Niall Hobhouse to Yseult Ogilvie
Your critique of the FOA Scheme is forcefully and elegantly made.
I’d only like to reiterate that the strongest single ‘driver’ of their path grid was to allow movement at all times on the gentlest possible gradients across a dramatically sloping site. This is in contrast to the original paths, one of which at least took the steepest available route down the hill.
I am not saying that either arrangement is wrong, just that FOA’s is apparently the more disciplined and consistent in its approach to the sloping terrain. Of course, discipline and consistency may be at odds with the drama and surprise required of a garden, but these could be generated by the new planting.
The old paths had a possible logic only as an organization of the interior space of the wall. The important point, on which I think we can agree, is that previous gardeners accepted them as a ‘given’ of the site. This done, there was no choice but to reinforce them with planting, and to the exclusion of arbitrary views beyond.
On garden history: this is, after all, a walled enclosure, even if it is not in the desert. I think we could all be forgiven for having thought of the internal space as an enclosed one. This especially since all previous gardeners, consciously or unconsciously, worked so hard to exclude from their garden everything beyond the wall.
I think we should give FOA a break. They came to the site in high summer, and much of the wider landscape was obscured by the Popes’ planting. Where it wasn’t – in the long curved border – the planting itself compelled attention to what was against the wall, not beyond it. Even the form of the wall itself was hard to read as a result.
There is time and opportunity enough for FOA to modify their proposal, and doing so would be a fine test of the structure and logic of their approach.
Besides, the competitors may yet come up with a better idea for the paths.