Right in the middle of the busy season, August, the only month when the house was open at weekends too, it was decreed that I should absent myself for several days to attend an internal conference of Senior Horticultural Professionals, where I could meet others in the same boat. Well, not quite the same boat, because my joint Administrator and Head Gardener post was unique. I didn't want to go. Like all operators working way out of their depth, I believed the place couldn't get by without me, whereas that was patently untrue. Until the end of the previous year, it had always got by without me. What it couldn't do in my absence was progress. But then, in the big picture, what is three or four days in the context of the great push forwards?
I also didn't really want to be placed in such illustrious company, where I would surely show my ignorance and lack of experience. I was battling with low self-esteem. I thought my meagre City and Guilds (with distinction) would compare palely with their Botanic Gardens Diplomas, and I would be baffled by their scientific erudition. I pleaded with my boss that I was needed at work, that I was indispensable, that the fabric of the building would disintegrate and the garden would fill with weeds if I turned my back on it for even a second. I was overruled.
In the event it was the best thing that could have happened. My colleagues were a good bunch, serious about their subject, eager to share knowledge and welcoming to a newcomer. Although I never developed any sensation that I actually needed social contact with my peers, I enjoyed it when it was available.
The first conference I went to was held in Northern Ireland. I didn't really enjoy the formal meal at the end, with guest VIP's, where everybody was supposed to dress up with ties and garments that I didn't even own, let alone wear. I expect I let the ambience down with my fast shirt. Or did I make a compromise? I can't remember. As far as I recall, I didn't have any appropriate clothes, and I hadn't been warned of the requirement. Time to be a rebel, I think. For the record, the local after-dinner speaker was hilarious.
Garden visits were another matter. We went to some fascinating places. I saw plants I had never seen before. I saw top-rate gardens and others which could have done better in my opinion. That was where my confidence started to grow. I looked at other people's work with a critical eye and realised that mine came out favourably. I had always visited gardens, of course, but by now I had changed. I had worked in the field myself, and had recently taken on a garden of considerable importance and quality. I was now able to review what I was looking at in the light of my own relevant experience. And that experience did not come up short. I could work a garden as well as anybody. Certainly there were plants that I would not be growing in our exposed garden, without the benefit of a more sheltered setting. We would not waste our time on tender myrtles, or Cordyline indivisa or Beschornerias, there would be no Mutisia decurrens for us, but I learned things here that influenced my approach ever afterwards. And in the end, when I had created new microclimates and had budget to spare, I even tried some of the above.
The first thing I learned on these visits, bearing in mind that we trudged through some sites with lakes and canals and which extended to over 100 acres, was that far too often the crispness of the maintenance tends to fail in the further reaches of large gardens. I was repeatedly disappointed to find, after 'doing' the prominent areas near the house, or castle, that my trek took me a long way out around the lake, where the banks would still be planted with rare and interesting ornamentals, and yet it seemed that the further out you wandered the more acceptable it was that you should find these intruded upon by brambles and nettles, as if somehow it didn't matter this far out. Well, to me it did. It let down the whole experience. I understand the concept of leaving such native plants for wildlife. I'm not even against it, but I believe when you are planting exotic non-native plants in a carefully landscaped context, providing planned walks through it, then you should be showing this off to the best of your ability. I know of no sensible compromise, in the same area, between your plant collection of rarities and the kind of rough scrub so beloved of our native fauna, so many of which will eat your fine ornamentals anyway. I like some kind of separation of such elements. I vowed not to let standards drop at the further reaches of any garden I managed. Anyone coming to view our work would find that everything they looked at aspired to the same high quality. In so doing they would leave their visit with a warm glow, precisely because at no point did we frustrate their expectations by lowering standards.
Secondly, I came to realise that tranquillity in a garden does not come from using quiet colours, as had always been assumed in the one I was responsible for. There are other factors at play, intangibles that I probably can't describe, but which certainly include the creation of magic atmospheres. What do I mean? Well, if you make an area enfolding and fill it with unexpected shapes and forms which make it instantly unfamiliar in the landscape it has two effects. First it will excite you, and then it will fulfil the needs of a fantasy. It will take a viewer into the realm of their own imagination, where the rest of the world will disappear. The usual parameters will be upturned, and sitting within it, you will be transported out of the now and into a place that is entirely your own. That is where peace can be found, in a setting which is the product of your own need. For this you don't need weak colours. You can have any colours you like. It is now your world. It no longer belongs to the person who laid it out like this. You, the visitor, are the one it belongs to.
This came to me at Mount Stewart, one of my favourite gardens, in which, despite being in the company of 100 or so Head Gardeners, I felt completely at peace, totally surrendered to my own imagination. I think you need to see a couple of pics.
Mmm. I'm back there now. That's my kind of fantasy. The shapes, the forms, the textures, the colours. The absence of people. But it only seems like that. In fact it was full of people. They were for a brief instant irrelevant to me. This was my element. In any case, what is the point of something so beautiful, if there is no one to enjoy it? Gardens are, and always will be, about people. Naturally, I would have liked the hedges to have been crisper, more precise. The whole point about formality is the way it contrasts with the plantings behind it. It needs to be spot on to set off the flowing flounce of the informality. I'll be telling you later how I treated our hedges to do just that.
But looking at this scene, suddenly I knew what needed changing in our drab little garden. It had structure, it had good taste. What it needed was imagination. What it needed was art. Art should always make you think.
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