Melbourne’s
landscape design conference this year comprised lectures by writer Anne Latreille
(`Garden Voices’: Australian designers both past and present); American landscape
architect Ken Smith (`Sky to Ground’); US tropical garden designer Raymond
Jungles (water in the garden), Juan Grimm from Chile and Australian Paul Bangay
(with photographer Simon Griffiths), Professor Toshio Watanabe (Japanese
gardens), Aniket Bhagwat from India; – and I found particularly relevant (in
our climate and with today’s enthusiasm for edible patches) – Canadian-born
French-based Professor Louisa Jones’ Mediterranean Gardens with her fresh (to
me) examination of these gardens born of use but not shorn of beauty.
Louisa
Jones’ comparison of Mediterranean gardens to English was particularly
instructive when we still see the hangover of the latter here, and yes, I am
guilty of that, with my British-born parents. (Growing up in a large suburban garden
of perennials and of perfumed shrubs not clipped into perfect cubes, I heard
the comment that my mother’s garden was `very English’ when I was a
teenager. I had no idea what it meant
then, of course, (and bristled when I overheard it called messy) but thought I
did now. Jones’ clear views have helped me rethink completely – always a bonus,
surely; and reassess my own garden, of course.
What is
most unsettling is the odd notion that J, my partner of 29 years, as Australian
as a white person can be, seems to like notions of English gardens (E) – as
Jones expiates – where I, child of very British ones, seem to want elements of
a Mediterranean garden (M). Could this be?
So, to
some obvious differences: English-style gardens (E) are floral, mainly
ornamental; Mediterranean-style gardens (M) are a mixture of use and beauty,
containing plants that produce fruit, leaves and roots for consumption. (See
above: red poppies under olive trees in spring with buttercups and Queen Anne
’s lace)
Jones
argues that the latter (M) are a moving mosaic, too, with year-round interest
for the 5 senses while English gardens peak in summer (or spring here, I
surmise) and only the visual sense (E) is considered; that was certainly true
the decade that roses began to lose their wonderful scent, and continued, I’d
say, when people derided David Austin for bothering to breed his roses with
their sensational fragrance. But I digress.
[Here J
and I are roughly 1 all. I care about flowers but believe in spreading them out
year-round; he cares about the orchard and he planned the edible patch that mainly
I plant. I buy vegetable seedlings each spring and autumn and also try to grow
some interesting veg from seed each year.
I care
greatly about the visual but love to brush a herb for its fragrance and sensuous
softness (it’s almost immaterial if it’s used in the cooking pot too, see below);
we enjoy fresh tomatoes, sweet corn enormously; we love the flutter, splash and
song of birds, so the garden is multi-sensual; but I’ll be honest, visual is by
far the most important to me. I am the granddaughter of a painter, after all.]
Louisa
Jones argues that Mediterranean gardens are herbal and botanical compared to
horticultural (E) and immersive (M, below) rather than a series of pictures
(E). They are site-specific (M) with local logic of place while English gardens
are often fitting many places, she says, and, interestingly for me, open lawns
edged by borders (E) – which I have (in part) – rather than gardens with layers
and views (M) – where I long for vine-clad pergolas (M) in summer and trees to
cast shade on the hottest days – where J prefers wide open spaces. Here, on
this point, here, suddenly, J is English! Just a little bit, but way too much,
I reckon, for our hot summers, which I dislike so intensely.
Here in
Australia we don’t have that soft, moist light Jones speaks of (in English
gardens), no, we have some days of 40°C and over, in some summers in our
Mediterranean climate; we should garden accordingly. More shade, please.
Jones
also spoke of Mediterranean gardens being strongly sculptural and an unusual
notion, that `formal and wild are not opposites’. While her images of untamed, harshly
wind-swept and salt-sprayed shrubs of lavender and rosemary were indeed looking
clipped, (see wind-pruned
Euphorbia
arborea and
Pittosporum tobira,
below, at
Cinque Terre (my image)), I
don’t think the idea would translate either to blousy rain-soaked perennials and
shrubs in the UK, nor to arid Australian gardens where many native plants, if
left unclipped, become dreadfully straggly. It’s the wind of ocean or mountain
that that is needed for this – or man’s sheers.
In Mediterranean Gardens, a Model for Good
Living, Jones writes of house, garden and landscape: the climate encourages open-air living during
much of the year, and indoor and outdoor spaces intermingle: courtyards,
balconies, gardens are extensions of the living areas inside. We are seeing
this here in Melbourne more and more with our opening walls of fold-out glass
panels and our al frescos. Climate management leads to refined living. Jones
cites Jean Giono about Provencal dwellings: “…sunshine is the enemy! Their
rooms are cool, their shadows soft” and Jones adds that a southern arbour with
grape vine, wisteria or both, cools the house and links indoors and out (see second
picture).
Climate
management is important too, and water distribution, use of local stone, and
summer shade with pergolas, trees, light in winter through a tracery of branches
of deciduous shrubs and trees (such as the Judas tree in the last picture). How
I long for some huge deciduous trees. (My mother grew wisteria on her north
pergola to shade living room and kitchen in summer and deciduous clematis up
the west wall to shade her bedroom similarly; a good plan.)
Arguably
a Mediterranean garden is set apart too, by its clipped broadleaf (as well as
fine leaf) evergreen shrubs along with that vital summer shade, as seen, above,
in a little café in Venice. It seems pretty simple to get that
Mediterranean-style garden but it has the right colour wall, of course, the
bright light, the terracotta pots. Importantly, retractable shade. Spatial
definition with those pots in nice proportion to the small area. Varying
heights, clipped shrubs. Peaceful colours.
But it’s
not easy to maintain.
What
bothers me is that so many of my landscape design clients say to me that they
will plant in pots and it will be easier.
Say what!
No, it
will need much more watering. Plants in the ground are much easier in
Melbourne’s Mediterranean climate.
Jetlagged
in Rome, I saw the waiters outside cafés watering all those pretty potted
plants at 7am on a Sunday morning. On a hot day I am sure that they had to do
it again at night and maybe in the middle of the day too. Do you want to be a
slave to the look? Never have a weekend away?
Instead
I am growing balls of a dwarf lilly pilly (Syzygium `Tiny Trev’) in pairs down
my front path for structure and in pairs
occasionally elsewhere too. (Four pots for accent have the same in protected
shade but, if facing the heat, pots have been planted with agave or
succulents…with reluctance.)
More
importantly, we have terraced our hillside garden a bit (for my little lawn,
straight out from the house veranda) as so many Italians have (like at the Cinque Terre, below), and created a
harmonious setting for our outlook (view is probably too ambitious a word for
our pretty vista across our little valley, of Eucalypt-topped hillside). I
always wanted to walk straight out from the house to the garden and not have a deck.
It turns out that this, too, is Mediterranean!
So I
make it J 2 and me 4 in the Mediterranean stakes; me 1 and J 3 in the English
garden style; quite surprising. (Perhaps I can consider myself
European-influenced?) I wonder what
he’ll say.
