In recent years there has been the money and drive for restoration of
Gardens to a specific period in their history (Heritage Lottery Fund in
the UK, Great Gardens of Ireland Restoration scheme). Whilst such
activities are of merit in the funding and redevelopment that ensues, they
are also much criticised. We are all well aware that the one unique
feature of a garden is how it constantly grows, both philosophically and
organically. It is one of the least static pieces of our heritage. And yet
we still need to look at the Victorian, Georgian, or even Roman,
approach to gardening if we want to understand how our modern
approaches have developed. The issue of authenticity can thus become a
subject not only for clear agreement, but also for healthy conflict.
As John Watkins said, ëhistory began a second agoí 2
. So, what is
authentic in a garden? At Charles Darwinís family home, Down House
in Kent, English Heritage has re-created, as far as possible, a faithful
restoration of the interior of the house as it was in Darwinís day. In the
garden, there was the difficulty of deciding upon a basis for what was
important, and authentic. Making sure that all hedges were grown from
original surviving material in the garden was one such attempt. Of
particular importance, from a historical point of view, was the
reconstruction of the famous Sand Walk. Every day, Darwin took a
circular walk around the house while he pondered his theory of natural
selection and other scientific writings. The glimpses he got of the house,
the fence that marked the way, all these were considered essential
elements of such a historic reconstruction. There may be no evidence
that allows this path to be anything but an approximation, but the aim
was to re-create the essence, and hopefully the inspiration, of his daily
walk 2
. Similarly, in the glasshouses, plants that Darwin worked on at
various times in his career ñ insectivorous, climbing ñ are now grown
together, but these probably never grew there all at once. However, they
serve a role today in exemplifying a composite history.
Thus, there will always be this spectrum of authenticity from general
layout or composition, to very specific usage of the right plants. In many
historical reconstructions of gardens, the importance of using the right
cultivars, from the right period, is adhered to faithfully. And yet, at the
same time, we should never forget that Gertrude Jekyll, for instance,
could well have fallen upon many a modern cultivar with delight. The
4
dominance of modern taste is probably one of the few factors that would
override the often startlingly bright colours that would have made up
Victorian bedding. At Brodsworth Hall 12, authentic vibrantly coloured
cultivars of bedding plants are being sought for the ribbon planting in
the restored flower garden and self-set trees in the woodland garden are
being cleared to make way for choice species available to the Victorians.
The Dahlia Walk at Biddulph Grange, filled in around 1920 and only
rediscovered after excavations in 1988, has been restored and replanted
with dahlias similar to the original cultivars, which are now extinct. At
the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, two floral carpets have been
laid out for over a century, the design being changed only once ñ for the
900th anniversary, in 1988, of the founding of Dublin city.
Every garden is unique, and the balance between accuracy and
entertainment is a useful dynamic. After all, most historic gardens were
not built for the general public ñ this has simply become a necessary
add-on 12. At Trewithen 16, the grand vista was designed to be viewed
solely from the front of the house, so as to provide a receding panorama
of shapes and colours along the lawn. It was originally planned to be at
its best for a concentrated period of 6 weeks in the spring. The
eighteenth-century kernel of the garden has today been developed as a
woodland garden, extending the period of interest for visitors.
Authenticity in a garden may thus be confined to style (ëcontemporary
heritage gardensí), design (an exact copy), contents (the same types of
plants, the same cultivars, or even the same clones), or simply a theme.
All these elements are authentic in their different ways, a happy melding
of the past with contemporary features. The approach to laying out order
beds provides just such an example, where the authenticity of a
historically redundant system can be more educational than the newly
perceived authenticity of DNA science 8
.
Authentic restoration involves many compromises, to take account of
modern growing conditions and health and safety regulations in the
context of access and faithful restoration.
So-called ënaturalisedí or ënaturalisticí planting is not really authentic in
the sense of being an exact replica of a habitat or wild assemblage, but
rather an abstracted form of natural, for a particular purpose.