The garden is now properly awake, what we didn't get done in the autumn doesn't seem to have mattered, the worms have done the graft for us. But grass aside really all we have had doing anything interesting through the winter is the mahonia up by the summer house which looks dire all summer, when we are up there and can see it, and looks glorious when we hardly go near, and the Viburnum grandiflorum (maybe) which flowers its socks off all winter, but also in a place where we hardly see it.
Which all brings me around to the subject of garden planning, or our lack of it, and why a luscious book that arrived had me thinking we really should probably have thought it all through a bit more carefully...
Landscape of Dreams - The Gardens of Isabel and Julian Bannerman by Isabel Bannerman, this information from the publishers, Pimpernel Press
'Isabel and Julian Bannerman have been described as "mavericks in the grand manner, touched by genius" (Min Hogg, World of Interiors) and "the Bonnie and Clyde of garden design" (Ruth Guilding, The Bible of British Taste). Their approach to design, while rooted in history and the classical tradition, is fresh, eclectic and surprising. They designed the British 9/11 Memorial Garden in New York and have also designed gardens for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove and the Castle of Mey, Lord Rothschild at Waddesdon Manor, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk at Arundel Castle in Sussex and John Paul Getty II at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire. The garden they made for themselves at Hanham Court near Bath was acclaimed by Gardens Illustrated as the top garden of 2009, ahead of Sissinghurst. When they moved from Hanham it was to the fairytale castle of Trematon overlooking Plymouth Sound, where they have created yet another magical garden. Landscape of Dreams celebrates the imaginative and practical process of designing, making and planting all of these gardens, and many more.'
That's quite a roll call of great gardens but I am particularly interested in the couple's most recent venture at Trematon Castle. I had heard news of it some years ago from friends who live nearby, and it really is only down and up and over the other side of the Tamar Valley and Kit Hill into Cornwall from us, so we have a visit planned as soon as the garden opens to the public again next May.
May is when the garden juices are well-risen isn't it...
Everything is waking up and starting to fill the borders...
Enthusiasm is high and I am busy planting out...
Chelsea Flower Show comes round and we are sat here wondering why, yet again, we haven't gone...
Doing the 'Chelsea Crop' on anything that benefits from a bit of a cut back for better growth..
And by now we know if the dahlias have survived the winter.
The book is sumptuous, beautiful photographs ...
...and it is an excellent read too, especially the chapter on working with Prince Charles at Highgrove under the watchful eye of the cynical and unconvinced security...
'Julian got to know 'the plod' as they plodded round on security duty. comparatively relaxed in those days, but for the waving of mirrors under the car and bonnet. They were mystified by what we were doing, but they were also amused; they made detours to see how it was going, began to encourage us, and, in the end, declared it was the best thing ever.'
Other commissions follow...Houghton Hall in Norfolk, Seend in Wiltshire, Asthall Manor in Gloucestershire along with work on homes the couple have lived in such as Hanham Court near Bath, and then the trauma of leaving them to move on to to pastures new...
'The lost domain, as in all good stories, need never have been lost and sometimes it is hard to understand what possessed us, after all that work, and in spite of all the children's radical attachment, to move from Hanham Court...'
In 2009 Hanham Court was acclaimed as the top garden of 2009 ahead of Sissinghurst (by Garden Illustrated) that's how special it was, and though we don't quite live in a Hanham Court I do understand that sense of loss, and I bet many of you do too.
We wondered why we had sold our last house having spent fifteen years making it so perfect (though in our heart of hearts we knew we wanted rural life) and I grieved for it long afterwards and while I waited for this falling-apart house to fill the void. We still have to drive past it on our way into town and are currently 'not liking' the colour it has been painted...we feel we have a right to a say.
And we admire the copper beech hedge we planted (having moved here and inherited several hundred feet of very incongruous escallonia) and I often wonder how my wisteria is, and the lilac tree and the beautiful hydrangeas and the climbing jasmine under the kitchen window, and did they keep my beautiful French kitchen tiles and my terracotta floors, and the piece of stained glass rescued from a skip that would only fit in one place.
And we also know the day will eventually dawn when we have to leave our home here, to downsize and somehow fit a quart into a pint pot somewhere new. We are in our twenty-third year now and sometimes think it would be easiest if some passing motorist (one of the three that pass in a week) were to knock on the door and make us an offer we couldn't refuse, because the idea of the whole marketing and selling process, and letting someone else have our beloved home and garden and climbing roses and summerhouse and veranda with its brackets rescued from a signal box being demolished in Plymouth (Bookhound happened to be driving past) and woodshed and potting shed and Aga and specially painted kitchen tiles and emptying the loft and ...and...
It all fills us both with horror.
So although Landscape of Dreams looks like and is a wonderful coffee table book with pictures alone that would enchant, it is a book whose story resonates too, and for sure the Bannermans would have uprooted our escallonia within weeks of moving in.
But then I am browsing through the book and see this...
and think, well maybe we haven't done so badly here after all...
and we do love it for what it is....ours.
I did a lovely interview with gardener Mary Keen in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot Festival (not far from Trematon) a few years ago, and she has this to say about the Bannermans in a newspaper article here...
The Bannermans have always chosen to live in buildings that are not just pleasingly decayed, but from which most people would run a mile, seeing only £££ signs and years of toil. Show them an architectural gem on a roundabout, or surrounded by suburbia, without a roof and with gardens asleep under layers of brambles and stones and, like Capability Brown, they see “capabilities”. The places that draw them always have an air of mystery and faded grandeur. From this they conjure up a vision of bowers and damsels, with roses clambering up turret windows – a place to step away from the realities of the present into a world of faerie tale.
..and it would seem they have created a worthy garden at Trematon within just two years.
I shall carry on reading and browsing Landscape of Dreams and taking note of the planting ideas, and marvel at the designs and the thinking behind them, but may have to set it aside once my thoughts turn to the dovegrey garden in earnest for fear of a bout of either Grand Design-itis or Inferiority Complex-opathy, but one thing is for sure we will be dashing off to visit Trematon because Mary Keen has me worried now...
'The worry is that, having created the garden in under two years, there will not be enough planning and rescuing to detain them and they will start to look around for another mission impossible. Get to Cornwall while you can. Trematon Castle is the most thrilling and romantic place you will ever see.'
Meanwhile do share news of your gardens...
Any welcome splashes of colour and if so what. I am now starting to yearn for the sight of the Black Parrots and Belle Epoques in my tulip tubs.
I wonder too...are you living off the memories of something special in your garden last year...for me it was the Black Peony poppies...
And over there in the Southern Hemisphere have your roses been looking grand...
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