Flowers galore

The garden style that resonated most strongly with me this semester was the arts and crafts garden. My favorite part of gardens has always been the plants and flowers. Although I really do appreciate the statues and sculptures and water features, whenever I think about gardens, I immediately think flowers and beautiful flower arrangements. I have always connected and loved looking at arrangements of flowers. I think this love for planting flowers and plants comes from my mom and all of the summers we spent at the greenhouse picking out different kinds of flowers and plants to put in the garden around our house. I remember watching my mom plant flowers for days when I was little and it is still so shocking to me how much hard work is put into making a garden and a beautiful arrangement of flowers. 

In arts and crafts gardens specifically I love how Gertrude Jekyll 'painted' with flowers and made such beautiful painterly gardens. All of the gardens from her are absolutely beautiful and you can tell how much hard work was put into them to make them look this way. I also love how closely Lutyens worked with her. Although I am not very familiar with architecture, I can really tell from all of his designs that he put a lot of work into them and worked directly with Jekyll to place the buildings/houses in the right locations with the gardens.A few of my favorite by Jekyll are the Holy Island Lindisfarne because the colors are absolutely beautiful and you can just see how intricate the detail is in the planting. The manor garden also shows how beautiful Jekylls work is and how the flowers just seem to go together.

Manor house

Lindisfarne

This semester in this course I have learned about and seen many different kinds of gardens. Out of all of the gardens we studied I am still very interested in flowery/plant filled gardens. I especially like the arts and crafts gardens because I really like how they come from the cottage idea. I have always been very into 'cutesy' little cottages and cabins and the intricate little decorations and gardens. I think the most important part about these arts and crafts gardens and Jekyll and Lutyens is that they make the architecture and gardens look so effortless when it was very hard work. Although I still like flowery gardens the best, I am very happy I took this course and learned about garden art in European culture as I have gained a new appreciation for many of these styles and designs.

Flowers and plants really just seem to liven up a garden and make it pop with color and excitement which is why I resonate so much with these arts and crafts gardens and specifically Jekyll's beautiful designs.

Example of a beautiful arrangement of flowers by Jekyll

For more practical information on arts and crafts gardens view my blog 9. Thanks for reading :)

Pictures:
http://www.gardenvisit.com/uploads/image/image/862/86228/holy_island_lindisfarne_jekyll_garden_original.jpg
http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/498add27-3762-4bdc-bdbe-049142f2e5c0.img
http://www.gertrudejekyllgarden.co.uk/images/pitch-4.jpg

Arts and Crafts garden

People wanted something new in garden design after the High Victorian gardens. There was a battle of styles between the gardener and writer William Robinson and architect and writes Sir Reginald Blomfield. Robinson had a naturalist vision, very informal with no straight lines, and wanted the contents to be strictly plants. Blomfield wanted a formal and geometric, Elizabethian landscape with topiary and plants. They went head to head in writings to find that they had a common enemy, which was to get rid of high victorian bedding. This battle of the styles led to the arts and crafts gardens. 

The goal of the arts and crafts garden was to preserve skills and popularize art and craftsman. The arts and crafts stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often applied medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. It advocated economic and social reform-essentially anti-industrial.The major influences and origins for these gardens were cottage gardens, and hardy, old-fashioned country cottage plants/flowers. They were very "pretty" and "romantic whimsey". An example of this is Anne Hathaway's cottage. In this example, the owner/person behind the arts and crafts garden was a big influence as well.

Anne Hathaway's cottage

The gardener, Gertrude Jekyll and architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens found each other during this time of arts and crafts gardens. They began a partnership as they had kindred spirits and knew exactly how one another were thinking. Jekyll had trained as an artist and was inspired by Turner, impressionism and use of color. She lived in Munstead Wood in Godalming where her laboratory was in 1897. It was hand built with local materials and craftsman. It was the first collaboration between Jekyll and Lutyens as Jekyll did the architecture and Jekyll did the garden. The gardens were not formal, they fit into the landscape. They had a long border that was the most famous part of the garden. Jekyll arranged the flowers according to theory of color. She was the first to apply painterly color to gardens and she re-invented the herbaceous border. She could paint with flowers. Jekyll and Lutyens were very popular. In 1897 the new magazine Country Life by Edward Hudson regularly featured Jekyll and Lutyens work. 

Munstead Wood

The arts and crafts gardens were very beautiful. They had a geometric structure that linked the architecture of the house to the garden. The gardens were full of outdoor rooms and were often enclosed by majestic yew hedges, long vistas, majestic pergolas, circular steps and pools, flower-filled rills, arches, and quiet courts all clothed in plants and flowers. These gardens were pretty high maintenance and a lot of work to keep up. In arts and crafts gardens, Jekyll and Lutyens and other arts and crafts designers always consulted the genius of the place. They knew exactly how to plant the garden and where to place the house, they also knew how to incorporate the character of the owners. A couple of examples of these arts and crafts gardens are shown below. Hestercombe is a well known design by Lutyens and Jekyll. You can see the beautiful flower work in the garden in Upton Grey by Jekyll. The deanery was one of Lutyens most well known work for the beautiful architecture and the gardens by Jekyll.

Hestercombe

Upton Grey

The Deanery, Sonning

For more information on these beautiful gardens and where I got some of my information. Also a list of gardens to look at or visit below!

Websites:

http://www.gardenvisit.com/history_theory/library_online_ebooks/tom_turner_english_garden_design/nineteenth_and_twentith_century

http://www.independent.co.uk/property/gardening/crafty-business-the-arts-and-crafts-movement-married-house-and-garden-in-a-beautiful-union-8551796.html

Pictures:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Anne_Hathaways_Cottage_and_gardens_15g2006.jpg

http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Clarke/Pics/Surrey/Munstead/p2.jpg

http://www.gardenvisit.com/uploads/image/image/163/16318/the_manor_house_upton_grey_1358_jpg_original.jpg

http://www.sonning.org.uk/BiF/img/Deanery.jpg

http://api.ning.com/files/58B8q26tWD4IQfjQeDYSDRbaBrwN91-8yVFzRbIL38TTgs*jOeY8OM4SLnm1Cvf8Xi7KC*FofsFvN0cjn7bOTmlKbVedvFBk/HestercombeGardens09.jpg