Our speaker in May was Alan Mason. He is one of Europe’s top garden designers and founder member of the Professional Gardeners Guild. One of his great successes in the UK is Harewood House near Leeds. He has produced many TV programmes on gardening for Channel 4 as well as other appearances.
He was also involved in a big project at the Villa Cicogna Mozzoni in Italy, where he led a team replacing all the old conifers that were “choking” the ancient water staircase with Italian Cypress.
Alan took us on a whimsical journey showing examples of diverse garden features where owners with wealth wanted to impress. One of those was a garden at Villa d’Este in Tivoli with its “Walk of a Hundred Fountains”, where the river was diverted to form the amazing feature. He now hosts gardening holidays around Italian lakes, where guests travel by boat from one location to another. He showed us quite a range of different gardens where shadows are used for beauty, shade for cooler spots etc. A good designer tip is that if a garden has beautiful views, don’t spoil it by overplanting with tall trees and shrubs, keep it low to enjoy the landscape. Alan categorises his guests into 3 groups. 1, those not interested and don’t look down. 2, the plantsman who will pick out and name all the flora trying to impress, and 3, the sad group, who complain that the flight was long followed by a hot coach trip and notice every weed on the ground.
A garden can be a small courtyard with a few planters to acres of woodland with lakes. There is no such thing as a perfect garden. Enjoy it for what it is and don’t cram too much into the space.
We all enjoyed the informative, humorous and light-hearted evening.
Hanna Roberts
