The Old Zoo Garden

Cherry Drive, Brockhall Village, Blackburn, Lancashire

About the reviewer, Anne Beswick:

Ex biology teacher turned garden designer and writer.

Trained at Reaseheath College.

Designed Reaseheath College garden Tatton ’99
(silver-gilt) and involved (with Garden Designers of Cheshire) in Tatton ’03 (gold).

Her own garden, 31, Moss Lane, Styal, is open for the National Gardens Scheme.(www.ngs.org.uk)

She's worked on a hundred plus local projects over the last 5 or 6 years, taught at nightschools, talked to many local groups and been published in the RHS journal "The Garden" and "The Garden Design Journal",- which she finds most stimulating and
challenging.

She says: "I am still trying to work out why I react to gardens and gardening (sometimes quite different things) as I do. Anne W’s website and her close questioning are helping me work this through. Hope I come to some sensible conclusions!"

As the Victorian British conquered the world and plundered its botanical riches, horticulture became the most desirable status symbol of its day. A variety of styles were being explored by the inventive Victorians but just as the coolest MP3 player or sleekest iPod is the must-have accessory of the early 21st century so the latest dahlias or the tallest delphiniums were the toys-for-the-boys of the nineteenth.

A model was established for good gardening. Carpet bedding, lots of colour and tons of horticultural expertise made for bright, cheerful gardens that were the pride of the fast-growing new middle classes. The paradigm was set, if not in stone then in good English earth, and we have clung to it ever since. It has served us well and the English garden as a mix of horticultural excellence and curiosities from around the globe is still envied and copied by many.

But the world has moved on and plants that are difficult to look after can be left to acknowledged experts like Kew or the RHS. When Gerald Hitman began work on The Old Zoo garden in Blackburn, Lancashire, he ‘stopped visiting great gardens, reading books on gardens and garden design, and even reading the gardening pages of the Sunday papers. ‘I knew that, if I did not, I would produce the garden I thought I ought to produce rather than the one that maximised my pleasure.’ (Garden Design Journal Oct 2004)

Hitman is obviously delighted with his garden so that part of his wish is well satisfied. He and his team have made an excellent garden. It is both romantic and pragmatic, derivative and original, indulgent and difficult, linked to its surroundings and very idiosyncratic. It is in the mould of Charles Jencks’ Garden of Cosmic Speculation and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta in that it is a landscape garden for a modern age. Unlike them it is not bounded by a single idea, unless that be Hitman’s maximising of pleasure, and it is not the work of a single artist but of an entrepreneur with a good eye and personal and distinctive tasted. Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a new paradigm.

Like that other great flowering, English Landscape Movement (actually less a flowering than leaf and branching), this new beginning is more about ideas than horticulture and, as both the Jencks garden and Little Sparta are in Scotland, has a British rather than English origin. Hurrah for the demise of the Home Counties and this-is-how-it’s-done gardening (exactly what Hitman wanted to avoid).

How is the Old Zoo so many things at once? It looks first of all to the landscape and follows the soft undulations of the Ribble valley sympathetically, sometimes screening out unwanted sights, sometimes framing others. Lots of roses, sweeps of waterside planting and a lack of sharp edges give the romantic feel that pervades the place. Despite this softly-softly approach pragmatism could be its middle name. The two hundred acres that is now Brockhall village was once a vast mental asylum with about 3500 patients and a similar number of staff. Gerald Hitman bought the complex in 1992. Most of the land was sold to other developers and Blackburn Rovers Football Club for use as a training centre and the money was used to build a modern house for the Hitman family on the site of the hospital’s old petting zoo; hence the name.

Garden construction began in 1999. The seven hectare site is mostly screened from the nearby new housing by earth banks or bunds. These have been made by dumping rubble produced by the booming local building industry, covering the piles with clay and horse manure then quickly establishing a cover of grasses, wildflowers, trees and shrubs. Local builders were charged dumping fees and this paid for planting and upkeep in the garden.

The garden has been, to some extent, a collaboration between the staff but with the ideas and enthusiasm of the owner playing a powerful part in the whole. David Smith, the estate manager and Liz Greene, the head gardener, have both worked closely with Hitman. Garden designer Keith Pullan was employed early on to help with work around the house. A wide terrace links with generous decking and a formal water feature with the planting in this area owing a lot to Ohme and van Sweden’s bold romantic gardens. So there are influences from other gardens here. This is not a total new garden experience, rather a good melding of modern influences with a given landscape. The terrace links very nicely to great views over the Ribble Valley and fairytale Stonyhurst College in the distance but too much dreaminess is avoided by the delicate calls of practising footballers. The juxtaposition of the two, Disneyland and the Field of Dreams, is delightful.

There are three main strands that weave through the garden; it contains lots of arts and crafts, it is horticulturally a naturalistic garden and it is dotted with family play areas that are designed to get people out of the house and engaging with the place. First and most powerful is the art and craft included and displayed very powerfully. This is not the William Morris type fusion of the two disciplines. This is proper art that kicks in to your emotional centres and makes you laugh or smile or feel sad or intrigued. Big scale stuff that needs a large outdoor venue to be seen to best advantage.

(pigeon optional)

Much of it is beautiful and calming, life-size wooden figures by Sophie Dickens or larger than life brightly coloured pieces by the Czech artist Olbram Zoubek; but some is unsettling. Our group was primed (or warned) before being taken to see a huge and powerful version of the crucifixion. A momento mori like the 18th century garden mausoleums we now find so quaint. The Old Zoo is not just a gallery, however. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a gallery that shows monumental works outdoors. When you leave, it is the power of those Henry Moore madonnas that stays with you, not the setting. At the Old Zoo, as with Little Sparta, the pieces and the setting work together, each element would be diminished without the other.

The crafts in the garden, some great woodwork in green oak by Derek Goffin, links from art to gardening with an obvious penchant for green roofs. There are woods and ponds and open spaces and streams, lovely shady plantings and bold sweeps of well-loved favourites like Primula florindae, Caltha, Ligularia and Hemerocallis with lots of spring bulbs beneath. A hedge of Garrya eliptica growing on a steel frame is designed as a screen to limit the view of the flowering woodland and further softly compartmentalise the garden. A nod to classicism is seen in the maze but again, this has a twist. It is a step maze with simple rules, a puzzle to take you to three goals all marked by sculpture. The family play areas are a positive effort by Hitman to get people out and about to enjoy the place.

The garden is neither precious nor sacred, it is to be enjoyed and to enjoy yourself in. There’s the huge patio for a start with swimming pool beneath the retractable deck, a boules court and a croquet lawn There’s also a giant hot tub in the woods with a custom-built wooden top with huge arm and counterweight that makes it easily operable but that would frighten all except the most confident of guests who will sit and steam in almost surreal surroundings. This garden is well worth seeing. It’s open for the Yellow Book (www.ngs.org) and by appointment to gardening and architectural groups.

Is it faultless? No. The spiral garden near the house is openly derived from Charles Jencks. This was built to shelter the occupants from prevailing west winds but apparently acts as a funnel rather than a refuge from the elements so is not really a success. It doesn’t sit so well with other nearby features either. Most areas flow well between set pieces but some transitions jar a little. The fluffy-lacy bulk rose planting around the croquet lawn doesn’t fit with the theme and the fabulous cloud-pruned yews look lost but hey, this is the best new garden I’ve seen for a long time. It is not primarily a garden for horticultural aficionados. If you want to see unusual or rare specimens there are lots of good places to go. You don’t even have to particularly like gardens to enjoy this one. The plants are great and well used but the stranglehold of horticultural excellence is beginning to loosen with gardens like the Old Zoo. Like Thomas Church said, gardens are for people.

Anne Beswick