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.

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