CHAPTER ONE Seeing

Seeing is not just about the gift of sight, it is about the dawning of greater comprehension and deeper insight into a subject. Gardening is a profound holistic experience. All our responses quicken when outside. Our sophisticated minds are alive not just to our physical surroundings, but to many levels of information fed into us through brains capable of sorting instinct, emotion and reason. Humans are unique in being able to ingest information from the world around them and process it, reforming and replaying it to create culture. It is the ‘duende’ of music and art . The ‘soul’ is often referred to in things that move us. It is a life-bringing, glittering instinctive understanding that something is beautiful.

The garden planting blends effortlessly into the natural surroundings of the Cotswolds. Using fruit trees and keeping them tightly pruned maintains everything in scale. The planting becomes simpler the closer to the field gate we get – foxgloves, valerian and semi-wild roses.

Trusting your instincts

Understanding how to make a space flow and be pleasant comes to me very quickly. It’s a knack I’ve always had. More often than not when I arrive somewhere new I get to grips with what needs altering within hours. It’s a sort of fact-based intuition. Having a little knowledge of many things allows for a shorthand in comprehension. I always try to check this instinctive understanding factually, though, as it could be precarious to rely on it.

When I first started out in garden design I had a fear of making obvious mistakes. To manage the anxiety I used to employ what I’d learned during my experiences in stage design at drama college. We were shown how actors expressed emotion physically in gesture and then how to create a physical space that allowed them to do it unconsciously. It was absolutely invaluable. So from early on I would peg out spaces on site and walk around in them, feeling the comfort of the enclosure I was imagining. The dynamics of passing through a garden are fascinating, so the cadence of moving from room to room needs to be examined and understood in this way. In the early days I’d rig gardens up in canes and string to get the wall heights and meterage of the room. Steps and stairs are particularly challenging to get right, and the riser height and length of stride, especially uphill, are best learned in this way. Calculations from books are only standards, not nuanced to a place, so I developed the skill through action. I still do it like this now, judging by the sticks all over the garden!

I believe fear should always be present when designing, as only when this heightened state starts to calm down do you understand that a good design is within grasp. I work out every level and every dimension on plan, of course, but then I invariably want to test it. Thankfully these terms are now within my lexicon, but they are not always within that of my patrons, so the mock-up is alive and well and we frequently peg out so that they can walk around the imagined space.

I strongly believe that outside spaces cannot be designed in CAD. Computers undeniably have a place and we all use them, but a genuine appreciation of the emotional and esoteric aspects of design can only be understood if one actually gets to grips with how the space feels.

Landscape designing is never dull. Restructuring the physical land to meet the aspirations of a commission is just a facet of it. Light, seasons, climate, time, architecture, growth, decay, function, history, culture, decoration, nature and beauty are all there to be considered. That is a lot of moving parts to blend into a unified whole. It is a prodigious act of creation. It reminds me of the alchemic process of ‘solutio’ that I learned about during my years of Jungian training. The alchemists thought that a substance could not be transformed unless it were first reduced to its ‘prima materia’, and this I feel is somehow what is required for good landscaping – washing through the subject ‘in solutio’ again and again to find the essence of what is really desirable and discarding all that seems dross. Ultimately my design layouts become quite unassuming. I’m a great ‘reductionista!

The simplicity of a few carefully considered lines on paper amounts to my sense of beauty. The lines can be pure and clear, as there are still so many aspects of the garden to come. For example, the volatility of light, the weather and planting lend their own layers of grace. There is a wonderful moment in designing when the muddy waters swirling around in my mind go clear and I can see what I’m doing. It hasn’t got much to do with picking a specific style, as my tastes are varied and eclectic. It’s very hard to describe what happens when I think I’ve nailed a design. It’s almost physical – something goes ‘clunk’ and the process concludes. All the whirring cogs stop. These days I just think it’s a sort of natural process I’ve honed over time. I never studied this subject, so it’s not been acquired academically. I trained myself and learned through asking endless questions of good-natured collaborators like my friend Robert Crocker, who has built many gardens for me. I am indebted to this generosity.

This is a seminal view for me. I think all my gardening thoughts were generated from seeing medieval villages in France hugging rocks and embedded in native planting. The roofs peeking above the wild oak trees and the punctuation of a few non-native thuja among the buildings are the discreet indicators of human activity. In the village the streets billow with lilacs, quinces and honeysuckle.

Almost every style of architecture and design offers me things to appreciate. I enjoy the challenge of studying to understand something that initially jars. There is satisfaction in learning enough of a new subject’s specific, coded language to allow access to its mystery. Once I grasp the essence of what is being expressed, it opens new doors of perception and that makes my working life a very satisfying one.

Time is another dimension that is so essential to this work. In garden-making it is vital to hold the long view. Although I’ll never live long enough to see them, the future growth of trees and hedges is vital to the larger picture. The weathering of materials, the true pattern and purpose of routes and pathways, are all in my hands at the outset, yet will develop their character over time. In my village in France I’m very aware that the tracks are ancient and, considering the relatively inhospitable topography, find comfort that the well-trodden path exists. The landscapes I create are newborn and I must leave them early, trusting time to take the original layout and romance it. That’s what I see when I arrive at a new place: initially the discomfort and ultimately the beauty, romance and freedom.

The thatched classical temple is by architect Charles Morris and terminates one of the serpentine shrubberies at The Menagerie. Planting was a complete trial on the heavy waterlogged clay, yet mountains of sand and perseverance improved matters over time. Thank goodness for Geranium phaeum ‘Album’!

This epitomizes French insouciance, translating as ‘a casual lack of concern’. The Virginia creeper is allowed to grow through the pot and at the same time is meticulously pruned every year. Acanthus mollis and a nameless Iris germanica coexist peacefully and indestructibly in the driest of dry places at the base of the house. My kind of garden.