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Sculpting the English Garden
publication date: Oct 8, 2009
Often the centrepiece of an English garden, ornaments and garden furniture come in all shapes and sizes. From reclaimed stone urns to trellises made of willow, there is something to suit all tastes and add instant glamour to your garden. By Liz Pickering
Often the centrepiece of an English garden, ornaments and garden furniture come in all shapes and sizes. From reclaimed stone urns to trellises made of willow, there is something to suit all tastes and add instant glamour to your garden. They say an Englishman’s home is his castle. In fact, it was 20th-century garden designer Gertrude Jekyll who first put emphasis on the idea that the garden is as much a part of the home as the house itself, and should be treated as a living space to design and enjoy as much as any interior space in the home. But what is an English garden? You might have a mental picture of a ‘cottage garden’ with its profusion of roses, meandering paths and vibrant splashes of colour. Or perhaps the more formal English garden springs to mind, with its organised planting and a grand centrepiece such as a fountain or statue.
Either vision of an English garden would be accurate – you could find countless examples both in England and abroad. We have a long history of both formal and informal styles of gardening, and though they seem worlds apart, the boundaries have sometimes been blurred. As far as we know, gardens first came to Britain with the Romans, and included the utilitarian kitchen garden as well as more formal gravelled walks with box hedging and spaces for statues or seats. Both these influences have stayed with the English garden, adapting to changing fashions. Over the centuries there has been a repeated return to classical styles of garden layout and ornamentation, visible in the remains of the Tudor style at Hampton Court Palace or Montacute House in Somerset. And in the 18th century the English garden really came into its own, characterised by a move from rigid formality to a more ‘natural look’ that was really a controlled and idealised version of that pastoral English landscape we see in paintings of the period. This perfected landscape was soon peppered with newly built ‘ruins’, temples and grottoes that would never have existed there by chance.
You can learn a lot about people from their gardens. The dichotomy in the Victorian character seems visible in the evolution of their gardens; on the one hand more flaunting of wealth and prestige; and on the other, a return to the humble cottage garden, a leaning towards the ‘wild’ rural idyll. Sometimes these two types of garden were combined over the coming years, as at Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire and Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. The traditional cottage garden is seen as functional as much as decorative. The idea is that flowers were planted in any available space not already given over to vegetables, resulting in a rather magical explosion of foliage, colour, shape and fragrance. Whatever its true beginnings, the cottage garden was somewhat formalised in the 20th century by designers such as Jekyll, whose gardens based on colour schemes and a series of ‘rooms’ may still be found around the country. The modern English garden is often a hotch-potch of ‘cottage’ style planting, ponds, topiary, manicured lawns, walks and seating areas, all given shape and structure by means of carefully chosen garden furniture and ornaments. In fact, your choice of garden ornament can speak volumes about the character of the garden you are trying to achieve. Is this particular English garden a place of order, or uninhibited passion, or a bit of both? The design, materials and placement of garden ornaments will help to define your garden. Take the use of lead, for example. This soft, rather handsome metal has been used for centuries to decorate buildings and gardens, the traditional craft of lead working hardly having changed since its inception. The Stephen C Markham Collection offers custom-made products to the customer’s own designs, so you can see your dream become reality and give your garden both your individual personality and the stamp of authenticity that such an ancient craft provides. H Crowther in London is a family business (spanning three generations) that has been producing hand-crafted lead garden ornaments from its own foundry since 1908. Pieces from H Crowther adorn the gardens of estates and institutions throughout Britain, but as Paul Crowther says, “something extraordinary can be created without ever looking pretentious. The material’s weathered appearance blends in perfectly with a temperate garden; it never says ‘look at me’. It punctuates and can successfully complete a garden.” This understatement is what makes a lead garden ornament such an ideal addition to an English garden.
If lead is subtle, stone can be anything; subtle or ostentatious, smooth or weathered, angular or gently rounded. This, too, is an ancient material for a garden ornament, but technological advances have allowed mass production and greater affordability. Stone ornaments and garden furniture are produced in moulds and given a ‘weathered’ appearance so that the piece fits into your garden as if it has nestled there for hundreds of years. Companies such as Chilstone, Redwood Stone and Haddonstone have all perfected this technique of weathering the stone, and it has been used to great effect in pots and urns, statuary, planters, bird baths, sun dials, seats… the list could go on. If you prefer something genuinely aged, why not find a restored antique or reclamation piece? The only problem is that these are increasingly rare and expensive. Redwood Stone offers a Reclamation Stone collection, inspired by traditional English masonry. Though each piece is a new creation, it is hand-carved by the company’s master mason and bears a unique mason’s mark. These arches, water troughs and urns are virtually indistinguishable from a genuinely historical piece carved from quarried stone. Similarly, Haddonstone specialises in traditional stone garden ornaments. Classical pieces such as urns, fountains and statuary are produced from cast limestone, with a similar surface texture to Portland Stone.
Perhaps you are looking for something unique, made by a single designer, in either traditional or contemporary style and purpose-built for a specific spot in your garden. Is that too much to ask? Not if you commission a piece from John Thompson at The Carving Studio, who uses his stonemason skills to handcarve bespoke designs by hand, giving a unique quality hard to match using machinery. Or from David Harber, who makes sundials, water features and garden sculpture, each piece an original work of art. Not only that, but his sundials are specifically calibrated to function at that precise location. As David says, “it is a perfect marriage of Art and Science.” “Because we are forced to live at breakneck speed, sundials have great appeal. They remind us of a more gentle age and they convey the passing of time in a relaxing, therapeutic and inexorable manner. They convey a stillness in the moment.” David Harber produces traditional-looking work, and also very modern constructions of metal, glass and light. Can something so ‘new’ truly belong in a traditional English garden? That probably depends on your point of view, but in fact your choice in garden ornaments for the most traditional of English gardens is not limited to classical urns, fountains or birdbaths. Far from it.
Martin Young of Sitting Spiritually produces hand-crafted swing seats using western red cedar, pine and English oak. You can really see why the pieces are given names like Serenity, Harmony and Tranquillity. These seats are so inviting, so beautifully carved, that they make a peaceful resting place the focal point of the whole garden. They are Martin’s personal creations rather than classical reproductions with a preconceived notion of what an English garden should be. Garden ornaments are often used to draw the eye in a particular direction as a contrast to the living things around them, but one of Martin Young’s seats might seem more a part of the tree it hangs from than a contrasting element of the garden. Today the ornaments for an English garden include all sorts of natural materials and designs to give shape and structure while blending with nature rather than standing apart from it. Ruth Thompson makes garden sculptures, trellis and arbours from willow. Alone, they are a beautiful natural addition to your garden, but once covered in climbers, they become living sculptures where nature is given centre stage. “My garden structures just provide an underlying skeleton for the honeysuckle and roses, or a shady living willow arbour, or a defining, natural edging around the herb spiral,” says Ruth. Working with willow is a rather spiritual process for Ruth, who loves the “dedicated time in that almost meditative space where hand and eye and brain work together.”
There is an abundance of talent in Britain for the design and manufacture of garden ornaments out of a great variety of materials. Royal Horticultural Society Flower Shows can be a perfect place to find just the right garden ornament, or you could visit the many great gardens of Britain which provide inspiration to millions of visitors every year. At Chatsworth in Derbyshire, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, you can even buy garden furniture made by the Chatsworth Carpenters. These pieces are exclusive to Chatsworth, all the designs having been approved by the Duchess herself. There is considerable choice out there,
so whatever your preference in design or materials, anyone can create a little piece
of England in their own back yard. Details
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