Design
Go d-wottery
By KENNETH J. ROBINSON There are, of course, some things about the show that not even the most critical devotee would wish to alter. Last week, when the wind was in the right direction, the Duke of Norfolk's strawberries blended happily with Mr. J. Lyons's hamburgers, an occasional whiff of a private viewer's Vol de Nail and the distant military thud of 'Gems from the Opera.' Where else can the senses be maddened by such collisions of scents and sounds? And where else, outside the cinema, can the eye feed on such impossible colours? (It was a. relief,. this year, to escape from the main rnarquee—from the bEink of orchids, the great sweep of azaleas and the enormous, offen- sive-looking calceolaria—to the comparative'Te- straint of the French kitchen garden and the Dutch 'plant publicity' display.) These are as much part of the show as the inevitable rock gardens, the annual sermon on 'the behaviour and social life of the honey-bee' and the sinister-looking canvas enclosure (whatever is it for?) marked 'Press.'
All these things are Chelsea. But it is time the show 'was rearranged, preferably by an exhibition designer who is also a landscape architect. For the last year or two the organisers have paid lip- service to good garden design by admitting an exhibition of the work of the Institute of Land- scape Architects. This is so shoddily arranged that very few visitors look at it; and very few of those who see it have the faintest idea what it is all about. The layman, who finds it difficult enough to understand architectural drawings, is less likely to understand landscape plans. Even if some of this year's visitors worked hard enough to decipher the drawings, they were worried by the unfamiliar ideas presented in them. 'She hasn't bothered to do very much,' said one woman, stopping in front of Brenda Colvin's scheme,for a crematorium. Miss Colvin had, in fact, designed a superb parkland setting, instead of the usual nasty little 'Garden of Rest,' with its formal flower beds and masses of ugly con- crete. It was obviously the sort of place where the mind really could find consolation and peace; but where was the caption to explain this? And where were the 4-- ntions to explain why Sylvia Crowe's park for Basildon New Town is so much better than the usual municipal grass-and-gravel patches, and why John Peake's landscaping for Cwmbran New Town is such an improvement on the average treatment of main roads and traffic roundabouts? None of the drawings or models on view answered the questions that any interested visitor Would be likely to ask about them. The Institute of Landscape Architects has missed a good op- portunity of telling people what its members are trying to do. Does this really matter? It does, in fact, matter a lot. The landscape architect can- not afford to lose a single chance of spreading propaganda about the work of his too-small pro- fession. We live in a densely populated country where there are tremendous demands on land use' Every week more of the countryside is turned over to building development, and, because We do not think of good landscape design as an essential part of building work—as it is in Swit- zerland, Sweden and Denmark—we add, every week, to the ugliness of our surroundings. If we want to stop the whole of Britain looking like the shabby sprawl that spills down the Al road, then we must make sure that people re- sponsible for factories, housing estates, schools and mineral workings realise the need for good landscaping Fortunately, something more than mere theorising can be used to convince them. Enough good work has been done to show that a well-designed environment can be provided economically and sometimes profitably. Several large firms have discovered that good landscaping can be a useful advertisement and can also raise the morale of employees. Speculative house builders (notably 'Span,' whose work at Ham Common and Blackheath is internationally ad- mired) have found that communal gardens can be laid out and maintained with the financial _and practical help of residents. Research by the Ministry of Agriculture has shown that .mineral wastes can be persuaded to bear grass or tree crops very quickly, and cheaply. Several local authorities have recently set up landscape de- partments. And one or two universities have Planned extensions in which the landscaping is considered just as much as the buildings. (The most remarkable of these schemes, for Bir- mingham University, can be seen at present at the Royal Academy. It was designed by Sir Hugh Casson and Neville Conder, and has rightly been described as a return to the English picturesque landscape tradition of the eighteenth century.) What has all this to do with the Chelsea Show? Simply this, that Subtopia begins at home. If People fill their gardens with rustic chairs, hideous hammocks and gruesome statuary that can be bought at Chelsea, then their eyes are already half-blind to the crudities that are constantly appearing in larger landscapes. The organisers of the show say that its purpose is Partly educational. Clearly they cannot censor the displays of vulgar garden ornaments and equipment. But if they really regard education as their business there is a lot they can do. They could do worse than to invite the Institute of Landscape Architects not only to improve its own exhibition, but also to make suggestions for the design 6 of the show as a whole. And even if the institute was not allowed enough money to make startling alterations, at least it could clear out the bindweed of ghastly good taste.
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