Conceptual garden classics
Post categories: Sally Nex
| 18:32 UK time, Monday, 7 July 2008
One of the many reasons why Hampton Court is unmissable is because it's a showcase for up-and-coming, ambitious designers - and they aren't afraid to buck the trends and try something really different
Sometimes it doesn't come off - 'Pulsations', an odyssey in black polystyrene and cactus plants, is a highly unusual small garden, but it didn't do much for me. Other times, it's revolutionary: everyone's talking about ''The Porsche Garden' by Sim Flemons and John Warland, which solves the problem of using front gardens as car parks by the simple expedient of using a lift to park the car under the garden, not on it. It's undeniably a garden for the boys, but you can't help thinking ideas like that might just catch on one day.
A few years ago the RHS recognised the show's tendency to break new ground by introducing the Conceptual Gardens category, and it's become a firm favourite - you always see something original, thought-provoking or both. You might understandably argue that 'Ecstasy in a Very Black Box' isn't really a garden at all: the only plants in it, after all, are tiny lettuces in a carpet across a black floor. But before you dismiss it, look closer: this is gardening as art, a visual representation of what it's like to suffer bipolar disorder. And when you understand it, you realise it's just right: glimpses of vivid brilliance - shards of coloured glass which of course harm as much as they attract - appearing tantalisingly through otherwise unremitting blackness.
More cheerfully, my favourite of the conceptual gardens has to be Forest², created by Ivan Tucker with the help of horticultural students at Merrist Wood, near Guildford. With just 30 trees and some clever use of mirrors, an entire birch forest springs up in an unfeasibly small corner of the showground. I had great fun peeking through the portholes in the side - the best way to view this garden without spotting your own reflection in the background. Though it was disconcerting to see a disembodied head floating in the nether regions of the woods - and realise it was your own face looking back at you...
Sometimes it doesn't come off - 'Pulsations', an odyssey in black polystyrene and cactus plants, is a highly unusual small garden, but it didn't do much for me. Other times, it's revolutionary: everyone's talking about ''The Porsche Garden' by Sim Flemons and John Warland, which solves the problem of using front gardens as car parks by the simple expedient of using a lift to park the car under the garden, not on it. It's undeniably a garden for the boys, but you can't help thinking ideas like that might just catch on one day.
A few years ago the RHS recognised the show's tendency to break new ground by introducing the Conceptual Gardens category, and it's become a firm favourite - you always see something original, thought-provoking or both. You might understandably argue that 'Ecstasy in a Very Black Box' isn't really a garden at all: the only plants in it, after all, are tiny lettuces in a carpet across a black floor. But before you dismiss it, look closer: this is gardening as art, a visual representation of what it's like to suffer bipolar disorder. And when you understand it, you realise it's just right: glimpses of vivid brilliance - shards of coloured glass which of course harm as much as they attract - appearing tantalisingly through otherwise unremitting blackness.
More cheerfully, my favourite of the conceptual gardens has to be Forest², created by Ivan Tucker with the help of horticultural students at Merrist Wood, near Guildford. With just 30 trees and some clever use of mirrors, an entire birch forest springs up in an unfeasibly small corner of the showground. I had great fun peeking through the portholes in the side - the best way to view this garden without spotting your own reflection in the background. Though it was disconcerting to see a disembodied head floating in the nether regions of the woods - and realise it was your own face looking back at you...
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