Question 1

Do Crimson, Navy and Lavender work together?

Accepted Answer

Yes — most botanically traditional English split-complementary: Navy very deep dark yew-topiary and Lavender pale medium English-lavender are the most specifically English garden cool pair (the formal architectural hedge and the fragrant botanical), Crimson passionate climbing-rose the most romantically floriferous warm. English walled garden: Crimson rose passionate, Navy topiary very deep, Lavender English-lavender pale medium.

Question 2

What is the English walled garden tradition?

Accepted Answer

The English walled garden (the kitchen garden or physic garden enclosed by brick or stone walls — the most important and the most systematically productive garden type in the English country house tradition — dating from approximately the 17th century and reaching its most elaborate and most productive form in the 18th and 19th centuries) was originally designed to: (1) Extend the growing season by trapping heat in the masonry walls (particularly the south-facing walls — whose absorbed solar heat raised the immediate air temperature by approximately 3-5°C — allowing the most tender fruit trees — peaches, nectarines, apricots — to ripen against the most sun-exposed wall faces); (2) Protect tender plants from the most damaging winds (the enclosing walls creating a microclimate dramatically more sheltered than the open garden); (3) Exclude garden pests (deer, rabbits, hares); (4) Organize the most systematically productive vegetable and fruit production for the country house kitchen. The most celebrated walled gardens: (1) Powis Castle (Welshpool, Wales — the most dramatically preserved and the most botanically rich of all British walled gardens — with the most extraordinary lead statuary, the most elaborate yew hedges, and the most dramatic terraced formal garden design); (2) Sissinghurst Castle Garden (Kent — the most internationally famous of all 20th-century English gardens — created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson from 1930 — now a National Trust garden receiving approximately 200,000 visitors per year — the most influential single garden in the development of the English cottage garden style); (3) Great Dixter (East Sussex — created by Christopher Lloyd — the most opinionated and the most botanically adventurous English garden writer of the 20th century — the most dynamically planted and the most continuously evolving of all the major English gardens).

Question 3

Who was Gertrude Jekyll and what was her influence on garden design?

Accepted Answer

Gertrude Jekyll (November 29, 1843, London – December 8, 1932, Munstead, Surrey — at age 89) was the most influential English garden designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the most extensively published garden writer in British horticultural history — with 15 books, approximately 2,000 articles in the most important British gardening publications, and approximately 400 garden designs to her credit. Early career: Jekyll trained as an artist (studying at the South Kensington School of Art — the most important Victorian art school — the direct ancestor of the Royal College of Art) and was profoundly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement (particularly by William Morris — whose insistence on the most honest use of traditional craft materials and the most organically regional design vocabulary was directly translated by Jekyll into the most botanically honest and the most regionally specific garden design). The Lutyens partnership: Jekyll's most productive and the most architecturally distinguished collaboration was with the architect Edwin Lutyens (Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens — 1869-1944 — the most important English architect of the Arts-and-Crafts tradition — later the designer of the Viceroy's House in New Delhi — the most impressive English Classicist building in India). Jekyll designed approximately 100 gardens for Lutyens buildings — the most celebrated being Hestercombe (Somerset), Munstead Wood (Surrey — Jekyll's own garden), and Orchards (Surrey). The color border: Jekyll's most important single design innovation was the herbaceous color border — the most systematically organized and the most painterly large-scale planting of perennials, bulbs, and annuals in a specific color progression — at Munstead Wood, her home garden in Surrey (now a National Trust property, but not open to the public), Jekyll developed the most extensively and the most laboriously thought-through 200-foot herbaceous border — a continuous planting that progressed from warm crimson-to-scarlet reds through orange-yellows through white to cool blue-lavenders and back to warm crimson — creating the most color-theoretically sophisticated and the most visually harmonious garden planting in English history.

Question 4

What is the significance of the English rose in British culture?

Accepted Answer

The rose (Rosa — from Latin: rosa — from Ancient Greek: ῥόδον — rhodon — from Old Iranian: wrda — the most ancient and the most universally cultivated ornamental plant in Western civilization — cultivated for more than 5,000 years in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, China, and Europe) has the most comprehensively rich and the most deeply embedded cultural significance in English tradition of any plant in British botany. The Tudor rose: the most immediately politically significant English use of the rose is the Tudor rose (the stylized five-petaled heraldic rose combining the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster — the two competing royal dynasties of the Wars of the Roses — 1455-1487 CE — whose bloody conflict for the English throne was the most dynastic and the most destructive civil conflict of medieval England) — adopted as the personal badge of Henry VII (the founder of the Tudor dynasty — 1485-1509 CE) as the most immediately symbolic combination of the two warring houses. The national flower: the rose was declared the national flower of England in 1986 — though its symbolic association with England is far older — the specific crimson of the red rose of Lancaster (a garden rose — probably Rosa gallica var. officinalis — the Apothecary's Rose — the most historically documented medieval English garden rose) was the most specifically and the most permanently English floral color long before the formal declaration. Shakespeare and the rose: the rose appears more frequently than any other plant in the works of William Shakespeare — in approximately 70 of the 37 Shakespeare plays — most famously in A Midsummer Night's Dream ('I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine') and in Romeo and Juliet ('What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet').

Question 5

What proportion creates the most English walled garden quality?

Accepted Answer

Lavender dominant (45%) as the pale medium English-lavender botanical cool anchor; Navy at 35% as the very deep dark yew-topiary formal cool secondary; Crimson at 20% as the passionate climbing-rose warm jewel. Lavender's dominance creates the English walled garden quality — the vast, pale medium lavender of the English lavender border (typically planted along the most prominent path edges and at the base of the most important walls in the traditional English walled garden — the most characteristic and the most immediately fragrant element of the English garden in summer) is the single most botanically aromatic and the most immediately 'English garden' color element — the specific pale medium purple of the Hidcote or Munstead lavender at peak bloom creates the most instantly recognizable and the most universally beloved English garden sensory experience (the combination of the most pale medium purple color and the most intensely sweet lavender fragrance being the most immediately and the most comprehensively English garden evocation); Navy's very deep yew topiary provides the most formally architectural and the most dramatically contrasting cool secondary; and Crimson's passionate climbing rose provides the most romantically floriferous and the most classically English warm accent.

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