Yesterday I arrived in Edinburgh and tomorrow I begin a tour of gardens in southern Scotland and northern England. This tour is similar to one I hosted last September, which means I’ll be taking this year’s group to many of the same places I visited then. On the 2015 tour I was seeing some gardens for the first time; others I had been to before. So this year I’ll be visiting some gardens for the second time, some for the third, some for the fourth or fifth.
Like the song says, will I find them lovelier the second time around?
A friend once asked me whether it was boring to re-visit a garden. I smiled and said no. Because you never step in the same river twice. Regardless of how many times I visit a garden, it’s different every time. In important ways it is not the same garden and, seeing it for the second or third time, I’m not the same person. The weather, the light, the season, the time of day; the people around me, their moods and mine — all combine to make each experience unique.
Far from finding it boring, I count myself lucky when I revisit a garden. I needn’t worry about where to go, nor need I consult a map to decide whether to turn this way or that. The layout will be familiar and this frees my eyes — and my mind — to focus on what’s in front of me, or what’s behind, or above or below at my feet. It allows me to be embraced by the space, to sense it more fully, with fewer distractions.
Who wouldn’t want to relax in the sunshine at Little Sparta on a beautiful warm day?
Still, when I visit a garden for the second or third time, I arrive with expectations that are shaped by previous visits. Will I be delighted once again with a particular view or will I find it a let down?
I can’t expect the sun to be shining as it was last year, lighting up a tree at Parceval Hall as brightly as if it were on fire. But maybe I’ll see something even better.
I arrive with questions that weren’t in my mind the first time I visited. Will the same combination of wildflowers be blooming at Gresgarth Hall or has the area been planted with something else?
I liked this combination of colours and textures. It felt looser and more relaxed than other sections of the garden at Gresgarth Hall.
Will I find the second experience of a garden I loved to be as fully satisfying as the first?
Broadwoodside, a garden near Edinburgh, inspired me in many ways. I liked the plantings. The colours of plants and architectural elements pleased me enormously. Art in the garden was positioned sensitively and to its best advantage. Plus there was a touch of humour that made the experience a true delight.
When I visit a garden for the second or third time, I can identify changes. If my visits stretch out over a number of years I can watch the garden grow and develop. The gardens at Lowther Castle were just being planted when I visited last year, and they felt as raw as you’d expect. So I’m eager to see what difference a year has made. I’m eager to see how much the plants have grown but even more eager to see if the fragments of columns and bits and pieces of the past that were scattered in the planting beds now feel as if they belong.
Lowther Castle is a ruin, and I I like the idea of incorporating broken columns with plants inside its walls. But last year, seeing it shortly after the area was planted, I didn’t like the effect. Will it be better now? I expect so, but this year’s visit will tell.
I’m eager to re-visit the Crawick Multiverse, a strange project designed by Charles Jencks on the site of open cast Scottish coal mine. It opened only two months before I saw it last year, and felt even rawer than the plantings at Lowther Castle. Will the thousands of boulders that came from the site now feel grounded or will they still sit uncomfortably on the surface, as if forced into line to tell a story that isn’t quite true?
This ceremonial way is lined with boulders from the site. The stones are placed as they might have been in neolithic times, yet for me the path lacked the sense of mystery and awe that a real ceremonial path would have. .
I’ve been twice to Little Sparta, the garden of the concrete poet Ian Hamilton Finlay. But even a handful of visits would not be enough to understand or come to terms with its complexities. This is a garden full of big themes and big ideas, where apparently contradictory extremes exist side by side. It’s less a garden than a complete work of art, a place that offers experiences that amuse, surprise and disturb. This year when I visit Little Sparta for the third time, I hope I will be able to separate my expectations from my actual responses. I hope to see it without constantly remembering what I’ve read about it, to let the garden speak for itself, and to hear what it says, even when it whispers.
A path of stones leads across the water at Little Sparta. It takes courage to follow the path, and it takes work to understand the garden.
On a second visit to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation I plan to devote less time to some of outlying areas and more time to areas I had to rush through: the walled kitchen garden where DNA features large, and the extraordinary Universe Cascade.
In the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Charles Jencks explores and celebrates scientific ideas about the universe. Using these ideas, he aims to create a new language of landscape, with new metaphors that illuminate old ones.
I plan to analyze Piet Oudolf’s magnificent plantings at Scampston Hall’s Walled Garden instead of simply revelling in them. I plan to spend more time at York Gate, figuring out how such a small space can contain such diversity without feeling overstuffed.
Succulents fill this section of the garden. Time constraints forced me to rush through it.
Visiting a garden for the first time is a special experience. There’s a sense of discovery that can never be recaptured and, occasionally, a feeling of excitement intense enough to take the breath away. Returning to a garden brings me a different kind of pleasure. I can experience the place more deeply, appreciate its strengths more clearly, perhaps even uncover its weaknesses.
Or uncover my own. Can a group of noisy schoolchildren spoil a garden for me, or a less than sanitary washroom? Do I like a garden more if I like the person I’m with? If its style suits my own? If so, am I being fair to the garden and to those who created it?
What about the weather? I’ve visited Castle Howard in the sun and in the rain, on cool days and on hot. I’m not sure which conditions I preferred. Or whether I need to have a preference.
When I visit a garden, I focus on my surroundings. I look, I try to understand what I’m seeing, to appreciate the garden’s character and spirit. At some point, I make a judgement — this I like, this I don’t. Every visit increases my knowledge and hones my responses. At the same time it helps me to see myself more clearly and to understand why I respond as I do.
Seeing a garden can be like seeing yourself in a mirror. Sometimes you like what you see, sometimes you don’t.
What about you? Do you like visiting a garden many times or is once enough? How much do your expectations colour your experience? If someone is taking you through the garden, can their accent or the tone of their voice turn you off, or turn you against the place itself? If it’s a garden that is highly praised, do you feel obliged to agree with the general opinion or are you willing and able to express a contrary view? Or do you simply relax and enjoy the experience, regardless of what it brings?
I don’t think I expect a garden to make me think, at least not in a philosophical way. I might analyze why a certain area of a garden pleases me, to figure out how I might achieve something similar in my own garden. But most of the time I wander through and let my emotions (or perhaps, aesthetic responses) do what they want to do, without getting my intellect involved. In other words, I might recognize that I like this or I don’t like that, without trying to articulate why. I do believe my subconscious takes it all in and the effects may not show themselves for months or even years, as something I have seen or experienced in a garden in the past influences the changes I make in my own garden. The few gardens I have visited multiple times have been the gardens of friends, and it is hard for me to separate my relationship with them from my reaction to their gardens.
I don’t — and can’t — think in some gardens but in others, that’s all I can do. Emotions and relationships dictate how I respond to friends’ gardens, too. That seems unavoidable. I certainly know that I like someone’s garden more if I like them; and vice versa.
I am looking forward to hearing all about it! I am lucky enough to work two blocks from Lurie Garden in Chicago, and I love going there over and over again. As you say, it is never the same twice. Lurie has been planned with seasonal transitions in mind, but even the day-to-day changes, and changes of lighting and breeze and viewing angle, alter the garden. Your newly planted raw gardens remind me that Jason and I visited Lurie in its early years, when it had just been planted and didn’t look like much of anything. I wish I had photos, but I don’t recall taking any. We also visited the prairie as it was being planted at the Chicago Botanic Garden – a huge space with multiple types of prairie plantings (wet and dry and gravel and sand and clay and more that I am not remembering) — and now it is fully developed. The passage of time, and the renewal of life in the spring, are major themes in any northern garden, but only if you visit more than once.
You are lucky indeed, Judy, to be able to visit the Lurie Garden regularly. I have yet to see it once. I must have been incredibly interesting to watch it and the prairie at the Chicago Botanic Garden grow and develop. Plant oriented gardens like these can definitely repay multiple visits.
I love visiting a garden over and over, both to revisit parts I love and to see something new — or to see the old in a new way.
Yesterday I went around the Edinburgh Botanical Garden following a totally different route. It was almost a completely different experience. And for sure I saw familiar things in different lights and from different angles. The people I was walking around with were different as well, and that changed my relationship to the garden. So without question, the visit combined the comfort of familiarity with the excitement of discovery — a win/win.
I good garden is like a good wine and always worthy of another visit!
Ahh, but can you tell if the garden is good from the first sip or do you need to leave it uncorked for a while to let it breathe?
We have found for many years that visiting a garden a second time tells its real quality. Initial excitement sometimes just doesn’t stand up on a second experience. I feel sure that to really know the quality of a garden at least two visits are essential.
And, knowing how my own garden changes daily and just how much the weather and LIGHT influence that experience – I wonder if we’d ever come to the end of discovery in a truly great garden.
Having said that – we found Little Sparta over stuffed with stuff.
Gresgarth on one visit rather disappointing….Which also raises another issue – does the effort you put into getting to a garden affect your experience? I think if it hadn’t been hard for us to get to we would have expected less and maybe appreciated more. Talking gardens up has similar effect.
I wonder – would you (XxxxxxxXXX) write us a thinkingardens post on your experience of second time around? (please?)
Today I re-visited Broadwoodside, a garden east of Edinburgh. I thoroughly enjoyed it last year and found even more to admire on a second visit. I know I’d discover more on a third visit, not necessarily about plants or plant combinations since the plantings this year were identical to last year’s — in my memory, at least. But the weather conditions were different which changed the light. Plus I had time to notice details that last year I missed.
I understand why you could find Little Sparta overstuffed — there is a lot there to see. I’ll have to consider your point about distances and difficulties in getting to a garden. For sure expectations influence my responses. I approach any place that is highly praised with some scepticism and have too often been let down by what I saw. Gresgarth was a garden I enjoyed last year so I’ll be particularly interested to see how I respond on a second visit.
As for a piece about this for Thinkingardens… yes, I’ll do that. I’m making notes already and have another 8 or 9 days on this tour to gather my own thoughts and to solicit them from people in the group.
Hurray!! Thank you so much – I know that will be really interesting. Enjoy the rest of the trip! Xxxxxx