When a recent Instagram post on how to edit self-seeders by Marianne sparked some design push back by Anne , they moved the exchange to email to wrangle over it in more depth. The resulting [long] conversation re: mulch, self-seeders, gardening visiting, and design seemed worthy to share here in three parts (with links & headings), as it is a testament to the importance of discussion — particularly when you don’t agree.
Interested readers are encouraged to continue the conversation in comments.
Anne begins the exchange bewildered that Marianne adds and edits so many plants in her garden each year…
Anne:
I suspect we just have totally different preoccupations with gardening. I want a garden, as good and as easy as possible. So I’m not interested much in pruning, grafting, seed sowing (except for something special), staking and so on.
Marianne:
I’m not particularly interested in grafting, but I am extremely interested in seed sowing, new crosses, very much pruning, and plants in general, I guess. I do have my limits though — there are many plant people who are far more obsessed than I am, and I rarely enjoy those gardens, because design is completely thrown out the window and the aim is often the possessing of a plant rather than its health and overall place in the garden.
That’s next-level obsession. I was actually thinking of putting together a post, entitled Torn Between Plants and Design. I suspect you are not torn?
Quick snap of a piece of the garden today – there’s at least 20 taxa in that small space. Not including weeds. (Anne — I find that rather hard to enjoy) (Marianne — Well, maybe if that damned Bartzella would bloom like it should.)
Anne:
I’m not. I am fascinated by plants, but basically for how I can use them in the garden to enhance the design. However, I’m as susceptible as anyone to something sweet and special for the conservatory.
I shouldn’t make assumptions about you – but you do go to learn at a highly labour-intensive garden.
On Great Dixter
Marianne:
I find myself extremely energized by the creative energy that is harnessed at Great Dixter, but more than that — the infectious joy that Fergus Garrett takes in orchestrating the planting. Those of us who are naturally cynical are fascinated by those who naturally aren’t.
Well at least I am, though I doubt the reverse is true – why would one want to be more cynical?
The richness of plant diversity is exciting. It’s a celebration of plants within a historic framework. I’m just as fascinated by other gardens doing the same thing.
Anne:
That’s an interesting take re cynicism and Dixter. I’m not sure about it – I warm mostly to people who are fundamentally honest and fascinated by the world as it is. (big subject?!) But mostly I am informed by a very disappointing visit to Dixter in July last year:
Marianne:
Yes. Big Subject. And that describes Fergus Garrett to a tee BTW. You should invite him to The Veddw for a beer on that beautiful daisy lawn. Charles would charm him and then you could challenge him.
Anne:
That would be great.
I think two or three generations have taken a good basic design at Dixter, made by someone else and then stuffed it with plants.
Marianne:
I’m absolutely okay with Great Dixter stuffed with plants. Though I will admit that there are areas where plants go overboard and overwhelm people more than they charm them. And other places where a path whose width is adequate and charming in spring is no longer as charming in summer.
But first impressions matter, I get it, and this can be a problem because visitors may not come back, and they’ll miss so much of what Dixter has to offer. I know a couple of garden designers who feel similarly to you about this. Swedish designer Johanna Antonsson posted her concerns on an Instagram post 26 May — except I felt her reel of frothy borders and soft, wild, textures (not to mention birdsong) undermined her argument. LOL.
However, I don’t think design suffers because you can’t always see the bones of it. I love that softening — I think it enhances the design. Too many clean lines bore the absolute pants off of me. Which is the politest way I can say that. There’s got to be a balance.
My kind of jungle
It’s also a seasonal thing. Your photo of the long border through the meadow grass is unflattering to be sure, but it captures the grasses and orchids in seed and just before their August cut. There’s going to be a good 4-5 weeks when the area looks either a) brown or b) scalped; but that allows them to create an incredible tapestry of orchids, flowers and grasses during the other weeks of the growing season.
It’s a decent trade off I think. We’re not talking about a growing season characterized by brown (as Susan pointed out in this post recently). Surely your meadow is not always picture perfect?
Anne
Strangely, and I’m not sure just why, it never looks as grim as that. That may be ecological and out of their control. In fact, the bit by their entrance is happier:
Marianne
I’ll counter your photos with a few of my own at Great Dixter, taken in May and beginning with the spotted orchids that have exponentially multiplied because the brown times were tolerated:
Not the best light, but showing the ‘tidy’ mown edge of the meadow. You were standing looking up at this scene.
Better light.
Invites a quiet walk. Looking directly opposite from where you took your July shot — down into the meadow.
End of day. Looking to the left of where you took your shot.
On Plants vs. Design
Anne:
It is a plant jungle, is the problem.
Without going into detail, your photos didn’t do much for me. And, living in a part of the UK specialising in ancient meadows I’d say that theory regarding orchids doesn’t quite ring true. But, as I said, that’s maybe botany beyond me.
The overboard didn’t just mean we couldn’t see the design, it meant we often couldn’t see anything but plant stems and hardly move. (Marianne: Fair enough — this is certainly true in the Exotic Garden.)
The fact that so many people love it rather depresses me – I would wish for appreciation of design enhanced, rather than smothered. And it indicates how many gardeners are basically simply interested in plants.
Marianne:
What a terrible thing – gardeners interested in plants. No seriously Anne, you’re making me chuckle.
We’re definitely seeing this differently. It would be wonderful to walk through with you so I could see where our sensibilities merged and where they diverged, because I know they would. Like we did at the Wye Valley Sculpture Garden at Tintern, when we sat on the hillside and talked about the garden, garden writing, and other subjects.
The scene of much chatter.
But hang on, why on earth would other people loving this kind of mad celebration of plants depress you? Just because you don’t feel called to that kind of garden doesn’t make it wrong. Surely there is room for more than one sensibility? De gustibus, etc.
Anne:
Being depressed about something isn’t making it wrong. I simply wish there was less desire for plants and the acquisition of plants and more appreciation and desire for beauty of expression and design in gardens. To see more people step back and look when visiting Veddw rather than peer at individual plants.
Marianne:
Damn, you would hate my garden. I’ll ply you with wine if you come.
Anne:
Good!
Strange that people also admire Rousham, which is in the critical part rather flowerless. No-one explains this.
Marianne:
It’s a completely different animal. I am grounded and calmed by Rousham because it allows you to walk at once through a simple garden space and yet be in the countryside — always reminding you here and there that you are indeed in a garden.
It is vast, and you feel that vastness and are moved by the synthesis of garden and country and history. It would be very different in miniature in a smaller garden setting. It might bore the pants off me there.
The Rill at Rousham. Copyright Charles Hawes.
The Pool at Rousham. Copyright Charles Hawes.
Anne:
There are lots of Landscape gardens like that in the UK, I think. (I have a theory that they were intended to be seen from horseback or a carriage, which creates a whole different view of them.) And – Marianne! – most people don’t think much of the flowery bits, do they?!
Rose garden at Rousham
Marianne:
No, on the whole, one doesn’t go to Rousham for the flowers, though they are there if needed in the large walled garden which originally served the house with vegetables and cut flowers. (And I think, still does.) I had one tour guest last year who took little joy in the intensely focused design of that astounding rill, and loved the walled garden.
It’s a perfect example of the two functions of a garden — sustenance and high art. They could close that part off and it would “make sense,” but why do that when so many would love to see it and think little of the Rousham big picture? Big pictures aren’t for everyone.
Anne:
Even I (ha!) can see it’s right out of the spirit and should be just for veg and picking. I agree, the cognoscenti don’t go to Rousham for the flowers and veggies. That doesn’t mean that part should be closed off, just that it isn’t what people admire about the place.
Marianne:
Cognoscenti. Love that. Can you and I join, or is it by secret invitation only?
Actually, nevermind. We’d only end up getting ourselves thrown out.
Next time… Mulch and Veggies.
Fabulous !!
30+ years making a garden for newspapers, books, TV…… Understand ALL viewpoints mentioned, lived them.
Loving each layer added, taken away, brain waves & epiphanies galore.
Game changer health issue arrived. How to garden beautifully with little physical ability, on top of normal aging?
Studied historic gardens across Europe during 80’s – 90’s . Learned the perfect type garden to create, for Earth, and my physical ability. While still having great beauty, zero chemicals, and no loss of focal-points-on-axis .
Oddly enough, realized all this in a ‘flash’. A friend sent her X-husband to mow for me after hospital release, and he said something incredibly deep, wise, obvious, moments after arrival. “I won’t have anything that can’t be mowed or sprayed.”
Of course the clinch is what to spray. Took me a bit, but got the perfect safe-to-earth spray.
This fall, plantings commence; deer proof, drought proof after established, friendly to wildlife, varying heights, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks all year, scent, food for me/wildlife/insects/soil . Historic Garden Design shapes, forms, simplicities, focal points. And, I can mow it myself, John Deer riding mower.
Will get the plants and site them myself, hire the digging and placing focal points, from teenagers at my Church.
Having had gardens you’ve shot, above, which I still thrill to see, is no loss personally. Instead, embarking on best gardening era of my life.
Now it’s, ‘Onward & Upward’ !!!
“Onward and Upward in the Garden Paperback –
by Katherine S. White ”
Look forward to future articles in this series.
Aging and limited mobility has changed my gardening aesthetics also!
We need to hear more about this new garden of yours.
For the reference to “orchids,” is that Dactylorhiza maculata or fuschii? (Or something else?)
I believe it’s Dactylorhiza fuschii Linus.
Hard to tell – could be either!
Two different viewpoints and preferences. I have one part of my garden that, for my taste, is too wild and jumbled up, but a neighbor of mine commented on how they loved it. I still don’t and will probably make major adjustments in the Fall when it is much cooler, and after I have had time to figure out exactly what to do.
How will you refine it?
It is a rather large space along the front of my yard up against the sidewalk, then continues between the sidewalk and the street. This is one reason why many people like the space because it feels like they are walking through the garden. The hell strip as we call it has a number of perennials that flower like crazy most of the Summer. However, some of the plants don’t thrive in that clay soil, and those need to be replaced. Liriope has worked its way in and needs to be dug out. Evening Primroses have spread like crazy and every last one of them needs to be eliminated. The Day Lillies are pretty when they flower but are very ugly after that, so they are going away. That area mainly needs to be cleaned up and some plants replaced with ones that can thrive in that soil, and that can manage an occasional street flooding. One issue here though is the strip is only 18″ wide, so I end up with a strip of one flower here, then a strip of another kind next to it, and another kind next to that. I have found that I use a bushy type of plant between those strips it looks ok.
The other side of the sidewalk is the main garden. First to go are the Evening Primroses, if I can manage to get rid of them. A half-dead Crepe Myrtle is next, but again, those are hard to really get rid of as they keep coming up from roots. One large clump of grass that grows to 7 feet tall and plops to about 10 feet wide – out! Large Chinese Pink Fringe bush/tree – out. Four miniature Crepe Myrtles need to go. They are pretty when they flower but are overall not much to look at. Dead Knockout rose and one too close to the sidewalk are coming out. Then the pieces of Liriope that seem to pop up everywhere, as does Sea Oats. So much of this type of mess will require that I either dig up whole areas or I use very targeted sprays of herbicides.
Now, what goes back in. I have some Red Dogwoods and some Yellow Dogwoods that are native to the area. I know they can spread by runners, but I think I would like some clumps of them. I will be careful they don’t spread too much. I have some other potted native shrubs that I will also put in. Still need to plan beyond that.
The area has been somewhat neglected, and last year my need for three surgeries certainly did not help. But I am doing well this year, and I retire in two months so I should have a lot more time in the garden!
“Evening Primroses have spread like crazy and every last one of them needs to be eliminated”
Dixter was absolutely over ridden with the blighters!
Oh – a long strip is difficult. I think I’d just have two plants in harmony with each other there.
The rest – that’s practically a brand new garden! Good luck!
I wonder if this also applies to your interior spaces? Minimalist and maximalist.
Ooh that’s a great question Martha. I favor an extremely layered look indoors, but all very functional and lived in. I don’t want books artfully sitting on a coffee table, but books that are being read on the coffee table. Dark, rich colors on some of the walls like brick red or forest green, and other rooms lighter and airer depending on how the room functions. I don’t like so much clutter that I can’t use the room well or move about in the room. Light is important because I live in a valley.
Minimalist spaces intrigue me, and I do like the look of them, but I don’t think I could live in them. I am too attached to the interesting things that make me smile. Anne’s style is similar I think. – MW
You think of the contrast as max or minimalist? That doesn’t fit for me, really. But indoors is a bit dramatic and too cluttered!
That’s an interesting way of seeing it, and possibly some good truth there. I would say that comparatively speaking, your garden is a minimalist garden. Clean lines, strong features, modern feel, contained borders…. no?
Interesting, but my image of minimalist would be rather bleak and stark. Would anyone describe Sissinghurst as minimalist? = strong lines, generous, rough planting.
you experts can dither on about arcane issues…readers like myself just want to grow some damn flowers–that is why we read this blog, not to delve into theoretical arguments about all-expense paid super- gardens of the wealthy.
Sally – I think you’ve come to the wrong site. We’re supposed to avoid ‘how to’.
Though I have an uneasy feeling that the next joint effort might be a bit ‘how to’……
Whoops!
I found the examples used (of famous gardens I acknowledge) very good illustrations of the points made. I guess they could’ve used examples of their neighbors’ gardens, but since I haven’t seen them, and they’re not in any books that I know of, the examples would be less edifying. I also find this question of what makes good design to be relevant in my own garden, as well as every garden I visit, whether my neighbor’s or a garden that is well known (and possibly owned by someone wealthy).
It is interesting to read an expert discussion. My problem is spreaders: tradescantia, yellow corydalis, Japanese anemone, and daylily fulva. They all create disorder. A good read is “Green Light Toward an Art of Evolution” by George Gessert on wild versus controlled gardens.
Spreaders can make the backbone of a coherent, easy to care for garden. I love Japanese anemone and that wonderful daylily.
And I still can’t really decide whether we are wild or controlled at Veddw. It’s just that we do try to make it possible for our visitors to walk round the garden relatively unattacked by plants. Though we now have a short path which we call the Dixter path, in August.
I don’t think either of us would call ourselves ‘experts’ Harry, but thanks. We are both curious however, and enjoy discussion, wherever it leads. My difficult corydalis is the purple. Thank you for the book suggestion. – MW
The Victoria and Albert Museum had a 1979 exhibition, accompanied by a book, called—The Garden: A Thousand Years of British Gardening. If my memory serves me, there was NO mention of Capability Brown. He liked beautiful views, lawns, cattle in the distance and an occasional “Ha Ha” fence. Flowers were not an integral feature of his designs.
Yes. Landscape gardens tend to be very unflowery. But I would like to attempt one in a carriage.
Landscape gardening uses a different scale (size and time) to gardening. Both play with shape, texture and colour to affect mood. The mood of a plant filled jungle is different from a strictly applied design ethos, just different. Not better or worse. I expect I come down on the “plant a holic ” side, but use repetition and structure so you don’t quite lose your reference point.
I understand that is the intention, but my mood is so much my own and hard to manipulate. Just as I resist being ‘made to think’ (a popular conceit esp in show gardens) too.
And, just to be difficult, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we suddenly broke free of all our liberal constraints and said – of something (!) : THIS is best!
Never! It’s simply far too subjective — subject to taste, trends, societal pressure & genus loci – what the space asks of the garden. And most of the time we are comparing apples and oranges. Go ahead, compare Rousham to Great Dixter or Sissinghurst as to which one’s ‘best.’ I don’t think it’s possible. They are different. (I’m using British garden references because you haven’t visited gardens in the States.)
Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ of a banana taped to a wall sold for $6 million, applauded by experts — and a friend of mine just bought a pair of expensive French vases (against my sage advice) that I think make good loo brush holders. Taste is subjective. I believe we can fault parts of the design for not fully realizing the vision of the designer or of the type of garden it could be for the space it inhabits, but ‘best?’ I can’t go there. xo – MW
Ah, we are to suspend our painful judgments. This leads us to – not even ‘better’ ?
Everyone will win prizes.
Better I will give you –absolutely. But within a certain aesthetic. Apples to apples. – MW
This requires further discussion. You can’t eliminate comparative evaluation just because two places are different. We just, rather superficially, had such a discussion about Dixter and Rousham.
For example – would you consider it worth discussing your comment ‘the two functions of a garden — sustenance and high art’ in relation to two such different gardens and debate how well they had achieved both? (or neither) Even apples and oranges have an enormous amount in common and could be evaluated in many different ways.
I concur.
Your discussion comes at the right moment for me. I’ve been fretting about self-seeding plants that appear where I don’t think they add anything and indeed subtract. Of course, like others, I’m not able to “edit” while recovering from surgery (and aging). Looking forward to the next episode!
Good. It’s all about (well, a bit of it is) how to eliminate that self seeding stuff!
Amen.
It’s frowned upon when you yank people around by the hair, but by golly, you can do it to your boisterous spreaders/self seeders, and I LOVE IT. Since I have a very small plot in CT suburbia (50 ‘ x 150’!), I don’t mind ripping out some mountain mint, obedient plant, bee balm, great blue lobelia, etc. I don’t know if this is due to aging, but I find that bending down to plant makes me dizzy, so I much prefer editing to planting. As a plant lover, I thankfully have learned that it really does make the garden more pleasing if there is SOME rhyme or reason to it. I once admired the garden of a neighbor on the next street, a master gardener, but now I see that she suffers from “Plant Collector-itis” and her garden really lacks cohesion. It’s just one unusual plant next to another, and it is not pleasing to my eye, although I drool over individual specimens.
People say that things are just subjective or personal, but tastes can be educated and refined. As you demonstrate here.
Now that you say it, I have never liked Great Dixter either (from afar because I haven’t been). Maybe because I dislike the almost aggressive masculinity of its mythos. There’s an element of received wisdom around its reputation that intrinsically repulses, sort of like having a book by David Foster Wallace recommended to me. He has enough worshipers without my prayers. Ironically, I do darkly enjoy some of Christopher Lloyd’s anti-intellectualism when it comes to gardening. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a well designed garden.
I am pretty early in my gardening career, so my desire for many different kinds of plants is based in novelty–I won’t deny that. I’m also finding that propagation is what I love, at least right now, and experiencing all stages of plants, but especially the beginnings of and multiplication of their lifeforms. I would hardly call myself a gardener, actually. “Amateur Plantsman” may be more appropriate. My garden is barely designed and once things get planted out, I almost lose interest. My husband is the one who wanders around the garden, photographing things as they bloom, and pointing them out to me. I’m delighted when the plants thrive *in* my garden–what a happy accident!–but usually I’m concerned with the results of my propagation experiments and creating abundance in my own little nursery. I enjoy the regularity of the modular pots and the repetition of neat infant plants in them. My neighbors always ask if I’m having a plant sale but I haven’t yet.
My approach is based on the realities of the gardening space that I have: it is a small, very shady garden mostly on the north side of my very tall old house with mature trees (oaks, copper beech) surrounding. I could plan and design the space all I want, but even supposedly shade tolerant plants and shrubs often fail to thrive. I have a little sun on one side of the house in my driveway, where I have my nursery. My love of propagation is rewarding because I always have more plants to “reload” the garden when some fail and the driveway is simply a more fruitful laboratory than the garden. I like pushing the boundaries of what might work and will gleefully plant a drift of full-sun plants, just in case they do live. It would be prohibitively expensive for me to garden like this if I had to buy all the slow-growing shade plants that I wanted. Plus, if the full sun ones die, then they die! Very little lost and I did possess them, if only for a moment.
One day I may get tired of seedlings, cuttings of all sorts, making something out of seemingly nothing, etc. It might be when I find all the very good plants that do stick to my particular garden’s canvas. I have already grown mostly tired of buying plants already mature in pots at retail nurseries– it feels like cheating, or missing out on much of the fun. Tangential, but I particularly cringe at the use of powered augers in small gardens, although that may be my sandy-soil privilege talking.
I do think people like me must exist for better gardeners who are an expert at design to exist. I’m hoping a few actual gardeners might adopt me (or let me adopt them) so my plants can have homes because I cannot continue at this pace. I have an eye on a neighbor’s garden with this in mind. But perhaps I will graduate to being able to cultivate beauty at some point?
That is a new take on me. I cannot imagine Dixter as an aggressive entity of any sort — in fact the opposite is true these days, it is a lead-by-example, not by recrimination or shame, type of garden. At the same time it is also a teaching garden, and many public gardens are not.
But your words make me curious Catherine – do you equally dislike Sissinghurst for the aggressive feminism inherent in its story (or mythos if you prefer)?
Your propagation dilemmas make me happy to hear — I too grow too many plants without enough spaces to place them. You must be a born nurserywoman! – MW
I had a friend who was obsessed with propagation and she was an enormous help to me in my early days, providing me with free plants. You may have found your metier?
Having spent a lovely week there from practically dawn to dusk, I must disagree. Dixter is soft, romantic, poetic, just as it is energetic and bold.There is no sense of aggressive masculinity on any level. Much of the natural bent of the property came from Christo’s mother Daisy. Today, many feminine perspectives play a role in the care and direction of this beautiful place, so I just can’t see where you are coming from. You may not appreciate all of the garden, but as a person who enjoys propagation, you might fall in love with their onsite nursery. It is a delightful place to wander.
Was replying to Catherine
I couldn’t agree more Jenny – glad you enjoyed the symposium. We’ll have to compare notes on the Cornwall trip in September. – MW
What a delightful article – I enjoyed reading this so much! I’ve never really thought about “design vs. plants,” is that odd? I suppose I let my tastes dictate what goes into a garden and let it evolve, and I confess to having a plant habit, as well as a way of creating more gardens. A neighbor and gardening pal calls me a garden choreographer. I have a color scheme in my front cottage garden: whites, purples, corals, pinks, blacks, and blues. No orange, red, or yellow is allowed. Any garden thugs that threaten to take over are yanked: Bellflower, Japanese Anemone, and Salvia Black and Blue are the worst offenders. I am a passionate and long-time gardener, but still learning and never finished. So good to see Tara above, whom I am betting is Tara Dillard – I run across her in other blogs and miss her own writing.
There you are, indeed, Judith – using plants in a special way to develop a design.
As a suburban home gardener, I’ve been waffling between these viewpoints for years. I was once called a “collector” by a landscaper who gave me a design, in which I promptly gave him a new list of plants. That was many years ago. I then read cover to cover several times Plant Driven Design by Scott Ogden and Laura Springer Ogden, and now I cannot look at a plant without optimizing its features in my landscape and I think that optimization is glorious in large swaths and seasonal beds.
Large swathes – makes my heart sing!
I really enjoyed reading your very polite exchange! I personally don’t think that this is an either/or question, that I have to choose between having an abundance of plants, and great variety of flowering plants interspersed in smaller groups, and having good design. This seems more a question of personal taste to me, as long as the garden has a strong structure (whether formal, or highly naturalistic, or anything in between), is “of the place,” suitable to the climate and local conditions, and has a degree of harmonious proportion, scale and balance. I acknowledge that an open, quietly planted area might.felicitously precede or follow a part of the garden where all is full, colorful, abundant and exciting, but to my mind, that is balance.
It’s a plethora of individual plants all messed together in one bed that I find hard to look at. (Hm – wonders whether there is such a thing lurking at Veddw……)
Ah but you see, they are not individual plants. They are usually in groups of a least 3 and usually more like 5+. And how many is too much? And who decides that? You’ve got at least three different (and I bet a few others) in the Euphorbia grifithii/ground elder/lysimachia bed. What happens when the delightful interloper shows up? No I’m not talking about me in September. -MW
We’re not even talking about in what sort of size of space. Have we finally lost it?
This whole discussion has so many possible threads leading so many directions! I think you will have to keep up this interchange through several more exchanges!
Just to throw in another and expand on some of the other comments, at Westminster dog show, I believe they are called upon to judge apples and oranges/different dog breeds, and I believe they do so by assessing/ranking each dog against others of its kind or breed e.g. best terrier or corgi according to breed standards, and deciding whether the terrier or the corgi comes closest to perfection for that breed. If it were not done in this way, and the judges simply chose the one they liked best based on personal taste, you might wonder why we have judges! Expertise has to come in somewhere. As there are no absolute criteria for best Arts and Crafts/best Landscape style/best naturalistic garden, I would tentatively argue that regarding gardens,, once you get to the level of extremely good in any category, what is left is making an argument for your own personal favorite as the best! To the extent that a garden is idealized nature, that ideal will vary according to the viewer.
Excellent point.
I think it’s time we stopped saying every garden is lovely and it’s all personal taste and began to establish some criteria for merit in different gardens. Let’s take gardens seriously.