I don't know how I feel about this book except to say that I liked it. Anne Wareham is clearly an outsider artist whose garden, Veddew, is her canvas. I've always liked outsiders, folks who are a little bit different. I can't help but admire the effort she has put into this book to help readers understand how she views the gardening world. Even though she is on the inside of that world, she's in a little bubble within it trying to push her way out to make everyone see. To see what? That landscape design can indeed be more than the sum of its parts. That it can be Art.
Through a collection of eclectic garden essays she draws the reader in with controversial and sometimes contradictory thoughts and questions. Don't be fooled by the disheartening title which is a play on Christopher Lloyd's The Well-Tempered Garden. It's a thought provoking read. Anne throws down the gauntlet, challenging folks to take gardens to a higher level. But which folks? I don't think this book was written for me. This call to arms is for those folks in the landscape design industry and for those who can afford to be patrons of the arts.
Is it art or is craft?
Making the argument that landscape design should be dragged up to the category of Art is a tough one. Anne makes lots of good points about it in her book but I'm left with more questions than answers. Landscape Designing implies creating something for money. Can a garden be art if paying clients are allowed to make changes to the final object? Can it be art if the end result is to please a client not to please the artist or to create meaning? Does meaning matter if the clients are satisfied?
And what about Art? I've always thought that art is an object that can evoke emotion. Something whose meaning transcends its components. Is it art if it has to be explained? Is the story important? Is a show garden art if it has a financial sponsor? Can a private garden be art if no one ever sees it but the creator?
Because I make plush and am deeply embedded in the plush world, I'll provide an analogy that fits within that world. There are varying levels of plush making from toys to art objects. Soft toys are usually more simple forms of plush whose purpose is to entertain. Plush art objects are created to view rather than be played with and they often have a meaning that transcends the object.
Take this toy for example:
Kids of all ages can play with it and be entertained.
Now take a look at this art object:
This plush trailer is one of a kind. It was created out of a need to express a part of a painful history. My painful history. But would this Plush Trailer mean the same thing if I hadn't produced this essay explaining why I created it? I doubt it. Probably it would just be some groovy plush thing no one had ever made before. It's the meaning that matters. Perhaps that's what Anne is trying to get across in her book. But still I don't call myself a Plush Artist only a lowly plush maker.
Anne's book feels like many details all mixed up together. But the muddle has a clear destination: an evocation of emotion. It's not about the hard and fast rules of three of this kind of shrub and four of those perennials mixed together. The pieces almost don't matter so long as the end emotional result is achieved. Perhaps Anne is simply too far ahead of her time. And perhaps the world will look back much, much later and realize it.
Or maybe I've got the meaning all wrong. I'm coming at this collection of essays with my own emotional baggage and having heard nothing what so ever of Anne Wareham. I am, after all, one of the little people. I'm neither landscape designer nor gardening artist. I don't work in the horticultural industry at all. I don't even belong to any horticultural groups or societies. I'm only one lone, newish gardener seeking to learn all I can to achieve my ultimate goal, to surround myself with something beautiful.
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