Gardens, for most of us, are about creating a space in which to relax and
admire the glories of nature. There is, however, a tradition, stretching
back to the Greeks and Romans, in which the landscape is for serious
contemplation and allusion: to philosophy, religion, politics and the
classics.
The three acres of gardens at Througham Court, Christine Facer’s 17th-century
manor near Stroud, in Gloucestershire, are firmly in this metaphorical
tradition, but her points of reference are scientific - considering such
weighty matters as chaos theory, the evolution of the universe and chirality
(in chemistry, the “left- or right-handed nature” of molecules, for example
in our bodies or in drugs).
“Science provides the new metaphors for the new century,” says Facer. “It is
so interesting, it is so sexy - so why not put it in the garden?”
In her fifties, with blonde hair and a petite figure, she is in the Baroness
Susan Greenfield school of sexy scientists. An expert in malaria, she was a
reader in tropical haematology at the Royal London Hospital before
retraining as a landscape designer in 1999. Her hero is Charles Jencks,
whose 30-acre Garden of Cosmic Speculation at Portrack, in Dumfries and
Galloway, tackles similar matters of the universe.
There are plenty of brainy designers working in Britain today, but – Portrack
and a few others apart – there is a shortage of gardens that overtly express
their intellectuality. The launch last month of the “conceptual gardens”
category at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Hampton Court Flower Show is
an attempt to address this, and there are plans for the team that ran the
innovative Westonbirt Festival of the Garden until 2004 to stage a new show
in Dorset next year. Gardens based largely on ideas, however, have been slow
to catch the public imagination.
Througham Court is an exception: there, traditional and cutting-edge,
challenging design sit happily side by side. Facer, who created a Genetic
Garden at Westonbirt in 2002, uses it to show clients her work. She and her
husband, Anthony Hoffman, 71, a judge, bought the house in 1995 and
inherited a garden designed by Norman Jewson, an early-20th-century Arts and
Crafts architect who also did some work on the house. Jewson’s client was
Michael Sadleir, the author of Fanny by Gaslight, a 1940 tale of Victorian
prostitution that was made into a film starring James Mason.
Facer has kept much of his work, including a sunken parterre (though she has
modernised the planting within the box hedges), an Italian garden and
topiary yews – once sculpted into birds, but now in more “interesting”
forms.
Her latest addition is the striking Chiral Terrace: large diamond-shaped slabs
of black granite, white limestone and red acrylic, enclosed by a ring of
polished stainless steel. A rill (long narrow pool of water) filled with
nontoxic black-dyed water reflects a stone inscribed with the word
“chirality” and various mirror-image chemical formulas are carved into
stones. The terrace is as much a feat of technical skill as a
thought-provoking work of art, in that each heavy piece had to be cut
exactly and fitted together.
The formulae and clever visual puns are a lot to take in if you are not
scientifically inclined, but Facer is determined that her work should be
accessible and read at many levels. “You don’t need a scientific background
to appreciate what is going on,” she says. “Though I think gardens of the
21st century should be challenging. They should say: ‘Look at me. What do
you think I am?’ If people come away learning something, then that is good.
You should push the boundaries.”
So, the entry to the vegetable garden could just be a gate with striking
brushed-steel panels on it; alternatively, if you are conversant with chaos
theory, you would recognise the spiky patterns they display. Likewise, the
winding path that has been cut through the meadow is planted with silver
birches spaced at distances that accord with the Fibonacci sequence: at one
metre apart, then two, then three, then five – each new distance being the
sum of the two previous ones.
The pattern, discovered by the 13th-century Italian mathematician, is found
widely in nature – the number of petals on a flower, the flowering of an
artichoke, the bones in your hand and the shape of a snail’s shell, for
instance. It is also related to the golden section, used by architects. “It
is pleasing to the eye,” Facer explains. “If you do anything out of that
proportion, it doesn’t look right.”
Fibonacci may have written his sequence more than 800 years ago, and inspired
the trail through the meadow, but Facer’s Cosmic Evolution Garden is based
on Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, which was
published in 2000.
“It is all about the evolution of the universe,” says Facer, as we contemplate
six sandstone balls sitting on mirrors that reflect the sky in an area
enclosed by high yew hedges. Each is engraved with one of the six numbers
that govern the expansion of the universe – from the smallest, epsilon
(0.007), the strongest number in the universe, representing nuclear energy,
to nu (10 to the 36th power), the largest, relating to the strength of
gravity.
That’s not to say that Facer’s designs are po-faced. For example, in the
cosmic garden, as well as a seat representing a black hole (it looks as if
it is being sucked into the ground), the plants are related to matters
stellar and cosmic (see panel, left). To cheer up a shady set of steps that
lead to an alley of pleached limes, she has covered them in bright red
artificial turf and called them the Royal Steps. A sculpture of library
shelves includes a book engraved with Tim Shutter, the maker’s name. “Heavy
reading,” she quips as she picks it up.
Facer has converted one of the outbuildings into a reception room, where she
plays host to groups visiting the garden. The end wall is glass, and gives
wide views over Holy Brook valley, where not another house can be seen.
Close to the window, in a sunny, welldrained spot, is what Facer describes
as her “rusty border”, full of golden, purple, burnt-orange and red
flowerers such as achillea, eremurus, salvia and dark ‘Queen Victoria’
lobelia.
In the meadow below, which the Fibonacci path cuts through, is a set of
fluttering red and purple flags – an ever-changing contrast to the
naturalistic landscape as the light moves on throughout the day.
Whether visitors looking out of the window appreciate the flags breaking up
their views over one of the loveliest areas of England is secondary for
Facer. The aim is that her work sticks in the mind. A recent visitor told
her: “I can’t get your garden out of my head.” “To me, that is really
pleasing,” Facer says. “That someone has thought about it – and is still
thinking about it.”
Enough of the theory – what should you plant?
Cosmos sulphureus‘Cosmic Orange’ - An intense and
brightly coloured variety of this cheerful annual, which flowers for months
during the summer
Ligularia stenocephala - ‘The Rocket’ Tall, thin
spires of bright yellow flowers, which are in striking contrast to their
black stems
Ophiopogon planiscapus - ‘Nigrescens’ Low-growing
and as black as space – Facer uses them to frame the more brightly coloured
plants in the border
Actaea simplex ‘Brunette’ - The tiny white flowers
that appear in early autumn along the stems are like starbursts set against
purple-black foliage
