Day 124 - My great ambition

Now my pictorial record surprises me. My next folder of photos is dated four months later. I can well imagine that I had been too busy to take any during what remained of the summer. I would have been flat out harvesting through that period, and there was a lot of involvement in planning meetings. It may also have been around this time that I took on responsibility for the building maintenance contracts, typically adding to my own stress, rather than letting somebody else carry the burden. I was so paranoid about the damaging effect of building works on my lovely garden that I felt the only way to control it was to run it myself. This was probably true, but it stripped much of the pleasure from the working day.

Looking at the photographs I have, it would seem that I just couldn't resist getting the camera out when the Pyracantha produced its berries. that was too good an opportunity to miss. The first shot shows why I do not consider myself to be a photographer. I repeatedly manage to snap my own shadow to the detriment of the finished image -

I wonder who was with me there?

I could have cropped it, to eradicate the shadows, but it looks good from a distance and I never mind showing my shortcomings. A close-up wasn't bad though. And weren't those hedges getting better all the time?

The two other pictures taken on the same day are of the mirage caused by the wavy mowing where the old fruit cage had been. Now at the stage I had envisaged, and in the longer autumn shadows, this area had the appearance of an undulating seascape, which was precisely the justification I gave for doing this in the first place, with this being a coastal garden -

In fact, that was a perfectly level lawn which now had taken on a completely different character through fancy mowing -

But that was it for that area. Its days were numbered.

The organisation desperately needed a stable environment for the archive, which was the largest of any composer anywhere, and had put in a planning application for a new building on the site of the house next door, which can be seen on the left of the above photo. That was the reason I had already cut down the Leylandii hedge in front of the building, leaving stumps for leverage when I came to grub them out. My lovely wavy mowing would be sacrificed to the landscaping for the new building.

It was clear to me, if not to everyone else, that the scale of the proposed structure was not going to get past either the planners or the bungalow-land nimbyism of the neighbours, but nevertheless, we were planning on the basis of the success of the application. The local authority planners were muttering about conservation plans and getting involved in the plantings, possibly dictating which trees we would have to use and removing all flexibility from the landscaping. We were already maintaining native woodland at the edge of the property, but my ideas for laying out the area round the new building had a different thrust and involved paying homage to the seaside location, and the property's musical heritage.

We had discussions around this, and I produced mood boards to explain my thinking, and the management team accepted my plans. My justification was largely based on photographs from the internet showing the kind of style I envisaged for the finished garden. It would consist of two areas, Firstly, on the far side of the building there would be a seaside garden, possibly with a Mediterranean flavour, but at any rate influenced by photographs such as this, giving a free access amongst the plants, quite unlike any of the traditional areas of the main garden -

The other part of the scheme was intended to act as an inspiration to visiting musicians and composers, and was planned to create sounds within the natural environment, as well as providing seclusion for contemplation. It was to utilise bamboos and grasses to blow and rustle in the constant east coast breeze, and to provide nesting places for birds which would bring their song to the enclosures. It would involve a serpentine path between small discrete circles of lawn, shielded from one another, eventually discharging in the vicinity of the front doors of the building and hopefully giving an effect like this -

The bamboos would be pruned carefully to reveal their stems and leaves would be removed to accentuate the colours, as in the next two pictures -

Strong foliage contrasts would be placed within the circular rooms -

There would be no fussy planting, but everything would be in large drifts of single varieties -

Smaller grasses would be used amongst the bamboos to give further contrast to the whole -

Throughout the scheme, trees would be planted which made strong statements with their bark. These would include Snakebark Maples, Cork Oak, Prunus serrula, Plane trees and Birches such as Betula albosinensis var. septentrionalis -

Although there would be limited numbers of bright flowers, the effect would nevertheless be lush and inviting, even exuberant -

Yet, looking out from the building, I hoped eventually to be able to create a feeling of tranquillity -

There was an urgency to all of this, though, as I would need to make much of the scheme part of the garden before the planners arrived and started dictating something much less creative. I was given the go-ahead to start my landscaping, which I had begun by the following March. I undertook the work with huge enthusiasm, as I was totally convinced of the statement I was trying to make. However, I also approached it with some trepidation, as I was absolutely certain that we would not be granted permission for the gigantic edifice for which an application had been submitted. That's all a tale for another day.