I have been to three different exhibitions, and my brain is full. Normally I wouldn't try and fit that many into one day, but there are several things I want to see that finish in the autumn, and I don't get to London so often nowadays, what with everything else to do, and the ever-escalating cost of railway tickets. My off-peak day return this morning cost me £23.40, while from a used ticket I found in my coat pocket I see that the same journey on 11 November of last year cost me £21.20. It's things like rail tickets going up 10% in nine months that leave me spluttering with indignation and wondering what parallel universe they live in when economic pundits on the TV pronounce that there is plenty of spare capacity in the UK economy and no signs of inflation in the system. Apart from temporary things like oil, which don't count, obviously. Looking on the bright side, the train in to London was only ten minutes late, and it turned out that the restriction on when I could travel home had been lifted for the school holidays until the beginning of September. This concession is not advertised, and you would only know if you asked about it, which I did, twice. Once at arriving at Liverpool Street, and again on returning to Liverpool Street but before embarking on a train. From which you gather I have little faith in National Express East Anglia's ability to not give me duff travel information and then try and charge me a penalty fare.
It was raining. That was the main reason why I chose today to go to town, since it was going to be useless for gardening. I know I could have cleaned the kitchen and started preparing to repaint the hall, but would you rather have a sparkling kitchen or a sparkling mind? Partly because I wanted to remain flexible and weather driven on timing I didn't attempt to go with a friend. Visiting galleries and museums with somebody else is nice, as then you can talk about what you've seen, but solo travel has its attractions. No aiming to be 20 minutes early in case the train in to London is late, instead you can just get straight on when you reach town. And being able to walk in the rain without worrying that the other person would rather get a bus or a tube. And being able to eat and drink when you are hungry and thirsty, and not spend valuable potential gallery minutes as closing time ticks closer stuck in a cafe because the other person is hungry or thirsty. And not having to worry that your companion hates whatever you are both looking at, and it is all your fault for suggesting it. To judge from the number of solo visitors I saw today I don't think I'm alone in being happy with my own company on occassions when it comes to culture. They might all have been sad no-mates losers, but I doubt it.
I walked down to Tate Modern, over the bouncy bridge, which various children were managing to slide on by taking a run up, despite the no-slip surface. The tide was already low, and still ebbing. The Thames is a great river. We have taken a boat as far up as you can go with a fixed mast (unless they are going to open Tower Bridge for you and even then you can't go much further), and know that the currents run fast and trickily. It is a river that demands respect. Tate Modern is showing Miro, on until 11 September. He is an artist I have long admired, mainly from seeing reproductions, and I was keen to get to this one. You will be familiar with at least some of his paintings (in reproduction) if you are even vaguely interested in art. In his working lifetime, which lasted into his 80s, he moved between a sort of strange realism, surrealism, and pure abstraction, but all of the pictures are oddly alive, and most of them vaguely disturbing, not surprising given that he was a Catalonian living against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war, WWII, and dictatorship that lasted until 1975. I found it riveting, but was relieved not to have dragged one friend there whom I'd thought of asking (his office is just round the corner) but didn't. If you don't like the idea of the subconscious, or believe that colours should be attractive, you really aren't going to warm to some of the pictures in this exhibition, though some of the little creatures from his middle period are vaguely like minor characters out of the Moomins.
Then along the South Bank path to the Garden Museum. This is housed in an old church by Lambeth Palace. It contains a vegetarian cafe, and as I walked through the doors to the murmer of voices, chink of crockery and smell of vaguely old-fashioned cooking, it felt very cosy. My vegetable soup could have been hotter, but tasted nicely of mint, and vegetables. The museum has a newish mezzanine floor with a small but perfectly interesting display on garden history, and a couple of temporary exhibitions which again I wanted to catch. The main attraction was a display about the gardens of Tom Stuart-Smith, about whom I have enthused before. He designs in the modernist idiom but underpinned by good and enthusiastic use of plants. This show covered six of his designs. One of them I'd seen a lot of pictures of before, on the phone of the gardener at work, him being good friends with the head gardener there. Big photos and plans on the walls were supplemented by books and videos, the space being limited. I was left with my admiration for his work bolstered. My only slight query was that most of the photos were taken in late summer, when the prairie style perennials and grasses were flowering. I did wonder what they would look like in the spring, and also whether there was much in them with any scent. There is also a collection of photos by well-known garden photographer Jerry Harpur (an Essex boy. Working in his picture library was a staple part-time job for Writtle students when I was there).
Then I went to catch the Watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain, but that will have to wait until tomorrow, as now I need to go and talk nicely to the Systems Administrator. Dashing in through the door and instantly glueing oneself to the computer is OK, but only up to a point.
Showing posts with label Tom Stuart-Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Stuart-Smith. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Saturday, 11 June 2011
a garden worth visiting
I took my parents to see the Spencers, at Great Yeldham. The S.A. and I went there once before with friends, for a folk concert that had good acts but not enough audience, and the grounds looked promising. Searching on the Red Cross open gardens website for somewhere to visit this weekend Spencers came up, and the description of the walled garden, not open when we went to the folk concert, sounded very nice. The whole garden turned out to be excellent, well worth the hour's drive to get there (which was a relief as it would have been rather embarassing if it had been dull, or horrid).
The house is Georgian, built around 1760, probably on the site of an older building, and sits in a pleasant park with some fine trees. There is a terrace and some foundation planting around the house, then the rest of the formal garden is separated from the house by lawn and trees, so that you are not aware of its existence until, like Mary finding the secret garden, you go through the door in the wall. Inside you find a gem, a charming, formal arrangement of beds packed with well-grown plants, and some really novel touches. After I got home I read the Spencers' website more carefully, and discovered that the gardens are still in the process of renovation following a master plan drawn up by Tom Stuart-Smith. That goes far to explain all, as the saying goes, since he is probably my favourite designer working today (it would be a tough call between him and Piet Oudolf). A lot of credit also goes to Spencers' gardeners, because the standard of cultivation throughout the whole formal garden is very high, far better than Knebworth.
A lot of the planting is uber cottage garden, with masses of foxgloves, old fashioned pinks (white with a split calyx so I guess 'Mrs Sinkins'. There are no plant labels anywhere), sweet williams, Aquilegia, peonies, snapdragons, herbs, and lots and lots of roses, including a magnificant climber trained in a dense mass over an opening in one of the hedges like a giant, pink-studded tea cosy. There are big stands of blue delphiniums (I now know from the website that they are the variety 'Lord Butler', named after Rab Butler who lived at Spencers until his death). The delphiniums topped 2m and were glowing with health; I have never seen such good ones outside of the great marquee at Chelsea. There is a wooden pergola covered in small flowered climbing roses and honeysuckle, a sundial made out of part of the old London Bridge, and a fabulous wooden greenhouse built at the same time as the house and said to be the oldest in Essex, stuffed with flowers.
The formal divisions of space are very Tom Stuart-Smith, such as the idea of putting the delphiniums in wide rows in long, narrow, parallel beds like something out of a botanic garden or Monet's garden at Giverney. The use of formal hedges to divide the space is also characteristic. However, there are very few grasses, apart from some Stipa gigantea, and the whole planting is so sympathetic to the Georgian house and very English parkland and surrounding countryside that any suspicion one might have that he just trots out a design formula each time would be banished at once. He was responsible for creating the stone terrace around the house, big random laid stone slabs of varying sizes, with lavender and Alchemilla mollis growing through the gaps, that looks as though it has been there for ever, and it turns out was laid in 1995. As you approach the walled garden from the house you go through a white garden, with white flowered shrub roses and (an inspired choice) white standards (I guess 'Iceberg') in long grass (a neat goosefoot mown through it) crammed with white oxeye daisies. The use of standard roses in the flowing grass and wild flowers is unexpected and beautiful.
In the walled garden is a restrained, very effective piece of planting I have never seen anywhere else. A large square is laid to white clover, humming with bees at this time of the year, and a mown grass path curves through it. Around three sides are four-tiered espaliered trees, with shining leaves I marked down as some sort of pear. Luckily I found a gardener to ask, and they are a pear, Pyrus calleryana 'Chanticleer'. They went in four years ago as maidens, and the gardeners have done all the training themselves. Normally you see this as an upright, vase shaped tree, but it turns out it will train beautifully. I found this a wonderful and restful area, and was very pleased to find a bench right at the back of a border, with slabs leading to it, where I could sit surrounded by foxgloves while looking at the geometry and the green. It produced a completely different response in a little girl, who ran round and round the path.
After the complicated pleasures of the walled garden, and the very nice Red Cross tea by the swimming pool (it said cream teas on the website, and turned out to be cake, but they had coffee and walnut so that was fine), we wandered through the woodland walk, and back across the park. The woodland is being planted up with shrub roses and other flowering woody things, and the walk takes you down to the river Colne, looking very small so far upstream, with a red lacquer Chinese bridge over it. The transition from bright and busy to green, shady and calm is a classic element of a good garden, I think, where space permits.
When I first looked at the Spencers website it appeared to me that the garden didn't open all that much to the public except for groups by arrangement, since they also use the house to host events and parties, but looking again more carefully there are some other open days coming up soon. They are open next weekend for the NGS, and are doing a couple of guided tours with lunch for £20 a head, and it looks as though they routinely open in the summer on Thursday afternoons from 2.00 until 5.00pm. Certainly there is an honesty box on the way in, which suggests there are or were regular openings at some point. Here is a link to their website so you can double check all these things for yourself, and it has nice photos on it too, so you can see what it looks like, since I didn't take any pictures: link to Spencers But I would say to everybody (especially those of you living in Castle Hedingham which is only just up the road!) do go. It is really, really good.
The house is Georgian, built around 1760, probably on the site of an older building, and sits in a pleasant park with some fine trees. There is a terrace and some foundation planting around the house, then the rest of the formal garden is separated from the house by lawn and trees, so that you are not aware of its existence until, like Mary finding the secret garden, you go through the door in the wall. Inside you find a gem, a charming, formal arrangement of beds packed with well-grown plants, and some really novel touches. After I got home I read the Spencers' website more carefully, and discovered that the gardens are still in the process of renovation following a master plan drawn up by Tom Stuart-Smith. That goes far to explain all, as the saying goes, since he is probably my favourite designer working today (it would be a tough call between him and Piet Oudolf). A lot of credit also goes to Spencers' gardeners, because the standard of cultivation throughout the whole formal garden is very high, far better than Knebworth.
A lot of the planting is uber cottage garden, with masses of foxgloves, old fashioned pinks (white with a split calyx so I guess 'Mrs Sinkins'. There are no plant labels anywhere), sweet williams, Aquilegia, peonies, snapdragons, herbs, and lots and lots of roses, including a magnificant climber trained in a dense mass over an opening in one of the hedges like a giant, pink-studded tea cosy. There are big stands of blue delphiniums (I now know from the website that they are the variety 'Lord Butler', named after Rab Butler who lived at Spencers until his death). The delphiniums topped 2m and were glowing with health; I have never seen such good ones outside of the great marquee at Chelsea. There is a wooden pergola covered in small flowered climbing roses and honeysuckle, a sundial made out of part of the old London Bridge, and a fabulous wooden greenhouse built at the same time as the house and said to be the oldest in Essex, stuffed with flowers.
The formal divisions of space are very Tom Stuart-Smith, such as the idea of putting the delphiniums in wide rows in long, narrow, parallel beds like something out of a botanic garden or Monet's garden at Giverney. The use of formal hedges to divide the space is also characteristic. However, there are very few grasses, apart from some Stipa gigantea, and the whole planting is so sympathetic to the Georgian house and very English parkland and surrounding countryside that any suspicion one might have that he just trots out a design formula each time would be banished at once. He was responsible for creating the stone terrace around the house, big random laid stone slabs of varying sizes, with lavender and Alchemilla mollis growing through the gaps, that looks as though it has been there for ever, and it turns out was laid in 1995. As you approach the walled garden from the house you go through a white garden, with white flowered shrub roses and (an inspired choice) white standards (I guess 'Iceberg') in long grass (a neat goosefoot mown through it) crammed with white oxeye daisies. The use of standard roses in the flowing grass and wild flowers is unexpected and beautiful.
In the walled garden is a restrained, very effective piece of planting I have never seen anywhere else. A large square is laid to white clover, humming with bees at this time of the year, and a mown grass path curves through it. Around three sides are four-tiered espaliered trees, with shining leaves I marked down as some sort of pear. Luckily I found a gardener to ask, and they are a pear, Pyrus calleryana 'Chanticleer'. They went in four years ago as maidens, and the gardeners have done all the training themselves. Normally you see this as an upright, vase shaped tree, but it turns out it will train beautifully. I found this a wonderful and restful area, and was very pleased to find a bench right at the back of a border, with slabs leading to it, where I could sit surrounded by foxgloves while looking at the geometry and the green. It produced a completely different response in a little girl, who ran round and round the path.
After the complicated pleasures of the walled garden, and the very nice Red Cross tea by the swimming pool (it said cream teas on the website, and turned out to be cake, but they had coffee and walnut so that was fine), we wandered through the woodland walk, and back across the park. The woodland is being planted up with shrub roses and other flowering woody things, and the walk takes you down to the river Colne, looking very small so far upstream, with a red lacquer Chinese bridge over it. The transition from bright and busy to green, shady and calm is a classic element of a good garden, I think, where space permits.
When I first looked at the Spencers website it appeared to me that the garden didn't open all that much to the public except for groups by arrangement, since they also use the house to host events and parties, but looking again more carefully there are some other open days coming up soon. They are open next weekend for the NGS, and are doing a couple of guided tours with lunch for £20 a head, and it looks as though they routinely open in the summer on Thursday afternoons from 2.00 until 5.00pm. Certainly there is an honesty box on the way in, which suggests there are or were regular openings at some point. Here is a link to their website so you can double check all these things for yourself, and it has nice photos on it too, so you can see what it looks like, since I didn't take any pictures: link to Spencers But I would say to everybody (especially those of you living in Castle Hedingham which is only just up the road!) do go. It is really, really good.
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