Garden Centre

Friday, July 13, 2007

Garden Designs, the good the bad and the ugly …

This garden has a real air of 1970s design. It brings to mind the era of The Rockford Files and The Partridge Family, Caramac bars and Click-Clacks (which you may have known as Bangers, Bonkers, Clackers, Crackers, Gnip-Gnops, Klick-Klacks, K-Nokkers, Popper Knockers, Quick Clacks, Rockers, Super Clackers, Tikka Takkas, Whackers or Zonkers!). Something about this design is redolent of those tan-coloured leather jackets with waists that TV detectives always wore, and luxurious sideburns.

If you think I’m being sarcastic, think again. The seventies didn’t give us much to be proud of in design stakes, but some of the seventies gardens have more than stood the test of time and one theme of that era, the year-round garden, has become a classic. The absolute apex of this garden style is Foggy Bottom in Norfolk, started by Adrian Bloom in the early seventies, as part of the Bressingham Garden complex which was created by his father Alan in the 1940s. The garden at Foggy Bottom is famous for all-year round colour and interest using heathers and conifers and is regularly featured on TV and in magazines. A superb book containing much of Adrian’s work, called ‘Winter Garden Glory’ shows how this kind of garden can be both low maintenance and spectacular in appearance. In addition, a craze of the current decade is foreshadowed in these seventies designs; there’s an air of the Zen garden in those mounded shapes of greenery and the contrast between warm coloured paths and soothing foliage, without the distraction of flowers.

Although this garden could do with a bit of a tidy up, perhaps - and some pruning to bring the growth back to the lower levels of those heathers - the colours and textures contained in it are excellent, the maintenance would be minimal for the gardener and the initial investment in plants, made perhaps three decades ago, has repaid the gardener with substantial plants that have stood the test of time.

Labels: all-year gardening, garden design, seventies gardening, zen garden

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:19 AM

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