Visit to the Majorelle Gardens, Marrakesh

GARDEN DESIGN IDEAS
The Majorelle Gardens are probably best known worldwide for one colour – a fabulous dark cobalt blue that has become associated with fashionable gardening…but of course there is more to the garden than an aspirational paint swatch!

The garden is in the city of Marrakesh in the centre of Morocco. You enter through a gateway in the high wall that leads from the hot, bustling, dusty street. The contrast is what makes the impact. This garden is a sophisticated oasis in a very African city. A perfect retreat from the heat of the day with cool walks, pergolas, deep green foliage, surreal cacti, tall palms, thickets of stripey yellow and green bamboo…. and that blue colour, glimpsed again and again along with splashes of orange, yellow, and turquoise from painted pots.

The garden is memorable for the shape, form and texture of the planting, and for the shade…the intense sunlight creates a latticework of shadows cast by palms, thickets of bamboo and plant covered pergolas. There are dense blocks of green planting and vivid splashes of colour from bougainvillea and plumbago. You are surrounded by strong graphic shapes and silhouettes made by agave and other spiny cacti – and everywhere glimpses of the extraordinary primary colours, including that famous blue, which form a perfect backdrop to simplicity of the planting.

Jean Marjorelle was a French artisit and plant collector who created the garden beside his studio in the early 1920´s. Yves St Laurent took over the garden, opening it to the public in 1962 after the painters death.

Open daily, all year.

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Choosing your style

PLANNING YOUR GARDEN PART 2


If TV’s popular life-style programmes are anything to go by, the style of garden you have is a way of showing off your fashion sense and your income level, not a way of expressing yourself. But the look and feel of your garden is very personal and expresses who you are – much as the choice of colour for a wall in the house does, or the placement of a picture – it’s the way we almost instinctively create our own style because it makes us feel comfortable.

In our consumer minded society, gardening is a way that we can express taste and style while at the same time avoiding conspicuous consumption or ostentation. There’s purity in it. You cannot express yourself by buying a garden. You have to make one. So when you design your garden its good to think about what the overall look will be before embarking on the detail.

Style in the garden isn't just about fashion - the style of your garden will depend on the kind of place you want to conjure up. You might want an unkempt wilderness or a dense jungle. You may want an informal space where you can add and take away plants to see what happens or you may need a degree of structure and need to impose order.

Modern, formal, traditional, informal – all these are styles and they can be juxtaposed in different parts of your garden. Formality – clean, calm, uncluttered, taming nature and training plants into divisions or walls, using topiary, rills or pools, straight walkways, symmetry. Informality – wilderness, lived-in, disordered, chaotic, evolving, meadows, ponds, woodlands, winding paths, layered hedges, dry stone walls…. A juxtaposition of these elements can create tension and contrast – setting up order then letting it go, clipped hedges enclosing a wild profusion of flowers or a formal patio that leads into a wild meadow beyond.

It is wrong to think that there is one style that is right for your garden and another that is wrong. There are really no rules and gardens are eclectic spaces….have the courage to create your own style.

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Wabi Sabi

Wabi Sabi means the art of finding beauty in imperfection...accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay and death. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind.

We hadn't heard of this concept when we moved into our current home - a 100 year old village house in the centre of a small Andalusian town - and it was evident that our Spanish builders hadn't either. They looked at us aghast when we said that instead of completely knocking down the tumbledown breeze-block 'matadero' (which once would have been used for the slaughtering and cooking of domestic livestock) we wanted to keep the brick corner pillars and the old wooden door made from a singer sewing machine crate and still bearing the words SINGER, clearly on the wood and incorporate them into the patio area. The builders complied whilst grudgingly muttering things to themselves about the crazy English...

Now, as I sit on my back steps in the warm spring air, and contemplate our ever-greener patio (the plants just thrive in the combination of shelter and shade), I know we made the right decision. Probably the guy who made the door and pillars didn't know about the concept of Wabi Sabi either, but he did know how to make something beautiful and enduring out of humble materials and I'm pleased to have been able to share it.

(Description of Wabi Sabi taken from http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm)

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Assessing Your Plot

PLANNING YOUR GARDEN PART 1

You need to know your plot inside out before you start to apply your ideas. Firstly record your gut reaction to the site – it might be a feeling of claustrophobia, or that you feel exposed. What do you want to keep? What is in the wrong place? What is missing?

Next make a rough sketch of the plot, don´t measure precisely, just pace it out and use a big enough sheet of paper to draw it at a size that comfortable…you need to get quite a lot of information onto this plan. Put in all the main features, walls, hedges, fences, sheds and gates. Use a compass (or the sun) to find out which way it faces. Mark out the main areas of full sun and of deep shade, places that are shaded all day or for significant amounts of time…or where the sun first touches the garden in the morning. Include your house in the plan and mark how you get into and out of the garden. Note any views beyond the garden - a tower or a neighbours tree that you would like to see better or a view that you want to accentuate.

At this stage the paper will be a bit full! Get some tracing paper and make overlaying sheets so that you can put exisiting plants and shrubs (that you want to keep) on the plan. On another sheet you may need to record the topography of the site in a cross section if there is a significant slope. If relevant on another overlay show different types of ground – boggy, rocky, good soil.

It helps to get information from the surrounding area to add to all your other info. What grows well in neighbours´ gardens or in the surrounding farmland? What is the ´natural´ landscape like? Is there ever frost and where? What about rainfall (or drought)…is that path across the neighbours land really your right of way? Where can you take your garden rubbish if you need to get rid of prunings etc?

Armed with all this information you can sit back and reassess your plot at your leisure. You need this knowledge to help you work out your design and to see how your ideas can work with what you now know about your site – some ideas will have to go, others be modified, but there will be more possibilities for some things than you ever dreamed of ……if you are brave enough to implement them!

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Foliage Garden

THE ZEN GARDEN

Imagine that it is late morning in the heart of one of the most frenetic and densely populated cities in the world. It is hectic and noisy, as all cities are at that time of day, and exhaust fumes hang lethargically like a haze... But, believe it or not, we are aware only of the sound of birds, the crunch of ground underfoot, and the rustling of leaves.

You might be surprised to learn that we were in Tokyo - in Hibiya Park. This park with its flawless planting, amazing canopy and vast swathes of cool green dappled light, was the inspiration for our next garden.

When we moved eight years ago, our plot of land - irregular in shape and listing gently - was completely bare. It was the perfect canvas with nothing but a beautiful, ancient stone wall defining our boundaries. There we were with the unique opportunity to plant anything we wanted yet we knew right from the outset where we were heading...

The plot we have isn't large but eight years down the line the seventeen trees we've planted are maturing well. It's a foliage garden and it is beautiful all year round. We have no grass and very few flowers but an abundance of interesting shrubs, wonderful textures and almost every shade of green you can think of. There's plenty of colour too: from the black grasses to the acers which range from acid green to burgundy; from the peeling white bark of the birches to the flaming red of the dogwood once the leaves are gone... And, then there are the berries. It is constantly surprising and it is changing all the time.

This garden, like all gardens, is like a microcosm of the world we live in. It embodies in a gentler, more nurturing way, many of the hope and dreams, successes and failures we face every day. There before your eyes is the full cycle of nature, from birth to death and every stage in between. There is something about planting and tending which makes your soul sing. I feel this way, whether it’s a tiny cutting on my window sill or when the trees comes into leaf each spring: I watch with wonder, and trepidation, to see if we’re made it through, and for the most part, we have…

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Refuge and Prospect

GROWING DESIGN: REFUGE AND PROSPECT EXPLAINED
A feeling of "refuge" comes from the fact that I am comfortable and secure, in a spot from which I am relatively protected with a broad view of the landscape in front of me. The "prospect" comes from the fact that I can look out over a vast terrain that holds a number of potentially good and/or interesting things to think about. Refuge and prospect is something that the earliest humans might have experienced sitting at the mouth of a cave overlooking a bountiful valley. Many scientists think that an innate positive response to such situations may be in our psyche as a result of millions of years of evolution. Places of refuge are generally associated with the connection to earth and water. Ancient people recognized this connection, and sanctified the regenerative nature of the earth.

The theories about “refuge and prospect” come from the landscape architect Jay Appleton. In public spaces “prospect” describes a place where we can see others, and “refuge” is a place were we can retreat and conceal ourselves. The best places are balanced in terms of prospect and refuge; we have the best view, but don’t feel exposed, or unprotected. According to Appleton, the ability to see without being seen increases perceived safety, which in turn increases the aesthetic pleasure experienced in the environment.

A specific prediction of this theory is that people prefer the edges of a space more than the middle. Often prospect and refuge are in conflict, as a prospect tends to be expansive and bright whereas a refuge is small and dark, but there are cases where they are beautifully combined in one place; these places are ones in which we feel most comfortable or which we vividly remember enjoying.

REFUGE AND PROSPECT IN YOUR GARDEN
The principles of refuge and prospect can be used with particular success within the design of your garden. Becoming aware of these principles provides you with the ability to play with powerful landscape relationships at a smaller scale.

In planning and designing a garden space, the development of an edge is fundamental. This edge can bound, enclose, protect, reveal, imply, project, and much more. Examples of edges include pavements, paths, fences, water, hedges, walls, natural features, and trees. An edge that emphasises safety, protection and enclosure falls into the category of "refuge."

When an edge is used to emphasise a view, this is "prospect". If you want to develop outdoor space with prospect, your design should address the view or magnify the perspective that is already there. Grand prospects of hills, lakes, or oceans are not always available, yet the principles can still be applied. The focus of prospect could lead the eye down a pathway or avenue, or frame a beautiful tree.

The illusion of prospect can be created within an enclosed place (refuge), by creating a separation between spaces, so the view is emphasised. Viewing one space from another, emphasising the connection between separate spaces, creates prospect.

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Perpetual Optimism

THE STARTING POINT FOR A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE THEME OF GARDEN DESIGN
The need to create gardens – to carve out, from nature, places of order and retreat – is as old as time. Whether the garden provides food, a place to relax or a place to impose “order” on the wilderness beyond, it is somewhere where we all act out a drama of perpetual optimism. Our plans are often thwarted by nature´s unpredictability.

The art of gardening is a unique combination of design and visual skills, science and nature. In designing an outdoor space we integrate natural materials and plants with constructions of concrete, tile, wood, metal or brick – arbours, terraces, pathways, fences. We perform a delicate balancing of scale and proportion. We manipulate light and shade…we play with the senses – smell, touch, taste and sound as well as our sight.

Gardens are dynamic places that somehow refuse our attempts to impose our plans on them. The garden is a focus of dreams…as well as a source of heartache – above all it is a unique expression of our relationship with the natural world.

Garden design is a process not a blueprint. There is always a beginning and a middle in the process of designing and making a garden…but no end! A garden is never finished.

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