Yes, of course, I would be happy to elaborate on my discomfort with the zig-zag paths.  First of all, the constant changes of direction would be very distracting when viewing the plantings, you’d always have to be minding the next turning instead of enjoying the garden.  Secondly they are in too much contrast to the broad sweep of the parabolic wall.  Some tension between path and wall could be a good thing, but this is tension between the two to the extreme.  Thirdly, I believe that plants are well displayed along a curve, which the zig-zags do not allow for at the front edge of the beds. Fourthly, I feel that this path arrangement would be disorienting, it would be very hard for you to know which little bit of zig-zag you were located on, and there would need to be many little location signs in the garden itself to reference you to a plan that would let you know where you were, and what plants you were looking at (if indeed the planting is identified on a paper plan you walk the garden with, although maybe everything will be identified by signs in the garden?  But that would not be aesthetically pleasing either).
 
I think those are my major problems with the zig-zags, although I am sure I could come up with additional ones if I thought about it a bit more!
 
Actually, I don’t have time to work on the competition, although I do appreciate your encouragement to try.
 
Once again, thank you for the opportunity to comment.

It does seem a pity you are not entering - it is the non-garden-designers whose approach will probably be most imaginative, or least constrained.

If you are not prepared to enter, then could you please be more specific about why, as a designer, you feel the foa paths are such a ‘disaster’.? My experience over the last six months is that nobody much likes the zig zags, but that they are unable(or unprepared) to say why.

We won’t know until next week whether designers generally have been able to come up with an improvement on them. Up til then I will have had to take them on trust that they can, and will.

I appreciate the opportunity you provide to comment on, and indeed, to enter the competition for a new garden at Hadspen.  As I am not a garden designer I do not feel qualified to enter the competition, but will look forward to seeing the process unfold.  I do hope you come up with a beautiful garden that all can enjoy.
 
I am glad to hear that the FOA plan has been let go as a requirement since the zig-zagpath would have been extremely frustrating for visitors to the garden.  Perhaps as a design idea it had certain beauty on paper, but on the ground it would have been disaster.  As an interior and architectural designer myself, I have a great interest in thedesign of objects and buildings and places, including, of course, gardens.  Therefore, I do hope you will finally choose a design that provides grand opportunity for showcasing plants, as well as demonstrating an openess to new design thoughts, but not at the expense of common sense!
 
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Thanks, and noted.

I see the current project (competition and website) as both a defence of my razing of the Popes’ garden, and a way of ‘dealing’ with its passing.Their letter is in itself the single most powerful,and durable,outcome of my project, but also of all efforts past and future to garden on that site;I expect it to be quoted for years to come, and I am very proud to have provoked it, if that is what I did. And remember that we - Nori, Sandra and I - were working with FOA on a new approach to the garden for a yearbefore N and S left for Canada; it was N’s health that then precipitated their departure much earlier than planned.

And I would be happy to try and explain to you why it would have been dodging the issue to start a new garden elsewhere o the Estate; but I would prefer to do this afteryou have seen whatever-it-is that next gets made on the site, and then only if you still feel the need of explanation.

As an appreciative visitor to the Hadspen gardened by the Popes I have been
following its new fortune with some sadness, awe and curiosity.

The Hadspen Parabola was glorious. A heritage of a garden which could have
lived on forever. Whilst applauding change, would it not have been possible to build thenew and visionary garden elsewhere on the estate, thus retaining the beauty of the Parabola garden for appreciation by future generations?

I was pleased to see Sandra and Nori Pope’s contribution to the Hadspen Correspondence but disappointed at the ensuing lengthy silence until Anonymous Competitor bravely dipped a toe into the water on 19 July to respond. He, or she,raises questions which I longed to ask but felt ill-equipped to raise as a member of the general public. The Open Day visitors have clearly given the previous garden much thought and hopefully the Popes will respond in due course to their message.

I wish you every success in your new project but not without lamenting the passing of one of the most beautiful gardens in the country.

Bravo. Thankyou - the best formulation yet! I hope you have realised that it is not gardeners I am at war with, nor yet the garden designers. Just with any form of mystery making. And I do so regret not seeing your ‘parti’. I rather expect competitors to re-form in different collaborative teams as the short list refines itself. That, after all, would resolve the ownership issue about which everybody was so steamed at the Museum Of Garden History.

We met briefly at the Museum of Garden History debate last month on
the commissioning of the new garden at Hadspen House.

I have written a column on the controversy for the International
Herald Tribune, published on Monday -
2007/07/20/arts/design23.php - and a longer version of the column is
to be published in the New York Times on Thursday.

As I was very interested by your comments at the museum debate, I
would very much like to know your views on the following:

AR: What are your misgivings about the process of commissioning the
new Hadspen Garden?

MK: I think the initiative is tremendously exciting. Please say that, as I think Niall has started something really interesting. Nothing wrong or novel about competitions for
gardens. They certainly exist and this one is a cracker. I hope
he gets the response he deserves. But I work as a garden designer
and landscaper and would never accept a commission to plant a
garden that had been laid out by someone else. (Although having
said that, one of our most successful recent commissions has been
the restoration of a Grade I Lutyens house working with Peter
Inskip.) Garden designers are more than exterior decorators.
Planting to a prescribed layout would seem to us like painting
by numbers. The whole place is what interests us, how it feels,
the atmosphere of the garden or landscape, but a degree of
pragmatism is vital. You need to be down to earth. The materials
we work with - time, weather, plants and space, all change and
develop as no other art form does. Gardens are also kinetic. You
move through them. I think, but I may be proved wrong, that we
are right to insist on the fact that those who understand what
making a garden involves will always be the best people to design
gardens. Of course there are total plantspersons who make bad
whole gardens and those who understand space and restraint who
also make bad gardens, because they do not know how to handle
plants. The best designers are the ones who hold the balance
between both these needs.

AR: Could there have been a better way of handling it? If so, what
would that have been?

MK: Not a better way because Niall has listened
and changed the brief and has agreed that the design as well as
the planting can be the creation of the competitor. The FOA path
layout was pretty impossible. Try walking in a series of hairpin
bends on a slope and see what it feels like. I am sorry I did not
have time to put in an entry. Too much work and any way I am a
judge. But I did have the germ of an idea to reflect on the
elements that seem to me to matter about the Hadspen Parabola.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more.

Anonymously (since all visits to the Open Days are supposed to be unconnected with anyone taking part in the judging) I wanted to tell Nori and Sandra that even if none of the judges have approached them for an opinion, they might like to know that Open Day visitors have all been wondering what they thought about the destruction of their garden. Although all the visitors are likely to be in competition with each other there has actually been quite a sense of cameraderie at the Open Days - with groups gathering together to share thoughts - mostly along the lines of “How could the Popes bear it?”, and sharing remembrances of earlier visits and happy hours spent there. The Popes may have gone, but they are definitely not forgotten by any of us - and most of us have a little bit of the old Hadspen planted in our gardens as well as in our hearts!

Without ANY irony, I would love to have seen the entry of the Designer who can wince at a misplaced apostrophe.

WHY have you got an apostrophe in “Visitor’s” on your Open Day page?

It’ OK, this bee-in-my-bonnet has only taken one minute out of my design time!

I’m not entering the competition, but good luck with it.