THROUGHOUT the history of garden design the latter half of the 20th century brought about a great change in the way that people imagined what a garden should be.
The “Festival of Britain” in 1951 was largely responsible for a renewed interest in gardens during this period. The festival was a nationwide celebration of everything that Britain had contributed to Science and the arts. But the main aims of the event were to encourage exports, promote Britain and to give people a sense of recovery after the Second World War. However, one thing in particular the festival did accomplish was to give garden design a new lease of life.
Garden designers such as Sylvia Crowe and Brenda Colvin started to gain a higher status as they produced an increasing number of inspiring public landscapes. Their popularity was reinforced by a number of books which they wrote on the subject of landscaping and gardening.
The legendary garden designer John Brookes began his career as an assistant to Crowe Colvin which gave him a firm grounding in landscaping. Brookes was also inspired by the work of Thomas Church, an American landscape architect who developed the “California” garden style. This approach focused on functional, low maintenance designs that were intended to feel relaxed and Church popularised the term “A room outside” to reflect this philosophy.
Following on from the designs and writings of Thomas Church, John Brookes went on to become prolific in the creation of gardens intended to be used by people and not just looked at. In 1969 John’s hugely successful book “Room Outside” communicated his design methods very effectively and he still writes today as well as designing and lecturing across the world.
Beth Chatto is one of the biggest names in 20th Century garden design. Since 1960 she has been developing The Beth Chatto Gardens in Essex. These gardens demonstrate the need to understand plants and the crucial role that positioning plants to suit their native environment plays in the creation of a successful garden. The site posed a range of challenging conditions to Chatto which she solved using a variety of planting styles with emphasis on contrast in texture, form and foliage. Of all of Chatto’s gardens, the dry garden is the most famous, which started life as a car park but was planted with carefully selected drought tolerant plants and only watered when initially planted but has thrived ever since.
In the early 20th century a German garden designer and plant breeder by the name of Karl Foerster was one of the first people to focus on using plants to suit the site. His style was also quite distinctive because of the way he used bold masses of perennials to create a naturalistic look. In more recent years a dutch landscape designer called Piet Oudolf has helped to bring this style back into vogue. Piet’s planting schemes often start with a formal framework of evergreen structural shrubs or clipped hedging. Within this he weaves huge drifts of perennials into each other emphasising contrasting forms and colours. The planting also has a variety of ornamental grasses running throughout to soften and create a unified effect. His use of perennials frequently highlights an array of flower shapes including flat- Echinacea, spherical- Echinops and spiky- Persicaria just to name a few. He now designs public and private gardens throughout Europe which celebrate the beauty of nature.
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