GARDEN HISTORY
LOOK BACK, THINK FORWARD
HISTORICISM
Garden design in the 1980s was in thrall to historicism. How-to books on ‘Period Gardens’ cemented the trend inspired by Roy Strong’s commissioned exhibition, The Garden: A Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening, at the V&A Museum in 1979, lamenting the destruction of our historic gardens. Tudorbethan formality and ‘heritage’ plants were the rage, ranging from the grand schemes of Lady Salisbury at Hatfield House to individual elements such as knot gardens. Accuracy was not the goal, though serious
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scholarship informed subsequent major restoration schemes. Historicism continues to please and provide period notes in many gardens today.
SMART GARDENS
Historicism was the mother of a style which gardening writer Tim Richardson dubbed ‘smart gardens’. Still popular and evolving today, it was based on an Arts & Crafts template but brushed with a tonal colour scheme, often set against a framework of green, white and silver. Box-edged beds, topiary, lollipop standards, formal pools, herringbone paths, painted trellis, obelisks and stone balls, a perfect mown lawn with an informal orchard on the side and a potager, are all recognisable stalwarts. Nostalgia, serenity and bounty – this is a style that has never gone out of fashion, epitomising the much-admired English Country look. If there is to be a competition from the last 40 years for longevity and popularity, I think I would place my bet here.
ROOM OUTSIDE
The integration of interior and exterior in our urban gardens has been a major thread of the period. In his seminal book, Room Outside (published in 1969), designer John Brookes spoke to a broad demographic, demonstrating how garden design, based on modern
Image: GAP Photos/Jerry Harpur
G
arden history is a slow old business, but a lot has happened since the Society of Garden Designers was formed in 1981, making its 40th anniversary a great moment to stop and review the period. The over-riding theme has been the tension between tradition and modernity; a post-war leitmotif which continues to inform our cultural life. Many designers will have created a personal idiom combining different motifs, which they continue to develop. The following brief survey is inevitably reductive but it will, I hope, highlight that garden history brings another dimension to the pleasures of a garden and can contribute to the future through a reading of the past.
Angelica is a garden historian, writer and designer who is fascinated by gardens as cultural artefacts. She is the author of Gardens of Marrakesh (Frances Lincoln) and has recently collaborated with the Society of Garden Designers to produce A brief history of British garden design, an illustrated poster that outlines 2,000 years of our rich garden culture.
Image: GAP Photo/Neil Holmes
The Society of Garden Designers has turned 40 years old, and British garden design has evolved and developed over that period, from styles that paid tribute to the past to distinctly forwardthinking ideas. Here, garden historian Angelica Gray tracks the past four decades of progress
ANGELICA GRAY
