), and rows of ornamental trees provide the framework for the abundant plantings. Like Alice in Wonderland, visitors step from one garden room to the next, not knowing what treats awaits them. Although the garden is English in inspiration, it is decidedly American in spirit. It is not a replica of an eighteenth-century garden, but a contemporary garden that perfectly complements the historic site and its antique farm buildings. Hollister House is certainly one of America’s best gardens and owes a great debt to the principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
