Formal Balls: Revisiting the Original Concept

The drawing above is from the article in the Telegraph.

I found an article today about the Telegraph Garden for the 2014 Chelsea Flower Show. The designers are Tommaso del Buono and Paul Gazerwitz. They favor more formal gardens and their drawings for Chelsea are no exception. "The 2014 Telegraph garden combines some of the guiding principles of Italy’s great horticultural tradition but reinterpreted for a 21st-century design. Inspiration for the garden has come from revisiting the components traditionally found in celebrated historical Italian gardens, to create a bold and uncompromising modern garden."

This garden reminded me of my original idea about the terraces in my own garden. Charles Platt's work in Cornish, NH and Villa Gamberaia, outside Florence, had inspired me to consider a formal Italianate design approach. Now I am revisiting that idea.

Here is a photograph I took of the Lower Garden last fall with boxwoods drawn in a very simple, symmetrical and elegant way rather than the random arrangement in the last two posts. Ten years ago, this is the feel I was going for. My latest idea is that the Upper Garden has boxwoods artfully arranged and the Hall with Balls has a random placement. Maybe I could leave the Lower Garden more formal but add boxwood balls on the slope of the Woodland Garden below as if they were rolling down the hill there. There would be whimsy in the woodland but a more conservative approach here in the Lower Garden. I have some interesting some choices to consider and plenty of time to think about it before all the snow melts!

Villa Gamberaia: Source of Inspiration

The Water Parterre at Villa Gamberaia

I had the good fortune to attend the Chelsea Flower Show on two occasions. Each time, I was struck by the simple modern design of two foreigners: Swedish designer, Ulf Nordfjell, in 2007 and the Italian garden designer, Luciano Giubbilei last May.

Nordfjell's garden was a tribute to Carl Linnaeus and used a Swedish steel, timber and granite elements in a very simple but elegant design. The plant palette consisted of plants known to be cultivated by Linnaeus and plants commonly grown in Swedish gardens. The Giubbilei garden was equally simple and elegant with a pool, bamboo pavilion and sculpture by Peter Randall-Page. He used pink, maroon and brown flowers planted in romantic drifts to great effect.

Both designers have published books chronicling their work. Ulf Nordfjell: Fourteen Gardens and The Gardens of Luciano Giubbilei were coincidentally both published in English last year. I found it fascinating that they both site Villa Gamberaia, the Tuscan masterpiece, as an inspiration.

Nordfjell noted that at Villa Gamberaia "I found what I have often missed in other gardens: architecture, design, and the art of the garden, all unified by the stylistic ideals of the Renaissance man." He goes on to say that the villa "despite its age, feels like a modern and cohesively designed garden." Nordfjell fantasied "in my mind's eye, I find it irresistible to replace today's well-manucred lawns with ethereal beauty of the Tuscan landscape, creating an intimate tribute to nature from its own wildflowers: meadows of grape hyacinths, primulas. daisies and salvias, framed by formal hedging. This would, if such a thing is possible, enhance the genius of the Renaissance garden still further, forming a meeting between garden and the natural landscape, created by our human longing for beauty."

In his late teens, Giubbilei spent some time volunteering at Villa Gamberaia, being mentored by the head gardener, Silvano, who had worked there since the end of the Second World War. When Giubbilei left the villa, "Silvano presented him with a black-and-white record of the garden, a book that would prove a significant influence once his design career was under way. The atmospheric photographs by Balthazar Korab depicted both the architecture and mood of the garden: deep, rich shadows played on intensely lit surfaces, their textures almost tangible." Using these photographs as a model, Giubbilei "wanted to seduce people into entering gardens using the architecture of planting, the texture of the surfaces and the arrangement of sculpture, containers and furniture. His intention was never to imitate but to explore, to understand the sentiment behind the garden and the intensely motivating images."

During a family trip to Italy, I visited Villa Gamberaia in 2000. I was struck by the simplicity of the design and the intimacy of the scale of the garden. I learned the importance of having both shade and light in the garden and the clever use of terracing to divide spaces on a sloped site. I realized that I long for a design that is well-articulated and doesn't attempt to do too many things at once. It reminds me of the advice of an English professor who encouraged us "to say it, say it and say it again." The same clarity of intention is true about effective garden design.

Both of these designers have helped me distill what I found so alluring about Villa Gamberaia. Luciano Giubbilei has reminded me of the importance being influenced by other gardens and art but not to copy them verbatim and Ulf Nordfjell has galvanized in my mind the importance of well-chosen plants to create a desired effect within the confines of a strong design.

Charles Platt grants permission

Villa Gamberaia

View from the garden toward the house

Water Parterre

The Grotto

Granite stairs on axis in my garden

Symmetrical beds with a granite bench as a focal point

The view out the French doors in the lower garden

When I began to make a garden on my small property in the village of Peterborough, NH, I was at a loss on how to arrange the garden on a steep hill which had glimpses of a view of Mt. Monadnock from the side yard. In the beginning, I concentrated on planting flowers that I liked and then I visited Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, NH. Aspet was the home and artist's studio for the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1884-1926). Saint-Gaudens may be best remembered for the Shaw Memorial in Boston. Aspet has a formal design and has garden rooms with white pine and hemlock hedges.

As I studied the Cornish Colony, I learned of the influence of formal Italian gardens in New Hampshire. Charles A. Platt (1861-1933) was a respected architect and later landscape architect who admired Beaux-Arts architecture and studied Italian renaissance architecture. In the early 1890's, Platt traveled to Italy with his brother to study Italian architecture. In 1894, his landmark book, Italian Gardens, was published. Platt moved to Cornish after he returned from Italy and built a house, studio and garden. Judith Tankard, in her book A Place of Beauty: The Artists and Gardens of the Cornish Colony, wrote that "Platt's intention as an architect was not to reproduce what he had seen in Italy, but to adapt its spirit to an American context." Platt's own house and garden has formal design with paths laid out axially in relationship to the house and terraces. The house is nestled into a hill and has a commanding view of Mt. Ascutney in Vermont.

In 2000, my wife's family planned a trip to Tuscany and I had the opportunity to see Italian gardens for myself. While the rest of the family took a day off from sightseeing, I traveled to the hillside of Settignano outside of Florence and visited Villa Gamberaia. Villa Gamberaia is probably the quintessential Italian villa and garden. Its intimate scale makes translating the formality of the garden into a small American plot possible.

When I returned to New Hampshire, it became clear that I was going to make a formal, terraced Italianate garden which related to the house. It was also clear that my version of an Italian garden would be a very humble permutation of Platt's adaptation of an Italian garden in an American context. I believe that Charles Platt created a New Hampshire tradition that made my garden have a sense of its own place. In essence, he gave me permission to build my garden.