Rousham

I have referred the landscape garden at Rousham, in Oxfordshire, in previous posts, but it is three and half years since my last visit and in fine spring weather this morning I decided to revisit. An almost complete survival of the work of William Kent, the mercurial genius of the first phase of what has come to be known as the English Landscape Style, the garden is by turns intimate and expansive, a theatrical sequence of enclosures and clearings, vistas and tunnels through the wooded slopes of the River Cherwell. It is the perfect understated setting for the magnificent house, the whole ensemble with its carriage yards, stable blocks, kitchen garden and dovecote a more or less unchanging evocation of a type of solidly English domestic feudal landscape, with hamlet and church within the park of the house.

Here nothing is obvious - the visitor is led through the garden by implicit clues - a gap in the hedge, a barely discernible path, an intriguing rise and fall in the ground.  At times way is more clearly marked, as by Kent's famous rill, leading to an octagonal bathing pool and thence to the water at the bottom of Venus' Vale, a descending series of fountains presided over by Venus herself, and looking out over the River Cherwell and the valley beyond.

Further along the circuit a sharp little escarpment is topped by the Praeneste - an arcaded lookout flanked by urns and the clipped underplanting of laurel and box.  The garden is populated with Classical sculptures, including a stone version of 'The Dying Gaul' and some sprightly gods, presiding over quiet corners or more dramatic openings in the hedgerows and tunnels of vegetation.  Here are Bacchus, Mercury and, most significantly, Pan to whom the whole garden could be dedicated. 

Still owned by the family who commissioned Kent to lay out the garden in the early 1700s, Rousham is my favourite garden - I hope the photos do justice to its timeless appeal.

See more images here.

Paul Ridley Design

Nursery Stories

A key relationship for any garden designer is that with a trusted and reliable nursery.  Plant supply is a dark art, subject to its own seasonal oscillations that are sometimes at odds with what is going on in the garden year, and the advice and support of talented and knowledgeable plantspeople who are also able to supply healthy stock can make the difference between a successful scheme and one which is merely acceptable.

Orchard Dene Nursery near Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire, run by Chris and Toby Marchant is one such.  This is not a retail nursery - stock is grown for wholesale supply to designers and landscapers, including those at the top of the field in the UK.  Calling in on any particular day you are likely to see plant orders assembled for the likes of Andy Sturgeon, Tom Stuart-Smith and Anthony Paul - a roll call of the notable names in our profession. 

It's no surprise that these people come here for their plants - the quality and range is terrific, with every plant on the list 'road-tested' for its garden-worthiness and contribution to a planting.  Chris and Toby have built an enviable reputation for quality and regularly supply plants for the most demanding arena of all, the show gardens, putting their wares under the scrutiny of the harshest judges in the horticultural world.  The plants I used in my own garden, supplied mainly in 9cm pots, have grown away brilliantly this season - it is hard to believe that the planting was only a few weeks old when I photographed it for my website.

The list is particularly strong on plants and groups popular in the 'New Perennial' school of plant design - large, robust perennials with good form and habit that could easily have come from the wild.  Improved forms rarely stray too far from this ideal - overbred plants with their attendant problems don't seem to feature here.  There is a good selection of grasses, particularly varieties of Miscanthus, to go with Persicaria, Salvia, Eupatorium, Helenium and Rudbeckia, amongst many others.  The catalogue also offers great advice on plant combinations, more than one of which has found its way into my garden.

If you live too far distant to make use of Orchard Dene then hopefully you will have an equivalent nearby - the world of horticulture is full of talented, committed and helpful people, ready and willing to assist.

Paul Ridley Design

Planting with Style

 

In a garden designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole in south Oxfordshire, sweeps of naturalistic planting merge together to form a plausible community of wild plants - plausible, but not genuine, and certainly not wild.

The planting is beautiful, however. Here, Bradley-Hole has employed his grid system, with square beds of perhaps four metre dimension separated by gravel paths. The planting is so dense that the pathways become visible only when you are looking directly along them, and each square of the grid echoes its neighbours in the choice of plants. Dynamism and variety are introduced almost mathematically - the proportions of each type of plant change with each bed, and select additions subtly bring new colours or forms to the overall pattern.

Elsewhere in the garden, a fringe of massed grasses and huge Persicarias along the boundary picks up the theme of these plants which runs through the planting as a whole, and a mown circle of grass allows for rough-grass planting of spring bulbs around its perimeter. The terrace, raised above the level of the garden, is fringed by a tall bank bearing swathes of different Persicarias and more grasses - looking at this head on gives the impression of a huge pointillist screen, ranged in colours of rust, plum and tawny yellow.

Some find this pattern of planting somewhat 'spotty' - too many small groupings of plants (often in fact single plants) creating, for them, a hectic mess of plant material.  This is highly skilled design, however - although the plantings cannot be read easily at distance, closer inspection reveals the rhythm built through repeated forms, closely-related varieties of the same plant and the same colours, appearing in the foliage and flowers of completely different species.  I find the style deeply satisfying - a creative response to the environment that suggests wild places and natural communities of plants through highly knowledgeable design.

Paul Ridley Design