Gardens

Gardens
Some friends, Jean-Marc, Florence, René and Ahmelle, came round for aperitifs this evening and all admired my back garden. Which was nice, obviously, but all made the same remark as other French friends had before. It was a “jardin anglais”, could have been made only by an Englishman. What they meant was that there was no formality or discernible structure in it; it just was. But it nevertheless looked good to them. It's a bit like the French attitude to Shakespeare; he's great but he doesn't observe any of the (French/Greek) theatrical conventions.

I've probably commented before on the French passion for formal structure in gardens. I think that can work fine if you have a chateau and a few hundred acres to play with but doesn't work well in relatively small spaces. I always despaired of the gardens I sometimes found in suburban England which had a rectangular lawn fringed by rectangular flower beds planted with flowers in symmetrical rows. I couldn't say they looked bad but they certainly lacked any kind of soul. Someone once said that there are no right angles in nature and, despite probably many exceptions to that, I believe that should be true of gardens. And I have another objection: for me, gardens have to evolve over time; some plants die, some become rampant and have to be curtailed and the resultant spaces don't have to be filled with the plants that were there before. So, over time, the garden changes shape and character. Within a formal structure, this is very difficult if not impossible to effect.

Anyway, René pointed out to me that there was a garden programme on French television this evening that had a significant English content; so I duly tuned in to it. It was a good programme but I was alarmed at first at the English contribution because the programme makers had gone to Blenheim Palace of all places: a chateau and several hundred acres looked like confirming the French approach. Fortunately, they then went on to Michelin starred chef Roux and his Manoir à Quartre Saisons just outside Oxford, a good French reference, who was very passionate about a very English garden he had created there. He said all the things I would have wanted to say about creating a garden.

As a kind of footnote, there is an American architect called Christopher Alexander who had a significant impact on IT thinking about how to create and amalgamate computer programs through his books “Notes on the Synthesis of Form” and “A Pattern Language”. I have found his thinking on the design of what should go into spaces works equally with gardening.

On a less formal note, I pointed out to neighbour and artist Florence this evening the quite large and very white walls in my terrace room and suggested that some of her paintings (far outside my budget) would look good there. She is currently preparing for an exhibition in Aix but kindly said that she would lend me some after that. I'm not sure that I am likely to have any visitors who would justify that from a commercial point of view (I don't have many rich friends) but maybe it will save her some storage space!