we will have a Competition, open and anon., spring next year, for the first planting scheme to perform on your ’stage’ ; and have fun choosing the judges,-besides ourselves, of course…..

1. I am making a garden, not a business or a tourist attraction. If it’s beautiful, people will want to see; I may or may not let them.

2. The site is the walled ‘D’, plus its entrances and exits.

3. For the architects, the project calls for a decisive reconfiguration of the ground itself ; new paths or walls, terracing and earthmoving as neccesary. No tree, shrub, plant, path, gradient or gap in the wall, has to remain. I’d perhaps prefer it didnt.

4. The brief is to provide a platform that can in the future support any type, style, scale or density of planting (or ‘gardening’ ) :- a single species, or two, or (as now) hundreds; only exotics, only vegetables, only architectural evergreens, only native plants,only groundcovers, only trees, only grasses, only grass; or nothing at all. Imagine the gardener -any gardener- as the theatre director.

The architects are required to design a stage that will render any dramatic performance more dramatic. Great theatres aren’t of their nature reticent- not Epidaurus, not L’Opera, or Vicenza.

5. We close the ‘D’ to the public this October; eight months for constuction, three to plan the new planting, five winter months for planting. Spring 2007 it’s finished.

6. How much can it cost to shift soil and surfaces, replant -even with major hard landscape? Its really not that I have unlimited money, but that I will do what I want to do if a project is important to me. My aversion for doing anything vulgar has always saved me from bankruptcy. So, YES to the neon session you propose; as soon as we can, and if this gives you what you need to begin. Supper afterwards would be a pleasure.

Thank you again for your email ,and for its particular combination of flavour - both generous and practical. It had the effect of sending me back to my own brief, and making me refocus on it.

A proper rereading has made me see the gaps you identified, and I have moved to fill them by arranging to meet on the site on April 7th a small consultant team who my mother has used regularly on her bigger projects in America and on the continent. I think their expertise is ideally complimentary - and consists essentially of very sophisticated technical specification on drainage, plant removal, soil moving, and the possibilities of hard landscaping, together with practical experience in the UK of reconfiguring garden/nursery businesses (all the stuff to do with visitor numbers, seasonality, sales turnover, etc) I do certainly owe you this information before we have our neon session All in all, therefore, I’m inclined to regard the hiatus as productive. Could I suggest that I come back to you around the middle of April and we plan a meeting towards the end of the month. I’m still very excited by the project, and by what you might do with it!

Warmly to you both