Happy Halloween from 'Monster Park'

In the spirit of Halloween, I wanted to share my visit to one of the most magical gardens I have ever seen, the Sacro Bosco or Sacred Wood.  Adding to the spell of the Sacro Bosco was how hard it was to find. 

While on my way to Viterbo, Italy, I couldn’t get my GPS to recognize either the name or the address for this garden.  This had happened to me several times in Italy, so I was mildly amused, confident that my hotel would help me with directions.  After all, I had chosen my hotel because it was close to the garden.  

My amusement turned to concern when the hotel staff had never heard of Sacro Bosco.  One by one, each tried to figure out where I was trying to go, finally agreeing with my GPS that no such garden existed in the area.  They were quite sure of themselves.  At one point, with the entire staff gathered at the front desk, they reached a consensus that I had the wrong town.  

In a last ditch effort, I recalled that I had packed a wrinkled black and white photo of the garden.   It was buried in my suitcase, but when I showed it to the staff one exclaimed, “Oh! That’s the ‘Monster Park’, why didn’t you say that from the start!” 

Emboldened by a huge sense of relief, and with my camera in tow, I drove the short distance to the garden.   The sign in the photograph of the sphinx proclaims, “He who does not visit this place with raised eyebrows and tight lips will fail to admire the wonders of the world.”  Beyond the sphinx, heavily wooded paths lead to the head of Orcus, god of the underworld, who is surrounded by sea monsters and figures from another world.

Stay tuned for more about this garden in the next post.

 

Farm to table: Fit for a queen

There are many types of beautiful gardens, but none are more different than the formal garden and the vegetable garden.

The formal garden is primarily ornamental.  Geometry, symmetry, constraint, and an axial relationship to a main structure rule the design. Clipped plant material reminds us of our desired supremacy and control over nature. Statues celebrate great past accomplishments, connecting us to a broader historical context.  The formal garden is soothing in its repetition and orderliness; it feels sheltered from the dangers of the natural world.

The vegetable garden is primarily practical.  Meant for physical nourishment.  Here is an immediacy that comes from the planting, growing, harvesting cycle. It is meant for a hard day’s work and a good nap at the end of the day.  In return we get food and sustenance. It too provides a sense of shelter, though mostly intended to protect precious crops.

Nowhere do these two garden styles contrast with greater impact than at the Chateau de Versailles.  I always thought of Versailles as an iconic formal garden.  Miles of straight paths radiate from the Palace into a series of formal gardens, many with grand water features. This garden screams power, money, destiny.  The vistas into the horizon are remarkable in a “how did they carve this out of swamp and woodland” way; but the effect is also intimidating.  I felt small in the face of it. 

After hours of walking through these formal gardens, the transition into the Queen’s Hamlet brings welcome relief.  Behind the Petit Trianon sits a traditional English picturesque garden where curved paths follow a naturalistic stream.  Each turn opens up a new view until finally a large lake frames a French rustic village.

It feels as if you’ve stumbled onto a small town. Without the gravel path leading toward it and it being on the official garden map, I might have stopped at the view so as not to disturb the families living there.

Hubert Robert's ink drawing Interior of a Farmhouse with Figures. Source: National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection.

From some angles the composition is too perfect, like a movie set or theme park.  Every piece of the design is intentional. A few man-made toad ponds blend into the meadow and provide part of the sound track.

Marie Antoinette commissioned this garden in 1783 as a retreat from the pressures of the Court.  The garden was built by architect Richard Mique and painter Hubert Robert at an estimated cost of $5 million (in today's $'s).

The garden is an imitation of a rustic French village, a series of thatched roof houses each has its own gardens framed by hornbeam hedges and chestnut trees, and planted with useful cabbage, artichokes and lettuce.  There are climbing vines on most buildings, flowers for cutting, and simple flowerpots. There’s an orchard and vineyard and small barn for farm animals. This was a working farm run by a real farmer who put food onto the royal table, but the main purpose of this garden was to provide Marie Antoinette a place to relax with friends. 

I couldn’t help but feel a philosophical struggle at Versailles between the vast series of extravagant formal gardens that celebrated legacy and big government on one side of the Petit Trianon, and on the other side this (also extravagant) idealized rustic place that celebrated simple farm life.  Did I want to stay in the warm, country village or go back to the grandeur of the Palace?  Perhaps a metaphor for the struggle going on in France that led to the French Revolution?  Marie Antoinette barely enjoyed any time in this garden. By the time it was completed, the Revolution had begun.

See more posts about the gardens at Versailles here.

The vegetable garden I am planning this year won’t look anything like this, but it is fun to dream.

 

Hubert Robert by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Source: Louvre.

Drawing of Richard Mique holding garden plan, unknown artist (courtesy of Musée Carnavalet, Paris) 

The wild garden

In the 1800’s a powerful change in garden styles came from a gardener named William Robinson, and his garden called Gravetye.

To appreciate how innovative this new style was it is useful to consider that at this time there were a few dominant garden styles: idealized nature in the Chinese and picturesque garden, rigid geometry in the formal garden, exotic plant displays in the gardenesque garden.  In some ways, the wild garden combined the best of each, but its real innovation was in using exotics in naturalistic ways.  Particularly in Europe, this meant planting non-native plants -- not as specimens, but as integral parts of compositions, as they might be seen in the wild.  Robinson described his view of the wild garden as "placing perfectly hardy plants in places they will take care of themselves."

To promote this approach, Robinson wrote The Wild Garden in England.  And he created his own garden, Gravetye, as an example.  His garden has each of the elements of the wild garden: close to the house geometric planting beds are stuffed with sun loving native and wild plant species; beyond the house he created a mixed meadow; in the distance there is a pond for water loving plants; and a woodland area beckons to shade lovers.

Today, Gravetye is open to the public as a luxury bed and breakfast.   The property sits at the end of a narrow country lane in the swanky West Sussex area outside of London.  Once you get there, time slows down and you are transported to 1860.  This means no air conditioning in the summer, but breakfast and plenty of champagne in the glorious garden.  The garden is inspirational.  One of my favorite memories was that rooms include a copy of his "plant book".  This means being able to stroll the garden as Robinson himself describes what he was thinking as he created each section.  This garden will always stay in my mind.

 

Portrait of  Robinson from the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland. Source: americangardening.net