G for Gardens, Gertrude Jekylls and Grief

 

 

 

 Our garden in 2010

 

 

We are very lucky in Taunton that we are three miles from Hestercombe Garden created by Lutyens and Gertrude Jekylls

Jekyll was one half of one of the most influential and historical partnerships of the Arts and Crafts movement, thanks to her association with the English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, for whose projects she created numerous landscapes, and who designed her home Munstead Wood, near Godalming in Surrey.^[3] (In 1900, Lutyens and Jekyll's brother Herbert designed the British Pavilion for the Paris Exposition.)
Jekyll is remembered for her outstanding designs and subtle, painterly approach to the arrangement of the gardens she created, particularly her "hardy flower borders".^[4] Her work is known for its radiant colour and the brush-like strokes of her plantings; it is suggested by some that the Impressionistic-style schemes may have been due to Jekyll's deteriorating eyesight, which largely put an end to her career as a painter and watercolourist. In works like Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden (reprinted 1988) she put her imprint on modern uses of "warm" and "cool" flower colours in gardens.
Jekyll was one of the first of her profession to take into account the colour, texture, and experience of gardens as the prominent authorities in her designs, and she was a lifelong fan of plants of all genres. Her theory of how to design with colour was influenced by painter J.M.W. Turner and by impressionism, and by the theoretical colour wheel. Later in life, Jekyll collected and contributed a vast array of plants solely for the purpose of preservation to numerous institutions across Britain. This pure passion for gardening was started at South Kensington School of Art,^[5] where she fell in love with the creative art of planting, and even more specifically, gardening. At the time of her death, she had designed over 400 gardens in Britain, Europe and a few in North America. Jekyll was also known for her prolific writing. She penned over fifteen books, ranging from Wood and Garden and her most famous book Colour in the Flower Garden, to memoirs of her youth. Jekyll did not want to limit her influence to teaching the practice of gardening, but to take it a step further to the quiet study of gardening and the plants themselves.

My garden.

Due to flood defences for our garden, a much loved old damson tree ( see above) with a rambling rose that I planted ten years previously, was bulldozed into the ground.

Such is loss and grief. In the year 2000, our garden then wasn't designed. When we moved in it was left over from an old farm meadow.  It was decidedly rustic.  In the hot summers it provided ample shade from the trees and mayflies came up from the river to cool down, their iridescent wings fluttering on the dark green of the foliage.  Birds nested in the hedge, which bordered the meadow and was quite ancient.  People couldn't understand why we didn't rip it out and remodel. But they weren't there when we heard the bird song in the quiet of the garden or saw the stars when John and I went out star gazing at night or John did his bird count for the RSPB. We had no light pollution anywhere near. Such is the charm of Somerset and after 13 years of living here I understand why the locals and now, I, love it.

2013 and then and now we have a brand new spanking garden, we have no risk of flood, we are the lucky ones.  We no longer put the good things upstairs when it begins to rain and the river rises.

We have raised vegetable beds, two new sheds where the damson tree stood for many, many years.  We have a plum tree and a flowering cherry and a newly planted border all courtesy of the Building Contractor.But the new doesn't treplace the love for the old.

What must it have been like for the Romantic Poets seeing the ravages of the Industrial Revolution disfigure the beautiful landscape of Britain? Their response was to proclaim beauty - God in nature. What will it be like for our Grandchildren? Will the Levels of Somerset return to the sea? Seeing the bulldozers flatten the previous garden was devastating.  Of course I am grateful, but I still grieve. This new garden is a blank canvas for nature to improve.

When global warming ravages the environment will nature survive. I think so. It is beyond my comprehension to see into the future, but my hope is, that the beautiful blue planet will be saved.