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Bringing nature into the twentieth-century city
By Susannah Charlton
A new book by the Twentieth Century Society charts the development of gardens and landscapes from 1914 to the present. It invites us to look afresh at 20th-century gardens and landscapes, setting some of that era’s most famous gardens alongside the less celebrated but arguably more important landscapes which shape our everyday lives. The book’s co-editor Susannah Charlton writes about how the visionaries, designers and landscape architects of the last century brought nature into the city.
The 20th century saw gardens break the boundaries of previous centuries. No longer the sole preserve of the privileged, gardens infiltrated the city as more people gained their own personal plot, tall buildings were topped with roof gardens and landscape designers applied their talents to landscaping new towns and housing estates rather than rural rolling acres.
Over the century, ideals and strategies about how to combine buildings and the natural world have evolved, from garden cities early in the century, through post-war new towns and landscaped housing estates, to the renaissance of urban parks in recent years.
A century ago Ebenezer Howard founded Welwyn Garden City which embodies his concept of a ‘marriage of town and country’, with the land held in trust 1 to avoid speculation. Although founded by Howard, the overall plan and landscaping were masterminded by Louis de Soissons. Welwyn Garden City Trust archivist Angela Eserin describes how he retained existing trees and selected over 100 new species to put nature at the heart of the new city: Lombardy poplars, not buildings, provide height in the grand views afforded by the formal Beaux Arts town centre. The two wide central roads not only have double avenues of lime trees separating people from traffic, but also lawns and rose beds. The more intimate closes of housing have open front gardens, hedges and distinctive tree planting in each area, giving a countryside feel.
Conceived as a ‘Forest City’, Otto Saumarez Smith sees Telford New Town as an astonishingly ambitious response to the scars of previous industrialisation. It was developed from 1968 in an area famous as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, blighted with disused mine shafts, derelict pools and colliery spoil. The Development Corporation planted over five million trees, undertook massive earth moulding projects and created a 450-acre (182.1 ha) park at its centre, transforming flooded clay pits into ornamental lakes.
But what of those who lived in the Big Smoke? Whereas Hampstead Garden Suburb offered a rustic idyll at the edge of the city, modernist architects envisioned new ways of living, with a different relationship between the building and the landscape. John Allan emphasises how Berthold Lubetkin’s design for Highpoint (1935-38), famed for its modernist architecture, was conceived as a composition of buildings and site ‘that together represent the most complete realisation of a particular urban planning model – compact apartments in a recreational landscape offering an idealised vision of modern living’.
Dolphin Square (1935) set sophisticated flats around gardens by the pioneering landscape architect Richard Sudell, who used native plants from different countries to create discrete areas adapted to their microclimate. While celebrating the survival of most of the gardens, Clare Price warns of development proposals which threaten parts of them, even though they are registered Grade II.
The Alton Estates (1952-61), designed by the London County Council Architect’s Department, fuse Modern Movement architecture with a picturesque landscape: the grounds of war-damaged Victorian villas and rolling parkland partly designed by Capability Brown. Suzanne Waters grew up there and recalls childhood memories of a ha-ha separating where she lived at Alton West from a golf course.
At Alexandra Road Park (1977-80), Neave Brown and Janet Jack created a unique integration of landscape and architectural design. Sarah Couch describes the whole surface of the site as ‘a sculpted landscape that relies on strong geometric design, complex levels, generous planting for wind shelter and a consistent approach to hard landscape detailing to create an unusually dense and intricate park.’ It exemplifies the mid-century approach to design and social inclusion.
Highpoint.
© John East
Welwyn Garden City.
© John East
Golden Lane Estate roof garden.
© Steve Smith
Derry and Toms roof gardens.
© John East
There is something undeniably glamorous and quintessentially urban about a roof garden: being surrounded by lush plants and trees while looking out over a city skyline is a hard combination to beat.
Sarah Rutherford and Sarah Couch worked on the restoration of the spectacular roof garden designed by Ralph Hancock for Derry & Tom’s department store in Kensington High Street, West London (1936-38). At 1.48 acres, it was the largest of its type in the world, paralleled only by Hancock’s roof gardens for the Rockefeller Centre in New York. Its Spanish Garden comes complete with a Moorish folly, pergola, canal and fountain, while the central woodland garden supports large trees and exotic planting around a stream. Lunettes in the brick wall allow long views over London’s skyline, while eye-catching flamingos add a final flamboyant touch.
At the Golden Lane estate in London (1952-63) Peter Chamberlin designed a roof garden on top of Great Arthur House, featuring a pool and pergola and great views over the city. His colleague Geoffry Powell said of the estate: ‘We have no desire to make the project look like a garden suburb.’
Derry and Toms roof gardens.
© John East
Geoffrey Jellicoe was commissioned to design a roof garden for Harvey’s Store in Guildford (now House of Fraser) in 1956. Barbara Simms says the resulting design for a café and water garden was ‘inspired by a Sputnik then circling the earth and was intended to mimic the first view of earth from space. Jellicoe described it as ‘a sky garden’ that united heaven and earth.’
The roof garden of No 1 Poultry (1996), overlooking Mansion House at the heart of the City of London, is far more urbane in its conception. The design incorporates three elements: a formal terrace of lawns and clipped box at the prow of the building, two restaurant terraces with perimeter shrub planting, and a circular walled garden with planting that evokes ancient Crete. Chris Sumner, quotes designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd as saying it was ‘an example of how these kinds of gestures can radically change the face of our cities’. Such gestures have become far more common as architects are increasingly aware of the ecological and financial benefits of incorporating green space in and on their buildings.
A photograph of the remarkable garden created by Derek Jarman at Prospect Cottage (1986) was chosen as our cover image long before we knew of the Art Fund’s campaign to save it. This place exemplifies the vulnerability of a garden that has lost its original creator. One of the motivations for the book was to draw attention to the need for more protection for 20th-century gardens and landscapes, many of which form ensembles with outstanding post- 1914 buildings. The C20 Society has campaigned successfully to protect such ensembles, including the exceptionally accomplished landscape of the RMC head office (Edward Cullinan Studio, 1990, Surrey) and the important design by Professor Arnold Weddle for the 25-acre grounds of the Pearl Centre (1992, Peterborough). The Society also works closely on this issue with the Gardens Trust, statutory consultee for gardens and landscapes, most recently on their project to propose significant 20th-century examples for addition to the Register of Parks and Gardens.
As well as the individual entries on the 100 gardens and landscapes, the book includes contextual essays by Barbara Simms on private gardens, Elain Harwood on the landscaping of infrastructure, and Alan Powers, who uses the career of Geoffrey Jellicoe as a springboard to write about the development of the landscape profession. It ends with a persuasive call from Johanna Gibbons to recognise the value of modern urban landscapes before it is too late.
100 20th-Century Gardens and Landscapes is edited by Susannah Charlton and Elain Harwood and published by Batsford, £25.
