THE GARDEN CELEBRATING AN IMPERFECT UNIVERSE

My story starts with a moment I didn’t capture on film, but which 16 years later still enraptures me. I had taken a photo of the stream at Bodnant Gardens in Wales, tall old trees on the banks, streamside ribbons of green, a few red flowers (what? perhaps they were yellow ligularia…) As I dropped my camera there tiptoed out onto the rocks across the stream a little girl of  perhaps seven or eight, dressed in red and pink, her arms out to balance her. Before I could lift my camera again, she had crossed. As I remember, I asked her to go back and do it again, smiling apologetically at her parents, but the spontaneity was lost and the final photo disappointing.

Element one of The Garden Celebrating an Imperfect Universe: children must play in it, lost in a fantasy world.

Element two, and the one I knew I could never make work convincingly on my budget – I am fascinated by the Golden Rectangle and its relation to the Fibonacci spiral and Fibonacci numbers  (see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_spiral  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence   Or just  do a Google Image search for “fibonacci sequence in nature”as I did for these illustrations. The pictures will give you a pretty good idea of what this is all about… and why the gardener/ designer/ spiritualist/ philosopher in me is fascinated by the subject.)

I wanted to try to make Fibonacci work for me; last year I met an American girl who was going to be studying Landscape Design and who wanted some hands-on experience whilst she was here. I gave her a pack of references, showed her the site and asked her what she could come up with. She went off days later, leaving me with a few charming and evocative sketches, but I think she thought me  a little touched.

Photographed in my own garden last week, no thought of Fibonacci on my mind!

Element three: near where Croft Cottage is today there were two massive  Eucalyptus  trees of an unusual species. They had the nasty habit of dropping huge branches from up high, each  the size of a decent tree. I once watched one fall… those trees had to go; but their going was slow. Two contractors abandoned the job, the second leaving one  tree leaning perilously into another. A third contractor managed to drop the trees successfully, but absconded before cutting the huge trunks, over a meter in diameter and many meters long. Last year a man who walked barefoot and drank a bottle of brandy neat on the job every day cut the trunks into ‘manageable’ discs. Well most of the trunks.

  I decided to use these discs like stepping stones in the garden at the end of the front door axis, One would step along them and look down on a sea of plants one would normally look across at in a border. And the child with the outstretched arms was there in my mind.

Now let us take a look at the site. The main axis of the garden runs from the front door down past the Ellensgate Garden and through Alfred’s Arches before forming a stage at the head of the Rosemary Terrace. There, at the moment, it stops.

Looking first down and then up the axis. The photos were taken on my return to the farm on 5 April,      a wet afternoon, and the dogs are eager for their first walk of the month. I am not being obliging…

Side view of the axis; the hedge at the top end of the Rosemary Borders is only just protruding beyond Alfred’s Arches, the Salic cuprea arbour over the path.  The Ellensgate Garden is mainly hidden behind the two junipers that frame the start of the path. The pillars at the head of the steps are matched by two pillars either side of the front door – they feature in this photograph.

The end of the axis is marked by a black rubber dustbin, let into the ground some 9 years ago to be the reservoir for a simple spout fountain that would sparkle in the view from the front door. Recently we laid on electricity to this point and the project can now be completed. But how to continue from here? There have been many ideas over the years. What ever happened next, the path would need to take a turn around the spout. Few of us are sufficiently in touch with our inner child to walk across an enema.

Stand at this point. Ahead is an off-centre semi-circle, dense to the right, fronted by the wonderful pale trunks of Pride of India (Lagerstroemeria indica) Straight ahead an ancient apple and a purple crab have clearable scrub beneath them. To the left there is lawn and  the view opens up towards the Makou Dam, but there are three Liquodambers kept coppiced to give an impression, along with some bedraggled spiraea, of finishing off the semi-circle. Take a look again at the picture above the axis shots to see this.

Too formal- one of the main reasons this area has taken 8 years to develop further.

Recently I stood astride the sunk dustbin, the silliest thing anyone can have in their garden, and wondered  how (the hell) I was going to make it all work. Whatever happened at this point would be of forced symmetry, at best vaguely semi-circular, yet this was where I was contemplating enforcing the perfection of Fibonacci on the terrain. No wonder my American thought me daft and apologetically came up with something very interesting, but only slightly like I had asked for… Since her suggestions  I had decided on the stepping stones, and pictured, vaguely, a curving set of steps going off to the left from the axis and flowing round into a sort of spiral within the semi-circle.

As I stood contemplating, a very lovely sunset developed, and it happened to reflect in the Makou Dam, and I happened to think that it would be very lovely if there was a sheet or two of water between me and the dam to bring the reflection closer.

I know it IS the 1st of April as I write this, but I promise you, I’m not having you on. Really not. I looked down the length of this lowest of the terraces and I thought about water and reflections and a picture of a very beautiful garden came into my mind and I thought ‘not like that, but rather like that’ and so I went inside (much to the dogs’ disgust) and searched through my many linear meters of books for the picture of it I knew I had. I searched and searched. I did not find the picture immediately.

But I found enough to realise that it was the garden at Shute House, designed by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe . More importantly, I discovered that there actually was an entire book devoted to the garden, and that it was available from the USA at $1.45, second-hand. So in due course the book arrived. I spent an agonising hour prizing apart the water-damaged pages (only very minor losses as they on the whole parted company cleanly) and then I could read all about Shute House in great detail. But that, I guess, really is a subject for another post. What is important here is that water had entered into the equation – and that I could almost certainly get it on site by pipe from Freddy’s Dam, there already being a pipe feeding the Waterlily Pond, which could be extended.

Last week I arrived back on the farm just before lunch with assorted shopping and a trailer load of old tyres to go into the soak-pit which will complete Croft Cottage’s sewerage system. At which point the Bell Loader arrived and parked behind me. He’d been working in the pine plantations, moving the cut logs and loading them onto the trucks. My staff had negotiated with him to come and help move the huge eucalyptus discs. They knew what a task it would be without the Bell… Well to cut a long story short, little over an hour later all the biggest and many of the smaller discs had been moved, several put on site in their final position, the Bell operator using his massively strong and incredibly manoeuvrable vehicle in such a way that one thought of an elephant using its trunk.

He was swinging those huge slabs to just where I wanted them, then putting them down facing as I requested. And so I found myself looking down on the semi-circle again on Wednesday evening, contemplating the newly installed curve of ‘stepping stones’.

I walked along them, exploring not only the inner child, but checking how aging gardeners would manage the ungainly hop. I wondered about a seat, for suddenly the area had a magic I had not noticed before. And I wondered about integrating the water into the spiral. And then I went home and prepared for payday, and coming to Johannesburg.

And thus we find ourselves on Thursday afternoon en route, with time to think, So I put my mind to the water issue. And as I told you in my previous post, things then happened fast… I thought of children, and I thought of the strange flattened-out spiral of  vaguely circular tree stumps and I thought of contrasting a counter-spiral of water, and I thought of the perfection of a Fibonacci arrangement, and how “sort-of” everything about the topography was, and the name came to me in a flash, and with it the whole solution… The Garden Celebrating an Imperfect Universe.

I stopped the car and drew a quick schematic drawing, to make certain it could all work: middle left the end of the axis where the spout is, with the steps above; circles of ‘stepping stones’, and the line of the chute.

 Perhaps a map will be of value at this stage! The front door axis is shown in red, with the half moon representing The Garden Celebrating an Imperfect Universe. The broken line shows the edge of the property. The new visitors’ parking is indicated – come and see the garden for yourself!

A	The Big House	N	The Old Barn (Die Ou Skuur)
B	Ellensgate Garden	O	Croft Cottage (still under construction here)
C	White Garden	P	The Long Border
D	Anniversary Garden	Q	Makou Dam
E	Big Lawn	R	The Arboretum
F	Alfred;s Arches (willow arbour over path)	S	Park Lane
G	Upper Rosemary Border	T	(marked Y ) The Avenue
H	Rosemary Terrace – the most obviously formal part of the garden, especially when seen from the visitors’ entrance ‘L’.	U	The Circle Route – a comfortable walk on a drivable road,on a gentle contour around the two dams. About 800m long.
I	Lower Rosemary Border – with a rosemary hedge along its entire length.	V	Freddy’s Dam. The Bridge is at the V.  The House that Jack Built looks onto  this dam.
J	Site of the planned new reflective pools on the lowest terrace.	W	The Waterlily Pond. Could also have been marked U as the Circle Route  passes here.
K	The Garden Celebrating an Imperfect Universe	X	Beech Borders axis With a bit of imagination the line between here and ‘U’ can be seen.
L	New visitor’ entrance  ; from here you can easily explore the formal gardens or take the Circle Route ‘U’ to explore the wilder parts of the garden or the arboretum (R to T).	Y	Site of the planned Mothers’ Garden and Old Rose Garden (to be moved here from the Rondel Garden – off pic to the right.) The Mothers’ Garden, commemorating my and Louis’ moms, is due to be started soon.
M	Vegetable Garden	Z	The Sequoia Avenue

 

WORKING ON THE NEW VISITORS’ ENTRANCE

At its best the Italian pot which marked the end of the vista down the Rosemary Terrace looked like this. Yet even then the conifer seemed windblown and the Abelia ‘Francis Mason’ cubes were out of scale and straining at the lead. But the perceptive might have noticed the past tense in the above. Because things are changing.

The map – click on it to enlarge – shows the new visitors’ entrance I am working on. The red loop show the anti-clockwise movement of vehicles through the new parking area. And the new entrance will be along the axis of the Rosemary Terrace, past the pot whose sole purpose was to close the vista down the long, narrow terrace in the past. A beginning and an end are not the same I have realised. (Besides – the pot composition was seriously in need of attention, the abelias out of hand and the conifer departed.) Not seen in the photo below, lost in the cube of abelia at the end of the lawn, is the pot…

Now the Italian pot will be one of the first things one sees on entering the garden, and beyond it the terrace flanked by the Rosemary Borders.

How to treat it? For long I considered four clumps of zebra grass to replace the Abelia, then realised they were (a) too seasonal and (b) even more out of scale. Then on impulse I spent too much money on too many plants to give a complex mix of yellow and coloured foliage and orange flowers. And half of them quite tender to boot. Mistaaake… They stand forlorn, waiting for me to figure their future. Meanwhile I found some lovely young box plants in my own nursery. They can form, four to a hole, much smaller, neater cubes around the pot.

But what IN the pot? No longer only an exclamation mark at the end of a vista, it needs to be a welcoming first focal point too. And it is at an awkward height, the lip too close to eye level. Does one put in simple low bedding? Or a trailing foliage plant? What will be multi-seasonal? Low maintenance?

This photo shows how the abelia hedge behind the pot has been removed for the width of the terrace, and gives an idea of the arch that will be cut through the dense maples to frame this view from the entrance. The old concept of yellow foliage against green no longer is valid. The pot is beautiful as it is. Does it stand empty? And suddenly a vision from a friend’s garden comes to me: a large Chinese jar filled with water, and a pump set to boil just below the surface right in the middle, thus creating little concentric waves which gently move in and out. Eureka! And I need to get electricity to the new entrance anyway!

Back to the past. Here the late lamented Doubly looks down the Rosemary Terrace from the pots which mark its entrance from the path on the axis from the front door. The Upper Rosemary Terrace is newly planted.

 And here he is again, some time later. The borders are looking good, the edges appalling, and the Rosemary hedge, planted as cuttings, reads only in the imagination. The viburnum hedge at the end of the terrace has never had a perfectly horizontal top. That soon must change. These borders – more particularly the Upper Border – are the closest to conventional borders I have. Maintenance and design (or visa versa?) on them need to be upped substantially. For South Africans don’t come to look at formal gardens; not on our mountain anyway. People need to be wowed before being led out around the dams and up into the arboretum…

This rather randomly chosen picture shows that the border is worthy of close inspection. But its real strength is when seen at sundowner time from the stoep (veranda) of the Big House, backlit by the late sun, the dam a black shadow beyond it.

 I love this shot. It has an old-fashioned artificial quality, like an enhanced Edwardian postcard. The cosmos, the Golden Rain Tree and the  Pride of Indias are in bloom, the light golden, and all is well with the world. There will, by the way, be a single jet of water rising through a bed of river stones just to the left of the hedge. It will be visible from the front door down that axis. Semi-completed several years ago, it awaits the installation of electricity for the pump.

There is much work to be done. But it has started. Beneath the roses visible in the wide shot of the Italian pot as it looks at the moment, there stands a yellow bucket. I had just used it whilst planting five different coloured Phygelius in shades exactly matching Rosa mutabilis. At the moment it is ‘Cornelia’, rather pinker, that dominates the composition. But I have no doubt that in years to come there will be a real show-stopper to greet visitors as they enter the garden!

 Late this afternoon I went for a walk in the garden. It was a glorious day after two sharp showers during the night. Roses and many other plants scented the air. I spent time photographing the Rosemary Terrace and Borders. Only when I started photographing the roses – about which a post will follow! – did I realise the camera was somehow set on black and white. So here is yet another very old-fashioned photo, taken from the path and looking back across the whole of the Rosemary Terrace area. Ubiquitous ox-eye daisies and an indigenous diarama (angels’ rod) in the foreground. I think I shall be spending more time with black and white…

 

A ‘MAP’ AT LAST!

It is very much a work in progress still – but a recent vast improvement in the photo on Google Earth has enabled me to start working on a map of my gardens. The first map was a bit of a disaster, so in the meantime here are a few photos-with-overlays to give you an idea of how it all fits together.

Just right of centre at the very top, a bit of my neighbour’s dam  (lake) can be seen. My boundaries form a wide arrow pointing towards it. An almost vertical line cuts down the left of the photo; my ground is to the right then and my cousin’s to the left. The grove of large trees on the very right are the Sequoias that gave the farm its name. Pine plantations grow behind the house and across the road, where the bulk of the productive farm lies. My cottage (The House that Jack Built) is near the centre to the right of the dam. The photo below gives more info.

The next three photos show the main garden area in more detail: in the second I’ve added the main axis lines and in the third defined the garden areas.

  

For those who are interested: the point 23deg53’59.61″S  29deg56’57.34″E lies just behind the big house, if you want to take a ‘live’ look at Sequoia Gardens and its surroundings. And there is a tourist map here which gives you our setting relative to the greater surroundings as well as our more immediate ones. We are just below left of the centre of the map, on the L road, below Cheerio Gardens; the word “trout” lies on my farm. My guess is that when the map is updated, it will no longer be necessary to describe where to find me: Sequoia Gardens will literally and figuratively be ON THE MAP!