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Sunday 27 May 2012

The emperor’s new weeds

29 October 2011

Even a dreadful garden will receive warm praise if you open it to the public – as Sir Roy Strong has proved

There is no garden in Britain so awful that someone won’t describe it as ‘lovely’. Especially if it is associated with a celebrity. I recently listened to Sir Roy Strong on the radio oozing complacency as he discussed his garden at the Laskett and why it should be saved for the nation. He made a virtue out of its disorder: ‘If a giant thistle seeds itself in the middle of the kitchen garden my head gardener just lets it grow there… and people love that.’

Oh no they don’t. If there is one thing most garden visitors can’t cope with, rightly or more possibly wrongly, it’s weeds and untidiness. It’s a narrow line between a ‘relaxed and domestic quality’ and a mess, but most garden visitors fail to get further than the idea that a weed creates a wasteland.

Some of us are more sophisticated and can appreciate that formal might not mean immaculate and that foxgloves seeding themselves around in a rose garden, as Sir Roy describes at the Laskett, are a charming addition (the roses are another question). There is a growing minority of interested people who are beginning seriously to engage with the aesthetics and philosophy of gardens and to visit and discuss gardens with this in mind, rather than simply noticing the weediness.

It was such a group that I took to the Laskett this summer, and we came away angry and disenchanted. Which is the right word, because what people take with them to a garden as talked-up as this — a book, television and radio programmes about it, and with a famous name attached — is just that: enchantment.

Such unreality doesn’t last long with a book or a play. The critics make their thoughts and feelings known. But gardens are outside this realistic realm. They have romance, charity and cake associated with them and are thus above criticism. The garden media approach them with a breathless reverence that even tends to quiet the anti-weed brigade.

The group I took to the Laskett were not only appalled by the mess; they were savage about the poor design of the place. The garden is flat and full. Wherever you turn there is a new space delineated by hedges: there is no space to breathe and no escape. There is no clear sense of where to go next, creating a build-up of tension and disorientation until panic begins to seep in and you wonder if you will ever manage to find a way out. It becomes an interesting question as to whether rather than thinking of this as a romantic garden, with historic and personal references as advertised, it should be seen as a conceptual garden where terror and chaos await you round every corner, heightened by small but inconsequential glimpses of relief.

But this contrast between expectation and reality is not special to the Laskett; it is the norm. Garden openers in the UK are almost universally smug and complacent about their efforts because they are universally praised. Sir Roy Strong can cheerfully tell us that the public love the Laskett and its weeds because, like the emperor and his new clothes, no one will ever tell a garden owner the truth.

Or at least, this used to be the case. Most of the written media’s garden sections describe paradises made by faultless designers and maintained with élan. All gardens are by definition ‘lovely’ and a garden writer’s task is simply to describe what is there, as long as it isn’t the weeds or dereliction, to which a careful blind eye is turned, aided by the flattery of careful and lying garden filming and photography.

However, change is in the wind. One newspaper has practically given up on features about gardens, another has begun to allow a little reality to seep in — perhaps unfortunately, in that when there is just a very occasional realistic feature it looks as if the garden described is exceptionally awful, rather than par for the course.

And the social media are discussing gardens. True, the notion that people have different preferences and ‘tastes’ so that it is impossible to differentiate good from bad or even bloody awful undermines objectivity. People who quite happily would tell you that a book was boring, a restaurant meal vile or a film execrable, will carefully tell you that a garden was not to their taste, but that ‘everyone’s taste is different’. We have no language or experience of garden criticism, so the enchantment lingers, casting a rosy glow over the worst patches. But people are just beginning to say ‘I liked’ and ‘I didn’t like’. And strangely I often find when someone praises a garden to me on Twitter, that if I query that assessment, a dramatically different opinion emerges, with, of course, the inevitable ‘everyone’s taste is …’ or ‘they are entitled to do what they want in their own garden but …’ The seeds of change are sprouting.

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James staples

October 28th, 2011 5:45pm Report this comment

a very trueful article.....the truth hurts sometimes!!

Sara Venn

October 28th, 2011 6:37pm Report this comment

This piece is exciting. Not because it gives an honest account of a garden which is raved about and yet which let down a group of serious gardening folk, but because it brings to the fore the lack of critical thinking that surrounds garden design.The gardening press is full of accounts of gardens which are described poetically by the writer, who often won't have visited at the same time as the photographs were taken, and not a mention is made of a weed or poor landscaping materials, both of which I believe were part of The Lasketts issues. In order for garden design and gardening in general to be seen as an art form, rather than something to coo over and ignore the nasty bits of, we need to find a way of critically reviewing gardens and doing so without fear of causing offence. After all, we are fiercely critical of all other modes of design so why not gardens? And constructive criticism usually ends in improvements in whatever the criticism is about. So I implore you to take away from this article the thought that next time you visit a garden don't gloss over the bits you don't like-take them on board, talk about them and be critical about them, just as you would if it was a book or a restaurant.

Clare Paver

October 28th, 2011 11:46pm Report this comment

Chapeau Spectator for exposing your readership to this well-written and thought-provoking article usually only found within garden media. As one of the group that visited the Laskett with Anne, I must corroborate her account and sign off as
"Disenchanted of Bedfordshire"

Sue Beesley

October 29th, 2011 12:04am Report this comment

Anne is right of course about the absence of proper critiques of gardens which are open to the public and charge for entry. Such critiques ought to be commonplace.

But I honestly don't think this is the result of an obsequious lack of discernment in visitors or a grand media stitch-up. I think it is mostly because almost no-one seeks to make a primary living from opening their garden for a fee unlike, say, a restauranteur, or a filmmaker. Most garden owners open as a sideline to some other venture, or to justify to themselves the cost of what they would probably choose to do anyway. Most garden visitors understand this and primarily feel grateful at having been permitted a peek behind the curtains at what would otherwise be a private space.

So, less a conspiracy of silence, and more a collective dawning of a sense of entitlement to comment, in my view.

Robert Warren

October 29th, 2011 11:45am Report this comment

In response to Jonathan Myles-Lea's comments on the article.

By his rational criticism of any art form, be it film, music, sculpture or indeed a garden is the work of someone who is 'hysterical' and 'disturbed' if he does not happen to agree with it.

The world is a richer place for a diverse range of opinions on art and debate is healthy and something that seems to be lacking in the world of gardens.

I find the personal nature of the Jonathan Myles Lea's comments as very offensive and highlights his mental state far more then it does of the writer of the original piece.

Deeply embarrassing.

Genevieve

October 31st, 2011 4:39pm Report this comment

BRAVO!

Here in the US it's no different. I often come away from my garden magazines quit crabby and filled with derision. Is this a reflection of my nature, or what's published? I tend to side with Wareham.

James Golden

November 1st, 2011 2:51am Report this comment

I agree with Genevieve (and Anne Wareham), but I think it's worse, rather than "as bad," in the US. Few public gardening figures even have the courage to use botanical Latin when it's needed, much less criticize a garden. Gardening seems to be either a sentimental, anti-intellectual hobby or an exercise in ecological correctness over here. I do hope seeds of change are sprouting.

Sara Manela

November 1st, 2011 2:10pm Report this comment

@Sue Beesley, your comment is more less that we don't criticize gardens because we don't take them seriously. The gardeners are not "professionals."

Historically, the sorts of hobby gardens you're describing are those made by women who are supported by their husbands. That's almost certainly not the case with most women (or most gardeners) these days - so what does it say that we still don't take them seriously enough to critique them?

Sue Beesley

November 1st, 2011 9:59pm Report this comment

Sara - The majority of gardens to visit in the UK are attached to stately or large private homes with their gardens either cast in aspic at some random date in the past, or opened rather reluctantly by the present family incumbent in order to pay the bills. The gardening may be done by professionals but this so often does not translate into rapid improvement, much less innovation.

Thinking about nearby examples, Arley Hall comes to mind. It is often quoted as having the finest and oldest pair of herbaceous borders in the country. Run by a superb professional head gardener, Gordon Bailie, he must tiptoe around the sensibilities of Lord and Lady Ashcroft, both of whom are prone to impulse purchases of plants which he is then obliged to find house room for. Their own sense, oft repeated in public, is that they are the hard-pressed custodians of a national treasure and the public is fortunate that they have been good enough to maintain it, at great expense, for the nation.

It's just one example, but it's certainly typical here in the NW and helps explain why garden criticism is not generally sought, expected or widely offered.

Sue Beesley

November 2nd, 2011 10:23am Report this comment

...for the record, Arley IS genuinely lovely, well-maintained and well worth a visit. I make a point of going every year and would recommend it to anyone.

Felicity Waters

November 3rd, 2011 12:55pm Report this comment

anne - there is something in them gardens that make people gush - i can rabbit on about design theory etc on facebook and no one cares. Then when i put a flower up - booo- social intereaction occurs - perhaps all garden thinkers should stand to the left and just chat amongst themselves?

Tim Gow

November 3rd, 2011 1:35pm Report this comment

Excellent article.

janet langman

November 4th, 2011 8:01am Report this comment

I really empathise with this article. I personally did a little back to back garden at Tatton 10 years ago. Mine was a proper garden, such as one could imagine having in a small space. The public loved it and asked where was my medal... the Judges hadnt liked it and so I hadnt got one. The Judges had loved a monstrosity with brightly coloured concrete walls and hardly any flowers. The public didnt love that one at all. I came away feeling vindicated by the public and decided the Law, in the form of the judges, is an Ass.

ChickenStreet

November 7th, 2011 6:36pm Report this comment

An interesting article and good to see the so called enchantment of a garden design being questioned. Too often 'intentional fallacy' seems to be used to explain away the way a garden looks when really a garden looks the way it looks to the person looking

Mary Grindley

November 8th, 2011 10:28am Report this comment

I always enjoy reading what Anne Wareham has to say. That is not to say I always agree with what she says. After all reviews and comments should spark discussion, otherwise why write them. I know of people who will write and say what they think they are expected to say, which is sad. The article she has written about Laskett made me want to visit as I would like to make my own mind up. I won't be visiting though as I do not want to go in a "party" of 20. My husband & I like to visit gardens, be on our own and to wander in where we wish.

I cannot comment on the garden as I have not been there.I do think it is a sad day when responses to articles such as this can make some people throw their toys out the pram.
It's also disturbing to see, presumably highly qualified people, use words such a poisonous and gestapo when writing a letter regarding this article.How would they like these words used in response to their work.

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