Sissinghurst, a bird's eye view

The charge to industrialize at the turn of the twentieth century changed our world: more goods became affordable to more people, economies shifted from agriculture to manufacturing, wealth accumulated with investors who built factories, and farm workers moved into cities to benefit from more steady work and to take advantage of urban resources.   But from another perspective, industrialization meant a loss of craftsmanship and design quality, a loss of a connection to the local land, a disregard for nature, and a de-humanization of labor.

The Arts and Crafts movement started in Britain, the most industrialized nation in the late 1800’s;  it intended to address anxieties surrounding industrialization.  The movement sought to raise the quality of design and to re-establish the connection between local artisans and consumers. Arts and Crafts did not promote a particular style, instead it was a philosophy that advanced a return to pre-industrialization design and local craftsmanship.

Portrait of William Morris, aged 53 Source: Frederick Hollyer -  Google Books edition of J. W. Mackail The Life of William Morris in two volumes, 1899

In the late 1800’s, writer and social activist William Morris popularized the movement by focusing on the home.  He was famous for saying, “have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”  He also revived traditional textile arts by designing wallpapers, textiles, and tapestries.  These can still be purchased today at Morris & Co.

Within this context an arts and crafts garden style emerged.  Today we recognize key elements of this style: the garden integrated with the home, intimate garden rooms, herbaceous borders, and formal architecture combined with wild, effusive planting.  Handcrafted ornaments embraced local materials. Useful and romantic features like meadows and orchards were also incorporated. Otherwise, Arts and crafts gardens freely borrowed from many different garden styles.  Most importantly, arts and crafts garden designers had the space to inject their own personalities, giving these gardens real power.

In an early example, Morris’ garden at Red House included a medieval pleasure garden with fruit trees and simple flower beds that were used in his textile designs and in the making of dyes.  England became ground zero for this type of gardening; great garden designers like Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson not only created their own beautiful gardens, but also educated millions of other gardeners through their garden writing. 

Jekyll and Robinson's influence extends to one of the most iconic arts and crafts gardens, Sissinghurst Castle, which we see in the slide show above.  Set in the English countryside, the garden was started in 1930 by wife and husband team Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.

This garden had an unlikely beginning.  As a woman, Vita was kept from inheriting her ancestral home even though she was the eldest child.  (This is a detail of English law that features prominently in the Downton Abbey series that is explained well in this piece from National Public Radio.)  Vita’s childhood residence wasn’t ordinary.  Her home was Knole House, a 365 room complex with 52 staircases!  Vita described the relatives who did inherit the property as, "A rotten lot, and nearly all stark staring mad.” This incredible story is the subject of Robert Sackville-West’s memoir Inheritance.

Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, in 1960 at their home, Sissinghurst, Kent. Photograph: Corbis /Corbis

We’ll never know what Vita and Harold would have done to the garden at Knole House, but we do know that their search for a new place to live led them to Sissinghurst Castle.  This ruin with roots dating to 1305 gave them a blank slate to start fresh and create their own personality-infused garden.  Today Sissinghurst is one of the most famous gardens in the world with nearly 200,000 visitors each year, more than twice as many as those visiting Knole House.

The garden consists of a series of distinct garden rooms.  Each one offers a unique, intimate space with a cohesive design.  Any one of these rooms could be modified for a smaller property.

At ground level each garden room felt like a wonderfully scaled space and a world to itself.  Then a small opening in a hedge or a path would draw me into another garden room where a totally different world opens up.  And then another, and another.  Like Chinese courtyard gardens created 1,000 years earlier,  the intimacy and repeated openings and closings of space is magical. 

The bird's eye perspective from the Tower makes the garden room structure clear: the Top Courtyard; the White Garden, Yew Walk, and Orchard; the Moat Walk, Cottage Garden; and the Rose Garden.  From the Tower it is clear that the entire property is set in the midst of a working farm in the English countryside. 

Map of Sissinghurst Castle garden.  Source: sissinghurstcastle.wordpress.com

 

Too pretty not to share

I recently took break from garden history to get inspiration from local gardeners Nate and Roberta Selle who have taken a bold design approach to create a welcoming garden.  Both fell in love with gardening when they were young.  While their first gardens consisted mostly of vegetables, their current Wisconsin garden is packed with flowers, color and fragrance.  “The passion is in the flowers, in working with the beauty,” explains Nate, and Roberta adds, “I love the fragrance. The garden brings a simile to my face every time I am in it.”  Speaking with Nate and Roberta about their garden reminds me of the power of memory, the joy of sharing, and the importance of personality in garden design.

Bird bath/ planter for succulents overlooks the layout of the rear garden beds.

Nate can visualize design ideas in his head; he’s ready to implement them right away. Roberta likes to draw things out, to consider before moving ahead.  These different approaches to the garden complement each other.  Their property was originally dominated by lawn.   Over the course of six years, they converted section after section into plant beds so that today it is a garden first, with grass pathways providing a way to get around.  “We started with the south side of the house where we could put just about anything in.  We loved it so much that we slowly expanded the garden around the house.”   One of the most striking features is a 20-foot by 50-foot garden in the middle of the back yard - no easy feat since the house lies on the Niagara escarpment.  Nate dug out three tons of rocks by hand to make room for fresh, rich soil. 

The couple actively seeks inspiration from other gardeners: “we are often driving around and Nate will say ‘go slow here’ to point something out.”  They are not shy about building on what they see, making changes that let their personalities shine.  This makes their garden delightful and unique.  In terms of plant selection, they’ve got over a hundred varieties, but their favorite plants - daffodils, tulips, and irises in yellow, orange, and purple – play starring roles.   And their love for succulents comes through.  Hen and chicks are paired beautifully with creeping sedum: as ground cover, in a collection of strawberry planters, and in several giant wire pigs.  

The Selle’s personalities extend into the details of the garden.  Nate’s childhood hobby of collecting pigs, a good luck symbol across cultures, has spilled into the garden with several pig sculptures.  And during their garden party last year, Roberta planted teacups with succulents and gave them away as party favors.

From the beginning, family and friends have been important to the garden.  The first plants used came in a car “filled to the trunk” from Roberta’s uncle in Pennsylvania.  The fact that these plants were shared from his garden make them even more meaningful.  When Roberta’s 39-year-old cousin passed away, they planted a special container filled with yellow begonias to remember her by.  Roberta explains what happened next, ”We then started to invite people to do something special for a loved one, or we’d put in a friend’s favorite flower.  An angel and smiley face are for our neighbor and daughter, both breast cancer survivors.“   These last two are right next to each other in a field of irises, their favorite flower.  This element of Nate and Roberta’s garden give it depth, and reminded me of the power of using the garden to remember loved ones by.

When asked for gardening advice, they quickly respond, “know your sun and soil and match plants to that.  Start small and be realistic with how much time you want to spend.  Not everyone is going to like spending 20 hours a week in the garden like we do.”  Nate also insists: “Figure out what plants you like, what makes you happy.”  And Roberta advises patience, “Give your plants 3 years.  If they don’t work by then, move them somewhere else.”

The most amazing thing about Nate and Roberta’s garden is how welcoming it is.  No fences or hedges block it off from the neighborhood.  They weren’t home when I first visited, but the layout made me feel comfortable wandering around.  Before I knew it I made myself right at home, sitting on one of several benches, just enjoying the space.  Roberta and Nate say that this design feature is intentional: “The flowers are too pretty not to share. We love to have people come in. Why have a garden if you are going to close it in.  It’s not what they are made for.” 

Happy gardening!

A group of red and white striped tulips remind me of the famous ‘Semper Augustus’ variety.  In the 1600’s these were so rare that it was cheaper to commission a grand master painting of this tulip than to own one. 

The iris, named after the Greek goddess who traveled on rainbows to link heaven and earth, plays a key role in the garden.  They are planted in drifts to increase their impact. 

Shade-loving plants like trillium and ostrich fern fill the shady border on the north side of the house.

See this post as featured in the Post-Crescent.

Border in a box

Baby blue eyes, Primlet sunrise, Skippy orange, Ballerina white.  Just a few of the evocative names for the primrose, violets, tulips, and sedum that fill these hand-made arts and crafts garden troughs.  Created to look like carved stone, each one is a border garden unto itself and perfect for shallow-rooted plants.  They are a reminder that gardens don’t need to be big to pack a punch and imperfect, hand-made things can be beautiful.

Even better: these garden troughs can be made at home using equal portions of peat moss, perlite, and Portland cement.  But don’t try substituting concrete mix for the Portland cement as I did.  The mix won’t have enough holding power to compensate for the other added ingredients.  The right ingredients will make warm containers that are more lightweight than concrete or stone.  Otherwise, your containers will turn to powder over time-- as I learned the hard way.  Instructions to make your own, just like these, can be found in the video below.   

The set above are from Chicago’s Heritage Garden, part of the Chicago Botanic Garden. The Heritage Garden is dedicated to Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist and explorer who developed the “species and genus” scientific naming system that we use to identify plants today.  This was the first classification approach based on the natural characteristics of a plant’s flower and fruit.  The system had the capacity to accommodate the growing number of new plants being brought into Europe from far away trading posts; replacing other, more arbitrary attempts to classify plants. He shared his work through his book Species Plantarum, published in 1753.

Carolus Linnaeus, engraving from Robert John Thornton’s The Temple of Flora (1807).

The Heritage Garden is divided into seven beds that display plants based on their geographic origin, and 14 beds grouped by their classification.  As opposed to a purely aesthetic garden, this space is essentially a dictionary of plants.  The overall design references the world’s first botanical garden in Padua, Italy that dates from 1545.

When I visited the Heritage Garden recently, all of that history was interesting, but it was the garden troughs that stole the show.