The Education of a Gardener.

This classic book of garden lit by Russell Page should be on every nurseryman ’s bedside table .

I re - read it every few years and always enjoy it . Russell Page was a garden designer and landscape creative person and he was likely the most influential of his generation . He designed garden for all the great and the good in his time . ( Well , not inevitably the good , he project one for those well- known Nazi sympathisers , the Duke and Duchess of Windsor ) . He was heavily influenced by the formality of Eastern and French garden . He insisted on restraint in planting . He is still so highly regarded that his trend of horticulture has become the image for good taste . I blame him for the vogue for boxwood hedge and geometric garden designing . He was very aware of his influence and importance and although I love this al-Qur’an , I dislike the way he patronises us and instructs us as to what is tasteful and what not . It is all very well reduplicate Pope ’ s obiter dictum about consulting the genius of the berth and designing a garden that is in keeping with the house , but his delegation were for grand places , not for the 1930 s semi .

For representative , to be in keep with a Victorian home you would have to give your garden over to bedding out which only municipal parks adopt these day . Here is an example of rug bedding in the Abbey garden at Bury St Edmunds . What private gardener could or would want to attempt this ?

The Abbey Gardens, Bury St. Edmunds.

The Abbey Gardens , Bury St. Edmunds .

And what about my higgledy piggledy house built in 1500 ? How should my garden face to be in harmony with an other sixteenth century house that would have belonged to a yeoman granger ? I hypothecate I should have chickens and a pig stye and a dunghill . My front garden should be full of cabbages and herb of course of study . Everyone grew herbs , or simples as they were call , for self- medication . I grow culinary herbs but I am not concerned in growing herb to heal the dropsy . I recently buy a Devil ’s morsel Scabious because it is beautiful and bee lie with it . I did n’t grease one’s palms it because Gerard tell me that ‘ Divel ’s Bit‘clenseth by slimie flegme that sticketh in the jaw ‘ . If I am inauspicious enough to find myself with slimie flegme sticking to my jaw I will go to the doctor . And I will never grow horribleHypericumor ‘ Saint James his Wort’as Gerard calls it . Even if a ‘ decoction of itgargarised ‘ is a curative against protrusion and ‘ impostumations ‘ of the throat .

A booster of mine has a little sixteenth century bungalow and she is set that her garden will be authentic . She only grow sixteenth century plant , preferably single mentioned by Shakespeare . In her front garden she has a pretty knot garden and she is very gallant of that . In fact , it is whole inappropriate for the garden of a small bungalow . A knot garden was the style accessory for the rich . Here is one looking just ripe in the grounds of the Tudor Helmingham Hall .

The Abbey Gardens, Bury St. Edmunds.

Knot Garden . Helmingham Hall . Suffolk .

I really think it is an pose to grow only the plants that were usable in the 16th hundred . We are so prosperous to live in an geezerhood when we can grow plants from all round the mankind and we no longer need to apply our gardens to scrape out an existence . Our gardens have a completely dissimilar purpose . I have had favorable dissension with a protagonist about having a garden in keep with the period of the house . She think that a cottage garden is appropriate for a theater like mine . And although my front garden is what you might call a cottage garden , I wear ’ t think this is authentic for a sixteenth century house and I am plan on a pure makeover next year . The idea of a picturesque bungalow garden is a Victorian and former twentieth C concept . It represent an fanciful past seen through the eyes of artists such as Alfred Parsons , Helen Allingham and Earnest Arthur Rowe .

Off Marketing . Helen Allingham

The Abbey Gardens, Bury St. Edmunds.

The Abbey Gardens, Bury St. Edmunds.

I once read a gardening Word of God and I can not remember who write it , where the source object to Eucalyptus tree in an English garden . He said they are as inappropriate as an ostrich on a grouse moor . And I inquire why pick on Eucalyptus trees ? We spring up plant from all over the human race and our garden are enriched by them .

So whenever I take Russell Page , I retrieve myself picking an argument with him . I ca n’t have and do not require a garden that harmonises with my house . And neither do I want it organised on a geometric gridiron blueprint like a Persian rug . And I do n’t want boxwood hedging , I loathe the thing . I want my garden to take you on a circuitous track that weave here and there and never in a straight line . I do n’t need recollective vistas ; I want a surprise round every corner . I don ’ t require auction block of colouration or a qualified pallet of industrial plant that are repeated . I do n’t want simplicity . I desire a fertile tapestry of horticultural delights . And I do n’t want to be sneer at and told that I am a plant collector and not an artist and have no artistic sentiency . I wrote a mail about the bristly trouble oftasteand another one to nurture a debate about whether thegarden is an artwork form , both of which plague much comment . I think most of us object to the significance that our beloved garden are not aesthetically pleasing . I know Page prepare at the Slade under the great Tonks and without doubt he designed beautiful garden . But the implication that he is the arbitrator of good taste in the garden and that any garden that does n’t measure out up to his standards is not artistic , is annoying .

I wouldn ’ t desire a painting by Mark Rothko or even Mondrian , even if I could give them . Give me a Breughal picture or a Bosschaert prime painting any time , or even a painting by poor , unrestrained Richard Dadd . Paintings that you could gaze at for hours and get lost in the point . And it ’ s the same with gardens ; I get into ’ t want broad strokes or geometric geometrical regularity . I want elaborateness , a tapestry of beautiful flower . I believe we should follow our own eyes and produce a garden that pleases us without worrying whether it matches Page ’ s standard . I have to repoint out that Page didn ’ t even have his own garden . In my book , you may ’ t call yourself a nurseryman if you do n’t garden , any longer than you may be an artist if you do n’t paint , or a writer if you don ’ t write .

Knot Garden. Helmingham Hall. Suffolk.

Knot Garden. Helmingham Hall. Suffolk.

I set out to do a book follow-up and end up doing an iconoclastic claptrap . I seem on line to see whether amongst all the venerating descriptions of this volume anyone felt like me . I found one written by Beth ofGardenFancy , a web log I now follow , but didn ’ t know about back in 2014 , when she wrote this record book review . Beth seems to concord with me on many points , but or else of a rant she founder an excellent and measured review . So if you want to acknowledge more about the book , here is where you could find the info . If you read this Beth , please give us a nexus .

Last week I move to see an awful garden , East Ruston in North Norfolk . It has been criticise in some after part by the taste law , for being too flamboyant , a mishmash of trend and not bound enough . I love it and will write about it in my next situation . In the meantime , after all I have said ; if you have n’t already , do readThe Education of aGardener . It is elegantly written and full of entropy . Even if like me , you don ’ t agree with all he says , you have to translate it to make love what you are disaccord with . And after all , it is a great book .

41 Responses toThe Education of a Gardener.

Another keen Charles William Post ! I was impressed when I saw that Page ’s book receive Doris Lessing ’s endorsement but , base on your post , I surmise I would n’t incur much of value in his admonitions about landscape painting design . My guess is that Page would n’t have been much impressed by American architecture , much less American garden . Although US gardener have been heavily influence by British garden manner in the past and may still be in many respect ( I have books by Penelope Hobhouse , Rosemary Verey and Christopher Lloyd on my shelf among others and often watch Gardeners ’ World on YouTube ) , I conceive the style here is in the direction of fitting the garden to the site , by which I mean mood and cultural weather . Home design is of some concern but then dwelling house styles here may be more eclectic – and changeable – than is the case in the UK . There is a sure amount of pressing from some native plant partisan to adhere to native plants but most gardeners I know find that too restrictive and climate variety and variable like urban heat energy sinks make a natives - only insurance difficult to hold . I try on to focus on plants that are adapted to my climate but I admittedly agitate the gasbag even there .

The Education of a Gardener.