Our Brexit Borders!

Okay, so our domestic gardens are still in the grip of Arts & Crafts, Edwardian borders. Whatever effect the naturalistic movement has had over the past 30 years, it really hasn’t made much of a dent in the ‘average’ garden of the UK. There’s not many British garden owners willing to rip out entire borders and re-imagine them wholesale – not without their beloved evergreen shrub layer, peonies and delphiniums… and those ubiquitous roses: adjective…’seeming to be everywhere’.

A rose is a rose.... is a rose... is a rose.......ZZzzzz

I hate to say it, but maybe our attitude toward garden design, somewhat reflects our attitude towards the European Union and the Brexit vote. Maybe the truth is, that whilst the likes of Germany, Holland and Scandinavia have – in the last 50 years – been forging ahead with innovative, philosophical, ecological and ideological plantings, Englanders still believe they have the best gardens in the world. Trouble is, these gardens all  – pretty much – look the same. Yes, I know we have some gardens where conceptualism and land art have produced contemporary visions of what a garden ‘space’ could look like, but in plant-based gardens – those built around planting design - our gardens still tend to emulate the average National Trust garden, and once you’ve seen one, you’ve kind of seen ‘em all.

A National Trust border.................... somewhere....????

I believe I had a 2-year membership of the National Trust that I let expire about 20 years ago. Always one to get my money’s worth, in that 2-year period I think I must’ve seen about 30 NT gardens, and whilst I’ve no doubt that they were all very nice, and reflected a huge of amount horticultural skill on the part of all those involved, I just tired of the ‘preserved in aspic’ feel to them: by the end of my membership they had somehow all blurred into one homogenous green jelly of trees, shrubs, climbers and herbaceous borders…. and those roses of course! 

Obviously, I realise that these gardens had to stay relatively in-keeping with the houses they wrapped around, but these are the gardens we Brits were exposed to every weekend, and unfortunately, these were the gardens we went on to emulate around our own homes. 

Now, this blog post is not really the place for a detailed look at what the rest of Europe was doing with garden design whilst we were still tending to our roses, but if you are keen to find out maybe Google search phrases such as: ‘German naturalistic planting’… or ‘Dutch naturalistic planting’… or simply just ‘naturalistic planting’. Either way, you’ll be taken on a journey far far away from the gardens of Sissinghurst, Nymans, Batemans… ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz…..…..?????

Vlinderhof in Holland. Now compare that to the average National Trust Garden!

Such a search might lead you towards the trial gardens of Hermanshoff, Germany, where the current curator Cassian Schmidt continues to trial site-specific mixed perennial plantings, revolutionising what can be done in moist, fertile soils, with the constant aim of creating harmonious and attractive, low-maintenance borders.

Hermannshof

Maybe a Google search (other search engines are available) will take you back to the likes of perennial and grass breeders Ernst Pagels and Karl Foerster, two hugely influential nurserymen responsible for much of today’s naturalistic planting design. Then there’s the Ruys legacy emanating from Deedemsvart, Holland.  Mien Ruys – daughter of Bonne Ruys - took over the running of her father’s perennial nursery and began experimenting with hard landscape materials, bringing elements of Bauhaus and Mondrian formality to some very informal plantings: naturalistic exuberance within a strict modernist framework.

Of course, there are many criss-crossing links of concatenation that connect our European friends with what we were doing in our own Arts & Crafts borders. Ruys had spent time in England (Tunbridge Wells in fact) observing the borders of Gertrude Jekyll before returning to Holland to re-imagine a similar aesthetic back home. 

Mien Ruys. The informal, within the formal.

A nice little Mien Ruys touch.

Even Piet Oudolf, with his obvious flare and genius for planting design, would gladly admit to the huge influence the gardens of England (Beth Chatto, Dixter and Blooms of Bressingham) had on his early design vision. In combining the fundamental design of an English herbaceous border with the steady influence of German naturalistic planting, Oudolf re-exported a contemporary version of Robinson’s wild garden to a nation grown tired of high-maintenance, colour-themed borders.  Also, by merging the formal with the informal, taking in design influences from all around Europe, and by using the robustness of many a prairie plant, Oudolf recreated a vision of naturalism that seemed to represent a version of meadow inherently  lodged in our primordial psyche somewhere.   

All within a formal framework....

What ‘naturalistic planting’ tries to achieve is something resembling natural plant communities from around the world. Say, the Russian Steppes, or North American Prairies etc. That’s the aesthetic. The ecological aspect aims to create low-maintenance borders which reduce the need for labour (staking, watering, feeding), and by selecting non-invasive, neighbour-friendly plants, aggressive weeds (so prevalent in our fertile soils) can literally be squeezed out of our borders.  Naturalistic planting design is both an art form and a science with the likes of James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett creating seed-based naturalistic vegetation that offer a low-cost, carbon-friendly solution to the problem of public plantings.

Oh, why can't our street planting look like this? Naturalistic planting in Utrecht, Holland.

I do feel that the naturalistic (New Perennial?) bandwagon might be slowing down somewhat. Those cultish gardeners who (like me) have always questioned the possibilities and potential of moving away from traditional gardening, and looked towards global plant communities for their inspiration, are simply not seeing their interest reap dividends and influence the domestic gardens of England.

A lesson in 'less is more'.....

As with our attitude towards Brexit, my fear is that we’ll just carry on arrogantly thinking that we have the best gardens in the world, prolonging a garden style that has already been hanging around far too long, and all the while our European neighbours will be forging ahead with innovative, stylish design. We on the other hand will no doubt still be breeding new roses (like we really need any more!), staking our delphiniums, displaying hosta leaves in bottles and trying to win the local fete’s ‘Largest Pumpkin’ competition at the local village fair!

Until next time. Thanks for reading!