Jenny Woods to Liz Noble
Thank-you for your response to my letter - which only reached me today I’m afraid! Got held up somewhere along the line.
Glad that I’m not the only one who thinks the FAO design is inappropriate
for the site - I feel a bit like the boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes
story,but I’m not quite sure how loudly to shout “look at the king!”
I could see the zig-zags planted and viewed as a plan in an urban
environment - perhaps a courtyard overlooked by office blocks, but human
beings are not going to want to walk through it and enjoy spending time
in
it as a garden - and as for “switching” visitors around, don’t they
understand that garden visitors want to “do” the whole garden looking at
plants out of season as well as those at their peak.
Visiting the empty garden, if you knew it before, will be a shock. I’d seen the photos, but it’s another matter actually being in the space. Quite moving - the area outside the walled garden, by the tea house and water tank is really atmospheric with the original planting run wild (roses and bananas!) but the great void of the walled garden is amazing (although I still regret the destruction of the allee).
I think the ‘microclimate’ discussion of the South East corner is a red herring! - the gate has been widened and opened up in recent years to allow the view of the lake thus destroying any sheltering effect of the wall intended by the original builders - visiting on a windy day in midwinter soon illustrated that. The idea of a traversable pond (which would always be viewed in the wrong direction against the sun) and those horrid little water channels (which will dry up and go green in summer) is just daft.
I like what you say about structure imposed by planting - do you know Broughton Grange and Bury Court? They are inspiring examples of spaces created by plants - perhaps because I’m quite short and get dwarfed by Stipa gigantea!
I really hope that the competition is thrown wide open again to generate more ideas, there are so many things one could do with the site - from purely planted designs to more structured approaches. Wish it was mine!