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Thoughts About Formal Gardens

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My previous article was about the basilica garden designed by Hugh O'Connell. Hugh sent me an email in which he shared some thoughts on the subject of formal gardens and he has given me permission to publish that letter so that you may all read it.

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Dear Kirk,
From a design viewpoint following the formal garden, not every client has a window with a round top. This I realized after completing that project. Yet I wanted to use proportion as a norm in my design approach. I decided to experiment and find a way of using proportion-without the client knowing. Or to produce work which varied in degree by the amount of formality. A few clients love formal design, but most don't. They associate it with Belgian gardens-clipped shrubs, or the formal examples of the past parks etc. I find it's easy to embarrass them, if I suggest it. It's the associations, which present such a big hurdle. Rather than try and educate them, it's easer not to mention it until the plan is finished - or not at all in some cases.

In Vitruvius's day, and the Renaissance it was the norm to build using proportion, today it's not.

The drawings for the formal garden were put on exhibition at Hampton Court Flower show for a week, the year after the garden was built. I was in attendance during that time. Relatively little interest was shown, by even designers (Mrs Rosemary Alexander FRSA, AI Hort, FSGD Principal of The English Gardening School was the exception) nice drawings, but a little bit too - highbrow?

Now some modern designers are experimenting with formal design. Jill Billington has written a book 'New Classic Gardens' ISBN 1 902757 50 5. These are mainly minimal gardens. She says some work, and some don't quite. I notice some are show gardens - not real (no consideration for the test of time) pity, because Arabella Lennox-Boyd does good work. I saw a garden she had done in Berkshire. Christopher Masson is not illustrated - another designer who understands the formal concept.

Gordon Hayward in Vermont, is well into his next book the MS is due late January. It will have six chapters: front gardens, side gardens, gardens in an ell or courtyard, gardens between buildings, outbuildings as centres of gardens. He says the information I have supplied him on the relationship between proportion of house to garden will be terrific.

The about Scotland website offers a number of pages devoted to harmony and proportion. The section on Palladio contains a page entitled The Proportion of Rooms, as it shows proportions based upon 'The diagonal of the square' or the square root of 2. Also illustrated in Landscape Design with Plants ISBN 0434 90234 9 page 49 figure 4.14. This illustrates the development of the root in separate sections, normally it is drawn as extensions to the Palladio drawing. To use it, the first measurement is a vertical taken off the house to first floor. Which relates to the occupiers ourselves (back to Vitruvius). The room variable has been adjusted to suite the occupants with the house architecture. This variable is taken into account with the first floor measurement. Which should be especially helpful to someone who is designing a formal garden.