Category Archive: Uncategorized

1. The Well Gardened Mind – Rediscovering Nature in the Modern World – Sue Stuart-Smith

   August 28, 2020 3:20 pm Leave a Comment

   

   There are so many books on gardening it’s untrue! And a thousand more are seemingly released every year! You would think that everything there was to say about gardening had been said, over and over again. Books on ‘how to’, – how to grow flowers, how to grow fruit and vegetables, how to propagate; books on aesthetics and design; coffee-table books full of sumptuous photographs of gardens around the world. But there are far fewer books on just why we garden, what drives us to do it, what are its benefits? In my opinion, such books are far more interesting.

   Sue Stuart-Smith has gathered together recent scientific research, numerous case-studies, current human evolutionary theory, her own life experience – as a practicing psychiatrist and psychotherapist, as an experienced gardener, her own health story and her family history – into a fascinating tome about how ‘green’ is good for us. About how we evolved within nature for millennia and how our brains are thus wired up to respond to green, about how we need it for our physical and mental well being and about how we separate ourselves from it at our own peril, about how we need to rediscover and return.

   The case studies cover such subjects as the use of gardening to relieve stress, anxiety and depression; its use to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and drug and alcohol dependency; its use in prisons to give prisoners a sense of worth and hope for the future after release; its benefits to the elderly and its use in old peoples homes; its healing benefits, from grief, after physical ill health and its use in hospitals to speed recovery after operations and much, much more.

   Sue also touches on the spiritual side of gardening, about how it can help us understand, and come to terms with, ageing and dying and our small part within nature’s vast cycles of new life, growth and death, of seasons and time. It touches upon gardens as sanctuaries, as half way places between ourselves and the world, between the workings of the mind and the activity of the hands, of places where we can be naturally mindful and enter flow states.

   The sub-title of Sue’s book is ‘rediscovering nature in the modern world’. One of the recommendations on the back of the book describes it as ‘a timely call of return’. For me ultimately the book is about re-connection, about how gardening can help us re-connect – to the self, to nature and ultimately to the world. A really, really wonderful book.

2. Kazayuki Ohtsu (Japanese woodblock artist, born 1935)

   November 3, 2019 3:42 pm Leave a Comment

   

   Images of calm, of stillness.

   Gardens and nature simplified, made perfect.

   Windows onto another world – this world…, but not quite.

   Top row, left to right: 

   Hana Fuu Ga, 2015; Garden in Autumn, 1999; Sunflowers in Summer 2012; Myogetsu-In at Kamakura, 2004.

   Bottom row, left to right:

   Stone Garden at Ryoan Temple in Kyoto, 2006; Hydrangea at Tokei Temple in Kamakura, 2008; Stone Garden in Autumn, in Kyoto, 2009; Green Garden at Hakone, 2007.

3. RHS Chatsworth – The Path of Least Resistance Garden

   June 8, 2017 1:04 pm Leave a Comment

   

   A garden of ‘weeds’ – Yarrow, Daisies, Knapweed, Spear Thistle, Teasel, Poppies, Docks, Campion, Comfrey, Dandelions, Buddleja and many others. For me this was by far the best garden at the inaugural RHS Chatsworth show!
   Design and built by three young landscape architecture students from Leeds Beckett University – Zuzanna Golczyk, Tom Rawlings and Frankie Tomany – whose concept behind the garden was: ’Looking to the unsung heroes of the plant kingdom, the renegades and survivors of urban landscapes, who thrive in their humble settings.’ Essentially they are encouraging a new look at plants we too often only see as there to be eradicated.
   The design had been put together with great skill; materials such as crushed tarmac, concrete and brick being very artfully laid out and the sensitive layout of the plants was supported by geometric sculptural forms welded from rusted road-pins.
   The garden was beautiful overall but it also encouraged you to examine the commonplace more closely and see the beauty therein.

   Lots more here:  https://www.polr.info

    

4. child’s play

   December 22, 2015 10:02 am Leave a Comment

   

   The opportunities to  promote child’s play in the garden are endless.  Obviously children can be encouraged to garden themselves, perhaps with their own little plot, but I’m thinking here of actual physical and imaginative play as opposed to ‘learning’. The images above all suggest ways to incorporate ‘natural’ play into the garden but there are many others.

   Sand and water are two of the best materials, especially for toddlers, to include in a garden.  Add a child’s own digger toys, buckets, spades etc. and hours and hours of play, (and mess!), are possible.  They may seem rather obvious but these materials never go out of fashion as a child’s creative imagination can really be let loose.  If you are worried about cat mess in sand then use a sand pit.  If you are worried about water and safety then very shallow rills, (e.g. for dam building or boat sailing), are a really good idea or just have containers than can be filled on a temporary basis.

   Other materials, such as timber and logs, can also be left in the garden for construction purposes. These can be made into different features dependent upon what game a child is playing.  More prescriptive items such as say, a bought structure specifically in the shape of a castle or boat, may limit a child’s imagination in that their use is already ‘fixed’.  Better to use/supply more abstract materials that can be a spaceship one day, a fairy castle the next, a submarine the day after.

   Vegetation can also be creatively used at little cost.  Thickets of soft plantings, say grasses or bamboo, readily lend themselves to use as ‘jungles’; paths can be mown through long grass to create ‘secret’ trails to follow, (and you can periodically mow these out on different routes to help mix things up a bit); willow cuttings can be woven into living tunnels and dens.

   Taking some of these ideas a bit further, trails can incorporate items such as logs to balance on, boulders to jump from or simple stepping stones; mown grass paths can be developed into spirals, labyrinths and mazes, (or these can be more permanently laid out, say with bricks set into grass); dens, and other focal points, can be created using low soil mounds covered with turf, (one of the nicest features I ever saw in a park was a series of simple horse-shoe turf dens laid out across the park – the opportunities for games of tig etc. with such dens being safe places were endless).

   Perhaps the most important thing to consider overall is that, with a little imagination, the garden, (or a small part of it), can be used to provide a rich, flexible, creative and safe environment for play without having to resort to buying expensive features from toy shops.

    

    

5. A Quiet Corner

   August 10, 2015 7:14 pm 1 Comment

   

   This sublime little garden was at RHS Tatton recently.  It was designed by a new partnership, JarmanMurphy.  You can find them here:-

   https://www.facebook.com/pages/JarmanMurphy/578643315608997

   It was one of the small ‘back-to-back’ gardens but, in my opinion, was easily the best garden in show beating all the bigger gardens hands down.  Called ‘A Quiet Corner’ it consisted of a cobbled path leading to a small sitting area with a pair of simple wooden block seats.  An elegant steel water bowl was set to one side and the area was backed by a grey rendered wall finished with a thin sheen of pewter metallic paint.  A multi-stemmed Field Maple added height – essential in a small space.  The herbaceous under-planting was perfectly executed:  grasses, ferns, thyme, sanguisorba, allium and erigeron amongst others – a very light, naturalistic style and the way the shadows of the plants danced on the wall was just wonderful.  My description certainly does not do it justice!

   The designers told me it seemed to be a real ‘marmite’ design – people either loved it or couldn’t do with ‘all the weeds’…….  However, anyone who caught the television coverage of the show will know that it was the favourite garden of a certain Mr Montague Don – surely no better endorsement!

6. wabi-sabi

   July 28, 2015 11:06 am Leave a Comment

   

   Wabi-sabi is a comprehensive Japanese aesthetic centred on the acceptance of transcendence and imperfection.  It is the aesthetic behind many traditional Japanese art forms such as ikebana (flower arranging), traditional Japanese pottery, the tea ceremony and zen gardens.  According to Leonard Koren, (Wabi-sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers’, 1994), wabi-sabi is:-

   a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete;

   it is a beauty of things modest and humble;

   it is a beauty of things unconventional.

   Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, roughness or irregularity, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the integrity of natural objects and processes.

   How might this aesthetic be translated into western garden design when, as seen at Chelsea every year, we are now so used to chasing the new, the perfect, the shiny and the aspirationally expensive?

    

7. A cherry blossom haiku

   May 1, 2014 3:55 pm Leave a Comment

    

   

    

   the cherry flowers bloom,

   we gaze at them,

   and then they fall…

   (with apologies to Uejima Onitsura!  (1660-1738))

8. Bang! – the Forsythia has exploded – Spring is here!

   March 19, 2014 2:21 pm Leave a Comment

   

    Can there be a more maligned shrub than poor old Forsythia?  Unappreciated to the point of derision and if it does feature in a garden it is usually really badly pruned.  Yet it’s annual explosion of ‘yellower than yellow’ blossom is surely one of the truest signs of the arrival of Spring.

   I’ll admit it – I used to deride Forsythia as well.  That was until I inherited one and now, another property down the line, we are onto our second.  Now I’ve learned to love it and I look forward to it’s blossoming as a sign that Winter is finally over.  The trick, (as with a lot of deciduous flowering shrubs), is to learn how to prune it so as to let it express it’s natural form.  If pruned properly Forsythia has a sort of natural arching grace, slightly scruffy I’ll grant you, but those arching sprays of blossom, (if not ruinously cut into that classic ‘bog brush’ look!), can add real theatre at this time of year.  (They also look great in a tall vase as a simple, elegant, ‘ikebana’ flower arrangement.)

   If it starts to outlive it’s space then try to cut out a few stems in their entirety right back to the base rather than just trimming it back overall.  It can need annual treatment, (once it has finished flowering), but keeping it in check this way will give it a far better look and mean that you’ll get complete sprays of flowers to appreciate each year.  Try and treat it as an individual shrub – if it’s been planted as a hedge then consider removing it altogether; there are many far more suitable plants for hedges.  If you have inherited an out of control ‘monster’, like we did in our current home, then it may take a few years to achieve a good shape but it is worth all the effort with loppers and secateurs – indulge your creative side!  (For creative people with both a Forsythia and young children, try weaving a few flowering stems into Spring crowns/coronets for them to wear; the more ambitious could even make a Spring wreath for the front door.)

   So take a second look at a plant that is all too often taken for granted and really does deserves to be far more appreciated.

9. Herbs – grow your own ‘great flavour enhancers’

   March 7, 2014 2:20 pm Leave a Comment

   

   Growing your own fruit and vegetables has become very popular over the last few years.  However not everybody has the time, space or inclination to do this.  But if there is one group of plants I think everyone should have a go at growing it is culinary herbs, even if it is just a few pots of basil on the kitchen windowsill.  The reason for this is that fresh herbs can absolutely transform a meal; they are ‘the great flavour enhancers’.  It’s a simple joy to be able to collect some rosemary and a couple of bay leaves whilst cooking a winter casserole, (and once you’ve tried fresh bay leaves you’ll never go back to those grey cardboard ones from the supermarket!); or snip some fresh mint in summer and indulge in a luxury mojito…

   If you have a large garden then a small part of it could become a dedicated herb area.  In smaller gardens there are various options – herb wheels, (where a circular plant bed is divided into sections with different herbs planted between the ‘spokes’), herbs in pots and other containers, or, and a great idea to avoid having to bend down to cut the herbs, use a timber vegetable trug on tall legs.  Pots, containers and trugs all have the advantage of being able to be placed on hard standing just outside the kitchen door, so that you can easily get at your herbs all year round.

   There is lots of advice freely available for growing your own herbs and as a general rule it is often stressed that many, (but by no means all), like Mediterranean conditions – that is, lots and lots of sun together with free drainage.  So choose a sunny spot if you have one and incorporate plenty of grit into the soil when planting.  Some herbs are easy to grow shrubs such as bay, rosemary and sage – you can just have a bush of each of these somewhere in the garden; others are perennials that might be better collected together in pots or a dedicated part of the garden, these include thyme, (broadleaved thyme has relatively large leaves which makes them easy to strip from woody stalks when cooking), mint, (restrict the root run!), and chives; some herbs you will need to re-sow each year such as basil, (tender), dill, (an annual), and parsley, (a bi-annual); still others are perennials but will need indoor protection in winter months, such as french tarragon.  Once you’ve got the bug you’ll also find lots of varieties of your favourites – try morrocan mint, lemon thyme and greek basil for instance – as well as less often grown herbs, such as lemon balm, chervil and winter savoury.  And, perhaps stretching the point, why not then ‘graduate’ to those other great flavour enhancers – chillies, (a whole other subject in itself), and garlic, (although it is too late to plant garlic for this year).

   So why not set about growing yourself some real fantastic flavour and improve your garden, and your cooking, at the same time!

10. The Winter Garden

    January 31, 2014 12:24 am Leave a Comment

    

    Just when the weather is at it’s bleakest – grey, wet, cold and generally downright miserable. Just when we could probably all do with some cheer – some colour, some signs of life, some greenery – we give up on our gardens.  Or by and large we do.  This is a shame, because there are many plants that are at their most beautiful at this time of year.

    In recent years there have been efforts to overcome this tendency as various people and gardens have developed ‘The Winter Garden’.  Among the very first was at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire, a National Trust property, but others have followed, for example the winter borders at the RHS garden at Harlow Carr.  Other gardens, such as Hodsock Priory, near Worksop, open especially to display extensive snowdrop collections.  This hopefully gets us out and about, visiting these properties and getting some fresh air, but there is no reason why you cannot enjoy a winter garden, on a smaller scale perhaps, at your own home.  All it takes is a little foresight and preparation.

    The ground may be too wet at this time of the year to do very much actual gardening but there is no reason that you cannot have a garden that is still beautiful to look at, either through the windows, or by venturing out on sunnier days.  Even better, why not make use of the fact that we all see our front gardens daily, as we come and go about our business.  If nothing else why not have a pot of something with fabulous fragrance right by the front door.  All we need do is plant a careful choice of plants earlier in the year.  (This year I have taken some cuttings of the astonishingly scented winter honeysuckle to go in a pot by the front door for this time next year.)

    Our own front garden is now largely planted up for winter and early spring.  (The back is reserved for a riot of bad taste in summer when we want to spend as much time out of doors as possible.)  The display in the front garden starts with the coloured stems of the dogwoods – fiery orange, yellow and dark purple.  Yellow witch hazel with its delicious scent follows.  Then it’s the turn of the mass snowdrops and crocuses to show off.  (In a fit of pedantry I painstakingly transplanted all the orange crocuses we inherited into the back garden, leaving only the more ‘tasteful’ white and mauve ones in the front.)  As all this is going on we slowly move towards spring and there is always something to see, to go outside and observe.  The white and plum hellebores, the early primroses, the Viburnum carlesii with it’s heavenly scent.  Before we know it the early daffodils are out and the forsythia too; we have arrived at spring without knowing it.  The winter garden has carried us through.

    So this year, when the time is right for planting, why not think ahead and develop your own winter garden.  You won’t regret it!