Fascinating though the conversation between Glendinning and Hobhouse is, I don’t get the feeling that either of them has really considered their position. They are making old arguments, and is that the best way to go into a new project? The whole design v plantsmanship contest is old hat, and was artificial in the first place, in much the same way as the spurious division between art and science. If he really wants to do something he’ll have to leave behind the old christian ideas of dichotomy, and enter the more difficult and rewarding zone of duality, plurality and uncertainty. He needs to let go.
Very funny though, that he thought he might find the radical by looking outside the professional gardening world. Amateur gardeners are the most conservative creatures on earth, artists and writers or not. They will not plump for his blind Peruvian in a million years.

Victoria Glendinning - the eloquence of VG and I totally agree - or nearly with everything she says. I didn’t feel I knew you well enough to ask the what-on-earth-are- you-on-about question. Partly because I admire what you are trying to do and partly because rational may be the only route for you to approach something unfamiliar?
Response to VG (in note, rather than eloquent form)
Yes to a garden is a process - not a product. Ongoing-ness means a second chance. And a third and so ad infinitum (or as finite as the gardener anyway)
Yes to a way of being outside and alone - legitimately.
No to scarily uncontrollable, because sometimes happy accidents -Â the self seeders - are far better than anything arranged
No to islands of order. I like the tipping into chaos - hate tidy gardens and think horticulture can get in the way of what matters. Back to Goethe’s ‘feeling in the head’ Not thoughts working wordlessly, more like painting than thinking. For me.

NH Q do we agree what gardens are for? A. see above and add being part of nature’s routine. Life, death, accepting mortality. If winter comes can spring be far behind stuff. Consolation. Art for people who can’t paint, or write poetry, or music.
Q experience of gardening/garden visiting the same? TOTALLY NOT. Visiting is looking at, but gardening is being in. Objective /subjective. Really rare to visit a garden that catches you in its mood. Saw jardin plume in france a few weeks ago and that was one to dream about. And Hepworth one but not - sorry- Pope’s Hadspen ever.
Q what does a designer do? A. understand the place and the person/client. Make the place more itself (MK version) others often want to do statements.
Q What’s in it for garden owner/ gardener? A.   Owner gardener has most fun, then gardener who gets a free hand, lastly owner who pays.
Not sure about your last plantsmen /designers idea. I think 50%50% is best, but if I had to choose one to emphasise it would be designer. Go to Wisley if you want to see plantsmanship ad nauseam, to no effect at all. It is like saying you would rather read a manual or an encyclopaedia than great lit

That is interesting, as my feeling in that upper area was definitely one of comfort - basking in the crook (? hammock) of the hillside, and if anything of balance. What fascinates me though is the way the space then tips one out of bed and the phenomenon in the North-Eastern area I find really rather unsettling. More a lurching. And in the shady, luxuriant run along the inside of the South wall, a total contrast again. Stillness, a pooling atmosphere.

We decided the ‘tipping point’ at its strongest was near the wall just above (westwards of) the door in the curved wall section. On this basis we have either two such points minimum or the much more intriguing idea that the location is subjectively perceived. That’s an idea to design around.

The pond garden is pretty gothic now, isn’t it - even in the midday sun! This deshabille
Seems to rather suit the character of this area - although I was a bit worried about being swallowed alive.

Absolutely agree about disorientating/tilting effect in the parabola - for me, in the open grassy East-Western area. But it does feel ready for the clean sweep. The suspense!

A Potager is just fine too, and probably easier than most ideas as a rationale for a design; just that it has to be a GOOD design.

This all isn’t about being radical, and certainly not for its own sake.

No, even this is not quite right - it is about being radical as to PROCESS, but possible that the process will prove the value of some of the empirical wisdom so beloved of Mary and Johnny.
It’s about understanding the conditions in which great gardening can happen.

I truly have no idea of what the garden should look like; way too early.

Love to see the Chatoniere plan, sounds exciting. What date?- can you photocopy?
Nori and Sandra were anxious for me to go to Petersham, and I will.

By the by, thinking wordlessly through their fingers is just exactly what good designers do do with a pencil.
There we have it, perhaps.

I really love your bit about there being not room for us all in the Walled Garden. What a vision!

… Call it an experiment, what I’m ‘on’ about …. over several years -Â until we can judge the garden that comes out of it. Unclear what the result will be (or should be, yet); even whether there will be a significant result. And yes, in our heads for now because there isn’t room for us all in the Walled Garden.

At this stage … clearing the (thick) intellectual undergrowth, so we know what’s there.
For instance: do we all agree what gardens are for? Is the experience of gardening remotely the same as the experience of garden visiting? What does a garden designer do? If the garden owner is not the gardener, what’s in it for either of them?
There is no consensus yet; and the gardeners themselves have been quite quiet - you, an honourable exception. Maybe they already know, and think it’s none of my business? Or too obvious to need saying?

I do like your proposition VERY much. It makes gardens just the spaces for gardening; and gardening itself something rather like an exercise bike for the soul. Exhilaration, guilt, pain, fulfilment - wonderfully curdled together. This solipsistic world is lovely; but I’d bet that sometimes even you in your garden get a thrill from things you don’t mention - perhaps from two plants placed just right side-by-side, or from the excitement of a visitor. From the rewards of designing, in fact.

I’m not a gardener, not your sort, and not yet maybe - it’s scary addictive stuff you tell me. But I do want a garden, and in a particular place where previously two really good gardens have been. I’m just trying to understand how best to make another good garden possible; or, if you like, who best can make one for me.

The gardener’s mania, so beautifully described by you as worry, concentration, freedom, and energy, does sound really convincing, if just a little bit of it can be borrowed for my project.
Better to make the plantsmen into designers, thinking wordlessly through their fingers; not the landscape architects into florists.

Niall - you should look at p640 of September’s The Garden. La Chatonniere gardens in France has a leaf shaped potager where all the paths running through are laid out like the veins of a leaf - it is VERY reminiscent of F0A’s plan.

I have always thought the D-shape should revert to a potager and wondered if you had been to Petersham nurseries where the gardens supply the big house but also a very successful cafe.

I know you want to do something more radical, but can’t potager’s be radical too?