Scotland for Gardeners - 560pps_Scotland for Gardeners - 560 pps 08/04/2014 13:34 Page xv
know someone who gardens like this. The other extreme is the ‘garden as theatre’ style. Nikolaus Pevsner wrote in 1944 that gardens are ‘Britain’s greatest contribution to the visual arts’. Perhaps a concept which the vast majority of gardeners would run a mile from. There is no doubt that many gardens are extremely theatrical, where design and bold statements are key to major structural and planting decisions. Such gardens are often deliberately ‘fashionable’, often built at great expense, planned and sometimes planted by a garden designer and/or landscaper. You may find exotic lighting, fountains and follies, colour co-ordinated planting schemes in blue or inevitably white, minimalism, pleached trees, topiary. Plants are chosen for their form and colour and are never labelled, as labels are ugly. Such gardens are often divided into rooms with hedges and each path or allée has an object at the end: a building, statue, seat or focus planting. Design-obsessed gardeners often find it equally hard to take pleasure from their gardens, as there is always some carefully planned plant partnership or effect which did not work out or failed to wow the last people to see it. Don’t get me wrong; there is definitely a place for theatrical gardens. Sir Roy Strong’s garden at the Laskett in Herefordshire is a fine example, and as Strong describes himself as ‘a frustrated stage designer’, I don’t think he would mind being assigned to the ‘gardens as theatre’ movement. Thankfully, few gardens are as clear-cut as either of the above extremes. In my opinion, what makes a really good garden is a balance between careful and individual plant selection and excellent form and structure. There is nothing better than stumbling across a garden with exquisite design touches and plant combinations which you have seldom or never seen before. Most great gardens are ‘great’ because they have both elements and because they do one or two things really well: large or small, they have that certain magic which comes from a perfect vista or where the form, structure and colour combination just take your breath away; what Gertrude Jeykll called creating ‘garden pictures’. Scotland is full of superb ‘garden pictures’. Sadly not every day, or even every year: rhododendrons and magnolias can be frosted overnight in spring, leaving mushy grey destruction while in summer wet weather may be great for hydrangeas but many roses and perennials just go mouldy. There is often an element of luck to being at the right place at the right time. This is part of the pleasure of visiting gardens; unlike a historic house, a garden will always be different, however many times you visit. Even the greatest gardens can be miserable in wind and rain; though I did visit plenty of them in downpours in the summers of 2007, 2008 and 2012 and still managed to enjoy them. The gardens which most excite me are not always the obvious ones; those untouchable classics that everyone has heard of. Their fame precedes them, and at times the weight of expectation just cannot deliver that wow factor that you were perhaps expecting. In contrast, I walked into some of the gardens in this book knowing little or nothing about them and came away delighted. I realise that by waxing lyrical about them, I’m raising your expectations, but I hope that when you discover them, you’ll be purring with pleasure as I was. Many private gardens are a particular pleasure to visit because you can meet and be guided by the owners and creators. Their enthu-
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