Louisa Jones to Niall Hobhouse
I owe you an apology I see, if only for my complete ignorance. What you wrote is very interesting about who owns and who gardens, quite a subject in its own right. One that I’m interested in now because of an ongoing project called Welcome to the Garden, a little book of advice to people who want to visit and those who want to open their gardens, both activities being rather newly-fashionable in France. Most of my examples, quotations etc come from interviews and readings in France, but perhaps you would want to add a word of advice, either to visitors or owners just opening? the relationship to gardeners is one issue, for both. I have also been asking for things like: most annoying or most helpful comments, examples of memorable visits, or what qualities should a garden have to make you want to return? All that sort of thing.
What you write about site and paths sounds very reasonable and most people would agree with you but Gilles (if I may speak for him as I seem to be doing these days) would not, at least for his students. He feels if you make the list of all those constraints and then try to deal with what’s left over, you have lost your first spontaneity, your first gut feeling about what the space is about. It sounds however as if you have no choice here anyway. And the situation you describe is sufficiently intriguing and challenging that you should get a good list of candidates, I would think? Good luck.