It will sound disingenuous to argue that I am so close to the Parabola site as to be blind to the inconsistencies of presentation.

Trying to have things both ways is a really good description of what I am doing. And unapologetically, since your phrase seems such an elegant encapsulation of any process of design. That is, making something immediate and ‘real’ out of a synthetic activity.

Of course it helps to choose things to synthesise that can be had both ways. The parabola correspondence is an exercise in discovering what these might be.

Garden Prospects

First, thanks very much for this reasoned response.

I am relieved you have taken my piece in the spirit it is meant, ie as
part of a polemical and irreverent regular column. I would love to meet
up in person and discuss some of this, if you like . . . We are on the
same side, after all.

You are right: I did not go through all the email correspondence linked
to the site but followed the manifesto. As such I think you are perhaps
trying to have it both ways: 1. Write a ‘manifesto’ [a very specific
term, that — remember the Futurist manifestos!]; and 2. Say the
manifesto is a house of cards and may be trashed at any moment. If the
case is that the FOA plan is just a conceptual idea which is subject to
unlimited revision or reversioning, then that should be made clear on
the site and the ‘manifesto’ should be downgraded in status, perhaps,
to ‘preliminary idea’.

As it happens I don’t think that the FOA plan is ‘bad’ or anything; it
might work well in the space. It is the principle of individualistic
creative design that I am defending.

I hope you would concur that the column and your letter in response
will have a positive and stimulating effect on the Hadspen experiment.

Tim Richardson Article

I very much enjoyed your article in this month’s Garden Design Journal.

Anybody should be forgiven for not wading through the hundred pages of correspondence posted on the the Hadspen Parabola web-site since its launch. Some of the exchanges are certainly wordy and repetitive, my own contributions perhaps most of all.
Still, it might be worth ‘retrogressing’ to some of the early postings so as to clarify the status of the Foreign Office Architects grid within the larger project.

(See NH to John Hubbard, 23/10/06; NH to Liz Noble, 30/08/06; NH to Roger Graef, 28/08/2006; NH to Emory Smith, 16/9/06; and Doug Coupland to NH 31/08/06.)

Doug Coupland I have included a bit mischievously as a reminder that provocation was from the beginning an outcome we hoped for. But it is evident from the run of correspondence to date that the propositional, not to say provisional, nature of the FOA idea has been there throughout. It seems that the more I have argued in defence of this idea, the more generally hostile the response of the garden design community. I may well have begun to sound too shrill.

To be really clear: the call for submissions, as posted in draft on the site, disqualifies specific planting proposals - whether in response to the FOA scheme or not. For those designers who progress to shortlist and interview, the paths themselves are - were always - seen as an interpretive tool to be used at will, much like the written interventions of the correspondents on the site. As tools, I quite see that they may have limited usefulness for those within the design community engaged in professional practice, but the competition is after all open to all.

I hope there will be no offence if I tackle both what Liz and Jenny have been saying to each other about the Foreign Office scheme, and what Yseult has written to me.
 
Most important: on this project I am open to anything – including making up the rules as we go along. And it is us going along and not just me; at best I’d describe myself as chairing the proceedings.
 
On the FOA layout generally: as a collaborative activity we needed a specific project to react to. I am not sure that something more accessible, immediately likeable (or even for some likeable at all), could have been so effective. And since it does have this glorious and surprising utility, I am reluctant to abandon it completely - at least for the moment. It may yet surprise us in exactly the same way by stirring up the competition applicants themselves.
 
My stricture about designers ‘designing too soon’ is the key. At this stage we are simply redesigning – very experimentally – the process by which gardens are in general made.
Drawings are so often a way in which designers take control; it is inevitable that they should want to. For those who already imagine them as built, the FOA paths are a proof of this (I am sure this is why they irritate so many people). But for anybody who sees garden-making as itself a process without an outcome fixed in time, their scheme is really more of a challenge to the idea of any designer assuming full control. For the record, I’m not yet thinking about any possible outcomes; it is still too early to start drawing.
 
Turning to the specific criticisms that you make, I’m mostly on your side. In no particular order:
 
On ’switches’: I think FOA discovered something that every gardener knows, and elevated it to a design ’principle’. Easily done. All paths, some of the time block themselves with plant growth.
 
On the gate to the woods: I am not thinking of blocking it up but, in relation to this and to the allee, the view that both arbitrarily fix to the hill beyond is not the best, or the most interesting. The old transverse path took that route simply as being parallel to the straight section of the garden wall. The gate at the bottom of the allee, incidentally, I made myself, and in another mood. For me the FOA paths are a much more flexible instrument for examining the landscape outside than the old paths, that just reflected the geometry of the walls. (And see below on the Parabola form for the uneasy relationship of the geometry and landscape).
 
On the pond-in-the-gap: actually I’d asked FOA to remove it from their proposal as both too limiting and too prescriptive; somehow it crept back in. For me the gap, made by my parents for frost drainage and tractor access, is the point where the surfaces of the garden and the Park flow into each other. Once could argue both for and against a pond in such a place, and against the light.
 
On the wall itself: surely the point of Nori and Sandra’s planting was that it denied the larger landscape and obliterated the inner surface of the wall very effectively. There is a rather good letter from Raoul Bunschoten, in the archive section of the website, that makes the point of the zig-zags allowing one to ‘read’ the curving wall at rhythmic points, whilst still allowing it to be some sort of backdrop to the plants.
 
On the drainage channels: to be honest I’d forgotten all about them. Reminded, they sound complicated, expensive and inappropriate. Possibly a bit like the ‘switches’; a perfectly good idea about water retention became too literally ’represented’ in the project.
Foreign Office are busy master-planning the Lower Lea for the Olympics; the odd confusion of scale might be forgiven.
 
On movement: it is true that part of the Brief required the paths to absorb visitors quickly. This was on the principle that it would be nice if the experience of the coach-tourist was as close as possible to that of the solitary wanderer. But there is nothing about the path system proposed that compels anybody to move along it. The paths are after all designed at the minimum possible gradient. (This is the single most important driver of the grid form). Anyway, it is surely inconceivable that the whole parabola area should be made to disappear under shrubbery. This would be appalling as an experience, and an impossible maintenance burden. Even for me passing through at the trot, gardens do need their empty spaces, both of the enclosed and the expansive sort.
 
On the parabola form: I think this is unfortunate, and rather regret now attaching its name to the project. The shape of the wall isn’t particularly legible as something geometric (witness the fact that we hadn’t registered it as a parabola before we completed the survey). As a shape it surely works against the landscape, not with it. The straight side has no logic whatsoever, and might be thought of as rather ugly in relation to the curve of the parabola form itself. The wall is beautiful because of its materials, but mostly because of the surprising way the curved section is laid into the rise or fall of the ground; in any case, not because it’s a parabola.  I’d therefore sooner it was buried not reinforced, as a piece of geometry at least
 
On the question of the scheme requiring too much verbal explanation: the story is that I was keen to put onto our website only the single sheet from FOA showing the zig-zag proposal. There was then going to be a link to the FOA site, where all their justification and research could be found. As it happens, I think the sections of the pdf which show this information offer both too much and too little.

I could easily summarise the considerations that drove FOA’s scheme, and reconstruct every design move, but I rather think that I would thereby be playing into Yseult’s hands.
She is quite right – as a scheme it stands and  falls (perhaps indeed both) on its own merits, and without having to be explained.
 
Sure I’ve missed something…..
 
 

Funny that, I did have you down as the One-of-Three who was tackling old Emory man to man.
  
It happens that I have just finished a collective reply to what you have just been reading AND to your broadside of last week. It seemed right to tackle it all in one go. You will get it early next week. An articulation of the design moves (which I know I suggested) would be playing into your hands. Weren’t you saying that such things can never make a bad design proposition good?

You are right of course, and I think I was agreeing with you in the context of Petra-so wonderful, even though the design statement is in some, still largely undeciphered, demotic.

A Bartlett project to follow yours on the library of Babel: a DS for Karnak in hieroglyphs  ??
We had a success incidentally in the MSc studio at LSE, drawing maps and plans of the suburban neighbourhoods imagined in John Cheever stories - 25 students each to a different story.
 
Of course I will tackle Emory or, better, try myself to do it, if you feel I have not made my case when you see what I wrote. I know you will all be irritated by the suggestion I included that FOA’s project had a proven utility - was even a triumphant success - by being so widely disliked. I forbore to say there that the large nay-saying party was all female; chaps on the whole like it, or don’t care. Maybe they just have more tact, though this would be a stunning assault on my vanity.
 
The story of the snake is awful.
 
Do have the Dict. of Imaginary Places and remember being vaguely irritated by it. The descriptions were meaningless when I hadn’t ‘been’, and either irrelevant or irritating when I had.

Come to think of it, exactly like reading a Pevsner in bed.

One of the Furies? Oh dear, I’ve always thought of myself as a boy!

An amusing clutch of correspondence. The FAO have, indeed, cast a net to catch an argument. At this point what I want to see are the bullet points from Enemy Emory, then I may be able to appreciate the intellectual tang of the endeavour in depth. In the meantime I would like to finish the model and think carefullly about the geometry inherent on site. As to the nostalgia of gardens, childhood memories of scale and the general scratch and sniff of things, I grew up in New York and one of the few green experiences I remember is taking my pet snake to sunbathe on the granite massif in Central Park (it seemed like a good idea at the time) Unfortunately he got caught in the zip of the bag on the way back and didn’t survive his day out. Most harrowing…

I have asked before, but have you seen the Dictionary of Imaginary Places (Manguel & Guadaluphi)? It may be worth a browse. On the subject of language and landscape, I once tried to draw Borges’ Library of Babel. As described on the page it works perfectly, but proves a physical impossibility in three dimensions. 

Am beginning to see the Parabola as the last theatre of the gender wars, and
you, Liz and Jenny as the Furies come (justly) to torment me.

The reciprocal irony appears to be that, in spite of your very articulate
dislike of it, you seem all to be somehow imaginatively ensnared in the FOA
mesh.

This reminds me of Arabella Lennox-Boyd, to whom I showed an early version
of the paths. Five minutes of outrage, ten of silence and then she asks the
butler to go for a pencil and sketchbook. Still fulminating, she sets herself the task of obliterating the paths with planting.

Cool.

A Happy New Year - loved the knitted version of the walled garden on the email card!
 
Just a few thoughts that sprang to mind following the latest installment of discussion material on the archive.
 
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THIS AND ALL POINTS ARE NOTED.
 
I’d been meaning to ask you for a scaled plan to be uploaded to the site - there must be a digital survey in CAD format somewhere that FOA worked from, would it be possible to put that onto the download page? By dint of much digital manipulation of your PDF file (should I be admitting that?!)  it is possible to get something usable into a CAD package but a proper scaled plan would be much better. It also needs a North point - I’m assuming North-South is up-down on the paper, but could be wrong.
 
WE OF COURSE DO HAVE A VERY GOOD DIGITAL SURVEY FROM WHICH FOA WORKED. I WILL GET THAT UPLOADED IN THE NEXT WEEK OR TWO AND WILL TRY AND LET YOU KNOW WHEN THIS HAS HAPPENED.
 
I DON’T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED THAT SOMEBODY ELSE COMPLAINED, VERY REASONABLY, THAT THERE WAS NO SCALE! WE ARE JUST UPLOADING SOME INFORMATION ON THIS. WILL ALSO CONFIRM THE NORTH POINT BUT I THINK THAT THE OPEN END OF THE PARABOLA IS JUST A FEW DEGREES OFF SOUTH. THIS CAN PROBABLY BE INFERRED FROM THE SUN PATTERNS ON THE PDFS, BUT DON’T BET ON IT.
 
THESE OMISSIONS COULD BE VARIOUSLY DESCRIBED: AS FORGETFUL, CONTRARY, STYLISH OR JUST CUSSED. HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO MAKE A STUDY OF THE LETTERHEADS OF ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICES; MY EXPERIENCE IS THAT ONE CAN ALWAYS INFER STYLISTIC AND THEORETICAL POSITIONS FROM THE TYPEFACE AND LAYOUT. A GOOD GENERAL RULE I FIND IS THAT THE REVISIONISTS ALWAYS USE TYPEFACES THAT I CAN READ WITHOUT MY GLASSES. THE DOCTRINAIRE MODERNISTS REQUIRE A MAGNIFYING GLASS.
 
I was intrigued by your discussion with Anne Wareham about the Nabataean gods - when I visited the empty garden the two butresses supporting the wall reminded me of nothing so much as a primitive but empty altar. By the way, god/s aside, anonymous competition has always driven evolution!
 
I LIKE THE POINT ABOUT EVOLUTION. I MAY OF COURSE HAVE GOT A LITTLE CARRIED AWAY BY THE NABATEANS, BUT PETRA IS A WONDERFUL PLACE.
 
Re: the Competition Submissions page - I used to run the process whereby funding was handed out for scientific research. We issued calls for proposals on a fixed page form - a similar idea to your A3 page submission. If we had issued your call for a minimum of 150 words on an A3 sheet it would have resulted in an unreadable mass of 6pt font! You may need to issue further guidelines on font sizes or text quantity for the sake of your panel.
 
VERY HELPFUL, THANK YOU. VICTORIA GLENDINNING FEELS THAT 150 WORDS IS TAXINGLY LITTLE, EVEN FOR HER, TO EXPRESS A VISIONARY CONCEPT.
 
DO YOU THINK I SHOULD SAY FIRMLY THAT THE TEXT SHOULD BE IN ENGLISH?
 
I don’t think you need to worry about the design process congealing, provided you don’t constrain the applicants too much. I suspect that many anonymous drawing boards up and down the country are already covered with ideas and just waiting for the call. The competition has been widely promoted, the anonymity will encourage the bashful - just let us at it!
 
VERY ENCOURAGING - LET’S HOPE.
 
I HAVE STARTED A TENTATIVE DISCUSSION WITH A SMALL MUSEUM IN LONDON TO SEE IF THEY WILL MOUNT AN EXHIBITION OF THE BEST OF THE PROPOSALS. WHICHEVER, IT’S VERY IMPORTANT THAT THE FORMAT DISCUSSED ABOVE DOESN’T PRIVILEGE ONLY THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE PRESENTATIONAL SKILLS ALREADY.
 
Re: wordiness - I will admit I found some of the discussion off-putting and I have 4 degrees! It wasn’t until the shock of the photo of the allee being cut down that I dared join the fray. Perhaps you will forgive the following thought which has been at the back of my mind since I started reading the discussion: I’ve seen great gardens built on the heaviest clay, the driest gravel and the harshest chalk, but I’ve never seen one that was intended to be built on so much hot air!
 
OF COURSE I FORGIVE YOU, AND AM STILL CHUCKLING.
 
I DON’T KNOW IF YOU SAW REM KOOLHAUS’ PAVILION FOR THE SERPENTINE GALLERY THIS YEAR. ITS ROOF WAS A HUGE INFLATABLE BALLOON THAT THEY ENLARGED TO ABOUT 30M WHENEVER THE ARCHITECTS WERE IN ENERGETIC DISCUSSION UNDERNEATH IT. IN ANY CASE, I HAVE ENORMOUSLY APPRECIATED YOUR INTERVENTIONS AND REGRET IT IF THE TONE IN THE EARLIER CORRESPONDENCE WAS A BIT OFF-PUTTING.
 
NOT EVERYTHING WE HAVE PUT UP HAS BEEN HELPFUL, I OR TO THE PURPOSE, BUT I FEEL THAT SOME OF THE DISCUSSION HAS BEEN OF A KIND, AND ALL SUBJECTS, THAT IT IS VERY HARD TO GENERATE BY OTHER MEANS. THE FACT THAT THERE IS A SPECIFIC PROJECT, AND THE FOREIGN OFFICE SCHEME IN ISSUE, HAS FORCED PEOPLE TO RESPOND. I CAN’T HELP FEELING THAT WE SHOULD REGARD THE PROJECT AS A SUCCESS OF SOME KIND WHATEVER NOW TRANSPIRES.
 
THE REALITY OF COURSE, IS THAT I HAVE ‘FRONTLOADED’ THE INVESTMENT IN DESIGN TO AN ALMOST LUDICROUS DEGREE. AFTER ALL THIS ACTIVITY, WE ARE PROBABLY STILL ONLY AT THE POINT FROM WHICH MOST PEOPLE THINK THEY WOULD START WHEN THEY SET ABOUT MAKING A NEW GARDEN.
 
AGAIN, COULD I ADD (AND IN A TINY VOICE BECAUSE I DON’T WANT THE WHOLE THING TO SEEM TOO SOLIPSISTIC) THAT I NOW KNOW A GREAT DEAL MORE ABOUT GARDEN MAKING THAT I DID, EVEN SIX MONTHS AGO.
 
‘HOT AIR’ MIGHT NOT BE SUCH A BAD NARRATIVE APPROACH FOR A PLANTING SCHEME, INCIDENTALLY.
 

Lovely to receive your email today. I think you/we should shout pretty
loudly.

Interesting, your point about the “switches” suggestion on the paths. This was actually one of the FAO bits that I quite liked, but in a rather perverse way. Yes, it would be trying to control the visitor (”access denied”) - and to me that immediately opens up the exciting element of temptation to trespass. I visited the garden in the Autumn and, like you, was enchanted by the sheer romance of it - especially the peach walk and pond area. Feeling like an intruder definitely added to the experience. Having areas becoming overgrown, thickets, I love. But I suppose any designer would need to be interested in expected visitor numbers - if hordes must be planned for some things would just not be possible.

Your comment about the Stipa made me think about childhood experiences of being physically smaller in gardens, feeling plants arching above me. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to go a bit mad with quite ordinary things - buddleias, honeysuckles, big species roses, unpruned overwinter to create a tunnel-like experience
 Or even a network of tunnels?

Why do you feel this way about the allee, do you think? How important do you think was the connection with the woodland? I was rather horrified by the possibility (which I think was in Nialls brief somewhere) that the woodland entrance be removed altogether. For me this is a really magical bit of the garden, its connection with the hillside and woodland which makes up such a strong part of the atmosphere inside. Even if it is in some way restricted, or hidden, I feel it is essential this remains.

One aspect of the allee I loved (especially as I saw it against the low sun) was looking South through the filigree of trunks, glimpsing the space beyond.

Another thing I note about the FAO paths is this implicit assumption that the garden will have a perimeter ‘gallery’ planting round the curve. I know that is the whole historic purpose of the structure - BUT. It is a beautifulsurface in its own right, it could support plants trailing off into the central area. It could even visually ‘repel’ masses of planting in places.

Absolutely agree with your comment about the gutters (oops! water channels). Daft is the word - I kept thinking maybe I was missing something critical about drainage, but the site doesn’t seem to have any special problem here does it? As far as that Southeast gate goes, my understanding from the climate parts of the FAO stuff was that without some opening in this, the lowest corner, the wall would create a significant frost hollow, trapping the cold air.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how a garden can be so powerful that it can draw people in like this? I think what is happening is fascinating because Niall is allowing the process to be accessible - licence to visit, comment, fantasise, and like you (and plenty of other people, I’m sure!) wish it were mine.

The big question has got to be - if the FAO suggestion is not right, what would be? No, haven’t visited the gardens you mentioned - maybe one fine day. Anyway, having had an enjoyable nosey around your website I realise my waffling and questions will probably be the last thing you want after the day’s work, so will sign off now.