Tom Turner's Blog, page 4
October 14, 2017
Wanstead Park proposed regeneration, restoration and Ghost
This Wanstead Park footpath suggests an easy way of marking the lines of the old axial lines on the forest floor
Wanstead Park used to be one of the greatest late-Baroque gardens in England. It survives with half the land used as a golf course and the other hand cared for by the City Corporation, which merits its great reputation as a benevolent land owner and manager. Wanstead was purchased as part of Epping Forest in the 1880s. It is now managed as what might be called a forest park. Could it restored? Should it be restored? The Friends of Wanstead Park have a good answer: ‘In recent years the Friends of Wanstead Parklands and the City of London Corporation have formed a partnership to reveal the ancient landscape and make the park more accessible to the local communities and those from further afield’.
The Ghost of Wanstead Park
But what would this involve? With no great house, a different use, no significant resources and only half the site, it can’t go back to the early 18th century? My suggestion is to celebrate The Ghost of Wanstead Park. This is how she might look. Her face is gone forever. Her shadow sleeps on the forest floor.
To give her life, I suggest:
placing a structure at both ends of the main axis, to give her eyes
sharpening the edges of the main axis, which is formed by trees and by the edges of the canal
placing logs on the forest floor to mark the positions of the old axes
The two plans, below, show the Wanstead Park in its prime and Wanstead Park with a Ghost sleeping on the forest floor for the curious to meet.
Plans of Wanstead Park with proposed Ghost
Wanstead Park proposed regenoration – restoration
This Wanstead Park footpath suggests an easy way of marking the lines of the old axial lines on the forest floor
Wanstead Park used to be one of the greatest late-Baroque gardens in England. It survives with half the land used as a golf course and the other hand cared for by the City Corporation, which merits its great reputation as a benevolent land owner and manager. Wanstead was purchased as part of Epping Forest in the 1880s. It is now managed as what might be called a forest park. Could it restored? Should it be restored? The Friends of Wanstead Park have a good answer: ‘In recent years the Friends of Wanstead Parklands and the City of London Corporation have formed a partnership to reveal the ancient landscape and make the park more accessible to the local communities and those from further afield’.
The Ghost of Wanstead Park
But what would this involve? With no great house, a different use, no significant resources and only half the site, it can’t go back to the early 18th century? My suggestion is to celebrate The Ghost of Wanstead Park. This is how she might look. Her face is gone forever. Her shadow sleeps on the forest floor.
To give her life, I suggest:
placing a structure at both ends of the main axis, to give her eyes
sharpening the edges of the main axis, which is formed by trees and by the edges of the canal
placing logs on the forest floor to mark the positions of the old axes
The two plans, below, show the Wanstead Park in its prime and Wanstead Park with a Ghost sleeping on the forest floor for the curious to meet.
Plans of Wanstead Park with proposed Ghost
October 11, 2017
Stourhead is a great English landscape garden
Stourhead Landscape Garden has a good claim to being ‘England’s greatest landscape garden’. Though changed, as all gardens must change, it retains much of its eighteenth century character. Tour operators are right to make it a priority in English garden tours.
Henry Hoare’s aim was to recreate the landscape of antiquity. Not having too clear an idea of what it looked like, he turned to the great landscape painters of Italy, including Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin.
In the Great Gardens postcard, below and at the start of the video, the plan of Stourhead is on the left and the garden design style diagram it represents is on the right. The Gardenvisit.com style chart shows this style in its historic position. Stourhead owes much to Augustan ideas.
Great English Garden postcard of Stourhead, showing the garden plan and the garden design style
October 3, 2017
English lawns in 1964
Lawn and Adirondack Chair (Guardian, 1964)
The Guardian has just reprinted a 1964 article on lawns by Moira Savonius, who also wrote books on fungi and on flowers. She sees lawns as a ‘cult’. My impression is that grass cutting has declined in public parks and stately homes but that the area they occupy in private gardens is but slightly diminished – and maybe not at all if you allow for fact that motor mowers were , relatively, much more expensive in 1964 and so many more people ‘neglected’ their grass in the suburbs. A curious feature of the black and white photo accompanying the article is the Adirondack Chair – I believe they were most uncommon in 1960s Britain.
October 2, 2017
The Promenade Plantee predates the Highline
The Promenade Plantee is older than the Highline and is spatially more varied
I wonder why the Highline in New York City has become much more famous than its older predecessor, the Promenade Plantee in Paris. I don’t think it’s a consequence of the design, the location or the scenic quality. Could the explanation be an application of triumphal American marketing to the Highline? Or does the Highline have more oomph? Paris is fast becoming a cycling city and the Promenade offers a great ride.
See also: Garden Tours in France
October 1, 2017
Not too late for a garden tour to the Italian lakes
Villa Balbianello on Lake Como in Italy
Still desperate for a garden tour in 2017? I recommend the Italian Lakes. Villa Del Balbianello is on a wooded peninsula projecting into Lake Como. It was built in 1787, on the site of a Fransiscan monastery, by Cardinal Angelo Durini. Steps lead from the landing stage into a terraced garden with a beautiful loggia. It was renovated by the American General Butler Amos and given to the Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano (FAI) in 1988. This guidebook to the gardens of the Italian Lakes is also recommended.
November 11, 2016
Donald Trump unveils new White House garden design
Golden opportunity for garden design lover
The design objectives were to make fellow Americans feel great about themselves, to restore women to their proper place in American life and to show that the garden of the White House can serve a higher purpose than Michelle Obamacare for sustainable vegetables. The designer is believed to have been recommended by a Mr Putin who has an important position in Russia and good taste in golden statues of bimbos.
A cub journalist working for Gardenvisit.com was invited to be a judge on the internal competition for redesigning the garden of the Trump White House in Washington DC. She was flattered but turned down the opportunity when required to wear a gold bikini.
July 12, 2016
Michelham Priory Medieval Garden
Michelham Priory Garden is a delightfully tranquil moated manor house in East Sussex. What I like most about it is the recreated medieval garden. And what I like most about the medieval garden is the ‘flowery mead’ and the turf seats. Our knowledge of Michelham – and of medieval gardens in general – is not enough to say whether or not the details are accurate. But, to me, these details feel right and this is not a feeling I have about comparable recreations, either by the Garden History Museum or National Trust. Nor do I have this feeling about cathedral cloister garths. They are all managed with lawn mowers and this device was invented in 1830. The usual problem with medieval recreations is that their designers are muddled about the differences between medieval, renaissance and baroque gardens. So they use clipped hedges, which were a baroque feature, to make renaissance-style knot gardens. It does not make sense!
The ‘flowery mead’ in Michelham Priory Medieval Garden
June 2, 2016
Capability Brown: Lenses on a Landscape Genius Exhibition 22 June – 29 July 2016
Capability Brown designed the landscape park at Blenheim Palace
The Landscape Foundation has organised an exhibition of photographs of Capability Brown’s work. It will be on show at the Building Centre, Store Street, London WC1E 7BT, from 22 June to 29 July.
Brown’s reputation has been in flux. Sky-high at the time of his death and at the time of his 300th centenary, in 2016, it had a profound slump from late 18th century to the early 20th century. For artists and novelists, this is not uncommon and re-examinations can be done by examining their original works. For works of landscape architecture, this is scarcely possible, because they are in constant change. So a photographic exhibition is an excellent idea. We can examine Brown’s work at one point in time.
See also
Capability Brown in Kent – book review by Tom Turner
Was Lancelot Capability Brown a landscape designer of genius?
June 1, 2016
Capability Brown in Kent – book review by Tom Turner
Capability Brown in Kent, published by the Kent Gardens Trust, is available from Amazon
Congratulations to Kent Gardens Trust for producing a book on Lancelot Capability Brown’s work in Kent. Despite there being little of his work in Kent, the content is interesting and the book is very nicely produced. I particularly commend the editors for their use of plans. Far too many ‘garden history’ books make no use of plans. Instead, they use long descriptions of garden designs that are hard to read and must have been difficult to write. Using plans is so much better. They can be understood at a glance and they let the reader make comparisons between what the designer intended, shown on historical plans, and the present condition of the gardens. The present day plans in this book (by Liz Logan and Rowan Blaik) were done using OpenData from the Ordnance Survey. It is great that the OS allows their data to be used in this way – I wish Google and Bing allowed satellite maps to be used in a similar fashion. There is much to be learned from air photography.
The gardens analysed in the book are:
Ingress
Leeds Abbey
Valence
Chilham Castle
North Cray Place
As the editors state, they were relatively small-scale projects. Yet ‘though they may not be amongst the most significant, but they do provide some highly valuable insights which help broaden our understanding of his work’. As a contribution to Brown scholarship, this book makes a most-welcome advance with its use of contours on plans. Brown had no effective way of representing landform on his own plans despite it being one of his main design considerations. This is one of the factors which make his own drawings both puzzling and disappointing.
It would be good if the detailed research in this book could be used to restore some of Brown’s Kentish planting.
The 1857 estate map shows a recognisably Brownian design, with the design concept much more intelligible when seen with the contours on the Kent Gardens Trust Map (right)
