Hollyhocks by Frederick C. Frieseke
I blame these fantasies on those isolated moments when, undemanded, garden ideas germinate. I see I should have kept my head, but a part of gardening must surely have come from losing it? Without being led astray from the known and tried, how would Charles Bridgeman have conceived the idea for the first ha-ha in 1712? Vita Sackville-West contrived a clematis ‘table’ so that she could gaze lovingly into the upturned faces of the flowers; and wasn’t it Gertrude Jekyll who first thought of growing ramblers horizontally as ground cover? Lady Anne Tree has a dressing table of yew, a four-poster bed made of clipped box with a vine canopy, a bedside table of ivies and an armchair of briar roses. As for outlandish garden eccentricities, they burgeoned from the dotty nineteenth-century Frenchman Audot, who made whimsical fantasies from sculptured trees, and his batty compatriot the conductor Louis Antoine Jullien, who cut his evergreens in such a way that a howling gale played the opening bars of a Beethoven symphony, to the giant shell in which to bask at Strawberry Hill, and the invention of glass cucumber straighteners. Thank God there’s no limit to fanciful garden deviants.
– A Gentle Plea for Chaos by Mirabel Osler
“Thank God there’s no limit to fanciful garden deviants.” Beautiful post, fabulous quote, and one of my favorite paintings. Garden fever – a malady for which there is no know cure. Thank goodness.
I’m not a gardener at all (city girl), but if I was, I think I’d hope to be a ‘fanciful garden deviant.’ (And p.s., that pink room with the bed and the books is my dream room! I’n glad you liked it.)
I did not know that book/author so thank you for the quote. The British in particular are notorious for their eccentricity but perhaps gardens bring out experimentation anyway. It is certainly true of garden buildings such as gatehouses, banqueting houses,follies etc. Dreamy picture!