INDEX gardens The look of a Lutyens
Steve Edney, head gardener at The Salutation in Whitstable, explains how the partnership of architecture and planting echoes the intentions of Lutyens and Jekyll
the turn of the century but is of course best known for his houses. He was a prolifi c architect and used certain styles in certain periods.
E
dwin Lutyens designed (or part- designed) many Edwardian gardens at
Some people have said to me The Salutation doesn’t look like any other Lutyens house they have seen before. They say that the clear Queen Anne style, with its huge chimneystacks, differs from some of his earlier work. Beautiful cottages like Munstead Wood and places such as Great Dixter (a place very close to my heart and a great garden for late summer colour), were built by the architect as was Great Maythem Hall at Rolvenden, which
unmistakably looks like a larger version of The
Salutation but for the gardens. Here they used strong lines that criss-cross each other and have implemented symmetrically designed linear avenues. At the relatively small garden here (it’s three-and-a-half acres), the area is cleverly carved up from an odd boundary line into a series of symmetrical ‘rooms’ with straight lines everywhere. It was up to his clever friend Gertrude Jekyll to soften these linear designs with planting. I would say that so few Jeykll gardens remain true to her plans that most people wouldn’t know what is and isn’t ‘Jeykll’. A visitor stopped me next to Jeykll’s long border last week to tell me that he didn’t think the garden was very Jeykll. I asked why he thought this. He said, looking at the long border, that she wouldn’t have had all these strong colours fl anked by pastels. I replied that this was in fact one of her most famous designs for her own garden at
Things to do
Save seeds: Collect seeds from early fl owering plants this month. This is best done on a dry day. Visit your local greengrocer
www.indexmagazine.co.uk
and get some brown paper bags; these are perfect for seed collecting and storage as the paper allows the seeds to breath. Don’t put them in
plastic as they’ll only rot. Write on the front what
plant you are taking the seed from (if you know it), the date and year. Most seeds, if stored
in a cool dry place, will last a few years but germination rates will drop the longer you wait before sowing after the fi rst year.
61 Visiting
The Secret Gardens at The Salutation, Knightrider Street, Sandwich, Kent CT13 9EW are open seven days a week to the public from 10am to 5pm. This month there is a not-to-be- missed dahlia festival.
Munstead Wood and we copied the layout as per the original documents.
So yes, Gertrude did follow the colour wheel but she didn’t eliminate colours. Instead she rigorously followed the colour wheel theory. Most gardens (ours included) are, at best, Jeykll-esque in style; I think it is far more important to follow her ideas and ethos for gardening than to try and plant- for-plant replicate something long gone. That is what I do at The Salutation and you can be the judge of whether you like the style we use.
The INDEX magazine September 2011
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