'I think there are
as many kinds of gardening as of poetry', wrote Joseph Addison in
1712.
Two hundred years
later, this was certainly true. The formal style with its terraces,
parterres, clipped hedges and topiary, the landscape style and the
plantsman's style, designed to show off collections of woodland
shrubs or alpine plants, were joined at the beginning of the
twentieth century by two new, interrelated styles of great
significance for the future of gardening: the natural style and the
cottage garden style. From the Edwardian era until the present,
these various kinds of gardening have flourished, often all being
represented within the boundaries of one garden.
Two great gardeners
were responsible for promoting the new garden philosophy by example
in their work, and above all through their writing. William
Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll had nothing in common as far as their
personalities and backgrounds were concerned, but they shared an
appreciation of the natural beauty of wild plants and flowers, and
of the luxuriance and artless charm with which the cottagers of
English villages planted their gardens.
Their achievement
was to persuade gardeners into a looser more natural planting style
that was particularly suitable for the smaller country and suburban
houses that were being built at that time.
Robinson's book
The Wild Garden and many of his magazine articles advocated
naturalistic planting in woodland and water gardens, and drew
attention to the value of native flowering plants to be used among
and beneath exotic shrubs and trees. His influence can be seen in
the great woodland gardens created between the turn of the century
and the First World War in the south of England, in Scotland and in
other areas with the benefit of acid soil and native birch and oak
woodland. In such conditions rhododendrons, azaleas, heaths and
many of the other plants being introduced from Asia
thrive.
Gertrude Jekyll
shared Robinson's views about wild and woodland gardening, but
perhaps her greatest contribution has been to the design of the
herbaceous or mixed border. A painter by training, she worked out
theories about colour in the garden, put her theories into practise
in her own garden and in gardens designed for her clients, and
expressed her ideas lucidly in her books. Their recent rediscovery
has led to great improvements in many gardens, despite the fact
that her planting plans were designed for gardens tended by a
large, skilled labour force and therefore need thoughtful
adaptation for use today.
Miss Jekyll's
immensely fertile collaboration with Sir Edwin Eutyens led to the
happy blend of the architecture of the garden with its planting.
The style they arrived at together, of romantically luxuriant
planting within a firm architectural framework of terraces and
garden 'rooms', is still today the ideal towards which most
gardeners strive.
The Second World War
brought private ountry-house gardening to an end. Houses were
requisitioned as military headquarters or as hospitals. Lawns and
borders were ploughed up for food production. Almost without
exception every major garden suffered involuntary neglect for a
period of five years. By 1945 precious shrubs and young trees were
suffocated under a tangle of brambles, nettles and elder. Sycamore
and ash saplings sprang up everywhere, lodging themselves in the
stonework of walls, steps and terraces and prizing apart the
framework of glass-houses.
In post-war years
there has been no question of returning to the prewar system.
It is no longer possible for owners to employ teams often or twelve
gardeners . Nevertheless, beautiful gardens have risen
phoenix-like from bonfires of cleared scrub, nettles, bindweed and
ground elder. This has come about through adaptation to changed
circumstances: through making maximum use of increasingly efficient
modern garden machines; through adapting the layout and planting of
gardens to suit the machines; and through dedication and hard work
by garden owners and their staffs.
Today, rather than
creating special habitats for special groups of plants, gardeners
choose plants that will thrive in the existing
conditions.
The post-war
rehabilitation of gardens still goes on after nearly fifty
years, and an increased interest in garden history has led
to the construction of gardens which relate to the architectural
style of their houses.
In England
working-class gardening was encouraged by land-shortage, social
imitation and a developed sense of private property. Like pets and
trees, gardens became a means of strengthening their owner's sense
of identity and adding to his self-esteem. 'Most of the so-called
love of flowers,' D. H. Lawrence would write, 'is merely this
reaching out of possession and egoism: something I've got:
something that embellishes me.)
The cultivation of
flowers is an historical phenomenon of great importance to anyone
concerned to know how the working classes would use their leisure
and direct their emotional energies. It explains why large-scale
tenements have seldom been built in England, for they would have
deprived working men of the gardens which they regarded as a
necessity; and it accounts for the growth of the allotment movement
in the nineteenth century. The preoccupation with gardening, like
that with pets, fishing and other hobbies, even helps to explain
the relative lack of radical and political impulses among the
British proletariat. It is also important as an indication of
that non-utilitarian attitude to the natural world
The greatest
revolution in home, as opposed to estate, gardening has come from
supermarket garden centres. These, aided and abetted by endlessTV
garden make-over programmes, have taken the passion for planting to
almost every urban garden, large and small. Designer plants
are now available for every condition a gardener could
imagine.
