cclancy's inspired gardens blog

The Savill Garden

cclancy — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:00:19 +0000

The Savill Garden is one of Britain’s greatest ornamental gardens, a lovely place to visit. Even though the car park was full to the brim of cars, the garden seemed empty when walking around the 35 acres of contemporary and classically designed gardens and exotic woodland. It is very much a garden for a gardens sake, and a great place to walk around if you are an enthusiastic horticulturalist or just enjoy being in a lovely green space. It was created in the 1930s by Sir Eric Savill, under the patronage of the king. It began as a woodland garden, with native oak, beech and sweet chestnut trees, but has since evolved by incorporating many new plants over the years. The garden has something for every part of the year…. the Spring Wood, The Summer Wood, The Hidden Gardens, The Summer Gardens, The Glades , Autumn Wood, The Azalea Walks and The New Zealand Garden. The Summer Gardens look pretty amazing at the moment, as does the Golden Jubilee garden.

Marjorelle Garden in Marrakesh, Morocco

cclancy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:58:01 +0000

This garden was created by the French painter Jacques Majorelle in the 1920′s and the the blue colour used throughout the garden has been patened… Marjorelle blue. Marjorelle also collected plants, and the resulting garden is extraordinary, water is a very important feature throughout, it has marble pools, banana trees, fab succulents, groves of bamboo, coconut palms and bougainvilleas. After years of neglect, the garden was then taken over and restored by the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge

Charles Jencks to create Green Goddess sculpture in Northumberland park

cclancy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:29:41 +0000

Work will begin next year on a 400m long, 24m high sculpture of a woman lying down, in a new public park next to Shotton mine in Northumberland, and will cost 2.5M. The 1.5M tonnes of soil from the mine will form the “green goddess”. It will take about a year to build.

Charles Jencks is a leading figure in British Landscape Architecture. He created the Garden of Cosmic Speculation in his private garden at Portrack, Dumfries, I visited it last year on its one open day per year, it was amazing, and I cant wait to see the green goodess.