Tag Archives: garden structure

From Hidcote to Serre de la Madone – Lawrence Johnston’s two gardens

When I joined the tour of gardens of the French Riviera, I was particularly looking forward to seeing Serre de la Madone. It is the garden created from scratch by Major Lawrence Johnston, he whose main legacy is the renowned Hidcote Garden in Gloucestershire, UK. Serre de la Madone was his French retreat in the charming town of Menton.

Serre de la Madone had areas that were quite Hidcote-ish in style. But with strelitzias.

When we made our one and only visit to Hidcote in 2009, it just blew us away. After several hours we walked out like stunned mullets. At the time, it was simply everything we aspired to for our own garden at Tikorangi except that we lacked major inherited wealth and ten gardeners. We have not been back on subsequent UK visits; in the years since, our garden aspirations changed and we never wanted to dilute the magic of that first visit by discovering that it was not, after all, how we remembered it. But I did want to see Johnston’s French garden, where he chose to spend most of his time in the last 30 years of his life.

Did it live up to my expectations? No. Not at all. Was I disappointed? Not really. As I get older, I get more philosophical and even the experience of something falling short can still be interesting. Hidcote is a large garden planted in a series of garden rooms so popular in the early 1900s, as also seen at Sissinghurst. Johnston sold it to Britain’s National Trust back in 1948 when he relocated full time to Menton and in the years since, Hidcote has had both money and skill lavished on it.

The belvedere may have started life with a view of the Med but is now more in that shabby chic style that the French manage with ease

Not so Serre de la Madone. After Johnston’s death in 1959, his French garden passed through various private hands, falling into disrepair before it was taken over by local authorities in 1999. Despite a major restoration in the years between 2000 and 2005, it is generally tired, messy, unloved and a shadow of its former glory.

Johnston was a keen plantsman and he originally planted his French garden with exotics from around the world, many of which were too tender to grow at Hidcote. Over time, the plant collection has dwindled away so what survives – the likes of agapanthus and strelitzia – are large a green framework for his historic structures and landscaping, rather than being interesting in their own right.

Never underestimate the quality of the British professional gardening tradition that sees both public and private gardens in that country maintained to exceptionally high standards. I have never seen it matched in other countries.

The central axis of steps leading up to the villa

Typical of many gardens in the area, Serre de la Madone is built on a fairly steep slope. If there is a view out to the Mediterranean Sea, I did not notice it but it is likely that there was in Johnston’s day. When dealing with creating a garden on a slope, it becomes necessary to create terraces, sometimes defined by a central axis with long paths on the intersecting horizontal axes. This gives long views to the sides.

Long views on the side axes

Johnston favoured plenty of hard landscaping and it is this that gives defining structure in photographs. I have to say that it all looks much better in the photographs than it does in person because you can’t see the general weediness and sense of neglect, let alone the poor quality of water in the pools. Photographs can create a sense of romantic abandon rather than tired shabbiness.

The water garden also served as a swimming pool, based on the steps. It was a lovely pavilion at the far end.

I looked at the water garden and wondered aloud whether it was also a bathing pool, as his round pool is at Hidcote. The person standing next to me doubted it so I felt vindicated when I looked closer at one corner and spotted the steps down into the water. It is an early swimming pool.

The Hispano Moorish garden

You certainly would not be wanting to swim or even paddle in the water in the Hispano Moorish garden, though.  But I could see why Johnston ended up preferring his French home. That Moorish look would not have fitted the aesthetic of Hidcote at all but is not out of place adjacent to his sunny yellow French villa.

Our tour guide pointed out the recent retaining work on the hill behind the villa. The south of France has had an unusually wet spring and the hillside had just slipped when he was last there in February. He was amazed at the fast progress on attempts to shore up the bank.

The hillside behind the villa where unusually heavy rains started a major slip

The lessons I took away from my visit are that detailed plantings can disappear with neglect but hard landscaping remains and gives form to the view; over time the vision of the creator can be lost and it takes particularly high level skills to keep that original vision in focus. Serre de la Madone has lost Johnston’s vision, at least as far as I could see.

A fair representation of the current quality of the plantings in most of the garden
Garden structure can carry the day even when plantings and maintenance fall short

A visit to Cloudehill Gardens

A touch of whimsy to welcome at the entrance – yes or no? 

We first visited Cloudehill Gardens about 20 years ago when it was still very much one man’s garden. Jeremy Francis took over the property in 1992 so it would still have been very new when we saw it. While there were plants and established trees from its earlier time as a nursery, there was no garden when he started. In the time since, it has matured to one of the flagship gardens of the Dandenong area, about an hour out of Melbourne. It is a large garden, created in the Arts and Crafts style with, the publicity tells me, twenty different garden rooms.

Very arts and craftsy in style 

The design may be very Hidcote/Sissinghurst, but the perennial plantings reflect the fashions of the new millenium 

While it appears that the originator, Jeremy Francis, is still on the scene, day to day management has transferred to The Diggers’ Club, which is a membership organisation unique to Australia. The upshot of this is that there is a now a retail outlet and a good café/restaurant (though the wasp infestation drove us indoors to eat), a focus on events and attractions and ‘adding interest’ to the garden. This means it has facilities and infrastructure but the trade-off is that the deeply personal touch of a single owner is no longer as evident. I found some of the novelty sculptures and touches were a little jarring in a garden where the underpinning hard landscaping is of exceptional quality. But a garden being run as a commercial entity has to strive to be all things to all people. It is now branded with the ubiquitous but rarely accurate strap-line of “a garden for all seasons’.

Not, I think, Cloudehill’s finest moment but it is hard for a garden to be all things to all people

Colour-toned belladonnas and Japanese anemones for an early autumn welcome

I have never seen a garden that can peak for twelve months of the year and at the end of a long, hot, dry Australian summer, it was not at its peak but there was still plenty of interest along the way. When I review my photographs, I see that I kept focusing on the high quality of most of the garden structures. Attention to detail, again and again. I really appreciate that. There is a timelessness to good structure that carries a garden well through the years, even though the plantings may change with the times.

I liked the cobbles set in the path, as an example of understated detail, though I am guessing the fill has washed away, leaving them as something of a trip hazard. It was the only maintenance flaw that I recall in a garden where the overall management was of a very high calibre.

Attention to detail – look at the staging of this feature pot 

The hand-crafted wrought iron fence that separated gardens took my fancy as a personalised, modern take on an old craft.

Detail again – look at the beautiful end to this balustrade. And unless I am mistaken, that is a Marlborough rock daisy from New Zealand, Pachystegia insignis, nestled into an Australian garden that is modelled on English design.

I blog. I do not instagram. This may be the reason why I forgot to photograph my lunch but as far as I recall, it was very pleasant. What I did photograph was an installation of figures created by sculptor, Graeme Foote. These I really did like, especially in their setting here. I could find a home for some of these figures. While the individual price seems very reasonable at a mere $400 each, the trouble is that we would need at least 10 to make a statement.  Plus packing and freight across the Tasman. Sometimes we have to be content with memories and photographs.