We lack a cricket pavilion in our garden. To build one, even as attractive as this one, would look sadly out of place
I have been pondering focal points and garden structures. This was partly initiated by an email from an overseas friend who, while praising our garden, was lamenting the lack of “features”. By features, he meant man-made features. He mentioned such things as tempietto, summer houses, maybe even ruins in the William Kent style of Palladian garden architecture. I laughed. I do not think he has quite got to grips with the differences in New Zealand. This is a man, after all, who has a splendid garden full of substantial features including his very own cricket pavilion which was designed to be used for the annual village cricket match.
We lack an amenable village nearby. Such a pavilion might look a tad pretentious in our situation. And we have always subscribed to the view that it is better to have nothing than to have a cheap imitation. I have yet to see a New Zealand garden that imports classical European or indeed Asian antiquity-inspired features and settles them well into our New World gardens. Summer houses built out of tanalised timber – which are commonly favoured here – have never appealed to us. Painting them white does not necessarily improve them, either.
The tanalised pine gazebo is much favoured in New Zealand gardens, often as a focal point
I have seen a fair few around the country in my time, and often situated where they are to be a focal point, a feature, rather than to be used as an outdoor entertaining area. I guess what it comes down to is that we have different spending priorities in the garden. A well designed garden room that is both functional and architecturally attractive would be nice to have but would cost a great deal more than a kitset, octagonal gazebo.
Maybe we are just too ingrained with functionalism because we would place a garden room in an area that is most convenient and attractive for use, rather than where it would serve primarily as a visual focal point. I find little gazebos marooned forever as an unused, ornamental point of interest a bit sad, really.
An outdoor seating area marooned forever as a focal point more than a social centre
The same philosophy applies to seats, in my book. Seats are to be sat upon and therefore situated in a position where there is a reason to sit rather than to be cast in the role of focal point. But I am a lone voice in the wilderness on this topic. A brightly painted chair is often forced into fulfilling this function.
If you go back to basics, the purpose of a focal point is to focus the eye of the viewer. It may be to serve as a punctuation point to end a view, or it may be to channel the eye towards a desired feature, maybe a vista or a borrowed view if you are lucky enough to have one. It creates an illusion of depth but if you already have depth, you may not need one at all. If you clutter the place up with endless focal points (a common mistake in small gardens), it becomes bric-a-brac rather than a statement. Less is more. And remember that the focal point is what attracts attention, often to the detriment of the areas of garden that lead to that point.
Miscanthus and alliums gave a subtle end point to a long walk at Gresgarth
Because we have always leaned more to plants than structure, we prefer the judicious use of plants as focal points. It is a softer, more naturalistic approach which does not immediately claim centre stage. We had watched a television interview with Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd, one of Britain’s foremost gardeners and garden designers. She was commenting about needing to terminate her herbaceous borders in some way, to create a visual end-stop. She would have liked water but that wasn’t possible and she didn’t want the cliché of a statue. Instead she decided to use miscanthus grass which, she commented, looked somewhat like water.
We remembered her comments when we visited her personal garden at Gresgarth. There was the miscanthus bed, with the globes of giant allium seedheads rising above and giant cardoons flanking either side.
It wasn’t a strong visual statement. It didn’t shout “look at me! Look at me!” It provided a gentle endpoint to what was a complex and highly detailed walk along battlemented herbaceous borders with interludes of detailed mosaic paving – an exercise in subtle understatement. We really liked the effect.
Similarly, a clipped or shaped plant can give a point of interest which keeps harmony with the surroundings while giving an accent point. Because we have a garden richly endowed with large, established plants, we have tended to head more in the direction of using plants as visual focus points rather than dropping in manmade objets d’art, or, worse: objets sans d’art.
Statues, urns and sculptures? Now that is a whole can of worms to be returned to at a later date. Decorating one’s garden can be a minefield.
Camellia Elfin Rose, cloud pruned in layers to give an accent point
First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.
1) I want to try and capture the magic of a particular garden in a few words and photos. This is Wildside in North Devon and was quite simply one of the most exciting modern gardens we have seen. It is not that we will try and re-create it at home, but we found it interesting, stimulating and inspirational in many ways. It has been about 10 years in the making to this point.
2) The creator, Keith Wiley (and let us acknowledge the active assistance from his partner, Ros) has taken a 4 acre (1.6ha) flat field and created a landscape. When he started, it looked identical to this neighbouring field. All the top soil was removed and substrata redistributed to create ponds, canyons, shallow valleys and hills. At this stage, it is still possible to see this process in the upper garden which has yet to be planted. Once shaped, Keith returned the top soil in varying depths, depending on what plants he planned to grow in each area.
3) The interaction between the created landforms and the plants are the key components of this garden. When we visited, the upper garden was dominated by oranges, golds, yellows and whites. We would love to have been able to return a few weeks later because we could see that the dominant colour was going to change to blue and it would have looked very different. It takes exceptional plant skill to be able to get that transition and successional planting across seasons, let alone within the same season.
4) These are dierama, commonly called Angel’s fishing rods, one of the few corms and bulbs that were in flower in midsummer but this was a garden which was rich in drifts of bulbs – another layer of plant interest and a means of ensuring colour and detail when most perennials are either dormant or resting. In keeping with the modern perennials movement, there were grasses used but in moderation. Plants were in good sized clumps and often in drifts, but always in combinations, not chunky blocks standing in their own right as seen in many modern gardens.
5) There is very little hard landscaping and very little ornamentation. There may have been one small lawn, from memory, but this is a garden of plants and flowers. Some may consider the lack of formality and structure to be a shortcoming, certainly in a country with a long history of landscaped gardens full of permanent features. We saw a garden that pushed the boundaries of the prairie style and New Perennials movement, combined with the creation of sustainable ecosystems, underpinned by exceptional plantsmanship.
6) We travelled a long way to visit Wildside which is on the edge of Dartmoor, near Yelverton, and we would gladly travel a long way to see it again. However, it is currently closed to the public and it is uncertain when it will reopen. The owner told us that he needed to get the house built. After a decade of living in temporary quarters while giving priority to the garden, they had reached the point where the house had become a priority.
Yes, a prologue. We first became aware of Keith Wiley’s style when we visited The Garden House in 2009 – the garden of the late Lionel Fortescue which Keith managed for many years. True, he had no hand in the first sight to gladden our eyes. As we went to enter the garden, lo and behold there was Mark’s very own Magnolia Felix Jury in prime position. To say we felt proud would be an understatement.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 