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Curiosity keeps me alive,’ wrote Roberto Burle Marx, the Brazilian landscaper whose modernist aesthetic transformed landscaping around the world, and who was renowned for extending the architecture of his clients’ buildings into his gardens. And it’s curiosity that keeps most gardens alive, too – for without it, without something about the outdoor space that triggers your ‘I-wonder-what’s-around-that-corner’ response, your garden could be in danger of becoming just another flat, featureless, even (horrible thought) plain boring old place.
Enter the ‘garden room’.
The idea of defining different areas of the garden as rooms comes from the design of the celebrated gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, which were developed by Vita Sackville-West (poet, novelist, journalist, columnist – her column for The Observer ran from 1946 to 1961 – and paramour of the writer Virginia Woolf).
Vita and her husband, the diplomat Sir Harold Nicolson, acquired the castle in 1930. After some years of clearing the overgrown grounds, Sir Harold laid out the formal architecture of the gardens as clearly defined rooms – some of which were enclosed with materials like hedges or pink brick walls. Into this geometry, Vita planted a ‘romantic profusion’ (in the words of the historian Anne Scott-James) of single colours in some areas, and riots of multihued blooms in others – an innovative style that became her signature.
Sissinghurst’s ten rooms (White Garden, Rose Garden, Cottage Garden, Orchard, Nuttery, etc.) caused something of a sensation when the gardens were opened to the public in 1938 – and they’ve remained a major influence on horticultural thought and practice ever since. It’s instructive to see the gardens as Harold did. They were successful, he wrote, because their rooms provided a ‘succession of privacies: the forecourt, the first arch, the main court, the tower arch, the lawn, the orchard. All a series of escapes from the world, giving the impression of cumulative escape.’
Getting Real
Of course, not many of us can make (or even afford) gardens like Vita Sackville-West’s or Roberto Burle Marx’s, but the lessons that great gardeners like them teach us shouldn’t be lost when planning our almost certainly smaller outdoor spaces.
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If you can create some kind of progression through the garden – a series of openings, a path through an archway, round a bamboo or timber screen, or through trimmed shrubbery – you’ll raise the curiosity of anyone who enters it or moves through it. A welldesigned garden arouses a sense of wonder – an intense desire to find out what’s around the next corner.
Two things if your garden’s really small, though. First, the theory of garden rooms doesn’t preclude the ideas and philosophy behind Zen gardens – arranged well, the different elements of a Zen garden will lead your mind down pathways of its own (see Estate Living, October 2018). And second, please remember that creating a room isn’t the same as decorating one. Rooms are about spaces – decorating comes afterwards.
Take the inside outside
Dividing your garden into rooms (or even just into different use areas) helps break down the barriers between the interior and exterior areas of the home – especially when you equate the two: in the same way that we have dining rooms or lounges inside, we have patios and private retreats outside.
Despite the fact that you probably don’t own a castle – so you’re unlikely to have space for a nuttery or an orchard – and given that you might have to repurpose some of your garden rooms as your family grows, you can still let your imagination run wild.
What can you do to rig up an outside shower for your garden bathroom? A rustic ceramic hand basin, perhaps, a decadent hot tub (if you’ve got the water for it in your area), or maybe even a loo with a view? As long as it’s a one-way view, of course.
How can you create a garden playroom for young children – jungle gym, slide, huge sandpit – that could become their own nursery (plant nursery or veggie garden) as they grow older? Will you be able to then convert this ‘room’ into the private space they’ll want when they mature into their teens? And – probably most difficult of all – what would teenagers want in a private retreat in your garden? (Don’t answer that.)
A braai area is an outside kitchen, and a well-designed back yard is an outdoor utility room where chores become a pleasure. The point is, of course, that anything you can do in the house, you can do in the garden (well, almost anything) – and that’s the genius of the idea of dividing your garden into rooms.
That, and the curiosity they evoke.
