In 2022 Clare Foster, Garden Editor at House & Garden magazine and photographer, Andrew Montgomery, self-published their first book, Winter Gardens. Despite the challenges of conceiving of, researching, writing, photographing, editing, designing, distributing and promoting the book themselves they have now published the fruit of their second collaboration, Pastoral Gardens.
This beautifully designed 480 page tome looks at a range of gardens that put nature and wildlife at their heart and has been a labour of love for them both. Focussed on 20 gardens and natural environments both designed and nurtured, rural and urban, in the UK and overseas, the book features work by renowned designers Tom Stuart-Smith, Sarah Price, Nigel Dunnett, Luciano Giubbilei and Julian and Isabel Bannerman as well as places gardened by notable people such as Jasper Conran, Arthur Parkinson and Umberto Pasti. Two gardens designed by Dan are featured; Little Dartmouth Farm on the south west coast of England and Robin Hill in Connecticut, USA.
Here Clare and Andrew explain more about how the book came about and what they both learnt from the process.
It is 3 years since your first book collaboration, Winter Gardens, yet the idea for Pastoral Gardens came about while you were still finalising that book for printing. How did that happen?
I have had this book in my mind for even longer than three years! As Garden Editor at House & Garden for nearly 20 years I have had a fantastic vantage point over the whole realm of garden design. I have observed trends come and go, from the makeovers and ‘garden rooms’ of the 90s to the more naturalistic New Perennial Movement – and more recently, a shift towards an even more natural and ecocentric approach as a response to climate change.
I wanted very much to document these exciting, contemporary nature-led gardens, and drafted a proposal for another publisher five years ago. I got quite far down the line with them, but they wanted to make it into a very different book with many more gardens included. I had it firmly in my mind that I wanted to give each garden enough space to tell its story in images as well as words, so I stuck to my guns and it didn’t go any further. To me, the photographs are of paramount importance as they draw people in, they evoke an emotional response and hopefully some sort of connection with plants, gardens and nature.
How did you select the gardens you chose for the book? Did you choose them to illustrate particular ideas were you were looking to focus on or did the common themes come to the fore once the book started to come together? Were there any surprises?
We selected the gardens to illustrate the breadth of garden styles we wanted to show, starting with more traditional gardens and ending with much wilder landscapes. There were many more gardens I wanted to include, but because of time and practical considerations, we had to let them go. One of these was Dan’s Tokachi Millennium Forest project in Japan. Because we were self-publishing this book we had zero budget for travel, so sadly had to accept that we couldn’t be this ambitious!
Closer to home, I really wanted to include Keith Wiley’s Wildside, but we were just too late to get the photography done and we couldn’t go on making an already huge book even bigger. From the UK I also wanted to include John Little’s garden at Hilldrop and in France gardens by James Basson and Olivier Filippi.
The best surprise was John-Paul Philippe’s ‘garden’ in Connecticut, which we tagged onto a visit to Dan’s garden at Robin Hill. This beautiful, wild meadow around a tiny wooden cabin throws into question the very definition of the word garden and was perfect for illustrating that sometimes less is more.
Clare, in your foreword you state, ‘In light of the environmental crisis, I truly believe that gardens have the power to be transformative on a global as well as a personal level, and that as garden-makers we must understand that collectively we can make an impact to help repair our ravaged world.’’
Many of the gardens featured have been designed, gardened or managed in response to the global climate and biodiversity crisis. How did the gardens you selected demonstrate this and were there any specific approaches that resonated with you? Can you expand on the role you believe garden designers and gardeners can play in the restoration of habitats and the education of the general public?
I hope that all of the gardens in this book demonstrate to some extent how gardens can be transformative – both for wildlife and for us as humans. The title of the book, Pastoral Gardens, reflects this in a figurative sense, embracing landscape and nature, and referencing ‘pastoral care’ and human wellbeing. If we garden in the right way, we can invite nature in, providing habitats for the declining insect, bird and mammal populations – and the very act of gardening can also be beneficial for our mental health.
Responses to the climate crisis vary in the minutiae, but all the garden-makers in this book demonstrated a desire to increase biodiversity in their gardens – whether in the form of a glorified cottage garden where bulbs, annuals and perennials are mixed with herbs and fruit bushes (as in Jasper Conran’s garden) or in the ambitious and incredibly biodiverse walled garden at Knepp, which Tom Stuart-Smith describes as ‘a kind of pan-global knees up’ with self-seeding natives left to fight it out with introduced plants. When I visited these gardens, the success of this biodiversity in bringing insects in was tangible. I can remember sitting down in one of the meadows at Brook Manor in Devon and at first hearing and then seeing the meadow humming with life. It is uplifting and hopeful to engage with these places and know that we can make a difference.
I interviewed each of the designers or garden owners for the book and had some fascinating conversations. I learnt so much! Something that Dan said to me really resonated. He was talking about his garden at Robin Hill in Connecticut and telling me how it was his mission there to make the surrounding woods and wilderness slightly less alarming for his client. He talked about the garden as a transition space, a link to nature, and how this halfway point can teach us so much. This is so true. By gardening, we learn to closely observe plants and their lifecycles; we connect with the seasons; and we learn about the soil. Gardens play such an important role in connecting us with nature and helping us to understand the processes that we as humans are a part of, not separate from.
The book features a variety of approaches to gardening for biodiversity on a continuum from a relaxed cottage garden aesthetic through naturalistic perennial plantings and gardens that mix cultivated and indigenous species and environments that prioritise indigenous flora.
How do these gardens differ from those created by early naturalistic practitioners like William Robinson or more recent approaches to naturalistic gardening in the late 20th century? What has changed?
Interesting! I think the William Robinson wild gardening approach probably underpins everything we still do, but back then, Robinson was led by aesthetics rather than wildlife. Ditto the New Perennial Movement, which dominated garden design towards the end of the 20th century. The Piet Oudolf planting style is very naturalistic in approach, mimicking the look of plants in the wild – but at the end of the day, it is about crafting harmonious planting combinations that are easy on the eye – it’s more about art and less about nature. Today, we have entered a completely different realm where we are creating planting communities specifically for the insect populations and for wildlife. We are learning how to create the right habitats for birds and mammals and incorporating these into our designs. It is this nature-first approach that has turned design on its head.
What are the key things that connect all of these different gardens and, having seen this wide a range of approaches, where do you see garden and planting design going from here?
The key things that connect these different gardens are, as above, the desire to increase biodiversity, most of them by combining both native and non-native species for maximum plant diversity. Another uniting factor for all these gardens is their need to be gardened. So many people think that wildlife-friendly gardens are relaxed, neglected spaces, that can be left to their own devices. This is certainly not the case with the gardens we showcase in this book. The role of the gardener is almost more important than ever in overseeing, managing and editing each planting scheme, ensuring that diversity is maintained, rather than one or two species taking over.
Where will things go from here? Well, hopefully this book shows that what we accept as a traditional ornamental garden can be easily adapted to make it more eco-centric. Everyone can combine elements of formality with biodiverse planting and sustainable principles to make it more wildlife-friendly. See, for example, the Bannerman’s garden at Ashington Manor, with its formal yew beehives and areas of orchard and meadow alongside. But I also think that many of us will adopt the more experimental ways of increasing biodiversity such as planting into sand, gravel or rubble substrates, as demonstrated by Sarah Price in her own walled garden and at Knepp.
Biodiversity can go through the roof when you are planting into poor soil because the competition species like nettles, thistles or docks are unable to thrive. And these drought-tolerant plantings never need water so they are much more sustainable. The main point to make here is that we are all adjusting our eye to accommodate this new style of planting and finding so much beauty there – and it’s a beauty that goes way beyond the surface because it is beautiful for the nature it supports too.
In his essay Kim Wilkie writes, ‘The vision of a simple pastoral existence speaks to a philosophical cultural taproot….Living a good and harmonious life in stewardship of nature is the basis….A practical, productive landscape full of life – wild and human – feels like a solid foundation for a fragile world.’ This is a statement which resonates, but how do we prevent this approach to gardening being simply nostalgic and romantic?
I think we have to work hard to ensure that this approach is not just idealistic and exclusive. But how can we turn back time to ensure that the larger population makes this connection with nature? We have to work incredibly hard to make gardens more accessible. We have to ensure that communal gardens and green spaces are popping up everywhere in urban centres and make sure there are enough qualified gardeners to look after these spaces (and indeed to encourage more of our younger generation to train as professional gardeners); we have to fight to get the right sort of planning in place so that every new housing development has communal green space, balconies, allotments and composting space. We have to make sure GPs are able to prescribe horticultural therapy!
Andrew, the challenges of photographing gardens in winter for your first book were self-evident, but did you encounter any difficulties in photographing the gardens for this book? What were the hardest things to capture?
The hardest element to capture was the magical sense of peace and tranquility you find at the end of long, hot summer’s day. Weather is, of course, always a huge factor and timing this with days when particular gardens were at their peak was very challenging. More from the physical side than a creative one. Summer days are, by their nature, very long so you are starting at 3.30am and finishing at 10.30pm. The first and last hour of a summer’s day is when the magic happens and those special moments are captured. With many of the shoots happening back to back, tiredness and exhaustion were the hardest things to overcome. Sleeping in my car during the day – storing up the energy to shoot into the evening. Tea, chocolate and adrenaline keeping you going all the time. I ended the summer months’ shooting needing a very long holiday!
Although I know it is both impossible and unfair to ask you to single any gardens out, but did any of them make a particular impact on you and, if so, why?
Clare: For me, it was Umberto Pasti’s garden, Rohuna, in northern Morocco. The combination of the utter passion of its owner and the garden’s extraordinary position on a hillside overlooking the Gibraltar Straits made it one of the most magical gardens I have ever been to. I have been back three times now. The first time I went there, I arrived in darkness in the pouring rain, and Umberto came out to greet me with arms wide, exclaiming, ‘you English women have brought the rain!’ They had had no rain for two years and the deluge started that evening – he was beside himself with joy. The next morning I had the excitement of walking out into that garden at dawn, when the light was gentle and everything was shimmering after the rain. The atmosphere was electric, the birdsong immense, the wildflowers extraordinary, and I felt such a connection with the place I almost wept.
Andrew: For me, Brook Manor was the one that means the most. This is because on my first visit it became apparent just how much the garden was geared to conservation. In particular, re-introducing the native habitat of the dwindling ‘Pied Flycatcher’. When I was there I was told how ecologist Daniel Whitelegg records the Flycatcher chicks in their nests before they fledge and migrate to West Africa. For me to capture this process and the birds in their nests was a huge challenge which required an enormous amount of preparation. Finally, this year everything came together literally 24 hours before one of the last monitored nests full of chicks was about to fledge. Up a six foot ladder, holding the camera above my head with the lens pointing down into a nest box, I was essentially shooting blind, as it was so high up. I managed to capture the chicks. The image I got opens the chapter on Brook Manor. I have never claimed to be a wildlife or bird photographer, so that image is one I am very proud of.
It seems you are on a roll with your publishing partnership. What’s next?
We have a couple of ideas we are discussing, but nothing is set in stone. It’s difficult to know where to go after this rather epic book!
Pastoral Gardens is exclusively available to order direct from Montgomery Press. There are no other stockists.
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Enter discount code DIGDELVE10 at checkout.
Interview: Huw Morgan | All photographs: Andrew Montgomery
Published: 7 December 2024
