As I wasn't working this weekend we braved what yesterday's Daily Express billed the KILLER HEATWAVE and went to the Chelsworth Open Gardens Festival. Chelsworth is towards Sudbury in the Brett valley, and sits in beautiful rolling Suffolk countryside. It is still miraculously compact, about sixty houses according to the Open Gardens programme, and has somehow escaped the twentieth century sprawl that extended the reach of most villages with a row of 1930s rural district housing here and a 1960s close of bungalows there. Most of Chelsworth seems to be mediaeval, Georgian or at the latest Edwardian, with one or two barn conversions that probably contain about as much of the original barn as grandfather's axe. The gardens therefore look straight out over fields and water meadows.
They claim to be the longest running Open Gardens event in the country, 2011 being the 44th annual opening. There were 22 gardens open, which out of a village of 60 houses must create a fair degree of social pressure to join in. We saw in the programme notes that the people who had bought Chelsworth Hall only last year were taking part. I suppose if you buy one of the grandest houses in the village and then spoil the Open Gardens by refusing to open for it, this wouldn't get you off to a flying start socially. The proceeds of the Open Gardens were going to the church, which was mostly built between the thirteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and is a little gem, decorated for this weekend with big bunches of garden flowers.
The whole thing was done very well. As well as the gardens there was a good collection of stands by local plant nurseries, craftspeople, and the National Trust. There were a lot of places you could get refreshments and enough loos. A horse drawn carriage was available for those who didn't want to walk the full length of the village, or just fancied a ride. There were buskers in several gardens, mostly young and of variable quality but very keen, and an oompah band, or rather trio, in the pub gardens. The programme looked professional, and we gathered that it was designed by a volunteer, and surmised that the advertising revenues probably covered the costs of production. There were neat and well-executed signposts to the various events and features, and well-organised parking. I suppose that after 44 years you are starting to get into the swing of it.
The gardens were of varying degrees of size, complexity and ambition. All gardens are to some extent works in progress, and a couple of these were in the rather early stages, but most contained quite a lot to look at. One was featured in The English Garden magazine this May. Some of the Chelsworth gardens I liked a great deal, some not at all, and some I admired as good examples of their type while not wanting one like that myself, but it was interesting looking at all of them. The programme quotes Laura Ingalls Wilder who asked 'Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner?' and I have often thought that.
The day made me think about grass. We saw some large expanses of grass, including some formal lawns, some rough grass cut to an inch or two, and some left to grow long with wildflowers. The longer I garden, and the more I look at other people's gardens, the more I question the point of any large area of coarse mown grass, unless it is used for something, such as for children to play on. Long grass with flowers, seedheads and insects is more beautiful, less work and kinder to the environment than flogging round fortnightly all through the growing season with a petrol mower. The trick with long grass is to frame it by cutting paths across it or round it. We saw some lovely examples of wildflower gardening today. We couldn't tell how much of the short grass was used for play, but my bet is that a lot of it wasn't. There are times when short grass is necessary, to give access or provide a neutral foil to masses of planting, but most gardens don't need too much of it.
Bright blue tiles are not a good look for rural English swimming pools. They seem just right for David Hockney paintings of pools in Los Angeles, or Gardens Illustrated photos of streamlined modern gardens on the American west coast, but they are out of place in Suffolk. The light isn't strong enough here, and the blue tiles are too bright for the surrounding countryside. Go for black. It will be much more chic, and not stick out like a dayglo funfair.
If you are surrounded by countryside, a gate suggesting that egress to the wider landscape is possible is very appealing, even if in fact you don't own the next field and the gate is padlocked shut. If you have the remains of a green farm lane going over a lovely brick bridge towards the meadows then don't plant a tree that blocks the bridge. Leave the illusion that you could drive over the bridge, even if it isn't your meadow and you couldn't.
A positive example of the psychological manipulation of space came in one of the more obviously designed gardens, which was done as a miniaturised East Ruston Old Vicarage. Part of that garden was enclosed by brick wall, and divided in half by a further wall. The nearer part contained double herbaceous borders running the breadth of the walled garden, and the further part was devoted to vegetables and fruit. Doorways in all three walls lined up, and created a vista across the walled area. It was only when I looked carefully that I saw that the far wall and gate were jammed up against the boundary hedge. The gate went nowhere, for you could scarcely have squeezed through it, but with the other two gates it created the idea of a lateral axis going off somewhere.
Gardens are very much about the division of space. Even a cottage garden in the romantic planting style, if it is larger than pocket handkerchief size, needs to have a coherent layout, and not just be a charming collection of plants and objects plonked down somehow. That is the biggest single area where otherwise keen and competent gardeners fall down.
Chickens are very popular in the countryside nowadays. Chelsworth can't have as bad a fox problem as we have, to judge from the number of open-topped runs we saw.
If I were to get a flattish pan of succulents to go on the metal table in our Italian garden, it would look good and might not keep blowing off the table like my previous efforts with marguerites and geraniums.
I am very grateful to people who open their gardens. I can't imagine us ever wanting to open ours.
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