General Subjects > The International Rock Gardener - Feedback Forum
GARDEN HISTORY
Tim Ingram:
There is a super booklet published by Kew that I picked up on my last visit: 'Joseph Hooker, Botanical Trailblazer' by Pat Griggs. It really puts into perspective the differences, and also similarities, between those earlier days of Botanical exploration and now - and how important this remains (and how much the specialist gardening community contributes).
Tim Ingram:
From the 'RHS Chelsea Flower Show - The First Hundred Years: 1913 - 2013' by Brent Elliott:
"The magazine The Garden greeted the rock garden as not only beautiful but also instructive: 'we might be pardoned for believing them to be a true bit of [alpine] scenery. Hence the object of their being is achieved; the teaching value is sound, which, after all, is the one great reason for holding such exhibitions at all.' Such statements proved very helpful a few years later, when the RHS was under pressure to explain the educational value of Chelsea in order to escape Entertainment Tax."
Brent Elliott describes how the very first outdoor gardens, when the RHS Great Spring Show was held at the Temple in the 1890's, were rockeries made by the Guildford Hardy Plant Nursery, Backhouse of York and Pulham & Son. By 1913, the first year that the Show was held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, a whole series of rock gardens were built by Backhouse, Cheals, the Craven Nursery of Reginald Farrer, Clarence Elliott, the Guildford Hardy Plant Nursery, Pulham & Son, George Whitelegg and John Wood. Not a bad time to be interested in alpine plants!
I suppose to some extent, and sadly for those of us keen on growing alpines and rock plants now, the hey-day of Chelsea rock gardens began to decline by the 1950's, even though an interest in alpine plants certainly didn't, and some rock gardens continued to be made on and off into the 1980's. One of the best of all, designed by Michael Upward, was made by the AGS in 1989 in celebration of 60 years from the Society's inauguration. It is quite surprising, in view of what remains a strong educational value in growing alpine and woodland plants - probably above all others in ecological and environmental terms - that smaller scale examples of 'rock' gardens (even without significant use of rock) are still not popular at Chelsea. Presumably this relates to their scale: they are no longer the preserve of larger gardens and wealthy gardeners but much more constructed personally by knowledgeable plants-people. This seems all the more reason to emphasise their educational worth, and the scope and variety of these plants is hardly any less than the more popular interests in hardy perennials or trees and shrubs, even thought the scale is very different.
Brent Elliott mentions at one point a comment from Graham Stuart Thomas (who started his career working for Clarence Elliott) that the rock gardens were 'great works of art', but the truth is that they were - and perhaps potentially still are - quite narrow in the range of plants grown and the way they were displayed, compared with 'Garden Design' now which has become infinitely more sophisticated and with gardening 'theatre' coming much more to the fore. Furthermore it would be hard not to class many of the present day Show gardens as 'great works of art' too, even if beyond the reach of most gardeners. The big question that could be posed is whether there is room for smaller works of art now? Many smaller gardens are displayed at Chelsea so the scope for designs based around alpine and woodland plants, with the sort of artistry and knowledge found within the specialist alpine and rock garden societies, must be there.
Brent Elliott's book on the first 100 years of Chelsea is a wonderful exposé of the Show for anyone who has visited it and been involved in making displays, and gives a more balanced view of the Show over time, despite much of the hype and criticism that always surrounds it and often makes it less applicable to 'real' gardening. It would be nice though to see the re-emergence of 'rock gardens' in modern guise, and so perhaps these will find their followers again in future years?
Maggi Young:
--- Quote ---........but the truth is that they were - and perhaps potentially still are - quite narrow in the range of plants grown and the way they were displayed, compared with 'Garden Design' now which has become infinitely more sophisticated and with gardening 'theatre' coming much more to the fore. Furthermore it would be hard not to class many of the present day Show gardens as 'great works of art' too, even if beyond the reach of most gardeners.
--- End quote ---
I would have to disagree - it seem to me that "garden design" is woefully formulaic. Hard landscaping is always to the fore at the expense of planting - as a sceptic I would suggest that is because of the poor plant knowledge of a great many of these so called "designers". It is clear that over each year the range of flowers used in the Chelsea show gardens is very narrow - which strikes me as a poor effort when there is so much money poured into these gardens. The same plants crop up time and again and also, in some cases from year to year. I saw one comment this year that "it was good to see that the ubiquitous cow parsley" had disappeared from Chelsea 2014 - and that after I had been struck by just how much of the stuff had featured in the TV coverage!
What is a "show garden" ever to be if not "theatre" ? Of course the old time rock garden displays had their own form of hard landscaping with the extensive use of natural rock - but their aim was to produce a vignette of a wild landscape and so the coalescence of rock and planting is more organic and to my mind, much more theatrical and astonishing, requiring much more understanding of the ecology of the plants and their origins.
For the most part a winning show garden is based on a well tried formula that mimics the fine historical gardens - not much new or innovative that I can see. History really is repeating itself!
Tim Ingram:
I could see gardens of the types made by Peter Korn and Michał Hoppel or the Czech rock gardeners at Chelsea, but how would they go down with visitors? In plant terms they would be far more sophisticated than most else on show and it would be fascinating to see if they would capture the imagination of plants-people. A seaside garden made by Julie Toll is described by Brent Elliott 'which replicated a strip of coastal vegetation so naturalistically as to incur criticism for not being a garden at all...' Another example mentioned is a garden made by Brian Halliwell for Kew (in 1976) on the theme of British native plants, showing 200 species in three different environments. Apparently 'Many [visitors] were nonplussed by such a deviation from normal horticulture'! Put a seaside garden into the same frame that Derek Jarman did and then you do have a Show garden - and actually one that many gardeners could identify with and consider making in the right environment. So how could alpine plants be made to capture the same attention in the absence of the naturalistic larger scale rock gardens of old? Scope for many ideas here like those I mention in the first sentence.
Maggi Young:
From a message just received from the BBC, it appears that any of us might get the chance to design a Chelsea Garden!
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=11669.msg307122#msg307122
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