{"id":5177,"date":"2017-05-22T20:08:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T20:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siteandinsight.com\/?p=5177"},"modified":"2017-05-22T20:08:36","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T20:08:36","slug":"veddw-house-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/veddw-house-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Veddw House Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’m in England now, about to start on a ten-day garden tour. With my co-host Julia Guest of Travel Concepts in Vancouver, I will take a small group of women to the southwest of England. \u00a0But before hitting the road, let me\u00a0whet your appetite with a review of\u00a0an extraordinary garden I visited pre-tour.<\/p>\n

Veddw<\/a>\u00a0is the garden of Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes. Located in Wales, just across the border from England in an area of outstanding natural beauty, Veddw pays homage to its surroundings in ways that show respect for what came before. And\u00a0significantly, that respectful attitude, felt\u00a0throughout the garden, highlights the design talents of its\u00a0creators.<\/p>\n

English gardens that nod to the past are a commonplace but Veddw is no ordinary garden. A bench at the entry to the garden announces the difference, first in its shape and colour and then in the words that appear on the back, names used for the property over several centuries.<\/p>\n

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\"Veddw,

Vedow,, Veadow, Fedw, Vadda, Veddw. From 1569 to 1947, the spelling has changed but the sound remains much the same.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the edge of \u00a0a wild garden, headstones give alternate names for people and areas nearby.<\/p>\n

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\"Barely

Barely visible is a wonderfully evocative name: Bulchey Bernard. And why Hatter’s Patch? Were hats made there by Mr. Bernard?<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Veddw and its designers do more, though, than show respect for the past. The garden they have created is very much of the present, yet it\u00a0draws on ideas of time and change that are common to gardens everywhere. Attention to detail is evident throughout… not in the ordinary ‘garden variety’\u00a0way where all is neat and tidy, with no weeds apparent, but in the subtlety with which design creates meaning and\u00a0significance.<\/p>\n

Every garden design manual will advise\u00a0repeating plants, colours and shapes, stressing\u00a0that repetition holds a garden together, gives it coherence. And I agree. But too often, repetition of the sort advised hits you in the face, as if\u00a0carbon paper had been pressed over a good idea and then imprinted mindlessly from\u00a0one area to another.<\/p>\n

Not so at Veddw. Here, the garden coheres through a more nuanced approach.\u00a0\u00a0The curve of hedges is repeated in the roofline of what once was a tiny stone house. \u00a0The curve of the entry bench is echoed in the curves of a bench by a\u00a0reflecting pool, but here the curve is modified with a dip that suggests what is about to come.<\/p>\n

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\"Black

Black water reflects an overcast sky. Water features, each different in size and shape, repeatedly bring the sky onto the ground, another subtle repetition.<\/p><\/div>\n

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For me, the marvel at Veddw is\u00a0the Hedge Garden. Designing interlocking hedges that appeal from every direction is a challenge that designer Anne Wareham has met, seemingly with ease. At\u00a0the entry to the garden, a visitor encounters\u00a0a genuine Wow! moment. Stretched across the valley below are scalloped-topped hedges set against flat-topped ones. Shades of green repeat and shift, balanced with touches of maroon and rust. Cones in the foreground are echoed by square columns in the distance. And all this energy is anchored by a calm backdrop of trees that promise a garden of a different sort.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Intricately

Intricately interwoven shapes, with flat and scalloped tops, cones and columns, are made even more intricate with different plants and colours. While they are barely visible in this photo, the yew columns on the far hillside to the left were one of my favourite features.<\/p><\/div>\n

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To create a view this satisfying from one angle isn’t easy. To make it\u00a0equally satisfying from the opposite direction adds another level of difficulty. Wareham has met the challenge and succeeded.<\/p>\n

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\"A

A view from the hillside opposite shows the bench listing Veddw’s various names\u00a0at the top of the photo. In the foreground you can see a tiny entry into the Pool Garden.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the Pool Garden, the interwoven hedges become a complex play of curves. Do they rise and fall like waves on a distant sea or do they mimic the rising and falling hills that surround Veddw? \u00a0No matter. Their reflections in the dark water form an inverted goblet that spills out an invitation to enter the underwater world beyond.<\/p>\n

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\"These

These hedges were tiny when planted. Very tiny — about ankle high. Getting the proportions right must have been a nightmare.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A\u00a0path continues around the reflecting pool to enter the Hedge Garden. Turning a corner, waves appear again, this time in a contrasting colour — the fresh green of boxwood set against the darker tones of yew.<\/p>\n

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\"The

The curving waves appearing on a side hedge draw you into the garden world beyond.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The magic of Veddw continues in the adjacent woods …<\/p>\n

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\"A

A twisted tree watches over a peaceful fern-filled valley. The bluebells were past their peak but still gave off a hint of blue.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

… where the ruins of an old farm building, once in the middle of an open field, have become a mysterious shrine.<\/p>\n

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\"A

A utilitarian stone hut changed its character when softened and romanticized with moss. The columns hint at some grander past, now cloaked in mystery.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is much more to Veddw than hedges and romantic woods. There are open sunny borders, a delightful garden stuffed\u00a0with cardoon and shaped boxwood, a meadow walk and a white Clematis\u00a0montana so tall it\u00a0might almost be visible from outer space.<\/p>\n

But for me, a\u00a0highlight was the use of words throughout the garden. (Those of you who read this blog regularly, or who read ThinkinGardens,<\/a> Anne Wareham’s internationally acclaimed blog, will be familiar with this quirk of mine. You can read A Matter of Words<\/a> here.)<\/p>\n

Hatter’s Patch and Bulchey Bernard are only two of many ways that words are used to link the garden to a wider world. A quotation from\u00a0Wordsworth’s poem about nearby Tintern Abbey appears on a wooden bench, connecting\u00a0the garden to the fields around. (\u00ab\u00a0These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines of sportive wood run wild…\u00a0\u00bb) \u00a0T.S. Eliot is quoted on an irregular\u00a0stone, the words suggesting the progression that occurs\u00a0when past and present, repeated, are brought together in new ways.<\/p>\n

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\"New

Old stone to new building: a repurposed stone provides a suitable place for a repurposed \u00a0quotation from \u00ab\u00a0East Coker,\u00a0\u00bb one of Eliot’s Four Quartets.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A small, weathered plaque attached to a tree speaks to what a garden is, or can be. At Veddw, the words articulate what the garden says: past is present, present, past. The future is still becoming.<\/p>\n

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\"This

This quotation from\u00a0Burnt Norton, the first of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, encapsulates a crucial component of the garden at Veddw. And of every garden worth its name.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Veddw is open on Sunday afternoons in June and July and from August 2-5. Groups\u00a0of ten or more are welcome by prior arrangement from May to September.<\/p>\n

If you have the chance, go. This is a garden worth the detour.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I’m in England now, about to start on a ten-day garden tour. With my co-host Julia Guest of Travel Concepts in Vancouver, I will take a small group of women to the southwest of England. \u00a0But before hitting the road, let me\u00a0whet your appetite with a review of\u00a0an extraordinary garden I visited pre-tour. Veddw\u00a0is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,346,22,23],"tags":[358,359,25,503,362,699,667],"class_list":["post-5177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design","category-quotations","category-reviews","category-travel","tag-anne-wareham","tag-charles-hawes","tag-england","tag-hedges","tag-veddw","tag-wales","tag-words-in-gardens","category-24","category-346","category-22","category-23","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}