Thank you for another lovely, stimulating, letter.

Largely, I need to do my maddening thing and not comment, but there are
Bits in yours where I am not going to be able to resist.

So, perhaps off the record:

The discipline of the FOA approach could as well provoke an oppositional response which is anything but ‘pared-down and elegant’. In any case, they know by now that I’m holding their feet to my bonfire, along with the garden designers. Also, the ‘drama’ prescription needs to be examined. Even in a garden, poetry doesn’t have to be pastoral; and surprises can be unpleasant, mysteries sinister.

Somebody who knows the landscape pretty well took me to a spot within the Walled Garden which he feels suggests a rocking vessel - as in cradle, ship, or liquid in a glass. Anyway, a comfortable instability, generated by the internal slopes, the curve of the walls, and the uncertainty as to whether the landscape outside was above the viewer in that spot, or below. So the paths could indeed be trying to escape the space, as you say; but equally, rather greedily or generously, trying to fill it. Hope this doesn’t sound like special pleading.

I will be sure to at least keep you in the loop with all this - tell us when we are driving you mad; and in the meantime thank you for thinking about it.

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