London Garden Landscape Design – From The Suburbs to the City
William Cobbett describes his journeys into the center of London through the hedges, fields and orchards which supplied Covent Garden, those same hedges, fields and orchards which now lie under our sprawling suburbs.
A little still remains but modern gardening tendencies have moved onto a more sculptured, less country, landscape. The many gardening programs and the huge business of the garden centers have produced, unfortunately, certain sameness in our suburban gardens. City gardens have moved in a rather different direction.
The modern tendency in city gardening has been one of a sculptured landscape, of stone paved areas, of formally clipped or twisted box, of bamboos lit at night and water running over clean marble blocks. A sense of rest, of peace, of serenity, of unchanging seasons, of cleanliness perhaps, even of sterility? Definitely a style that has a valuable sculptural and architectural role to play, but it could, of course, be in any city in the world. It is a city landscape design, not a specifically London landscape.
What would be a London landscape garden? What could be done to help in the battle for cleaner air, for preserving our native wild garden birds, for returning to a sustainable environment?
We could, in London, have an apple tree or a pear tree in every garden, however small or difficult a garden it is. You can buy a fruit tree that will only grow to 6 feet or 10 feet, that will grow into a rounded shape or a pyramid shape or grow as an espalier on a wall. You can buy one that will grow in a damp dark spot or one that will grow in a large pot. We could fill London with blossom every spring, with just enough shade for a hot summer day and with fruit every autumn. There could be a blackbird singing from the top of every tree.
We could have hedges where little birds could nest, not of the ubiquitous privet, but of hawthorn, sloe, holly, rose, all bearing flowers for the pollinating bees in spring and hips, haws, sloes, holly berries that will last through the winter. These are the plants of our native hedgerow, thousands of miles of which have been destroyed by agribusiness. And hedges do not need to be boundary hedges – for boundaries a wall or fence is probably a safer, dispute-free option. Your whole garden could have winding paths bordered by low hedges of these old hedgerow plants. They are unbelievably cheap to buy, they will not flop over and die nor get nasty diseases, they are easy to clip and maintain and they will give you patches of privacy and shelter throughout your garden.
None of this is revolutionary, none of it would be difficult, every garden would be different and the country would come back into London.
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