The thing which lifts my spirits in the cold wet spring is first, a ray of sunshine, and second colour!
And yes, that does include green. Spring green:
But most of all, something with real pow!
And, I confess, when we are about to have visitors, I feel desperate for lots of flowers and colour in the garden for them.
So it doesn’t surprise me much seeing a lot of Great Dixter on Instagram, being much admired and enjoyed.
A picture borrowed from thinkingardens.
It is loved and you will have come across it often: Marianne, Allen and Allen’s grandaughter love Dixter enormously.
However, despite its amazing reputation and fame, it is not the garden which gets the most praise from the (other) most sophisticated and knowledgeable garden professionals. The real favourite, absolutely best garden is in total contrast – it is Very Green.
Now this marks me out as a philistine and I’m taking my chances on being dismissed forever as any kind of serious garden lover, but it leaves me cold.
I think I’ve referred to it before in the context of its statues. This one is set to be viewed from the windows of the house. Nice to have with your morning toast.
Yes, the lion is having a big bite.
But most people, I think, ignore that these days.
You don’t hear much about it. No, what is admired is the garden itself. If you want to hear the reverential tone which is commonly used to describe it, and have a Monty Don tour of the highlights, here is a video.
Or here is my hero, Tim Richardson, telling you how amazing it is.
Mostly, it is like this:
There are bushes, trees, classical style buildings and statues.
And a rather nice rill. (and yes, that is that photographer again)
It has a rather cool pool.
and a rather murky one
This view, with the goose? scurrying away from the rather precarious and chilly woman, makes me giggle.
(My picture, hence rather blurry. Thank you, Charles for your contributions)
I don’t think that it is the ornamental garden beyond this that is the admired bit – it is not referenced at all by Monty Don and I don’t think the designer, William Kent, was responsible for it. It has a slightly familiar feel:
This is really not what Rousham is about. But it is at Rousham. Doesn’t do it for me, either. (Fusspot)
So, you will have gathered, that I don’t understand the enormous admiration for this garden.
It’s (mostly) pleasant. I like woodland and views of the British countryside well enough, but they are not in short supply. Statues and classical buildings not so much. A meandering rill is sweet.
My question for you is this – can you illuminate me?
What makes this garden so special? Do you really prefer the greenness to the kind of colour which makes Dixter also so very popular? Which would you rather?
Would you be disappointed, do you fear, if you were taken there, to see one of the Very Greatest Gardens?
But, confession time: I did do a takeaway:
It’s not that Rousham has seats – it does, but not many, I think. It’s the flat laurel. I’ve used it to enclose this seat.
What we have here is the difference between colour photography and black and white.
Colours are vibrant and exciting, but you can have too much vibrancy and excitement. Dixter is the very epitome of that bounty of colours, and is excellent because it does what it does. There are those who find the ceaseless bounty of Dixter overwhelming.
The simplicity of stripping a garden of colours, or using colours very strategically, is that it forces you to look at shape and form. Vistas are no longer distracted by colours in the foreground, so the eye is carried all the way. This is more like black and white photography, where in the absence of colour the shapes and forms take precedence.
Both perfectly ‘correct’ of course. I wonder if the Rousham model could be miniaturised for smaller gardens, or whether you need a large space to achieve these results effectively?
You’re right, Ben, that must be the appeal. But in a horticultural world obsessed by plants in all their variety, Rousham’s status and popularity are very surprising.
It reminds me of those old debates about whether a garden can have no plants.
Sure someone could take that idea to Chelsea.
I just popped over to their website and their own “pitch” for the garden is interesting. They headline that the garden is “unspoilt” and “uncommercial” (no tea room or shop). I’m not sure how you spoil a garden.
Actually that’s not true. Plas Brondanw, home of Clough Williams Ellis in North Wales was spoilt when they added their tea room and shop and plant labels. These destroyed the atmosphere of the place. They used to have an honesty box for entrance money (as Rousham did when we first visited). So we are in good company by not falling into the commercial trap.
But interestingly whilst the those influencers of good taste shun the colourful walled garden at Rousham (a huge area by the way), their owners consider it “not to be missed”. Monty Don describes it as “one of the greatest gardens in the world”. An absurd view in my opinion.
I think the over- heated reputation of the garden is primarily as a result of the sheep like nature of those who revere and follow garden influencers like Don and Richardson. Much is made of its place in our history of garden making in the UK. Fine. That makes it an excellent garden museum (though not the walled garden which would have been a huge kitchen garden).
After visiting most over-filled, over planted gardens it’s a huge relief to visit somewhere so pared back. But wouldn’t it be fabulous if all those horrible classical statues and buildings were replaced by art works and buildings that speak to the 21st century (keeping the rill, obvs). Now that would be fabulous.
You are more right about Plas Bronanw than you say, because what really spoilt it is the addition of masses of flowering plants which Clough Williams Ellis specifically excluded.
His original garden was closer in spirit to Rousham than its Dixterish revival – which is clearly intended to bring in the visitors.
It was a truly lovely garden once – the views, simplicity, light, colours of the paintwork and the context (Snowdonia) all much more appealing (once) than gloomy Rousham.
I am a lover of different shades of greens.. rather than of flowers. Altho I do love my clematis plants and summer geraniums, lilacs and rhodos. Roses are doing well in Virginia for the moment but soon the Japanese beetles will come along with black spot. I am beginning to wonder if they are worth the trouble. Growing up in Nebraska and Oklahoma, I prefer trees, bushes and lots of greenery. The greenery helps make the hot and getting hotter, summers bearable. If I had one plant to choose, aka Sophie’s Choice, I’d pick the hostas.
Wonder if the UK will get hot. Hoping not. Well, you are one of the cognoscenti as far as gardens are concerned. (Though no hostas at Rousham in the greenery.)
I’m attracted to leaf shape, and plant structure. Probably the last tenants of my architecture degree. That I never used. Love the greens. I would enjoy the garden, but the greatest? Love the rill. Though it made me laugh because it reminded me of Terry Pratchett books. Bloody Stupid Johnson landscape with the trout pond just wide enough for one fish to swim one way. A long way.
How do they find the beginning?
I haven’t been lucky enough to visit this garden but I have read about it and seen enough of it on TV to understand the arguments here.
One part pf the garden I remember someone waxing lyrical about was a huge bank of clipped Portuguese laurel (which I think are those in the photos here). On TV it looked good, but it was the scale of it that was impressive. Something quite ordinary (clipped laurel being everywhere here in Scotland) done extremely well, on a scale that us city dwellers will never know looked great.
Whether its the greatest garden, well that seems to me to have a feel of “clever people like it so I should probably agree”. Recently I did an online course with Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, and an opening warm-up question was for students to name their favorite Gardens that they’d visited or seen on TV. I admit, not the most scientific survey ever but what was really interesting was the range of gardens with hardly any overlap. Maybe someone will tell them the right answer eventually!
I’d love to see the student’s list. I asked on Facebook once and was depressed to find they all thought of dead people’s gardens. Like Rousham and Dixter, i suppose.
Laurel is almost universally hated here (it spreads unwanted in Welsh woodland) but it was the mass of it clipped flat that was my takeaway – as in last pic. Loved that. No-one has ever remarked on it here.
Apologies for the late reply Anne! I sadly don’t have access to the course anymore so I couldn’t check the responses but I agree it would be an interesting read to compile them all. For what its worth I offered three gardens that have left a lasting impression on me. One was in Spain (long, long dead), the middle one was Brazil (30 years dead) and the last was still alive!
Starting a garden is more than what to plant. How old are you? How much labor can you do, can you hire? Of course ubiquitous sun/soil/temps/water. Are you organic? Will you use chemicals? Will you hire mow/blow/go? Do you know how you want your garden to look? Will you have any plantings needing irrigation? And etc.
Already leaves out most homeowners, zero clue the choices above exist. Merely do what the Jones do, or HOA demands. Not a criticism, observation.
Studied historic gardens across Europe for decades, beginning ca. 1986. Knew USA landscapes horrid. Found what I was hunting, the soul responded.
Retired landscape construction company owner, wildly successful, moved nearby. He began our first conversation, “I will only have a garden that can be mowed or sprayed.” Magic thoughts. Been trying to get the ‘spraying’ acceptable to my soul, aka organic. Anyone have that answer, please leave it here.
Back to those historic garden studies. Fell hard for the oldest of them, centuries old. Why? Eye/heart/soul knew to use their template. Use what survives. Survives wars, pestilence, poverty. What survives: canopy trees next to low meadow with focal point. Want more? Hedges. Want more? Put small gap into hedge & plop exquisite focal point. Want more? Add flowering native shrubs. Want more? Add self seeding annuals. Want more? Add hardy perennials. Start everything on axis from key views from inside the house.
So far have gardened from age 6 to 64. Doing the work myself. Lack of beauty not an option. Hiring help mostly not an option. Mostly? Will hire muscular help 1-2x/year.
Love/adore the 5th pic, and the last pic. Classic, of the ages.
(Pics with flowers, above, Amusement Park landscaping. )
Not many of us start a new garden, though we were lucky enough to. Most struggle with whatever they’re landed with, which is rather a shame.
I am as underwhelmed as you are.
🙂
I’d have to be there in person to be sure, but your photos of this garden make it seem really peaceful, soothing and restorative. In today’s world, that’s very compelling!
It is that, but aren’t there quite a lot of those? This gets picked out for reverence amongst a great many old landscape gardens, with long plods for tree to tree…..
I guess I meant “even more peaceful, soothing and restorative than other gardens”. Like when you’re in a darkened room, and your eyes adjust enough to see details you hadn’t noticed before. Many other gardens are designed to lead your eye in particular ways, or wow you with color or extravagance, or be utilitarian in some way; this one seems to invite your own thoughts to ramble, without expectations.
Yes, I see what you mean.
Tom Richardson quotes Tom Stuart-Smith: ‘Rousham is an intensely psychological landscape and one that provokes as many different emotional responses as there are individual visitors, and this is an important part of its extraordinary appeal; that within the confines of this relatively small plot there is scope for such myriad interpretations.’
This is my understanding too. It’s unique in this and I know nothing like it. Although there are many possible interpretations, and routes through it, it’s ‘of a whole’. Indeed very special.
This is the kind of thing many great people say – you are in excellent company. And it’s what has taken us back too many times to try and discover what it is we’re missing.
It must be us that have something missing, perhaps.
Taste is a fickle thing! Maybe it’s a bit like when you know a piece of music to be highly regarded by many, but you just can’t get it, even though you try! Similarly with art. Individual variation is not a sign of something wrong………..:-)
Maybe not. The best of the arts do manage a fairly broad consensus, though?
As do gardens. Maybe knowledge of the historical context is an important component at Rousham? (As at Sissinghurst??)
Tom Stuart Smith (2013, FT article):
As in great fiction, in a good garden you are given certain facts but you are not told what to think, where to walk, what to feel. There are moments, as in a novel, where you are constrained and directed but then there are equally times when your imagination is let loose, and it is the balance between this constraint and liberty that above all sets the tenor of the place. So the narrative device is there; it is just well hidden until you go looking.
Not all flowers!
Well, of course not. So we are perhaps to conclude, here are the bottom of the comments on this post, that it really is the sophisticated and knowledgeable garden visitor who is truly able to appreciate quality?
You know, I might endorse that thought if Rousham weren’t so dull.
And TSS may perhaps feel unable to compete with such an amazing garden, but he sure has not given up flowers himself.
From images of Rousham, it seems to me that the sophisticated gardeners may be attracted to the juxtaposition of disparate elements-the rill that has a contemporary feel/the statuary anchored in the past. Just saying “Rousham” has a posh feel to it. If Monty Don and Jinny Blom and a shelf full of books praise it, then it must be good on some level. However, having seen Great Dixter over several days, no other garden will ever beat it in my mind. It has everything I could possibly need or want-charming structure/successional color/contemplative spaces/kind people who care for it. It even has a bench enclosed by hedges. It isn’t surprising that professionals like Nigel Dunnett, James Hitchmough, Piet Oudolf, Dan Pearson, Tom Stuart-Smith and many others say that Great Dixter has influenced their design ethos. Great Dixter is my idea of what heaven should be, but it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, which is why we need Rousham.
Strangely, I have come across much more criticism and problems with Dixter than Rousham.
Do we actually lack a good way of criticising gardens – in the “The analysis or evaluation of a work of art, literature. We need the serious discussion and dialogue which criticism offers: it raises standards, informs, educates and promotes intelligent debate. It is the very lifeblood of any high art.”
I need something like that to open my eyes and mind to these gardens.
Rousham dull?? How about the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Studley Royal, Prospect Cottage? Any of these do it for you?
This, I fear, will descend into an unpleasant argument if we continue. Though those are
an intriguing choice – two of them made by people already famous in a different field. Wonder why they get so much attention?
Prospect Cottage brought me to tears. I will always remember the evening light, the wind whipping across the gravel, the drama of the ornament, the sheer determination of each plant to keep going on.
Chosen because 2 are non-flower gardens and one a very unusual use and siting of flowering plants…….I wondered if it was just Rousham that you found difficult.
I only know Studley Royal and that from many years ago (my honeymoon, and childhood) so don’t feel qualified to comment. But I’m not fond of landscape gardens. Have wondered whether a pony and trap would be the way to enjoy some of those.
If it helps, I loved Broadwoodside. I was inspired by Little Sparta.
I imagine I would be fascinated by Prospect Cottage and Cosmic Spec – but I have heard the latter described in its later phase as a theme park. The landforms are amazing and beautiful, I believe,