Book Review: The Gardener's Garden

Le Jardin Majorelle, Phaidon.

Granite slabs are carved with a quotation attributed to the French revolutionary Antoine de Saint-Just (‘The present order is the disorder of the future’) in Little Sparta, the garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Sue Finlay in South Lanarkshire, U.K., Andrea Jones.

‘Mudmaid,’ a play on Victorian ornamentation, at the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, U.K. Julian Stephens/Heligan Gardens.

The Gardeners Garden

Authors:  Madison Cox (Introduction), Toby Musgrave (Contributor), Bill Noble (Contributor), Lindsey Taylor (Contributor)

Hardcover: 480 pages

Publisher:  Phaidon Press (October 27, 2014)

Language:  English

ISBN-10:  0714867470

ISBN-13:  978-0714867472

By Cynthia Kling

WSJ, Nov. 7, 2014

 

The one thing all gardeners lust after—whether they have a tiny terrace in Hong Kong or a gorgeous estate in Northern California—is four seasons of uninterrupted beauty. An impossible fantasy? Not according to “The Gardener’s Garden” (Phaidon), a 480-page tome with 1,300 photographs of more than 280 locations. The book was put together by a team of garden luminaries such as British perennial expert Dan Pearson and American designer Madison Cox, whose clients include the style icon Marella Agnelli and former mayor Michael Bloomberg.

  

To give landscapes an enduring sense of structure during the inevitable off-season, many of these gardeners use ornamentation—even if the term is a bit of a dirty word among the horticultural elite. This might mean colored elements, as in the brilliant cobalt blue walls and bright yellow pots at Le Jardin Majorelle, a city garden in Marrakesh, or the red-hued fiberglass panels of the New Century Garden in Palm Springs, Calif. Whimsical sculptures can add personality, whether they take the form of a massive installation like “Mudmaid,” built out of rocks, plants and soil, on the grounds of the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, England, or just a simple, unexpected piece of gate at the Jardins du Prieure d’Orsan in Maisonnais, France. In the garden of artist Derek Jarman’s tiny English cottage, found items like rusted screws and driftwood have been transformed into enigmatic objects.

 

“A garden should stand on its own as a good space without any plants,” observed Arizona landscape architect Steve Martino, whose work is shown in the book. “Plants are incidental.” That is one of this volume’s key takeaways: Every garden needs specific pieces that stand out beautifully when the weather turns. To actually look forward to the tough seasons? Not as crazy as it sounds. With inspiring solutions like those shown here, who needs the flowers?

 

 

  

The terrace garden at Chanticleer in Philadelphia, Andrea Jones.

 

OUT OF HIDING During spring, summer and fall, the terrace garden at Chanticleer in Philadelphia is a play of yellows and greens as grasses, corydalis and climbing hydrangea jostle for space. But after the frost withers the vines, the planters along the wall and the large oil jar are revealed, creating a more serene, formal scene. If you can’t find weathered antiques like these, designer Chris Woods, who turned this hodgepodge former family place into an exuberant public garden, suggested brightly colored urns. Plant them with tall grasses for dramatic plumes all winter.

 

 

 

New Century Garden, Steve Martino.

 

No matter what ornaments you choose, they should do double duty as both functional and aesthetic objects, said Mr. Martino, who designed the desert-cool New Century Garden for a fashion designer looking for “a place to throw parties” in Palm Springs, Calif. In place of hedges, Mr. Martino installed a series of fiberglass panels that overlap vertically and horizontally to give structure to this garden of tough native desert plants. Brilliant red rectangular walls mingle with semitransparent ones, providing a backdrop against which the rugged plants can shine.

 

The sculptural features at Plaz Metaxu, in rural Devon, England, “are aseasonal,” said Alasdair Forbes, the garden’s creator. This private modern space, whose name literally means “a place that is between” in Greek, uses a range of materials such as metal chains, inscribed stones and fillets of slate across 32 acres. “The idea,” Mr. Forbes said, “is to relate to the land as tactfully and meaningfully as possible.” (When the hornbeam hedges shed their leaves in winter, for instance, they reveal standing stones that you can see from afar.) Elements like these can punctuate garden spaces, and take on different moods depending on how light changes across seasons.

 

Jardins du Prieuré d’Orsan in Maisonnais, France.
RMN-Grand Palais/Jean-Baptiste Leroux.

What exactly is that gate doing there? “It’s a trick, a tease,” said one of the book’s advisers, garden designer Bill Noble, of this secluded part of the Jardins du Prieuré d’Orsan in Maisonnais, France. “You want to know what is beyond that, and so your eye is drawn to the hills beyond.” Amid 7-plus acres of vegetable gardens, these trim hedges and lollipop trees offer a feeling of repose while framing this unexpected object. It just goes to show that a strict sense of simplicity and a flair for the dramatic can turn even a seemingly out-of-place piece of fencing into a landscaping master stroke.