'Yes' for Aberdeen's City Garden Project

Image from Aberdeen Garden Cite Project website.

This controversial scheme, in which voters were offered the choice between retaining the historic gardens or opting for the £140m City Garden Project redevelopment, has passed in favour of the latter.  With a 52% turnout the result was 45,301 'yes' and 41,175 'no',  a  majority of 4,126.

The 'yes' will mean that historic Union Terrace Gardens will be lost as part of the redevelopment.  For both sides of the argument, here are the websites of the Aberdeen Garden City Project  and the Friends of Union Terrace Gardens.

Hannah Carter Japanese Garden - Update.

Image from Save the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden

Back in January I posted about the threat to the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden in Los Angeles.  Sadly, the University of California is proceeding with its decision to sell the garden.  In response a coalition of interested groups and individuals - Save the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden - has been formed with the intent and aim of preserving the garden.

Please do visit their website - there is also a downloadable factsheet on this page - and see if there is any way in which you can help save this historic garden.

John Evelyn & Sayes Court

The ‘developer’ is perennial enemy of the garden historian, or more specifically of those gardens and landscapes which developers feel could be put to a better - more profitable -use.  One of the most important roles performed by the the aforementioned Garden History Society (GHS) is lobbying to prevent destructive and unsympathetic development of historic greenspace, as well as offering advice on the conservation thereof.

The battle of the moment is to try and save and restore the remaining part of the garden at Sayes Court in Deptford, east London.  The GHS is ‘on the case’ and the Royal Horticultural Society also highlighted the plight of the site in this months issue of The Garden.  But why, you may ask yourself is this garden so important?
The Grove at Sayes Court from sayescourtgarden.com on Vimeo.

Because it was one of the most famous of all 17th-century gardens, created by John Evelyn (1620-1706) the famous diarist, scientist (he was a founding member of the Royal Society) , gardener - and friend of both Samuel Pepys and king Charles II.  

Evelyn aged 69 by Sir Godfrey Kneller

And enough archive evidence of the garden survives to enable a recreation of that part which today remains public greenspace...just so long as the dreaded developers don’t get their way.

So please help to save this very important part of Britain’s gardening heritage by visiting the excellent website set up by the Campaign for the Restoration of Sayes Court and offering your support.

One last fact.  Evelyn spent over 40 years composing Elysium Britannicum, or The Royal Gardens, the 'first large-scale encyclopedic work on the science and art of gardening'.  However  Evelyn never saw his great work published, indeed it was not published until 2001.  Here are a couple of Google Book links about this fascinating tome: Elysium Britannicum and John Evelyn's "Elysium Britannicum" and European gardening

William Kent, The Picturesque Landscape & Rousham

The English Landscape Garden is arguably one of Britain’s greatest contributions to world art.  And while many garden lovers have heard of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’ (1716-83) not so many are familiar with his predecessors such as William Kent (c.1685-1748).

Put simply, Kent designed idealised landscapes with softened edges, sinuous walks, water features, many varied buildings and long prospects where garden and park were indistinguishable.  As Horace Walpole put it, Kent ‘leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden.’

Yet the scenes Kent created were not English but took their inspiration from Italy, from the romantic images of classical times.  These landscapes were designed to be a picture, a work of art laden with emotional overtones of tranquillity, gaiety, grandeur and melancholy, all set within a tamed, sculptured Nature. 

The noted garden historian, Professor Tim Mowl offers an insight onto Kent and his work on this video of his 2010 Claremont Garden History Lecture.  Here is part one (of seven):

Here are the additional six parts of the lecture.

However, it is not easy to visit a Kentian landscape because his works were overlaid by successive incarnations of the English landscape garden.  Most often by ‘Capability’ Brown.

A most notable exception is Rousham in Oxfordshire.  

Admittedly the landscape has suffered the ravages of time and lack of cash, yet it fully retains both its layout and emotional harmonics - and oftentimes you find you are the sole visitor!
 

For those who wish to read more, try Simon Pugh’s ‘Rousham and the English landscape garden’.

And for comparison, Blenheim Palace, perhaps the finest example of ‘Capability’ Brown’s landscaping work is a mere 7 km from Rousham.