As far as gardening art is concerned Great Britain has long monopolized the leading positions. Reference books, guidebooks and special maps are issued annually so that all comers could view even private gardens the numbers of which grows each year.
Among those there are several gardens that had acquired a status of a national masterpiece, received the highest awards and made it to the top five of the most prestigious star ratings. Stars are awarded for design, plant versatility and "theatrics", i.e. scenic viewpoints. It is exactly what draws thousands of visitors to these gardens.
The garden of Vita and Harold
A megastar on the gardening horizon, Great Britain’s most beautiful and picturesque garden is a 9-star Sissinghurst created by diplomat and writer Harold Nicholson and his wife, poetry writer Vita Sackville-West. For many people it has become a quintessential English garden.
Harold viewed the garden as a stage where nature itself put a performance against the background of everchanging seasons, seasonal flowering of numerous plants and weather that changes daily and even hourly. The Sissinghurst performance begins in early spring when tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, anemones and viols turn to bloom and cover the surroundings with a bright tapestry carpet.
The main event takes place in the midsummer. It’s the flowering of Vita’s White Garden that attracts thousands of viewers who come and silently stand under the pergola canopy made of climbing roses, listening to the rustle of petals falling down. A yellow-and-orange spectacle of the approaching autumn marks the end of the season.
Vita and Harold had been creating their garden based on contrasts and compromises, constantly striving for harmony in its every nook. That’s why it turned so versatile. Harold’s garden is rectangular, with a famous Harold’s Circle that is the structure’s centrepiece, long regular pathways made by trimmed yew-trees, symmetrical stairs and steps that reflect male willpower, firmness and visible end result in every turn of the pathway.
Vita’s garden is entirely different: entwined romantically into structured rigidness, it allowed the plants to wanton freely wherever they wished and the lawns to blossom in plenty before it was time to cut the grass. But whenever someone called Sissinghurst "Vita’s garden" she objected, saying "No, this garden is ours", yielding the palm to Harold and admitting that without his designer’s skills it wouldn’t have been such a success.
During many years they both had been watching the plants which later allowed to draw out several major rules. The main one was that the garden should surprise all the time, hiding unexpectedly new things behind every turn and retaining a "chain of anticipation, expectation of versatile surprises and riddles and the exciting wonder that you experience when solving them".
There’s no need to be sorry for the plants. If one of them dies it should be replaced by another. Also, the garden shouldn’t look too groomed. Letting self-seed crops grow as they like and wild flowers mingle with cultivated plants is not a catastrophy. When you start planting the garden you should draw out the three schemes: architectural, colour and seasonal.
After Vita died in 1962 Harold and sons decided to donate the garden to the National Trust.
Scotland’s golden garden
Crathes Castle Gardens go under the name of "the Scottish Sissinghurst". They are made in the style of garden rooms and require a leisurely walk from one room to another which all surprise with their original design and beautiful plants.
The castle was built by the Burnett family. Alexander, first of the Burnetts, had been given the land by Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, as a reward for his faithfulness.
The castle garden was founded by the13th and last baronet, General Sir James Burnett, and Lady Burnett, who have been creating it since 1926 and to the end of their days. Clipped trees have stood here since 1702, all the rest had been planned and created by Sir James and Lady Burnett. The collection of plants includes over 14.000 species. Rarest white Himalayan lilies, wild strawberry tree, giant silvery-blue Mediterranean thistles – you’ll find everything here!
In the central part of the garden there’s a unique "golden garden" or "sunny garden of Scotland" made up of only yellow plants. Decorative shrubbery was especially favoured by Sir James; he’d been bringing them from all over the world.
Nowadays the estate belongs to the National Trust for Scotland – a society for preserving historical monuments.
Major Johnston’s garden
Ironically the 8-star Hidcote Manor was not created by an Englishman. Its founder was an American officer Lawrence Johnston born in Paris in 1871, who had lived most of his life in England. His father died when the boy was 13 years old, having left his son and wife quite a fortune.
Johnston studied in France and England, successfully graduated from the Trinity College Cambridge (Deparment of History) and… took up gardening. In 1907, when Lawrence was already 36, his mother bought him some land and a farm in North Cotswolds. This year is considered to be the garden’s birthdate. In 2007 the country celebrates its centennary.
It was Johnston who invented garden rooms – they say the only reason for that was unfriendly interfering neighbours. No one had suspected at the time that millions of English gardeners would fall for this style.
Johnston spent all his time in the garden experimenting with plants and thoroughly selecting the colours for his future assortments. Sometimes he travelled to North America or China to find new species and exotic seeds and spent a long time there, later successfully growing the plants in his garden. Collecting new species was his passion. At the same time Johnston was developing the garden’s structure, creating all the new "rooms".
It all stopped in 1914 when Lawrence Johnston went to fight in WWI. He returned a major and remained major until the end of his life.
During 4 years of his absence the garden came into complete ruin, and Johnston gave himself away completely to his favourite pastime. In 1922 he hired his first professional gardener, Frank Adams, who later was sent to the London Flower Show annually in order to pick up some new ideas and varieties of plants.
Gradually the garden grew popular and celebrities interested in gardening art were calling on the major. In 1930 Vita Sackville-West came to visit: impressed by the garden, she called it "jungle of beauty". True, the garden was overgrown because the main principle of Lawrence was "planting only the best plant varieties", as well as "planting densely".
In 1948 Johnston gave Hidcote to the National Trust and went to live in France, at his estate Serre de la Madone where he had long started creating a garden like Hidcote’s, but totally different.
The years after Johnston’s death in 1958 have somehow changed Hidcote. New plants and new garden details appeared. Many landscape gardening professionals consider it wrong and try to restore the garden’s look and design as it had been intended by Major Johnston.
Christo Lloyd: "life and gardening should be fun"
In January 2006 the gardening community learned sad news: Christopher Lloyd, a legend of a man and creator of a wonderful 8-star garden, the most favourite and read author of gardening books, "Christo" adored by the whole country, passed away.
He was born in 1921 at the old Great Dixter estate bought by his father in 1910. The house had been restored by a famous architect Edwin Lutyens who designed the very first alley of clipped yew-trees that is still there today.
First Christopher graduated from the King’s College, Cambridge (he studied languages there), and then successfully completed his studies at the agricultural Wye College and stayed there as a teacher. 4 years later he returned home to live in his manor and had spent all his life there as a bachelor, travelling from time to time.
To fully realise himself in life his own garden was quite enough for him. He was always surrounded by people. Students came for internship and dwelled for a long time in the 15-century dining rooms, sleeping in their sleeping bags by the ancient fireplace. Christo devoted a lot of time to the most curious of them.
When somebody called and politely asked permission to see the garden, he could ask "Why?" However, he liked wandering unnoticed among the visitors and eavesdropping on what they were saying about his garden.
A bold experimenter, he worked up all the country’s gardeners, having destroyed a 70-year-old rose garden to plant tropical plants in its place. Later he told all about it in his book "The Exotic Garden".
In 1979 he received the most coveted gardening award - Victoria Medal of Honor. Contemplating on his garden’s fate shortly before his death, he wrote, "I don’t want this place to become a museum. The garden must change like it had many times in my time".
The epitome of English gardening
The 8-star Wisley garden is a quintessential English garden, a laboratory in the open, a training ground for creating new varieties and species of plants.
In 1903 these lands and estate became a property of the Royal Horticultural Society. Only 24 hectares of land were cultivated, the rest of it was covered with woods. The garden was an oak grove with a collection of Japanese irises, gentians, primroses and water plants. Since then the garden has expanded fourfold. At first it was intended as a decorative garden for relaxation. But gradually Wisley had turned into a magnificent collection of plants, a botanical garden where scientific objectives were put first. The Gardening School was opened and became alma mater of many renowned specialists.
The most interesting thing about Wisley is its experimental gardens representing different styles and trendy design. There are crop mixborders by the famous Dutch designer Piet Oudolf; a romantic garden with archways weaved by pale purple wisteria by Penelope Hobhouse, designer and author of garden books. Many gardens have "moved" to Wisley and taken up residence here after the Chelsea Flower Show.
The central part of the garden is occupied by roses. There are more than 200 select, very expensive and precious varieties of impressive colours, shapes and sizes.
Wisley’s rock garden is the biggest in Europe. Its creation required the construction of a small railway needed to transport giant rocks. It has the best plant collection and is definitely one of the most scenic spots in the garden with its streams and cascading small pools.
Wisley welcomes up to 750.000 visitors yearly. In a way it’s a perfect garden, a model that would take an eternity to aspire to.
The article is courtesy of Tourgarden, a travel agency organizing trips to world gardens.
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