Garden Bench Giveaway!

I have heretofore resisted requests for advertising on the blog, but how could I say no to giving away something to my readers? All you have to do is leave a comment telling me which of the below benches you would most like to receive:

Renaissance Double Bench (C-1320)

Parquet Double Bench (C-1020)

Parquet Triple Bench (C-1030)

Windmere Double Bench (C-1420)

The benches are provided by teakwickerandmore, purveyors of patio furniture.

I do have to know your email address to get in touch with the winner; if you don't have a public blogger identity, you can either leave your email address in the comment (use a coded form like name [at] emailservice [dot] com), or if you're not comfortable with that email it to me privately. But you still have to leave a comment as to which bench you would like!

Apologies to all my international readers, but the bench can only be shipped to a US address.

The giveaway will be open through the weekend; until Sunday May 3 at 12:00 midnight my time (USA Central).

Enjoy!

P.S. I neglected to specify that one winner will be selected at random when the contest closes. (Someone thought everyone got a bench...sorry about that!) One name picked out of a hat. I'll use my nice straw garden hat with the black ribbon.

Seeking a publisher

Can I say that the nanobattery encyclopedia article has gone to the editor? Yes, and with relief. But it seems that my garden history writing is not as in demand as my scientific writing (though it is infinitely more tedious) because I arrived home to two rejection letters. Author friends tell me that this is not very many, really, but still, I have decided to put it into the ether of the internet and the hands of my readers: if anyone out there is (or knows) an agent or publisher who would like to hear more about a book on Art Deco gardens, Gatsby's gardens, the mostly lost gardens where F. Scott Fitzgerald went to parties and Josephine Baker danced and Man Ray took pictures, gardens of jazz and blue and speed and light, just get in touch.

(Teaser images below)

Oh, and if you need, say, a nano-solar cell made I can do that for you too.

Stanway

We had some car trouble and were late getting out to Stanway, so by the time we arrived there was no one in the courtyard and you never notice how many doors there are on a house like that until you’re not sure which one to open.

Hilary had told us that when she couldn’t find him, she simply walked around shouting “Wemyss!” until he stuck his head out of some window but even for this American (who doesn’t hold with the whole ‘your lordship’ business…it offends my democratic sensibilities) that seemed a bit indecorous. At least on first meeting. But it would have been a sight, especially if the window was one of those painted metallic gold to reflect the red-gilt color of Stanway’s Cotswold façade. I’ve never seen a more beautiful stone.

We were there for the landscape, not for the house, though I soaked up all of it I could when after perusing maps and speculating about the significance of various clumps of trees we went through to the kitchen for tea. It’s a proper house, Stanway, with pale floors and dark paintings and newspapers scattered about the twin settees with pagoda canopies, and the uneven stone and settling oriel window a Jacobean pile should have. Some of England’s stately homes have been renovated until they’re pickled. At Stanway, you can still feel the house breathing.

Charles Bridgeman (1690-1738), ever orderly, had a fondness for lakes like soup bowls, and it is likely he who installed the circular water atop the hill behind the temple. A telling sign of the movement toward naturalism in the English landscape can be seen in William Kent’s conversion of a similar lake Bridgeman had made at Claremont:

Bridgeman on the left, Kent on the right.

At Stanway, Charles Bridgeman’s successor in the landscape was not Kent but most likely Thomas Wright (1711-1786), ‘wizard of Durham’, astronomer, mathematician, architect and garden designer , with a fondness for Shapes of Significance like triangles and pyramids. Which is why we were there, my garden history pal Judy being something of an expert on Wright. He (if he it was) added the cascade, so that with the opening of a sluice gate water from the lake streamed down the hill to a canal at its base.

The waterworks had been treated roughly over the years, and were re-excavated by the present Earl Wemyss, who once ran up the hill and struggled to open the sluice gate so Princess Margaret could see the cascade (she remained unimpressed). Not all owners of historic properties are interested in their landscapes, an exasperating but unchangeable part of practicing garden history. You can’t make someone care. But Stanway is in good hands.

On returning home

I always seem to pay a price for my vacations...the nanobattery encyclopedia article lies on my desk unfinished, the scanning electron microscope must be fired back into life, and the garden is speckled with spring weeds. I keep part of my prairie plot unmowed, and rampant self-seeding into the flower beds is the result.

But I will procrastinate on it all, for just one more afternoon, to tell you what-I-saw-in-London and savor it again myself.

Down a busy street in Richmond, a sign painted on a brick wall beckons with the promise of something special this way. Past the narrow alley the landscape opens up onto the Petersham meadows, and down the lane is a nursery straight out of a Merchant Ivory film set.

In addition to impossibly beautiful garden ornaments and handmade candles smelling of 'Marie Antoinette's Dreams' there is a restaurant (expensive) where the waitresses wear wellies and a cafe (reasonable) for lunching outside. Petersham nurseries is in danger of losing its planning permission due to the increasing vehicle traffic; visit by public transport if you can. Instructions for supporting their application for permanent planning permissions are on their website.

Stumbled upon in central London, next to the old city walls, the herb garden of the Worshipful Company of Barbers, with useful information about how to stay awake in church

We were on our way to the Barbican, actually, whose water garden by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon far-off garden historians will someday study as a quintessential example of a 1970s landscape:

And that great lady, Kew was wearing a couple of new necklaces. The treetop walkway:

and the new Sackler bridge by John Pawson with its sublime curve: this is minimalism I can believe in.

More about the rest of my trip later; for now it is on to an interlude of weeding and an evening of writing about nanobatteries.