Hal Moggridge and the Future of Landscape Design

The Garden Museum, on the South Bank in London, next to Lambeth Palace, has an ongoing series of evening lecture-discussions called VISTA.  Co-chaired by Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury, the format is simple - an invited guest gives a presentation of their work after which the chairs jointly interrogate that guest on issues raised by the talk.  The end of the session sees questions from the floor.

Last night it was the turn of Hal Moggridge, doyen of landscape architects, to offer his opinions on the state of landscape architecture in the UK, explored through brief exposition of a small portfolio of key works in which he has been engaged over the past four decades.

The discussion was interesting when exploring the failure of the authorities to secure and protect iconic views (especially in the capital).  It is apparent that Moggridge's early architectural career in the socially-responsible 1950s - when the profession of architecture was striving to build a post-war democratic environment fit for the new, Modern, utopia - deeply influenced his outlook, and although his stance is not necessarily a 'political' one, he is clearly on the side of a public whose environment is at risk of degradation, not the side of the wealthy developer or company wanting to erect huge buildings for mere financial gain.  The value of detailed and comprehensive planning to preserve the best of the built and natural environment - something which is implicit in the work of landscape and garden designers - becomes even more apparent when viewing the 'before and after' images of Moggridge's work in comparison with other, less successful interventions.

The trend towards landscape architects working on huge private estates came under scrutiny, along with the increasing trend for these tracts of land to be removed from public view - another strand in the theme of the undemocratisation of the landscape.

 

Discussion of Moggridge's early career with such luminaries as Geoffrey Jellicoe and Brenda Colvin raised questions of the links between garden design and landscape architecture.  Tim Richardson's recent suggestion (Garden Design Journal, June 2012) that the Landscape Institute and Society of Garden Designers should combine forces, with fully accredited members being designated 'landscape designer' came up for discussion.  This is an interesting possibility, and has much merit.  The field of garden design is, frankly, bedevilled by the lack of an overarching body to manage the profession.  Changes are under way, and the SGD has to be congratulated on its moves to increase the professionalism of garden designers.  Hal Moggridge identified the crux of the matter, and I have discussed it elsewhere: until suitable garden design qualifications are accredited by the SGD or another relevant body at the source, there are only the 'post training' hoops to jump through to ensure the professionalism of garden designers.  Much more sensible would be for design courses and providers to be rigorously assessed and accredited at the outset: successful completion of such a course would give an automatic, professionally recognised qualification.  The tradition of gifted amateurs designing gardens for themselves and friends could be accommodated by a licentiateship or associate membership.  This would have the benefit of allowing appropriately rigorous courses to advertise themselves as such, thus encouraging an improvement in training standards across the sector. 

Part of the problem, from my point of view, is that so much garden design (and the vast majority of that at the amateur level) is still so driven by plants and horticulture: in a nation obsessed with the culture and cultivation of plants there is no shortage of people who are able to create pretty gardens for themselves or others - whether this makes them garden designers is a moot question, and one which I would probably answer with a 'no'.  This is not to say that there aren't sufficiently talented amateurs out there, with the vision and patience to create magnificent, meaningful gardens - I'm currently reading Roy Strong's account of his garden at The Laskett, clearly a garden so rich in allusion and meaning for the makers that it could never be achieved by a designer parachuted in to draw up a ground plan.  On the other hand there are (mercifully, for garden designers!) plenty of others who would love to have a beautiful garden but lack the time, knowledge, patience or creativity to make their own.  Perhaps this is the real dichotomy - not 'landscape architects and garden designers', but rather 'garden designers and garden makers' - the former providing a service, the latter engaged in the very personal act of creation.  Possibly the greatest skill of a designer is to become so good at the design that the end result has the same effect as a more personally created garden.  Fortunately there are enough gardens in Britain to keep everyone happy and busily employed, at whatever level they are engaged with the process of making gardens!

Here's a pretty photo after all that text...

Paul Ridley Design

Current trends in planting and design

This was the title of the Gardens Illustrated lecture held yesterday at the Royal Geographical Society.  Jointly steered by Tim Richardson, garden historian and writer, and Noel Kingsbury, researcher and writer, the discussion between three well-known designers pointed out some of the directions that garden planting and design is taking.

The designers, Andy Sturgeon, Dan Pearson and Cleve West - officially up there with the big boys now, thanks to his ‘best in show ‘ garden at Chelsea this week – had interesting things to say about both their own practice and the future development of design, although it seemed to me that a number of points were  left unaddressed.

A meadow with unmanaged planting - other than grazing

In one sense the debate turned on the tension between ‘Modernism’ and ‘traditional’ gardening styles.  Part of the trouble in this debate is that the term ‘Modernism’ refers to a distinct artistic movement, with political and social dimensions, that emerged in Europe after the First World War and held sway for a quarter century and more, evolving as it travelled across the planet and finding its spiritual home in interwar Germany at the Bauhaus school and in the United States.  We all think we know ‘Modernism’ – but we use the term as shorthand in relation to any pared-down building, garden, painting or sculpture, and this is often an inaccurate way to describe what we see.  I think we need to seek a new term to identify our current creative trends  - ‘contemporary’ is insufficient.  But this is an aside – what of gardens?



Natural plant communities- the template for new developments in planting

Andy Sturgeon has written that the conflation of Modernist and Arts and Crafts styles in gardens is a ‘very British fudge’ – he’s right.  In a way most current ‘Modern’ designs of strong ground plans, asymmetrical and using up-to-date versions of old materials (sawn, honed and polished stone rather than riven slabs) still have at their heart the Arts and Crafts style – loose, romantic planting set within a strong frame.  The plant choices have changed over the years with the tides of fashion, but the great traditions of planting that have rendered the British style desirable across the world still hold sway.  We love our plants – the variety, the colour, the succession through the year.  Creating plantings which look good at any season, that combine wonderfully harmonising or clashing colour combinations with scent and structure is, as Tim Richardson reminded the audience, our greatest native vernacular art form.  The French have food, we have gardens.  For many, this fudge is an acceptable one – you can have a wide variety of plants and a funky terrace all in the same space, and call it ‘contemporary’ -  but what comes next?  If we are to identify and define a new style, what will it look like – and what will it be called?

Massed sunflowers as seedheads - an attempt at a natural community

The big developments are taking place outside the UK, it seems – the speakers referred to Eastern Europe and Germany as areas where exploration into new planting styles are furthest advanced.  These developments hinge on the the naturalism of wild plant communities, and this naturalism is something we are also exploring in the UK.

Through research into plant communities such as meadows, steppes and prairies, there have crept into our planting palette over the past 20 years the echinaceas, rudbeckias, grasses, eupatoriums and countless other varieties.  Wilder-looking than traditional garden plants (although, of course, hybridisation and selections mean that we are seeing increasing numbers of cultivars that are shorter, more floriferous, more brightly-coloured and more ‘garden-worthy’) these plants have been used widely in less formal plantings in the UK and beyond. 

Drifts of natural-looking plants evoke the combinations of plants found in nature

The New Perennial style, prairie plantings and drift planting all use this type of plant material, but such gardens need to be created on a large scale in order to succeed fully.  Meadows and ‘pictorial meadows’ are now equally engineered, and while we call them ‘naturalistic’ they are in no way natural – they are gardens, and as such are as much an artifice as a rose garden underplanted with catmint.  The fact that they emulate nature helps us to view them as ‘wild’, but in reality I think that they are emblematic of our current uneasy relationship with the natural world.

A roof garden in California - local flora massed for ornamental and ecological impact

While news regarding the environment is continually gloomy – climate change, deforestation and biodiversity issues continue to worsen it seems, no matter how much we say we want to make amends – we appear to be seeking a way of both salving our consciences as well as creating little bits of nature to return to from the pressures of the modern world.  That is what gardens have always been, of course, but the yearning to have a patch of ground that looks as though it could be a piece of unimproved nature seems to be getting stronger.  Seed mixes for meadows can be tweaked for their aesthetic value, and while they may help to improve biodiversity, a similar effect can be created in most traditional gardens by letting the lawn grow a bit weedy and leaving flowering stems to stand through the winter.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the new styles of naturalistic meadows and prairies, engineered plant communities and green roofs – I just don’t think we should fool ourselves that we are making anything less artificial than a traditional garden.  The biggest benefits come from the maintenance regimes we adopt, and these can become wildlife-friendly no matter what our preferred style of gardening.  The danger of ‘going wild’ is that, in small spaces, any sense of underlying structure is lost, and gardens lack focus.  On an appropriately large scale there is still scope for areas of naturalistic planting within an established layout.

Gardening with a light touch - drifts of plausibly 'native' plants in a woodland setting

Dan Pearson reflected yesterday that he hopes, in large areas of his new garden, to allow nature to have the upper hand – by careful editing, restrained addition and sympathetic management he aims to create his garden from what is there, on the ground.  Perhaps this is as close as we will get to a truly naturalistic garden  – but it will still be a garden.

Paul Ridley Design