From a letter from Alasdair Forbes to Niall Hobhouse sent on the 13th August 2006

What – especially – I cannot remember of the ‘Parabola Garden’ is to what extent it combines – or will combine, once the beech allée is gone – the services of hub and vantage…ie I know it serves to protect - but how far also does it serve to face - the slope and the refusal to complete the oval argue a motive of further onlooking – but how intransigent is that wall at the base? – does the prospect over step it? – how do the new paths conform to, or defy, that decisive, or provisional finality?….

The shapes you have to deal with are anyway fascinating in themselves – the idea of a space defined by both cut-off and curvature! – to what extent does – will – the gathered spatiality veer towards its own inner life – or a leap - the patience of the squaring of the curved corner! (do you remember if Bachelard ever takes those two favourite loves of his together as a single amalgam? – I rather think he does – well, here would be a prototype!) but so, too, that final invasive abruptness – disallowing (Praeneste, Epidaurus) the logic of scenic or theatrical spectacle!

This unexpectedness - so tender, so harbouring an expectation – so sudden – so almost – snubbing a finale (“let be be finale of seem”?!) well fits with what little impression I have formed of Hadspen through my (propitiously?) disjunctive visits (tea with your father and Jeannie on a terrace - extensive perambulations with Jeannie as sympathetic Cicerone – quarantined forays into the walled garden) namely – that – under your stewardship – a startling dialogue seems to be emerging between (can I say?) the ancestral and the disinherited conscience – the residual and the contemporary ways of being in the world……

Perhaps already in the eighteenth century intimations – if not of ‘unbelonging’ then of greatly stretched belonging – arose as one bestrode the ridges and the counties multiplied…. today it is impossible not to feel a tension between the harmonious latitudes attendant on the dwelling – v the approaches to a panoramic sublime on the heights – as if the measure of place itself became untenable when lifted to the illocality of free-ranging space. (Not only Bachelard and the poets, but also the best of the geographers – never art historians in my experience! - have deliberated such a relation: Yi Fu Tuan, for instance, wrote an illuminating book developing the dialectic between space and place).

I felt, while walking with Jeannie, your placing of an airy vertical sculpture down on the meadow adjoining the house was somehow striving to instil into the domestic levels an anticipatory disconcerting vastness…I am the last person who wishes to diminish the achievement of the eighteenth century –

I idolise those eloquent and floating aprons of lawn permitting access to far-smiling acres – or – a rebours – obediently forgetting themselves for the sake of their ‘frontispiece’ – as Palladio liked to title the façade of the house – that invention of a grateful latitude is the proper compensation of dwelling – privileged – lethal – (to huddles) – it may be – but who will imagine a default of poetry is such fresh license granted space? (with perhaps the potential of a spatial erasure of place already latent?)
The question, for us, becomes the new catechising of that licence – the dispossessing of the assured entitlement – the suit of a gratitude – incredulous – tremulous – for not always easy – disowning – expanse – Would this be the case of the ‘open’ at Hadpsen – its folding back into the domestic – the ancestral – register a sharper, more endangered configuration of serenity?

So, to return to the parabola garden, one then sees perhaps, why from our point of view, as well as theirs, it is still suited to being a dislocated hub for now just remains this discreet abeyance (of a pivotal outdoor foyer) from the societal routines of the house –

On the face of it, I like the inlay of the FOA path lattice – amongst other things, it seems to organise the asymmetry of the slope, and bring it to rest on a rather Gaudiesque footing (didn’t Gaudi, if I remember, fetishize the parabola?) I seem to recall a dramatic cross view, on the axis of the beech allée, to a steep, wooded hillside? A purely visual, supra-mural focus that did not physically disturb the interior space has perhaps the gesture expecting one day its announcement here (or was there perhaps something already in place?)

There is a rather seductive non-conformity between the aspects of geometry and gradience in the walled garden – even, the deployment of the path lattice has got to work with a series of bristling chasses-croises.

Not only the somewhat frenetic networking of the lattice – but also its non-deference to a centre – is so Hermetic! (Hermes alone of gods disliked the self importance of a sphere of influence, eschewing any personal power-base). I can’t but on my own terms of reference see this energetic pattern of paths – pent up, impatient with its formal confinement – as inscribing Hermes’ love of testing the boundaries, into the (indispensable) Hestian provision that sine qua non of courage – of the vessel of containment….(ancestral belonging and contemporary disinheritance combining ‘in loving strife ‘ … again?)

Should all the central lozenges be planted?

Will there be preserved a haunt of emptiness running through the design to prefigure the elsewhere – majestic – open? So to bear down on us availability, responsibility to Bachelard’s ‘intimate immensity?–

In any case – what a stimulating project!

Everything said here I shall probably want to discard at once when I revisit the site! What does haunt me though – is that the direction taken by the parabola garden – whatever it may be – might not be – from your point of view – an isolated project – the site is too pivotal, and too precious – not to need that it both absorb and anticipate your reading of the legend of Hadpsen as a whole – (whatever that may be!). As we said of .. , it is a pity there that here is no real sense of companionship between its various spaces – no legend of their necessary spatial congruity – the further image steps out of the FOA plan of the garden its being the hive of the quest for connection. I long was nourished by the manner of the greeting of the house – so judiciously honey – on its hill –

I thought you might like to see this for the path layout; “the bottom of the mind is paved with cross-roads” (Valery).

Aspiration. Aspiration. Aspiration is still the watchword for publishers of gardening books. How many heavy, glossy productions filled with Get- the- Look pictures does the average gardener need? Especially when what is always peddled and praised tends to emphasise the Haute Couture of horticulture. There is a fashionable tendency to over- intellectualise about design. This is not what gardening is about. If you want more of this argument log onto www.thehadspenparabola.com , a website for the competition to re-design the walled garden at Hadspen, where there is some good online reading to be had. Victoria Glendinning is down to earth ‘This is all gardens-in-the-head, not about real gardens and still less about making a garden’. Penelope Hobhouse reproves her son, who set up the site, I think YOU, Niall, miss out on a lot by not digging, mulching, pruning …..all the tasks which Victoria G. enjoys !’, but in her latest book, Hobhouse provides another lofty overview of world horticulture. In Search of Paradise. Great Gardens of the World (Frances Lincoln £25) contains her assessment of what will last, in page after page of enormous projects. It is a personal view of Important gardens. Spades get no mention. Jellicoe and Helen Dillon, surprisingly do not appear,but there is plenty of Jencks and a good clutch of adventurous designers like Caruncho, Burle Marx and Christopher Bradley Hole. The only page that made me want to linger was the park at Chatsworth, but for those who like an armchair trip to gardens they may never visit, for people who never get their hands dirty, this book could be the ticket.

Congratulations upon your fascinating challenge to the world of gardening, a challenge sorely needed. 

Most gardens, it seems, are designed in late Victorian mode, or worse. Their planning is mindlessly uncreative, oblivious to the changes - for better or worse - in all other artistic modes. 

Of course, your letter inspires a good many early-AM-follies, such as a greenpeace Jackson Pollockian hotchpotch, planted entirely with strains of maryjewwanna, or - a less lucrative one - composed only of weeds.
 

ps: my proposal for the parabola garden is to build, a white concrete wall, to project (silent) films on, it would be magical …
 

In haste because the questions you both raise need to be addressed before the Gardeners’ World programme goes out this evening.
 
These are tough issues and they have already been the subject of a great deal of agonized discussion; any competition does eventually reach a point of imperfect compromise, but I am not prepared to make the compromise quite yet.
 
The most important thing to say is that, at this stage, we do not wish to exclude anybody at all from following the project with a view to competing. The fact is that we are not clear yet in what form we will ask for submissions and how precisely we will define the applicants we want. The reason for this is because the discussion on the website since its launch in July has already powerfully informed the way we have been thinking about the competition. For instance, it has convinced me that initial submissions must be entirely anonymous.

 We hope that this level of exchange continues; it was certainly always the intention that public response of this kind would help to write a set of rules that were very open and offered an even chance to all comers.
 
Having said this, I do think that it is also important by whatever means to preserve the connection between the plants themselves and the overall design.  By way of illustration, in many ways I take the garden that Nori and Sandra made for themselves (and for me and many others) at Hadspen as a model of a process that I am seeking to replicate in this competition. That is, the unique identity of their garden grew, almost literally, out of a knowledge of plants, and of the science of plants. The vividness of any visitors’ experience came out of a sense of the direct connection between the two elements.
 
I don’t want to lose this connection if I can possibly avoid it; this may mean that some of the people with good new ideas (whom you describe so well) feel ultimately that they are not in a position to apply.
 

So far as prizes go, there will certainly be in due course a definitive shortlist of a minimum of five applicants; we expect to offer a fee for them to develop their ideas in more detail. When we come to interview these candidates we will certainly be giving at least as much weight to their vision and determination as to their technical knowledge and experience.
 
Overall, the key is to remember that it is an outstanding garden that we are trying to create – we are now experimenting with the best ways of making this possible.
It’s really important for anybody who is seriously interested to read carefully through the correspondence already posted on the site if they are to have a clear understanding of this priority.
 

Your intriguing competition says that it is open to all but then appears to describe a prize only applicable to a resident gardener. Are designers able to submit on the basis that a winning entry could be produced by collaboration with a resident gardener?

Hope you are well. Sorry for not replying before.
 
I suggest that maybe it should be taken into consideration the fact that this is or should be a competition of ideas. This means that finding a ‘permanent gardener’ that will be willing to stay at Somerset is maybe not a very logical winning prize.
 
If the aim of the competition is to find a ‘youthful-smart and contemporary person’ as I understood, maybe it could be a good idea to try to think what a person like that will be and I think that definitely will mean that we are talking about a ‘mobile person’. 
 
It should be specified that he/she can be in charge of the supervision and production of it without staying there permanently and maybe 2nd and 3rd prize would be useful too as to put it into a more ‘competition’ category.
 
I think that one thing is the brilliancy of the idea that I guess is something being searched through this competition and the other is a job advertisement for a permanent residency, and maybe by putting the two together a lot of interesting entries will be missed.

It seems to me, lacking an intimate knowledge of the site section, that the form suggests a natural amphitheatre where sight lines are concentrated toward a focal point and form the ‘desire lines’ a walker will take to reach the goal his eyes have glimpsed.

The destination itself should be ‘vaut le voyage’; a space or ‘theatre’ of drama where one encounters an exciting spectacle, what some people call the ‘wow factor’. (Think of the Chatsworth water spout, the water filled parterres of Gamberaia or the Temple of Worthies at Rousham) ; where one observes or is observed; where visitors themselves become the actors in the drama; where the backdrop of plants sets the mood and adds to the pleasure of the stage. Whatever form it takes, perhaps not so grand, the garden will be identified with it and remembered for it.

The importance of this focal point is paramount. It fulfils the promise of future pleasure anticipated on entering and would become the highlight of the garden visit.

I think that your pattern of ‘desire lines ‘ is on the right track as it were. I agree that there should be ‘fast lanes’ on both sides of the amphitheatre for people who are hell bent on reaching their destination as fast as they can, but for those who are willing to defer their gratification, who are neither so fit nor able to walk, a transverse, easy , slower route is a good idea along which to enjoy the planting.
The points of concentration where the fast and slow lanes intersect will provide opportunities for dramatic planting. When you come to judge the competition, it will be these areas of concentration which will help you to identify the style of the planting intended by the competitor.

I entered an Italian hill garden from the high ground one time, to behold set before me a comprehensible plan of the garden enticing me to explore. This I did, to experience the awakening of the senses of sight and smell which afford such pleasure; Penny calls it ‘happiness’ and I agree.
I don’t know how you feel, but I love this process of objective and subjective appreciation which you only encounter with hill gardens.

I do think that you have the skeleton of a garden layout, which will, with some clarification, suggest points and special spaces where the planting can accentuate the sense of location and mood and make evident what function the planting is performing.

A garden is not natural. It is a representation of Nature which in any given period will
hold up for scrutiny a particular attitude towards the relationship of man and Nature.

In any period I would agree that:

‘ It is the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man; without which, buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks’ (Bacon, OF GARDENS)