Niall, One more suggestion in respect to Richard’s comment too. I think that he should be in the jury, and that you may be able to involve other people with no gardening experience, as long as they are willing to serve in the jury. I think it is a good idea to have some experts around the table able to assess whether the profiles or the competitor demonstrate technical capacity, but I would not preclude the possibility for other intellectuals to assess the conceptual capacity of the entrants as another merit of the proponents… It will be up to you to convince people like Serota to enter into a debate on gardening as a relevant contemporary artistic endeavour, if you want to use the occasion as a PR opportunity. This will not affect negatively the project’s development but make it more interesting, I think, if they are properly briefed…

Thanks. What is clear to me is that this much lower key route, if it works, will produce a garden with its own integrity, rather than something for show. And it is a much more interesting way to test out the research you did for the project. The widening discourse can come later, but the rigorous idea requires rigorous execution. The change in the profile of the judges should make it possible to identify the interesting individuals, and we will just have to see what the networking produces. I think it would be nice if your scheme was on your website, and I’d appreciate this. But now things are no longer anonymous it’s actually possible for us to forward the file directly. I’ll be in touch again when I have the site cleared, the paths marked, and a palate of sample materials to look at. Thanks again for last week, it was very helpful.

On the blackberry in the woods but……. N and S had three more years to go to the full term we had agreed together. I was very happy with this and we had begun to plan a succesion. They had sold their house here and bought in British Col to be near children. Then in jan last year n had long postponed hip operation and they decided to bring the date forward. This precipitated the replanning but the manner of their going couldn’t have been easier or more amicable. Any unease now has more to do with seeing their work, and memory, swept away. But the fact is that they,and the manner of their coming, remain my best model for what I want to do here next. Could forward their email address if you want to be in touch. Also do ttalk to my mother if you want.

Onto your question: definitely a hands on gardener. And not an intermediate and imposed designer. One could say in fact that I’m trying to extend the successful popes model in terms of both design and management-in recognition that the Arabella(say)- plus- head -gardener one won’t get me the new approach I’d like,or is really credible these days. Am trying to reinforce a connection between planting and landscape somehow lost between landscape architecture and plansmanship. as now practiced in isolation from each other so much of the time. Is this helpful?

Thanks so much for tireless help and time yesterday. I really enjoyed it and meeting the daughter.

Just read your Cedric Price piece which is terrific and made me understand your ‘unblinking interrogation’ of the project a bit better. One question ( I will try not to do this all day) You are expecting the Chosen One to live and garden at Hadspen? Not an established designer with serf to execute the plan? Well well Sissinghurst and Hidcote AND Lutyens sounds pretty arts and crafts to me. One day you must come here and see a non garden.

lovely to see you; and thank you for your sharp observations. Teresa will send you the Cedric piece later this pm(not on this machine). Meantime here is my list of gardens; I was wrong - Sissinghurst and Hidcote are there, (and 2x Lutyens). We rejected this approach altogether in the end, but the note gives a flavour of the to-and-fro that went on with FOA for six months before they came out with anything like a drawing. It occurs to me to say, perhaps wishfully and probably unhelpfully, that the answer in my case to the rationalist/romantic conundrum should be BOTH.

That is people from either school of thought would probably achieve some concensus about most of the gardens on my list; you and I did, for instance. So the questions become: how do great gardens do this? Can we assume that this is why they are great? If so, can one do anything to create the preconditions for them- in this case, by front-loading some of the ideas? I freely admit that ideas are my comfort-zone. I changed the manifesto, incidentally, to include drama:-mystery, surprise, poetry. Above all, an experiment.