The SGD at 40

LOOK BACK, THINK FORWARD

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

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

Garden 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.

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 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

Image: GAP Photos/J S Sira

Image: GAP Photos/Jerry Harpur

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP

LEFT: Old Palace Garden at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire; Italian-style sunken garden, by Thomas Hoblyn MSGD for RHS Chelsea 2012; Modernist-inspired garden by Amir Schlezinger, MyLandscapes; garden room by Tony Woods MSGD, Garden Club London; water feature at Tintinhull, Somerset, by Penelope Hobhouse.

Image: GAP Photos/Joanna Kossak

principles, could transform a small garden into another family room for dining and leisure. This gained currency in the 1980s and 1990s, going into overdrive with the arrival of TV ‘makeover’ series such as Ground Force (1997–2005). By 2010 an outdoor kitchen, firepit, lounge-style furniture and ‘architectural’ plants had become must-haves for many.

MODERNISM AND MINIMALISM

Contemporary design is not without heritage either; its roots go back at least a century, to an architectural idiom which, rejecting historicism, represented a more democratic way of living. Modern Movement buildings are rare in Britain but the clean-lined and abstract garden style they inspired became the height of cool for urbanites from the late 1980s. Terrence Conran was a celebrity fan: his book, The Essential Garden Book (ipublished in 1998), co-authored by the young Dan Pearson, showed how it was done. Minimalism distilled the aesthetic, embodying a kind of cerebral spirituality associated with Zen Buddhism. Modernism continues to evolve but the incorporation of naturalistic planting ideas has marked the contemporary style of the past 10 years and given it a broader appeal which continues to develop today.

NATURALISTIC

The concept of ‘natural’ has changed throughout history. In gardening, today we think of it as mixed perennials and ornamental grasses, planted in communities to give a meadow-like, soft and romantic effect. The trend began in the 1980s, inspired by the flora of the Great Plains of America, but it was not until 1996 and the publication of Noel Kingsbury’s book, The New Perennial Garden, in which he illustrated the work of Piet Oudolf and the Dutch New Wave, that it began filtering into the British gardening world. The idiom is not easy to manage but it is visually appealing and over time, a more practical, hybrid look seems to have evolved. This incorporates an appreciation of the faded splendour of the late season and the positives of less tidying up.

ECOLOGY

Ecological responsibility has been a growing theme since the 1980s. Pioneer Beth Chatto led the way with her mantra, ‘right plant, right place’. The fashion for wild gardens, meadows, native plants, organic gardening and landscape as inspiration have all been in response to our environmental crisis. The carbon footprint of hard landscaping has come under scrutiny, along with the deleterious use of plastics. All of these concerns are affecting design today, but the ‘wild-is-best’ orthodoxy is not going unchallenged. Fergus Garrett has demonstrated in an audit at Great Dixter, that the traditional British horticultural approach with mixed borders and natural hard landscaping, if gardened organically and gently, can support an astonishing diversity of life.

THE NEXT BIG THING?

Our anthropocentric approach to the world is being rocked by science as we begin to really understand the intricacy of species interdependence. Climate change will bring huge horticultural challenges, and opportunities: the next 40 years will certainly be seen as a pivotal era. Designers make history every day and, together with clients, leave a legacy which tells a story. It is a responsibility and an investment in our shared future – which has never been more important.

BELOW: Oudolf Field garden by Piet Oudolf, at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset. BOTTOM LEFT: mixed borders at Cogshall Grange, by Tom Stuart-Smith MSGD. BOTTOM RIGHT: the Peacock Garden at Great Dixter.

Image: GAP Photos/Richard Bloom

Image (left): GAP Photos/Richard Bloom Image (right): GAP Photos/John Glover