Saki, The Occasional Gardener, c. 1910

"My dear Elinor," said the Baroness, "you would save yourself all this heart-burning and a lot of gardener's bills, not to mention sparrow anxieties, simply by paying an annual subscription to the O.O.S.A."

"Never heard of it," said Elinor; "what is it?"

"The Occasional-Oasis Supply Association," said the Baroness; "it exists to meet cases exactly like yours, cases of backyards that are of no practical use for gardening purposes, but are required to blossom into decorative scenic backgrounds at stated intervals, when a luncheon or dinner-party is contemplated. Supposing, for instance, you have people coming to lunch at one-thirty; you just ring up the Association at about ten o'clock the same morning, and say 'lunch garden'. That is all the trouble you have to take. By twelve forty-five your yard is carpeted with a strip of velvety turf, with a hedge of lilac or red may, or whatever happens to be in season, as a background, one or two cherry trees in blossom, and clumps of heavily-flowered rhododendrons filling in the odd corners; in the foreground you have a blaze of carnations or Shirley poppies, or tiger lilies in full bloom. As soon as the lunch is over and your guests have departed the garden departs also, and all the cats in Christendom can sit in council in your yard without causing you a moment's anxiety. If you have a bishop or an antiquary or something of that sort coming to lunch you just mention the fact when you are ordering the garden, and you get an old-world pleasaunce, with clipped yew hedges and a sun-dial and hollyhocks, and perhaps a mulberry tree, and borders of sweet-williams and Canterbury bells, and an old-fashioned beehive or two tucked away in a corner. Those are the ordinary lines of supply that the Oasis Association undertakes, but by paying a few guineas a year extra you are entitled to its emergency E.O.N. service."

"What on earth is an E.O.N. service?"

"It's just a conventional signal to indicate special cases like the incursion of Gwenda Pottingdon. It means you've got some one coming to lunch or dinner whose garden is alleged to be 'the envy of the neighbourhood.'"

"Yes," exclaimed Elinor, with some excitement, "and what happens then?"

"Something that sounds like a miracle out of the Arabian Nights. Your backyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate and almond trees, lemon groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble- basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster terraces. The whole effect rather suggests the idea that Providence and Norman Wilkinson have dropped mutual jealousies and collaborated to produce a background for an open-air Russian Ballet; in point of fact, it is merely the background to your luncheon party. If there is any kick left in Gwenda Pottingdon, or whoever your E.O.N. guest of the moment may be, just mention carelessly that your climbing putella is the only one in England, since the one at Chatsworth died last winter. There isn't such a thing as a climbing putella, but Gwenda Pottingdon and her kind don't usually know one flower from another without prompting."

"Quick," said Elinor, "the address of the Association."

~H.H. Munro (Saki)

Read the entire story (it's quite short) here.

illustration from the gone-but-not-forgotten 'House and Garden', c. 1921.

Wang Tingna's Gardens of the Hall Encircled by Jade

I have been searching, without success, for an online version of the Chinese garden classic, 'Yuan Ye' to share with you. Completed by Ji Cheng in 1634, it is the earliest, and still one of the most important, treatises on Chinese garden design, offering practical counsel on the layout of the landscape, the construction of garden buildings and rockeries, pebbled walkways and gates.

Some images from Yuan Ye are available, but as thumbnails only, at the University of Pennsylvania, and the entire volume can be purchased in a 1988 English translation by Alison Hardie that has now become quite expensive.

But perhaps a better parting gift, as we leave for now the Orient and return to the Occident, is a stroll through the garden of Wang Tingna.

The c. 1600 scroll depicting his garden, which was nearby to Suzhou, is the longest continuous printed illustration ever produced. It is designed not to be viewed all at once, but to be slowly savored as each turn of the scroll reveals a new scene. The online view available from Dumbarton Oaks is digitally scrollable, allowing for the same sort of experience.

The garden itself vanished some time in the 1800s and even the images available to us now are only a shadow of the original artwork, which was destroyed as late as the 1960s in the mass paranoia that was the Cultural Revolution. Fortunately, metal plates of its images had already been made.

"Wang built a mansion, with an abundance of jeweled terraces and elaborate galleries, exotic flowers and famous rocks. He also dug a lake of more than a hundred acres to surround the hall, which local people called His Honor's lake. Wang would stroll about in the garden, drinking wine and composing poems. "

Note the scene of Wang and his companions gathered round a curious sort of table:A similar carved rivulet in Prince Gong's garden in Beijing, set into the floor of a pavilion, has been preserved.

The trees of Myoung Ho Lee

Given the emphasis on the shape and form of individual plants in the Oriental gardening tradition, it is perhaps not surprising that the creator of these works is South Korean.

Photographer Myoung Ho Lee "makes us look at a tree in its natural surroundings, but separates the tree artificially from nature by presenting it on an immense white ground, as one would see a painting or photograph on a billboard."

Quote from lens culture, where you can find more information and prints available for purchase.

The goal of Myoung's work is to make a photograph rather than to intervene in the landscape like Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose work seems an obvious inspiration.

But I'd like to think that these backgrounds are still out there, that somewhere in some forest I might come upon a tree shivering against a background of white, ready for its close-up.

Chinese gardens - the naming of the pavilions

Another of my 'take-home' ideas from China is the naming of garden buildings, often connected not only to a sensory experience but also to poetry, art and folktale. A short selection:

The Waterside Pavilion (where you can wash your tassel)
The Moon Comes with Breeze Pavilion
The Watching Pines and Appreciating Paintings Studio
The Hall of Ascending to Clouds
The Hall of Distant Fragrance

And my personal favorite:

The Balcony Free of Frippery

Chinese gardens - Serenity, and the importance of an open center

With the latest scientific manuscript written and submitted I can at last return (with relief) to the contemplation of gardens, and to some final thoughts on the gardens of Suzhou though I have now been home these few weeks.

I have continued to ponder, since returning, the vaunted 'serenity' of oriental gardens. Chinese gardens are as ornamented and decorated as a Victorian parlor. It is definitely a maximal, rather than minimal, approach to the landscape. So whence the calm?

As I traversed these gardens, I found that my view was being constantly cast into an open center, which was most often a pool of water, the best example being at the Master of the Nets garden, below. See how the view *away* from the center is continually blocked by the walls and rockeries?

It's a bit hypnotic, as if you're circling at the edge of a whirlpool. The smaller the garden, the more compelling it feels. When I walked round a garden for a second or third time I would often be struck by features I had totally missed before, because my gaze had been turned only into the center. As seen on the map, even secondary and minor courtyards, without water, have a strong open center, with the busy-ness of rockwork and plantings and seating swept back against the walls.

These open centers actually serve as a negative focal point, guiding the eye in to an empty, and serene, space.

It puts me in mind, actually, of the Grecian fields at Stowe, which acts as the same sort of open center for a much larger landscape. The genius of the natural stylings of William Kent and Capability Brown in England was due less to their famed clumping of trees and more to the remaining empty (negative) spaces that these arrangements created.

Because barring quantum effects (and I speak here as a scientist, not as a garden historian) the negative space is the part of the garden that WE are in (and if you're experiencing quantum effects in your garden you should definitely let me know) .

China has made me much more aware of the importance of shaping negative space.