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Glyndebourne: A Garden For All SeasonsEditions
Review
It would hardly be possible for their horticultural standards to match the level of the achievement musically, but the garden is nonetheless a good one, easy of access and with large open spaces to accommodate hundreds of strollers and picnickers. In this handsome little volume, David Wheeler, founder and editor of “Hortus” magazine, gives us a brief history of the house, the Christie family, and the building of the old and the new opera houses, before he takes us on a tour of the garden, guiding us through the main features. He highlights the signature plants and gives details of the personalities behind the scenes. The involvement, at some point in the Sixties, of Christopher Lloyd, neighbour at Great Dixter, had a considerable impact, not least in the Terrace garden, where he introduced shrubs to the herbaceous border to great effect. (Herbaceous borders are, it seems to me, much like Wilde’s truth, “rarely pure and never simple”.) There are some wonderful cameo drawings by Simon Dorrell which contribute much to the enjoyment of this book, and if the prose is a purple as the Cerinthe major ‘purpurescens’ in the beds around the Ha Ha lawn, who is to say that this is inappropriate for this operatic venue? A bloomer on the cover, though. Surely it’s not Penstemon in the photograph? Salvia jamensis, perhaps Raspberry Royal? - review by Stewart Grimshaw |
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John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
The garden at Glyndebourne is enjoyed each year by thousands of opera lovers, an enhancement to a satisfactory performance and a consolation on those occasions, thankfully rare, when one is at odds with the director’s viewpoint or an artist’s interpretation. (Let’s not talk about the 2000 production of “Don Giovanni” here!)
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