IMAGINE standing in a garden for the first time and trying to work out what it can become. Will it be minimal or traditional? Will the planting be cottagey, Mediterranean or jungly? How is the garden going to be used? By children and dog show many and how boisterous? Should there be a vegetable garden? Are the clients sociable or reclusive? Do they like gardening? This last one seems pretty obvious, but designers often have to make gardens for people who are neither knowledgeable nor keen. Some are scared witless by the idea of a garden and it is the designer's job to stroke the fevered brow, spread calm where there is panic and reassurance where there are misgivings. Lots of questions must be answered before the business of creating a garden can begin-and it is immediately apparent that the design of this garden near Godalming has been well thought through.
The designer Pollyanna Wilkinson stood in this garden for the first time about four years ago. She was surrounded by a few mature trees and a large expanse of very dull lawn. That is not to say that lawn does not have a place in a garden-in the same way that carrots have a place on a menu― but to have nothing except lawn (or, indeed, carrots) can become a trifle dull. There she stood, scratching her head and hunting for the essence, the spirit, the inspiration beneath the surface. What was it that would provide a strong enough theme upon which she could hang the design of the garden? The answer lay, as is so often the case, in the architecture of the house. In this case, the house is quite quirky with pegged tiles and Bargate stone walls. 'In the end,' she explains, 'we based it on the distinctive round chimney, which gave us a good starting point for the formal/not formal feel that I was after.'
Esta historia es de la edición April 17, 2024 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición April 17, 2024 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
