Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Modernist gardening, modern gardens and contemporary design


I felt as if I was looking at a parallel universe as I browsed “Contemporary Gardens of New Zealand”.

In fact, I think that the book is incorrectly named. It might be more accurately titled: “The Modernist Revival in New Zealand Garden Design”. The dominant impression is that the contemporary garden in this country is hard-edged design stripped of colour and plantsmanship. Who needs more than griselinia, nikau palms, corokia, strelitizia (the bird of paradise plant), xeronema (Poor Knights lily) and trachelospermum (star jasmine)? Yes, I know that is over simplifying, but most of the gardens included in the book use a very limited range of plants.

Modernist gardening has its roots in 1930s garden design. In fact, if you look back at some of those early examples, they would still look cutting-edge today. But it is only one style and the mistake is to think that modernism as a movement is synonymous with modern and therefore contemporary.

I would argue that modern gardening in this country goes well beyond the modernist revival style. How can anyone write about modern gardening without discussing the huge resurgence in interest in the edible garden? There is a distinct trend returning to utilitarianism usually seen in times of war and food shortage, where the growing of plants for ornamental purposes was seen as frivolous and every plant should be edible. These edible gardens, even when dressed up as potagers, don’t look contemporary and don’t photograph as well, but they are a definite modern trend.

Similarly, we are witnessing a movement against the chemical intervention of the last few decades. Call it organics, call it ecology, or naturalistic gardening, even sustainability – all reflect a rejection of the gardening values of the previous generation and a concern for harmony in nature. The modernistic gardens in the aforementioned book all play lip service to the idea of a “strong sense of place”, being “deeply respectful of the unique location”, the context – to the extent that I somewhat uncharitably started to think of all the Miss Universe contestants who give 60 second speeches about wanting world peace and homes for fluffy kitties. I would argue that at least some of those gardens demonstrated man’s imposition of rigid symmetry and entirely unnatural monocultures which is in fact the opposite of a harmony with place.

Most people actually like flowers

Most people actually like flowers

What is difficult to believe is that a garden genre which strips colour, seasonality and flowers from the garden is ever going to be more than a passing trend which appeals to a minority, most of whom are not gardeners themselves. There is next to no pink in this book on contemporary gardens, nothing voluptuous or even pretty. At its best, it is all terribly sculptural. If the owners want to have flowers indoors, most of them will be buying them from the flower shop. In my experience, most people like flowers and colour in their garden. And while seasonal change is messy, it is also what gladdens the heart for many.

The Foreman Garden in Lepperton

The Foreman Garden in Lepperton

I visited two local gardens last week which I would describe as modern or contemporary examples. Both are the creations of younger woman who are very keen gardeners and both are beautifully maintained and represent a great deal of time, thought and skill. The first was an example of green and brown austerity with a very limited range of plants, which has its origins in the modernist style though I found the use of curves to be more sympathetic to the surrounding countryside than hard edged symmetry. The total package of “the look” was what mattered and it was clearly designed to be as static as is possible when working with living plants. It was well executed and I can enjoy looking at such a garden, even if it is not to my personal taste.

La Rosaleda - photo credit Jane Dove Juneau

La Rosaleda – photo credit Jane Dove Juneau

The second garden was equally beautifully executed but could not be more different. It was an over the top riot of flowers, particularly roses, where the owner wields total control over the colour scheme and every plant combination represents thought. But pastel. Indubitably pastelle, with the most refined colour transitions throughout the garden. That love affair with the romance of pastel colour and the rejection of primary hues harks back to the Edwardian rejection of the garish Victorian gardens. It is incredibly pretty, feminine and romantic and in its most recent incarnation, is just as contemporary as the modernist garden design.

Landscapers are a breed apart from gardeners. That is not a value judgement. They are just on a different path, as indeed are plantspeople who have no interest in design but find the botanical detail of different plants fascinating. Both landscapers and plantspeople have their own unique language which sets them apart, accords them a higher plane is some eyes. In the middle are the gardeners who try to bring together both the design and the plants.

That said, there was one garden in the book that rendered me awestruck. It was the work of Queenstown landscape architect, Paddy Baxter and the location was in a remote area on the flanks of the Remarkables. It was not pretty, it was not conventional. It used pretty much all local native plants and it was the most exquisite example of anchoring a residence into its environment by sensitive landscaping. That was a very fine example of one type of contemporary garden.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Contemporary Gardens of New Zealand by Carol Bucknell, photography by Sally Tagg

Twenty three gardens by twenty one New Zealand designers – this book has certainly prompted a great deal of discussion here over the past couple of weeks. There is a heavy bias towards high budget properties with stunning views in or around Auckland, often with hard-edged modern, architecturally designed houses. The response is dominated by hard edged, angular gardens, pared back planting schemes largely stripped of colour and heavily dominated by native plants. Water features and swimming pools abound, usually with wet edges of the infinity style (so that the body of water melds into the sky or sea in front) and sometimes with the water lapping at the walls of the house. Generally, there is little evidence that the property owners want to garden themselves. Most want an exterior which will complement their homes, their lifestyle and, apparently, the environmental context of the property.

Two things stop this book from being any more than one for the coffee table book. One is the absence of critique or interpretative commentary. It is a showcase presentation of a narrow selection of modern NZ garden design. The second is the actual design of the book. Unfortunately, the decision was made not to caption the photographs. This of course gives a very clean, some might say contemporary, look to the book but it is not a lot of help to the reader. This is even more so where four photographs are placed on a page with no borders separating the images. We know they are artsy because sometimes one or two are in black and white and sometimes they are cropped so heavily that you are not even sure what the detail that is shown is. Sometimes features referenced in the text are not illustrated in the photographs and it takes frequent flicking backwards and forwards to try and match text to photograph. Given the calibre of the photographer, this almost certainly comes back to the book designer, as does the photo selection.

From the point of view of the reader and given the reportage style of most of the writing, showcasing the photographs with extended captions instead of wodges of descriptive journey around the properties might have integrated text and illustration better.

Sally Tagg is vastly experienced in garden and plant photography. She doesn’t cut corners and the photography throughout is of a very high standard. The author, Carol Bucknell, has faithfully recorded each garden and gives the landscaper’s framework for the decisions behind the design and construction of each. It makes an attractive coffee table book but is unlikely to contribute much to the garden history of NZ.

Contemporary Gardens of New Zealand by Carol Bucknell, photography by Sally Tagg. (Penguin; ISBN: 978 0143 56694 6).

For more thoughts on the topic, related more to the ideas than the book, check out: Modernist gardening, modern gardens and contemporary design

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Garden lore

Subjugated gardens abound, and I can see why. Unless discipline is maintained from the moment the spirit-level is laid across the earth, you are nourishing a vast, tactile, heavy-scented siren which will keep you forever in its thrall.

Hortus by Mirabel Oliver (1990).

Choosing plant containers

While round bellied pots are often more pleasing to the eye, you will save yourself a lot of trouble if you only plant short term annuals or leafy plants in them. More permanent woody plants fill up the space with dense packed roots and it becomes very difficult to extract them for repotting when the root mass is larger than the opening at the top of the pot. All container plants need repotting at least every two years to stay in optimum health (and who wants an unhealthy looking container plant on display?) but to extract one from a round belly pot requires cutting the roots with a knife until you have it small enough to pull out. Too often you can end up breaking the pot. Straight sided vase shapes or cylinders are a much easier shape to work with for woody plants.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Garden lore

Garden radishes are in wantoness by the gentry eaten as a sallad, but they breed but scurvy humours in the stomach, and corrupt the blood, and then send for a physician as fast as you can.

The Compleat Herbal by Nicholas Culpeper (1653).

Spring planting – NOW

If you have not planted out your summer garden, now is the time to panic. An unseasonably cool spring may have led many to delay, but delay no longer because the official start of summer is a mere two weeks away. Top priority needs to be given to the plants which require the longest growing season. This includes capsicums, aubergines, both rock and water melons, kumara and even tomatoes. Starting with plants now, rather than seed, is advisable to get a jump start this late in the season. Other techniques are to plant in black plastic (which heats up the soil faster) and to use a cloche for the early stages because this heats up the air around the plant to encourage growth.

Ayrlies, by Beverley McConnell

The subtitle of this book is “My story, my garden” and that pretty much captures the flavour. These are Bev McConnell’s memoirs and as both the author and her garden reach maturity, the timing seems entirely appropriate. Her garden, Ayrlies, is located at Whitford, south east of Auckland and over the past 40 years, both the garden and the gardener have earned a leading position. This is a book about a garden, not a gardening book as such. The author writes about her own experiences and while there is wisdom and advice contained in the text, it is not a manual or a reference book.

I have not read anything written by Bev McConnell before, so it was a pleasant discovery to find that she has an easy and very readable style. She is disarmingly frank, almost alarmingly so at times. Given that this substantial and beautifully presented hardback extends to 270 pages, it is just as well the text is engaging. The many photos cover from her early family life in Wairoa (a wonderful photo of her standing on her tricycle seat as a little dot around 3 or 4), through the stages of her adult family life and the development of a bare patch of dirt into the large and handsome garden that is now known as Ayrlies.

In the New Zealand garden scene, Ayrlies is unusual in that it has had skilled labour employed from the start while the owner has kept complete control of the design, the planting and the management and has been an active participant at all stages. It is more common in this country for the major private gardens to have been established on the smell of an oily rag without any permanent staff at all, or, in more recent times for a wealthy owner to have handed over the whole project to a landscaper and crew. Bev McConnell has as much dirt beneath her finger nails as any of the staff she has employed over the years, but she has been able to realise her visions with extra input. It is an enviable position to which she has responded by taking an active role in encouraging others to lift their own standards of gardening. Her own garden is as much about interesting plants and good combinations as it is about design. She has kept her focus on the beguiling complexities of good planting, demonstrated so ably by Beth Chatto in England whom she acknowledges as a major inspiration.

The chapter on her huge wetlands project is particularly interesting and it may be that this will prove to be one of her great legacies over the coming decades.

Ayrlies, by Beverley McConnell (Published by Ayrlies Gardens and Wetlands Trust; ISBN: 978 0 473 21451 7)

First published by Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.