Creating a Courtyard for Contemplation Out of an Alleyway

I was walking through downtown San Francisco this morning on one of the busiest streets in the city center and I noticed this little alleyway to my left. What caught my eye is how with very little of architectural interest to work with, a few well tended plants have turned the space into a tiny little peaceful oasis in a busy city. It could have been piled high with garbage bags or the like (others I saw were) but someone has made the effort to make this little corner worth looking at. And everyone who passes, not just those who live and work down here can now have the pleasure of looking at the results of their work.

All it would need to perfect it would be little icon of Christ on the back wall, or perhaps a statue of the BVM, and a place of peace might even become a place of contemplation!

The cobblestones help too of course!

The Christian Environmentalism the Media Chooses to Ignore - Man is the Answer, Not the Problem

We need more people in the world, not less, if we are to solve the world's problems. And we need more gardeners - I am serious here. For the true gardener is the man transformed in Christ who works in the world to raise it up to what it is meant to be.

It is common nowadays for people to think of man as an unnatural animal whose work necessarily destroys the environment. Much of the back to the land movement, I always feel, has a romantic vision of the past and assumes that only a man who lives as he did before industrialization can live in harmony with nature. This pessimistic view of modern man could be seen in various influential figures going back to to Rousseau in 18th century France who hated industrialization and thought that all modern society corrupted ideal man. The ideal for Rousseau was the noble savage  who could be conceived, unlike modern man, of living as an intrinsic part of nature as the animals do, rather than in opposition to it.

This may all sound fairly innocuous stuff - a high regard for the environment is good thing, surely? But in fact it is the neo-paganism we see today, that removes man from his a place as the highest part of creation to something separate from it, and lower than it. This false elevation of the rest of creation to something greater than man in the hierarchy of being has serious, deadly consequences. And I do mean deadly.

Man is not only part of nature, he is absolutely necessary to it - the eco-system needs the interaction of man in order to be complete. Through God's grace human activity is the answer to all the environmental problems we have, not the cause. This is the part of Pope Francis's message in his latest encyclical; a part that so many eco-warriors who were enthusiastic about the encyclical seem not to have noticed...or to have ignored. It is possible to have cities, heavy industry, mass production, and forms of capitalism that are creative expressions of the God's plan for the world, and which add to the beauty and the stability of nature. But, we do need a transformation of the culture in order to see a greater realization of this. The formation that I believe will lead to such an evangelization of the culture is derived from a liturgically centered piety and is described in the book the Way of Beauty.

For me, the flower garden is the model of natural beauty in so many ways. First, It symbolizes the true end of the natural world in which its beauty can only be realised through the inspired work of man. It symbolizes what Eden was to become. It is worth noting that Adam was the first gardener and Christ, the new Adam, prayed in the garden during the passion, was buried and resurrected in the garden and after the resurrection was mistaken by Mary Magdalene for the gardener.

Here is a quote from St Augustine from the Office of Readings on the Feast of St Lawrence, August 10th:

'The garden of the Lord, brethren, includes – yes, it truly includes – includes not only the roses of martyrs but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows. There is absolutely no kind of human beings, my dearly beloved, who need to despair of their vocation; Christ suffered for all. It was very truly written about him: who wishes all men to be saved, and to come to the acknowledgement of the truth.'

This may seem a rather innocent little quote about flowers and the things of religion - martyrs and virgins and so on, but in fact reveals so much about the difference in attitudes between one of the Faith, and the modern world. Here's how: we see Rousseau's worldview today in many of the green movements that assume that any influence that man has on the eco-system is bad, because man himself is an unnatural entrant into it, he is not part of it.

Millions of people have been killed as a result of a simple philosophical error. If we believe that  civilized man's effect on the environment is necessarily destructive, then the only method of an effective damage limitation is to limit the number of people in the world. The most effective way to do this is to control the population and, because they do not wish to dispense of the pleasure of sex, the solutions offered are contraception and abortion.

The Christian understanding of man and his interaction with the natural world is very different. The first point to make is that both are imperfect. We are fallen and we live in a fallen world. Man is part of nature, and it is certainly true that his activity can be destructive on the environment (just as he commit the gravest crimes against his fellows). However, through God's grace and the proper exercise of free will, he can choose to behave differently. He can work to perfect nature. He has the privilege of participating in the work of God that will eventually lead to the perfection of all things in Christ. Then all man does is in harmony with nature, and with the common good. This is the via pulchritudinis, the Way of Beauty.

There are so many signs in modern culture that reveal this flawed perception of the place of man in relation to his fellows, The changing attitude to the garden is one of these. Even in something that seems so far removed from the issue of abortion, we can see a change which has at its root, in my opinion, the same flaw.

What is the model of natural beauty? For the modern green, neo-pagan it is the wilderness. National parks in the US seek to preserve nature in a way that they perceive as unaffected by man (although this is an impossibility, even the most remote national park is managed wilderness!). I do not say that is a bad thing that some part of nature is preserved, or that the wilderness is not beautiful. Rather, the point is that it is not the pinnacle of nature and it is not the standard of natural beauty. When man works harmoniously with the environment, then he makes something more beautiful. Beautifully and harmoniously farmed land takes the breath away - as we might see in the countryside of France, Spain, England and Italy for example, places of which I am familiar. This the sort of landscape in which Wordsworth saw his host of wild golden daffodils.

Higher still is the garden that is cultivated for beauty alone. A garden is a symbol of the Church. Each part, each plant is in harmony with every other just as every person who is unique has his place in God's plan, as St Augustine points out in the quote given above.  Gardens will have their place in the New Jerusalem. We know this because the description of the City of God in the Book of Revelation contains gardens.

The activity of gardening for beauty is a symbolic participation in the completion of the work of God in the world for it raises creation up to what it ought to be, through God's grace. The garden itself is a sign to all others of the fact that all of creation is to be transfigured supernaturally. The act of gardening is both reflective of and points to, therefore our participation in the Sacred Liturgy by which we are transfigured and by which we participate in the work of God. Gardening for beauty is an act of love that is formed by our greatest act of love, the worship of God in the Sacred Liturgy. It can be likened to the action of Mary with our Lord, anointing his feet; and contrasted with the cultivation of the land in order to create produce to eat, which can be likened to an action of Martha. Both are good, but Mary's is the highest.

Pius X likens the activity of gardening to that of singing the Psalms in the liturgy: 'The psalms have also a wonderful power to awaken in our hearts the desire for every virtue. Athanasius says: Though all Scripture, both old and new, is divinely inspired and has its use in teaching, as we read in Scripture itself, yet the Book of Psalms, like a garden enclosing the fruits of all the other books, produces its fruits in song, and in the process of singing brings forth its own special fruits to take their place beside them.' (This is taken from the Office of Readings for August 21st, the Feast of Pius X).

The gardener is the symbol of the transfigured man who works in harmony with nature to create something greater for the delight and good of man and for the greater glory of God. The highest aspect of what he does is the beauty that he creates. This beauty has the noblest utility, one that takes into account our supernatural end for it prepares the souls of men to be receptive to the love of God in the Sacred Liturgy.

Leo XIII said in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, that man should be encouraged to cultivate the land. I have heard this cited by some Catholics in the back-to-land movement so as to imply that it is almost a moral obligation to have chickens in your backyard, to keep bees or to grow vegetables. I say, if you enjoy those things then go ahead and do it, but I feel no such obligation myself. I for one have little interest. I am perfectly happy to buy a ready-cooked chicken for under $5, jars of honey and vegetables and fruit from all over the world year round from the local supermarket.

However, what is not so often remarked upon is that Leo says that in cultivating the land, man will, 'learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them [my emphasis].' I suggest we learn to love the soil especially when it yields beauty; and when it is through our own efforts that it does so. There is no need for three acres and a cow for this to happen. For some this might mean the tiniest patch of land around your house, or if you don't have that a window box; or if you can't do that some well tended plant pots inside your high-rise apartment. We don't need to head for the outback or escape from the cities or the suburbs. However, modest our resources, this can be an act for love for the glory of God and for the enjoyment of those dear to us. When this is done it can have the profoundest effect on a neighborhood, as we can read by this example in Boston.

When the garden is enjoyed for its beauty it can be a contemplation by which we are passively open to the reception of Beauty itself. This is why it is a good thing to approach a church through a cloister that looks onto a 'garden enclosed'. The garden enclosed from the Song of Songs, is seen by the Church Fathers as a reference to Mary, the Mother of God, by whom we approach the Son.

It is no accident, I suggest that today even botanical gardens and public gardens which used to be formally laid out, are now being turned into 'natural' or wild gardens, in which the aim is, it seems, is to reduce it's beauty (although they would probably argue that it is the opposite) and resemble something that is like the wilderness - base nature, unaffected by the inspired work of man. Even the lowest form of nature is beautiful, I don't deny it. But that is not a garden. When we make the standard of natural beauty its lowest form, then such a garden is a symbol of the banishing of man from the world altogether, of Unnatural Man so to speak, and an emblem of the culture of death. The next logical step after the misguided  glorification of Unnatural Man is to strive for the absence of man altogether and this is what we see through our abortion clinics.

Who would have thought that the simple cultivation of ivy, roses, lilies and violets could say so much! I would consider it the greatest compliment if someone would mistake me for the gardener.

Cristo appare a Maria Maddalena (Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene)" by Pietro da Cortona from Wiki commons 

I have written about this painting in more detail here.

— ♦—

My book the Way of Beauty is available from Angelico Press and Amazon.

Don't Beat About the Bush...Change the Culture! More on Land and the Common Good

Landowners have a duty to leave some food for the poor and give people access to get it. Or that's what it looks like at least. Here are two scriptural passages taken from the Office of Readings (part of the Liturgy of the Hours) that  caught my eye when I read them. One is from January and the other is a Lenten reading. Office of Readings 24^th Jan 2011, Commemoration of St Francis de Sales: "You must not pervert justice in dealing with a stranger or an orphan, nor take a widow’s garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I lay this charge on you. When reaping the harvest in your field, if you have overlooked a sheaf in that field, do not go back for it. Leave it for the stranger, the orphan and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees you must not go over the branches twice. Let anything left be for the stranger, the orphan and the widow. When you harvest your vineyard you must not pick it over a second time. Let anything left be for the stranger, the orphan and the widow. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. That is why I lay this charge on you." (Dueteronomy 24) And Tuesday 4^th week of Lent “When you gather the harvest of your land, you are not to harvest to the very end of the field. You are not to gather the gleanings of the harvest. You are neither to strip your vine bare nor to collect the fruit that has fallen in your vineyard. You must leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord your God.(Leviticus 19) I have written on a number of occasions, here, that land is considered by the Church a common good. This means that like air and food it is something that should be available to all people. This does not mean that there should not be private property however, provided that private ownership of property is viewed as an entitlement to work the land. This privilege of ownership brings obligations. Its use should be for the benefit of the common good. This is not so completely counter cultural as it might sound at first. Generally, growing crops on a farm; and then selling anything (beyond what is needed for personal consumption) for distribution through the market is in accord with this. This entitlement, however, and this part might be counter cultural in some parts of the world, is not always seen as extending to allowing the owner to exclude others from his land all the time, as the quoted passages above indicate.

In a number of European countries (I know of England, Scotland, Spain and Italy specifically) there is public right of way preserved in law, on privately owned land. This is a tradition that goes back to medieval times. While the landowner is obliged to allow people on his land, those who go onto the land are also obliged to respect the property and the crops that are growing respecting it's function as contributing to the common good. I don't know if any applications of this extend to being in accord with the passages from the bible, which clearly allow for "the stranger, the orphan and the widow" to go onto the land and gather food.

There is an American version of this approach, as I understand it whereby in some states the default situation is that people do have access to private land to hunt. In New Hampshire there is an option to pay a higher land tax and that allows you then to bar everyone else from your land. I wouldn't be interested in hunting, just the chance of finding a walkable path across farmland. I did find one farm west of Nashua, NH when I was living there that had a notice saying. Please do come an enjoy our farm land but we ask that you respect it. I don't know if it was a coincidence, but the was a large statue of he Virgin Mary very visible next to the farmhouse as we walk off the land.

It seems that perhaps the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council and those subsequently who actually revised the Office of Readings considered this an important principle for today; otherwise it would not have been included in regular readings in the Church's liturgy. I believe that access to the land is important even for those who are not so poor that they need to pick the crops for personal use. It is important for the soul, I think. And this means access to cultivated land, productive land, not the wilderness. It is good to have firsthand experience of man's productive and harmonious activities with nature. This shapes not only the view of nature, but the view of man's proper relationship with the land. This access will also, I believe raise people's wonder at the beauty of cultivated land (whether ornamental garden or agricultural) and so perhaps help to offset the neopaganism that gives rise ultimately to the culture of death.  When the only country landscape available to man is wilderness, and all else he sees is modern suburbia or a cityscape, then it reinforces the idea that the standard of beauty is that land which is untouched by man, that is wilderness. This in turn reinforces the idea that man's influence on nature is always detrimental and the natural extension of this idea is profound evil: the most effective way to restrict man's bad influence on nature, so the logic runs, is to restrict his activity through population control, which means contraception, abortion and euthanasia.

I do not believe that this alone will reverse the culture of death (abortion exists in Europe too). However, if any discussion of these ideas in both Europe and the New World is combined with the example  of what people see if they have access to cultivated land it will, I feel,  speak of man's positive impact on the natural world. This then could help to change views on man's relationship with Creation. The change will not occur through engagement in discussion, so much as through a subtle influence that seeps into the thinking of society. Then perhaps, in some small way at least, it could contribute to the transformation a culture in the reverse direction to what is happening now and which is so anti-human.

So it seems that the dictum, spare the rod and spoil the child doesn't extend to olive trees! The photograph below of the Tuscan countryside. Above that we have Spanish olive groves and an illumination from Crete dating from the Byzantine rule.

Why Men Cultivate their Masculinity When they Grow Flowers

In the Office of Readings, on the Feast of the Visitation, the first reading is from the Song of Songs.

It seems to have been a common theme  in late medieval art to portray Mary interpreted as the 'Garden Enclosed' as referred to in the Song of Songs. As someone who loves gardens I like the idea of the garden having a place in sacred art. I am talking here of the garden grown for beauty, the 'flower garden' as it would be called here in the US. In Britain, where I come from, 'garden' always means a place cultivated for beauty.

I am not aware of this being a common subject for artists to paint today and one wonders why? The first answer that comes to mind, almost as a knee-jerk response, is that genuine piety for Mary has declined and this is just one more casualty in the devotional lexicon.

It might be this, but also, it is very likely a reflection also of a different attitude to gardens and to man's place in creation that is prevalent today and especially strong in the US.

Historically, the wilderness was seen the place of untamed nature which is the home of the devil. Christ went to meet him there for 40 days and when monks and hermits went out to the desert, it was not so much as we might think today, to escape the city, but rather to engage in spiritual battle in the wilderness, the lair of the enemy. In the painting below by the Flemish artist Robert Campin (scroll down to the second last), we see the father of monasticism, Anthony Abbot (with St Catherine of Siena, John the Baptist and, I think, St Barbara), now resting in the garden having completed, one presumes, his spiritual battles in the Egyptian wilderness.

Today, however, the beauty of nature as wilderness is seen as the highest form of natural beauty, of greater beauty than cultivated nature (which would be thought of as unnatural because it is 'man altered'). Here in the US, for example, people particularly prize their national parks as places of wilderness unaffected by man. They are wonderful and beautiful places to visit, but nevertheless very different from those in countries that are of the Old World. In the UK, where I come from there is no part of the land, as far as I am aware, that is not man-affected. Our national parks preserve the look of ancient farmland. The Lake District, for example, in the northwest of England is a landscape that has been shaped by man for centuries through agriculture. It's beauty was admired by the Romantic poets - it is the place, for example, where Wordsworth saw that 'host of golden daffodils' that he wrote about.

The wilderness is beautiful, but it is part of a fallen world and we know objectively that by God's grace man can raise the beauty of nature up to something higher than the wilderness (it should be said also, that as a fallen creature with free will, he is also capable of destroying its beauty too). It is a neo-pagan philosophy that makes nature untouched by man as ultimate ideal for beauty. It arises from an attitude that man and his activity is not natural and the influence of civilization is always detrimental to nature. This attitude took hold strongly in the US due to the influence of figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

For the Christian, man is meant to cultivate the world (or large parts of it at least) and if he does so well, he elevates it's beauty because he raises it up to what it was meant to be. So farmland is more beautiful than wilderness and a garden, grown for the contemplation of beauty is more beautiful than farmland.

The second point that arises in my consideration of this is the question as to whether or not gardening is a male or a female pastime? Talking to many here in the US, the impression I get is that people see planting vegetables or rearing animals for food as a masculine thing; but growing a garden for its beauty as something intrinsically feminine. I have noticed since I have been here in the US that it seems to be a fashion among Catholic academics (especially those with distributist tendencies) who have even a small plot of land  to use it for rearing chickens, keeping bees or growing vegetables. But I don't see much interest in creating a 'garden enclosed'.

Again, this goes against the tradition and not the case elsewhere. Adam was a gardener, Christ, the new Adam, was mistaken for a gardener. Christ went to the wilderness to meet the devil, but when he wanted to pray to his Father, he went to the garden. Also, while Mary is identified with the garden itself, it was the man in the Song of Songs who cultivated that garden and gathered lilies for his love. Furthermore, to add a personal note, my great grandfather was head gardener of the Duke of Northumberland (so the family lore goes); my grandfather was and my dad still is a very keen amateur gardener (my father's garden was even featured once on national television).

Aristotle it seems to suggest that the natural home for man is not the wilderness but the city, where he lives in association with others. Scripture seems to support this: for example, in psalm 106 the city is the place of culture from which the wilderness is banished; and in the Book of Revelation, our final home will be the city of the New Jerusalem. That city, however, is not a concrete jungle, but rather is a garden city in which the Tree of Life flourishes and Eden has been restored by Christ the Head Gardener. The garden in these accounts is a place of beauty, a retreat for relaxation and contemplation for city dwellers.  Everything is grown for its beauty and to delight the senses - taste, smell, vision - as well as sustenance. The little bit of reading  about medieval gardens seems to suggest that, consistent with this, they were designed with both utility and beauty in mind (just as with architecture it seems, utility and beauty are seen as two different aspects of what is good). By this the work of man adds harmony to the hymn of the cosmos in proclaiming the glory of God.

Furthermore, Leo XIII said in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, that men  (I assume here in the sense of all humanity) should be encouraged to cultivate the land. I have heard this used as an argument by those Catholic academics to support the idea that they ought to be keeping chickens and bees in their backyard and growing vegetables. If you enjoy it then I say go ahead and do it, but I feel no such obligation myself. Frankly, I can't see the point as long as the local supermarket sells ready-cooked chickens for under $5 and jars of honey and vegetables and fruit from all over the world year round.

However, what is not so often remarked upon is that Leo says that in cultivating the land, man will, 'learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them [my emphasis].' He says specifically that he should cultivate for reasons that go beyond generation of food. This I suggest is the garden that man can contemplate for its beauty. I would even go so far to say that this is the higher goal. The Marian garden is higher than the Marthan.

In advocating that men grow flowers I am not suggesting that this should be the goal of unreconstructed men so that they can discover their 'feminine side'. On the contrary, the cultivation of beauty for contemplation should be seen as much a masculine occupation as a feminine one and a way in which the true masculinity is realized for it is part of what mankind is meant to do.

Perhaps there are parallels in the modern feminization of flower gardening with the feminization of prayer and contemplation that has lead to a drop in the number of priestly and religious vocations in the Church, and to the fact that in a typical congregation women always seem to outnumber men. Perhaps the antidote to both is the same - the reinforcement of the role of fathers in the family. In the first case, by leading the family in prayer, and in the second case by being happy once again to  cultivate natural beauty as an example to their sons...even if it is only by watering a window box to grow flowers to give to his wife!

Pictures below is  Noli me tangere by John of Flanders, 14th century - Christ with holy spade! And below that: Martin Schongauer, Madonna in Rose Garden, 15th century; and below: Gerard David, and Robert Campin, both late gothic Flemish. Picture above are from 14th century English psalters.

At Work in My Parents' Garden in Cheshire, England

As an antidote to the gloom of ever shortening days I am posting some photos taken in England in the summer. I was back there in August and took these photos of my parents' garden. Some will remember that I showed photos of this garden just a year ago, in an article here called A Gardon is a Lovesome Thing, God Wot. when just in its second season. Fifteen months later and it is maturing so that the herbacious borders look packed out! I was immediately put to work doing some dead-heading and weeding. I can't claim much credit for the beauty of it, though. What is remarkable given that my Dad and Mum haven't been able to do much work on it this year, is how beautiful it is when for long periods it has just left to grow on its own. The look of it is down to careful planning in the design and planting. My parents winter in Spain and the Spanish influence is obvious with the removal of the lawn and courtyard type layout with large terracotta plants (also another labour saver as there is no lawn mowing to be done).

Two More British Walks - Farmland in England and Wales and a 12th century Welsh castle

Here are some photographs of two more walks in the British Isles. The first is walking from my parents' house in a village called Willaston in Cheshire. This is in the north of England, close to the Welsh border and the area where I grew up. This is just a short jaunt from my parents' place through gentle, flat agricultural land viewed from a disused railway line. As with all of the British countryside, there are footpaths that you can take off this public land onto privately owned farmland. As you can see in the photographs, this is agricultural land and when I was there, the farmer was harvesting wheat. The second is rural north Wales. This is sheep pasture land and a rugged terrain in Snowdonia, and mountainous region of Wales. The highest hills are 3,000-3,500ft above sea level. The village is called Dolwyddelan (pronounced Dol-with-ellen - double ds are pronounced 'th' in Welsh).

These two places are about 60 miles apart.

First Willaston:

This little diversion took us to a pasture in which just a month ago the field was full of orchids and the dog rose was in bloom too. The following photographs were taken by my dad.

And here we have the rugged sheep country of Snowdonia...

It was a rainy day in August...well this is North Wales. We climbed out of the village into the hills along a farm track, the views opened up behind us and then we approached the ridge

Here we are close to the ridge above the village, about 2,500ft high

Flora and fauna along the way - sheep, yellow gorse and purple heather

And the cairn on the top for lunch.

And back down through the windy and rugged sheep pasture. Most of the sheep we saw were sheltering from the wind on one side of the ridge

Our return route took us via a castle that was built by the Welsh of the principality of Gwyneth. The Welsh in this part of the country resisted the Normans for two-hundred years longer than the English Saxons and were conquered by the English until the late 13th century (under Edward I). It was not used for defence but as a garrison for soldiers to help the security of travel routes for trade within the principality.

We had to climb the stairs, above, to get into the main hall inside.

And from there, we climbed up a dark stone stairway up to the top, and here's the veiw. The mountian by the way is called Moel Siabod (pronounced Moe-ell Shab-odd)

Below us, a shepherd was training his two sheep dogs

Photos of Naumkeag House and Gardens, Stockbridge, Massachussets

The Way of Beauty gardens reporter, Nancy Feeman has sent met me another missal, this one following a trip to Stockbridge, Massachussets. "The name of the house is Naumkeag," she tells me, "and the house itself was built in 1886. It is absolutely enchanting and charming. The gardens were redsigned from 1926 to 1955 and they are in the process of restoring them now. The idea of garden rooms is present in the design and a lot of the garden is heavily landscaped because the house sits on a hillside. The stairs are really interesting and have water flowing down to each level. Mabel Choate - the daughter who worked on the gardens - traveled to many countries for inspiration. This was was popular thing to do in the early 1900's and as a result of this she wanted a Chinese garden. The rose garden is lovely but the rose bushes are very young. In general there were not many flowers which is what I really love but nevertheless it it was still beautiful and of course the views of the nearby mountains, the Berkshires make the whole scene so picturesque. The website is here.  

Alcazar Garden, Seville

Here are some photos of the gardens of the palace - the Alcazar - in Spain. Owing much in style to the Moorish builders of the palace and gardens (like the even more well known example in Granada), it has nevertheless been since the reconquista a palace of the Spanish Royal Family and so has become reflective of something that is a much distinctively Spanish. I have wonderful memories of visiting this palace and the gardens. I went to Seville for the wedding of a friend to a Spanish lady whose family originated in Seville. The wedding was right at the beginning of September and the weather was almost unbearably hot. In the first two or three days there, we were preoccupied with the wedding and preparations. It was a wonderful occasion but by the time everything was over I was utterly exhausted. The heat was sapping and I was staying in a hostel that didn't have good air conditioning and so I hadn't slept well. We had put aside a few days for sightseeing and so the first place we headed for was this palace.

You enter through the main entrance of the palace building and then after seeing the interior move through to the courtyards in the back and then the expansive gardens beyond. Going out into the courtyard was like emerging into a new and wonderful world. First of all the temperature was controlled. The courtyards had little fountains and shade and the evapouration created a natural drop in temperature. It doesn't always look like it in the photos that I found, but my recollection is that in the gardens every walkway was predominantly shady and cool either through built archways or through high trees creating shade.

The other aspect of the garden that struck me was that the beauty of the garden was created by manipulation of light as much as through the colour of the plant leaves and flowers. So foliage could be dark or light green depending on whether or not they were in light or shade. There were additional effect created by light transmitted through the leave as the sun partially penetrated the canopy above. As well as walking at ground level a high, covered walkway was created just to allow the privileged residents (and now visitors) to stroll out above the canopy and look down on it. This created a whole new range of light effects of great beauty.

In addition, while there weren't many flowers at this point in September, there were nevertheless enough blooms to create beautiful fragrance at every turn.

I have spoken in the past of how my experience of the liturgy at the Brompton Oratory was so influential in my conversion, here. One of the aspects of this experience was how complete the liturgical experience was with art, music, incense, architecture and so on. In many ways, coming some time later, this reminded me of that experience. This is man sculpting and composing in stone and flora and through its beauty so that all my senses were engaged and even the temperature was controlled naturally.

The painting of the gardens shown above, by the way is by a Spanish artist Manuel Garcia y Rodriguez.

Photos of the Gardens of Blithwold Manor in Bristol, Rhode Island

Blithewold Manor and is located in Bristol, Rhode Island about  an hours south of Boston on the Narragansett Bay. The first house was destroyed by fire and the second was built in 1906 in this English Country Manor style with Arts and Crafts style gardens. The photographs were sent to me by Nancy Feeman, who has written on gardens in England for this blog. Here is the website.

The house is in 33 acres of land which sits on the coast and so has spectacular views over the water. As well as the beautiful gardens there is a well developed arboretum. Thank you for sending these photos Nancy, I can't wait to go down and have look myself.

Real Men Grow and Pick Lilies...Yes They Do!

Is gardening for beauty and delight a male or a female occupation? Talking to many here in the US, the impression I get is that people see growing food for produce, or rearing animals for food as a masculine thing; but growing a garden for its beauty? Definitely not. They will rear chickens in their back yard, but growing flowers? No, that is for girls. In response to this I would say that the call of every man to cultivate the land, should have 'three acres and cow' is at once too narrow and too broad: narrow in that seems to imply that only a utilitarian view of cultivation; and broad in not every man is meant to be cultivating even three acres of land, but he should at least have a plant-pot and a geranium on the windowsill of his 3rd floor city-centre apartment! Adam was gardener; Christ, the new Adam, was mistaken for a gardener and my great grandfather was head gardener of the Duke of Northumberland (so the family lore goes). Also my grandfather was a keen amateur gardener and my father still is a devoted gardener, who also had a garden-nursery a garden design consultancy business. All were men! Perhaps this is a little family line of the 'Downton Abbey' old world pro aristocracy view of life in which every man has his proper place passing down through the family line, holding out against modernist utilitarian view of the land.

The garden is a place for relaxation and contemplation for city dwellers. The city being the place of culture and the natural place for man to live (according to psalm 106 and Aristotle alike). The city garden then is a sanctuary and is described in scripture as a place in which everything is grown for its beauty and to delight the senses - taste, smell, vision - rather than simply sustenance.  

Also, I note, Christ went to the Garden of Gethsemene to pray. He went to the wilderness to meet the devil; but he went to the garden to find the Father in his time of agony. The garden is a sanctuary of the natural world raised up by man to something greater, so that contemplation of its enhanced beauty raises our spirits to God and as such prompts our praise of God the Father in a way that even the beauty of the wilderness is unable to do. When Mary Magadalene saw Christ in the garden, as mentioned above, she mistook him for the gardener, which seems to me to be symbolic of who this was, she was seeing more than we might give her credit for. 

Reading the book of Revelation, that too seems to suggest that man is meant to be a city dweller, for our final home will be the liturgical city of the New Jerusalem. But this is a garden city in which the Tree of Life flourishes and Eden has been restored by Christ the Head Gardener. 

I wonder if the root cause of the idea that flowers are cissy is the same as that which has created the tendency towards the feminisation of the prayer in the Church (leading in turn to a reduction in the number of priests)? It seems to me that it is, although I can't say exactly how - perhaps this removal of anything contemplative from masculine list of activities is a common element.

Perhaps then, accordingly, just as we should be encouraging fathers to lead prayer in the home we should also be encouraging boys to start growing things so that contribute to the beauty of our homes and cities and make them sanctuaries of peace as a gift for the family (even if it begins with just in a plant pot inside the house).

I am not suggesting that macho men should discover their inner femininity, rather, that we need to learn to see that cultivation for beauty is as thoroughly masculine as it is feminine. For as Leo XIII say in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, men should be encouraged to cultivate the land and in so doing will, 'learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them [my emphasis].'

Consistent of this idea of the gardener growing good things for those that are dear to him, to use Leo's phrase, we see in the Song of Songs that while the garden is identified with the lady, commonly seen  as Mary, a 'garden enclosed'; it is the man who is the gardener who woos her by growing and gathering lilies for her. What strikes me when I look at the traditional pictures of the garden enclosed shown below, is not how our attitude to Mary has changed, but how are attitude to nature and gardens, even as Christians, has changed. I wrote an article that touches on this called Come Out of the Wilderness and Into the Garden . It is this differing attitude to gardens and man's relationship to them that makes this identification of Mary as the garden enclosed so unusual to us today.

As an aside: reading again through Anton Chekhov's the Head Gardener's Tale (and I can't remember why I had cause to read through it the first time!) it is interesting to note that in this short story written in 1894, the gardener is proud of his position, for we are told he calls himself 'Head Gardener' even though he is the only gardener and has no subordinates. The scene is a sale of flowers in 'Count N's greenhouses'. He tells a tale to the narrator in  which a judge acquits a vagrant for the brutal murder of an just and beloved village doctor. The tale itself seems to my unlearned appreciation to be asking questions about how justice and mercy are balanced (and I'm not sure I'm with Checkhov in what appear to be his conclusions...perhaps some literature experts can interpret for us, the story is here  - it really is very short!) What I find particularly curious, is that Checkhov made the narrator of the tale, who a mysterious sage, an aristocrat's gardener. Is there any significance I wonder? Comments please!

Pictures below is  Noli me tangere by John of Flanders, 14th century - Christ with holy spade! And below that: Martin Schongauer, Madonna in Rose Garden, 15th century; and below: Gerard David, early 15th century Flemish.

and finally, below, the York Psalter, 12th century

Bringing Traditional Proportion into the Design of a Rock Garden

Traditional proportion can be incorporated into the design of just about anything once you know how. Here is an example a rockery (as we say in England) or 'rock garden', as I think Americans refer to it. It is part of the developing garden at the Thomas More College future campus at Groton, Massachusetts. We placed rocks into a steep bank in three tiers. The relationship between the three lines is based upon traditional proportion in which the first relates to the second as the second relates to the third. The spacing and change of angle is intuitively applied. Top left are three lines I have painted in watercolour on paper to illustrate. The designers of the basic shape of the arrangement of rocks in the garden were three students at Thomas More College in( alphabetical order!) - Cecilia Black, Nicole Martin and Erin Monfils. Once three walls had been put in, it was clear that they were unstable. We get heavy snow in the winter and it was likely that the snow would collapse each little wall. So without straying from the basic shape I stepped each wall into the bank in such a way that it imitates natural outcrops of stratified rock (or that was the idea anyway - I'm just a beginner and this is as about as close as I can get what I remember in my parents' garden).

I also introduced some deviations from the simple original shape so that while still following the general form, it looked less rigidly applied. So occasionally the line twists in a concave rather than convex way. In doing this I was trying to remember what I had seen my dad do in the rockeries at home. He was using sandstone (the natural rock of the Wirral peninsula in Cheshire, England). The photographs below show the gradual progression.

First, the bed is full of giant and old lilac plants. These were removed.

Then our gang turned their attention to putting the stones in the steep bank you see at the back of the above picture. You can see also how we have gradually planted it out with perennials. The hope is that next year these will come back more strongly and fill in the gaps. I don't feeling like another season of constant weeding.

Above, the three 'walls' and below after they have been stepped and softened.

A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

An English cottage garden with a Spanish twist. Here are some photographs of my parents' back garden in England. After I visited them in Spain on my recent trip to Europe, I went on to England and stayed at the family home in Cheshire. They had asked me to tidy up the garden. What a relief it was for me that there was virtually nothing to do. Even though only a few years old, the perennials grow and dominate the space, shutting out weeds. The only weeding that was needed was on the paved area; and the pots which were to be planted with annuals. The first photo is taken after that extra work was done, the rest were taken of the garden that had not been tended for two months. I have written before about how their garden in Spain uses local plants but in an English design. Here we have the reverse influence. A garden in England with English planting, but the design influenced by Spanish design. They have often remarked on how the Spanish create lovely courtyards with pot plants. Usually these have high walls and create shady areas that a cool places to retreat to in the sun. My parents decided to remove the old central lawn and make it a planted bed so that the main space, where the seats and the pots are, is now paved and surrounded by plants on all sides, creating a courtyard effect. This is the 'Spanish twist' I referred to. To see pictures of their English garden in Spain, and the how this garden in England looked before they removed the lawn, go here.

When they sent me these photos, my mum, who had just read a previous post about the garden poem of Ben Jonson, referred me also to a 19th century English poem about gardens. So here it is - My Garden, by Thomas Edward Brown (1830-97). For those who like me didn't know, 'wot' is an archaic term meaning 'knows' and 'grot' is a poetic form of 'grotto'. This post is the second garden-and-poetry column I've done in a short space of time. I ask readers please don't tell anyone I've been doing this - it will destroy the image I like to portray of myself as a poetry hating curmudgeon. So, on to the poem...

A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Fern’ed grot –

The veriest school

Of peace; and yet the fool

Contends that God is not –

Not God! In gardens! When the eve is cool?

Nay, but I have a sign;

‘Tis very sure that God walks in mine.

PS As an afterword, and going from the sublime to the 'cor blimey', here is a folk song about English gardens that always makes me sentimental about home when I hear it. It's by Crowded House, who are not from England but New Zealand; and the only version I could get online has subtitles in Spanish, but given the Spanish - English garden theme in this article I suppose it's not altogether inappropriate.

http://youtu.be/u4Xhh4D66ro

Photos of Bodnant Garden in North Wales

Last week I wrote about Bodysgallen, a country house in the Conway Valley in North Wales. Here are some photos of somewhere I visited on the same day further inland on the same river valley. It is Bodnant Garden. The mountains you see in the distance are the Snowodonia range, the highest in England and Wales. I visited earlier this year in May and have just been working outside in my garden here in New England. I was looking for some inspiration to remind of the ideal I am aiming for. So here are some photographs of the National Trust property. As you will see the planting is in the traditional British style of drifts of colour and lots of herbacious borders - in the manner of Gertrude Jeckyll. I really can't think of much more to say other than please just enjoy the photos and to ask, why can't we have a few more gardens like this over here in the US?

A Country House and Grounds - a Model of Manmade Harmony and Order

And how a 'marvel of Renaissance verse' describes precisely this, by Corey French. This article started out as a simple description of a country house that I visited on a recent trip to Britain. It is in North Wales and is called Bodysgallen Hall.  I was introduced to the house by a friend who took me there for the very British event of afternoon tea. What a delight that was! A number of things struck me about it. First was the harmony between house and grounds and the surrounding countryside. The gardens are more formally laid out close to the house, then they change into the less formal English cottage style and planting (a la Gertrude Jeckyll) and then into managed woods. Even the vegetable garden was arranged in an ordered and beautiful fashion, everything in its proper place. From the grounds we could see  and sheep fells on the Welsh mountains in the distance, beyond the Conway valley.

Second, is that every aspect of what we see is man made. There is no part that has not been shaped by the activity of man. This is not the untamed beauty of nature, but something even greater: nature conforming to a higher order. It has been raised up by the work of man.

Another aspect of note is the date in which the house was made. Or rather, dates. The various wings of the house were built over centuries ranging from the 17th to the 19th centuries. I could tell because each wing year of construction placed visibly on it. Despite this there is a unity to the whole because each part uses traditional proportions. These are the proportions that go back to the ancient Greeks and are derived from observation of the order and beauty of the cosmos. (There is one part that is an exception, it seems - the tall tower in the centre, which has even sized windows).

I was just contemplating this when I received an email from Corey French, who is currently working on his doctorate in English Literature at the University of Virginia, with a focus on 17th century British poetry. He had attended the first summer retreat of the Way of Beauty Atelier this year. I mentioned to him that I am a literary philistine with little regard for poetry. Undaunted he told insisted that his specialist area would be of interest to me. This is because, he said, they often refer to the ideal of beauty and harmony that I had been talking about in my lectures.  He told me that many even have and 'architecture' (ie structure) that incorporates he sacred number theory that I had mentioned. This piqued even my interest and I had asked him to send more information.

Here is the first poem he sent me. It is called Penshurst and it is by Ben Jonson. There is a link to the poem itself here. It is the subject matter, rather than the form which is of interest here. It describes how the country house is a model of beauty. In his letter to me Corey describes how it reflects exactly the ideas I had been discussing of the liturgy of the Church as an ordering principle of cosmic beauty. You can see what he has written below in italics. Before that here is the closing stanza of the poem:

Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee

With other edifices, when they see

Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else,

May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.

'The poem itself is a marvel of Renaissance verse and inaugurated a minor school of English poetry--the country house poem.  (Although there were other country house poems before "Penshurst," such as Emelia Lanyer's "Description of Cooke-ham," Jonson's poem establishes the conventions of the trope through the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries.)  In any event, the overall schematic of the poem traces a movement from the grounds around Penshurst Place (ranging from the copses of Gamage and Sidney to the Medway) into the manor-house itself, culminating in the middle of the poem with a depiction of a feast and then launching into an excursus on the hospitality of the Sidneys.

First of all, the poem begins with a meditation on the virtues of Penshurst Place as an edifice compared with the "prodigy houses" of more recent construction.  As the poem presents it, Penshurst's architecture manifests an organic harmony that extends through time, pulling together through a unified tradition both its ancient and more modern aspects.  In this way, the house becomes an emblem of the virtues which reside therein and which subsist in the Sidney family.  The other houses, "built to envious show," are merely objects of conspicuous consumption, discordant in their architectural programs and intended only to display wealth.  Penshurst's own harmoniousness extends to the natural world as well, and we find the entire natural order revolving around life in the manor house, even offering itself sua sponte for the enrichment of the manor's tables.  As we travel around the grounds, the poem leads us through the natural topography of the place, yet it insists upon our simultaneously recognizing it as a moral topography.  The concord of the land reflects the virtuous concord of its landholders.

Then the poem takes us into the feast, and we find that it is the feast that resides at the heart of Penshurst, the energy which drives its entire harmony.  Now, I'm absolutely convinced that Jonson intends this feast to be an image of the Eucharist.  He spent several years as a recusant Catholic before reverting to Anglicanism, and I cannot help but think that he understood the intrinsic necessity of the liturgy.  Indeed, what I see in this poem is precisely your concept of the liturgy as the ordering principle of the cosmos, as the source and summit of human life.  The entire poem centers around this scene of feasting in which "all come in" and all are fed to satiety with "thy lord's own meat."  I've written some on this poem, and to my surprise, no one has argued substantively for a reading of the poem as a profoundly liturgical and sacramental poem.  Even Harp's article [see below], which raises and considers the Eucharistic elements of the poem does not, I think, unravel the full implications of this reading.

Additionally, the history of "Penshurst" criticism is a bit of a case study in the deformations of modernism.  The reigning scholarly interpretation of the poem (though one that has met with its share of push-back in recent years) is the Marxist reading put forward by Raymond Williams and Don Wayne.  They attack Jonson for colluding with the structures of power represented in the manor house and thereby using his poem to "write out" the inequalities of labor by depicting the land as offering itself up without human intervention and by suggesting that the life of the tenant farmer was little more than attending soirées at the manor.  Immediately one realizes how truly malicious such an interpretation is; indeed, like most contemporary literary theory, it manages to base an entire interpretation of the poem on what isn't there rather than what is.  Richard Harp produced a rather admirable essay in which he dismantles the Williams/Wayne approach entirely and points to the poem as a poem of festival.  He suggests that Jonson hasn't "overlooked" labor to suit the ends of power but has chosen to write instead a type of Sabbath poem in which labor is given its reward of rest.  The Williams/Wayne reading simply demonstrates the inevitable consequence of having recourse to no other worldview than one in which "labor" is the defining mark of human life and in which transcendence ceases to be possible.

How Small Household Flower Gardens Have Helped Transform a Boston Community

Here is a great story of how beauty really can change the world. A low-income housing complex in Boston has been transformed, through the work of its residents, into a place of beauty and dignity. It started with one or two people deciding to plant the little plots of land in front of their houses, then others seeing what was going on and starting to do the same. And according to the delighted director of the complex, who has just been watching this happen over the last year or so, it has brought benefits to the community as a whole that one just wouldn't have imagined. I have written before about the importance of the pleasure of gardening and as the garden  as a symbol of the culture of life in which man's harmonious work with nature raises it up beyond its natural state. But here is a story of how there is an underlying truth to this that really does affect people's lives for the good; we are talking here of people who, bar one, have never read my blog and are not likely to. There are no Chelsea Garden Show gold medal winners. This is just everyone mucking in and having a go. I heard about this from Nancy Feeman, who is working with me and a band of enthusiastic students to establish an English style garden at a farmhouse in Groton, Massachusetts.  The farm on which this stands will, once the money is raised for building, be the site for the new campus for Thomas More College. Nancy lives in the complex; she became connected with the college by coming along to one of the Way of Beauty retreats, two summers ago. (She has written about how this sparked an interest in gardening before, here.)

I'll let Nancy describe it: 'I have lived here for 9 years.  The housing complex in Boston was originally built for the returning WWII veterans and their families.  Later it was converted to housing for low-income families.  Here we pay 27% of our income for rent as well as heat and electric.  For me working in a Catholic school and as a single mom it was a huge relief to know that my rent would only change according to my income.  Still it was difficult to move here because of the social implications, prejudices and the difficulties raising children here.  But God’s grace has helped us overcome every difficulty. Recently changes in policy from the Housing Authority, which has always work hard to make this a good community, have had a positive effect.  About 4 years ago they received a grant for a huge renovation project and every apartment was completely remodeled which meant new and updated kitchen and bath.  They put in a small police substation to deal with crime, more lights, cameras, speed bumps, and the director moved her office from the main building to this complex about a year ago.

I was told about seven years ago that I could not hang a planted basked from the rail outside my house. That was disappointing I admit, but I am sure they had very good reasons at time.  Then about a year ago I noticed that a couple of people were doing little bits of gardening here and there and went to ask the director about it. I was pleased that this time the policy was different and she encouraged me to do it.

I have a tiny plot of land in front of my house and so this year I have planted it in the English style, that I have learnt about from the writing of Gertrude Jeckyll. This is a new interest for me and I am just finding out about plants, and this is just the first year I have tried it. I am just learning as I go along. What has happened is that gradually people have noticed what I have been doing and asking me about it and then starting to have a go themselves. As far as I know, most had no knowledge of gardening or plants before this. I feel as though I am only half a step ahead of the starter-gardeners. I am not using exotic plants at all - just the ordinary things that you buy from the garden centre, but the colour combinations and that way of packing out the bed so that eventually there are no spaces, which comes from Jeckyll, does have an impact. Not everybody is doing exactly what I am doing, but more and more are planting something and making an effort to think about how in other ways to make the place look neat and tidy. There has been a definite change in the attitude of people who have gardened even if they have simply begun to rake around the trees outside their apartment or sweep their porch. ’

Recently, the director of the complex, who has planted some annuals in front of her office called Nancy over just tell her how wonderful she thinks the imact is on the whole street: 'The director was full of excitement and told me how beautiful she thinks all the flowers are and how it has spread from house to house. She said: "More people are starting to garden and care about their place.  This is their home and it is so wonderful to see them even just rake or sweep their area because it means they care and that is what we want. Also, the gardening brings people outside and then they interact with each other and that builds more community." The director even involves the local children: "The children love the plants too. I invite them to help pit annuals in front of my office and they take great delight in carrying the water jug to and fro to water their small garden.”  She even told me that she taken aside all the summer student workers and the maintainance people to explain to them which plants are to be left and which are the weeds so that they don't take things out accidentally with their mowers and weedwackers!'

As Nancy said to me when relating the story: 'I think this does speak to the truth of human dignity towards things that are good and beautiful and gardening is part of that. It’s not just the beauty of the effect, but even working this tiny garden you feel the truth of the idea that there is dignity in working the land.

'It has made a big difference for me living here to be able to garden and to bring some beauty into a place that is not always easy to live in.  It’s so good that it brings joy to people and that when they see the flowers so many have been inspired to join in and do it themselves. '

What I love about this story is the way in which that has happened without the need for an organisational input or even community meetings. It has just happened organically (if you'll forgive the pun). When one person started doing it the others followed suit. There has been no cost to the taxpayer and precious little to the individuals involved.

We'll finish with a quote from Gertrude Jeckyll that Nancy brought to my attention: 'The size of a garden has very little to do with its merit.  It is merely an accident relating to the circumstances of the owner.  It is the size of his heart and brain and goodwill that make his garden delightful.'

Above is the approach to the complex. Nancy's street is beyond this, below.

And below is a typical view of the what the house front would look like before. At best neat and tiday, but soulless:

And that can be changed into this:

People have been planting the stone circles in the middle of the common lawn area, sometimes with garden plants:

And sometimes seeding with wild flowers:

And then they plant and arrange their house fronts in a variety of differents ways. As you look at them, remember that this is the first summer, the plants will mature in future years if this continues:

A walk along an ancient aqueduct in southern Spain

When I was in Spain in May, some neighbours of my parents offered to take me on a walk that followed the line of an ancient aqueduct built by the Moors centuries ago. Phil and Brenda took me to a spectacular route that started in the town of Canillas (about an hour from Malaga). The aqueduct was a small channel providing water for irrigation and drinking water for the town. It is about a foot square in cross section and open topped. It weaves its way around the hills through olive groves and wild flower meadows, climbing at a rate only slightly greater than a contour line. This lead us eventually up high into a fast running stream in a narrow gorge, which was the source of the water.What was interesting was that this was still the means of irrigating the olive groves on the hillside. So in some sections, where the Moorish stonework had begun to leak, the channel had been mended. Somtimes with stone and cement, and sometimes even with sections of black plastic pipeline. From time to time, there would be small sluice gates that could be dropped into the channel, blocking it off and then directing the water onto the fields below that section. I have spoken in the past, here, about how there is a 'right to roam' in European countries. It's exact form takes different shapes, but for the most part, provided you don't take produce or destroy property and respect the land and personal rights of those who own it, you are entitled to go onto privately owned land. It means that in Europe that those who live in cities and suburbs and are not landowners, nevertheless have access to the land and have a sense of connection with it. People can also experience the peace and see the beauty of well managed agricultural land which has a very different effect on the soul than seeing 'wilderness' - land unaffected by man. New-world countries, such as America, Australia and New Zealand do not have such laws and so it is much more difficult to get access to agricultural land (as opposed to wilderness parks). Ironically, this means that even in New Zealand, a country in which perhaps 30% of the land is preserved as national parkland, there is still a greater sense of being deprived of contact with the land than you would have in a western European country. The reason for the difference between old and new worlds is that the new societies, driven by Enlightenment ideas of individualism that started to take hold in the 18th century rejected the traditional idea, which comes from Catholic social teaching, of land being a 'common good'. The traditional idea is that landowners balance their privelege of ownership, which is necessary so that the land can be cultivated in an ordered way, with certain responsibilities towards the community as a whole.

In Britain, which is a land of walkers (perhaps because the temperate climate is so condusive to it) there is a modern application of the custom, which has resulted in a network of public footpaths across its length and breadth. My guides Phil and Brenda, who were great company for the day, explained to me that because so many Brits live permanently in Spain now (about three quarters of a million), that the Spanish government has begun to establish British style footpaths through scenic areas and promote them to attract yet more people as tourists. Its not clear whether the Spanish people themselves are yet as enthusiastic about walking. It seems that perhaps Noel Coward was right, only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

An irrigation channel seems to me an example of a project that is intended for the common good and requires each landowner to acknowledge this in allowing it to be built on his land and in the way in which he uses it. Once this was built if the landownder wanted to act against the common good he could and use all the water for himself: nobody below him would be able to stop him taking it. Taking what is necessary for himself is in accordance with the common good, because this is how he grows food for the community (which includes himself of course). Maybe a historian out there could help me, but I don't think this would have been built by the central government buying the land through compulsory purchase order on the land. My guess is that there has been a cooperative process between landowners.

Any, enough of the discussion, here's the walk -  we start by filling up the water bottles at the public drinking fountain:

And then gradually climb our way up, through olive groves and some pine groves, pausing occasionally to look back at the town below. In time the trees clear and we can see the gorge ahead.

Here, below, is a sluice gate (it's on the end of the chain only partly visible). This is a simple metal plate which is dropped into the channel at this point, directing the water out through the opening which is visible above the waterline, bottom, left. This allows the farmer who owns this part of the land to irrigate his olive groves in the hillside below. We would see these periodically as we climbed. Clearly, there is mutual trust here and an assumption that no single landowner is going to abuse the privelege of access to the water and deprive everyone else of a share. Subsequent photos show the flourishing olive groves (note how the hillside is stepped to enable access when the olives are to be picked).

Round a corner, below, and things take a turn for the spectacular:

We can see the gorge in the distance which is the source of the water for the aqueduct, you can see the it cutting across the hillside halfway up on the left:

If we walk on an turn back, we can see, below, how precarious the path is in some places:

On the photo above you can see the aqueduct cut into the cliff face on the near part. In the distance to the left you can make out the line of the road through the hills, which follows the old Moorish trading route through southern Spain. It is seen more clearly in this photo:

Then we walk up into the gorge and to the mountain stream that is the source of water:

The very start of the aqueduct is on the left in the photo above. The manmade channel has water running in it, but it is not obvious in the photographs because it is so clear.

We stopped for a drink of water at a small waterfall in the stream above this point:

And then returned to Canillas retracing our steps. The day ended with a late lunch in the village square: Spanish coffee, which is a strong and milky, and tapas.

Latest Issue of Second Spring - 'In the Garden'

Those readers who have been following our postings on gardening will be interested by the latest issue of the International Journal of Faith and Culture, Second Spring, which is entitled In the Garden. It has articles by figures such as Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan and Thomas More College's own Dr Christopher Blum. Second Spring is produced by TMC's Centre for Faith and Culture in Oxford (which is directed by Stratford Caldecott) and is published and distributed in the US by the college. Go here in the UK; and here in the US to subscribe.

Inspiration for Gardening in the US from Bodnant Garden in Wales, by Nancy Feeman

Nancy Feeman is working with us on the development of an English garden at the Thomas More College's new Groton campus development in Massachusetts. She describes a recent trip to the UK and a visit to one of the great botanical gardens there, in Wales, called Bodnant Garden. She writes: During the past couple of years I have attended the Way of Beauty Course and Retreat at Thomas More College summer programs and have enrolled at the distance-learning college in England, the Maryvale Institute on the course called Art, Beauty and Inspiration in a Catholic Perspective (available now in the US through the Maryvale Institute center at the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas).  This summer I traveled to England for the final weekend of the Maryvale course and was blessed to be able to make a pilgrimage to St. Winefride’s Well (the Lourdes of Britain) and to Bodnant Garden in Wales.  Before I left I would probably not have called the trip to the garden a pilgrimage but now I am not so sure.

Wales is a country with more sheep than people (that is what the cab driver told me, so it must be true!), and Bodnant Garden is a hidden treasure in the northern part of the country.    Walking into the garden is like walking into an earthly paradise surrounded by the rural idyll of the sheep pastures and farms on the mountains.  This is the beauty of nature, but is different to an earlier experience of mine of walking through the Himalayas where the nature, while beautiful also and awe inspiring, is untouched by man (except for the surrounding rice paddies).  Here everywhere has been shaped by man and made beautiful, more beautiful, through God's grace and the vision of those who worked on it.

The garden is set on a hill and separated into levels.  On one level there is a rose garden and the colors are planted together moving from white to yellow, orange, pink and red.  We watched as the gardener held the rose branch so tenderly before he clipped off the flower.  The water garden holds perfectly formed water lilies, seven plants on each end of the pool.  Benches are on platforms throughout the garden and have been placed in the most perfect viewing spots beckoning to us as we passed, just asking to be sat upon (which we did every time we saw one!).  Here there is no separation between gardens and woods as one area of garden flows naturally into the next. The woods are managed and have been filled with hosta, hydrangea and many other plants.  Even the brook at the bottom of the hill is lined on each side with enormous blue hydrangea. Walking up the hill on the opposite side there are fields and one gardener carefully and methodically raked the grass.  It seemed to me that he should be wearing a Benedictine habit!

I have recently discovered the writing of the famous garden designer from the first part of the last century, Gertrude Jekyll. Her joy in her work is infectious and it is informed by her Christianity. She declares regularly that gardens are a hymn of praise to the Creator; and it would be difficult to wander through Bodnant Garden without giving thanks and praise to God.

Since my return home my heart always skips a beat when I see a lace-cap hydrangea that I remember so clearly from Bodnant and my visit has inspired me to learn more about gardens.   I hope to reflect in the future on the manner in which gardens, especially their history and design, have a part in the philosophy and spirituality of the Way of Beauty; and am looking forward to seeing how the development of a English garden, that has begun at the Thomas More College's new, as yet undeveloped, campus in Groton, Massachusetts, takes shape as we work on it.

What Colour are the Blue-Ridged Mountains of Virginia?

Do Laurel and Hardy have something to teach us about colour perspective? The words of garden designer Gertrude Jeckyll seem to confirm the words of the American comedians. Laurel and Hardy sang about the blue-ridged mountains. But were they seeing blue mountains or green mountains in Virginia?

When learning to paint landscapes I was taught the principles of colour perspective. In a natural landscape those parts that are in the distance look bluer. Artist use this to indicate distance. A good gardner understands, along with the landscape painter and the this too. Just as with a painter, the gardener is creating a beautiful scene and will consider the combinations of colour so that the whole scene is harmonious. When considering how distant flowers will combine with those that are closer, he must take into account the fact that everything looks bluer when it is further away.

There is a another way of making use of this. If I want to enhance the sense of space I can create artificial perspective. The gothic architect made the distant objects smaller in reality, so that it doubles the natural effect of perspect and made things seem even further away than they are. Consequently, gothic cathedrals seem to soar to heaven. The gardener can use large-leaf plants closeby and small-leaf plants in the distance, so creating the illusion that things are further away than they really are. Similarly he can put bluish green leaves and blue flowers in the distance and other colours in the foreground and it will reinforce this further. It is useful if you have a small garden but want to create a sense of greater space.

Even when we know this it is not always easy to see it. When we focus on a distant point, the mind modifies the information that the eye supplies it to create an image in our mind's eye that is affected by what we know, or think we know, to be true. So looking at distant hills that are blue tinged we don't believe that they are really blue, the brain knows that they are in the distance and we very often see it as green.

Gertrude Jeckyll was a garden designer who used her artistic training in the academic method in the choice of planting. She describes here how she convinced a skeptic of the fact that things in the distance really do look blue:

'As for the matter of colour, what is to be observed is simply without end. Those who have not training in the way to see colour nearly always decieve themselves into thinking that they see it as they know it is locally, whereas the trained eye sees colour in due relation as it truly appears to be. A remember driving with a friend of more than ordinary intelligence who stoutly maintained that he saw the distant wooded hill quite a green as the hedge. He knew it was green and could not see it otherwise till I stopped at a place where part of the face, but none of the sky bounded edge of the wooded distance showed through a tiny opening among the near green branches, when to his immense surprise he saw it was blue. A good way of showing the same thing is to tear a roundish hole in any large bright-green leaf, such as a Burdock and to hold it at half arm's length so that a distant part of the landscape is seen through the hole and the eye sees the whole surface of the leaf. As long as the sight takes in both it will see the true relative colour of the distance. I constantly do this myself, first looking at the distance without the leaf frame in order to see how nearly I can guess the truth of the far colour. Even in the width of one ploughed field, especially in autumn when the air is full of vapour, in the farther part of the field, the newly turned earth is bluish-purple, whereas it is rich brown at one's feet.'

So it seems that Laurel and Hardy could have been landscape painters, or gardeners - each had an artists eye!

Images: the Appalachians in Virginia; the garden scenes are of a small walled garden on Holy Island, in the Farne Islands of the coast of Northumberland in England. This designed, to some degree, to be seen from the bench seat visible below. The wall protects the garden from high winds. I struggled to find photographs of her planting that illustrate very strongly the principles I have been describing, but though the photos of this garden would be of interest to readers anyway!; the watercolours below are by John Singer Sargent and W. Heaton Cooper the 20th century English painter respectively.

A Visit to a Garden in Connecticut Designed by Gertrude Jeckyll

The English garden designer who painted her ideas in plants, and thought like a 17th-century baroque artist.

I recently visited Glebe House, Woodbury, CT to see a small garden designed by the famous English garden designer and writer Gertrude Jeckyll.

Gertrude Jeckyll is an English garden designer whose long life spanned the turn of the last century. She often worked in conjunction with the architect Edwin Lutyens who was famous for his English country houses. Most of Jeckyll's gardens are in England but there were three in the US. This one has been restored, which for Jeckyll's gardens means planting as she planted as much as reproducing the shapes of the borders.

Jeckyll design principles are about harmony of colour and form through a proper understanding of beauty and a deep knowledge of her medium, plants. She studied art as a young woman and based her ideas of colour combinations upon what she learned and especially those of the artist William Turner. Luckily for us she also wrote beautifully about gardens and gardening. I am grateful to my friend Nancy Feeman who has been studying her work and her gardens for bringing Jeckyll's books to my notice.

I am just working my way through the first book, The Gardener's Essential Gertrude Jeckyll and it is a delight. She had a deep Christian faith and this is reflected in her approach to design which is that of the baroque painter, applied to gardening. So much so that her descriptions of the purpose of gardening (to bring glory to God and joy to mankind), the virtue of creating a beautiful garden to that end and the need for inspiration from the Creator in working towards it, remind me of passages that I have read from the book about baroque painting written by the great Spanish teacher of Velazquez in the 17th century, Francesco Pacheco. I would recommend every artist to read her. Especially those who wish to paint landscape.

Furthermore, her understanding of the relationships and hierarchy of God, man and nature is thoroughly Christian, and consistent with those that I wrote about in a previous article about gardening, here. I would suggest that Jeckyll should be read by all conservationists and ecologists as well in my opinion.

Glebe House is not a huge garden at all, and we saw in September when it was well past its peak. Nevertheless it was a pleasure to see (apart from the vicious biting insects!). There will be more about Gertrude Jeckyll in the coming months, but for now I will let her garden and her words speak for themselves:

‘The object of this book is to draw attention, however slightly and imperfectly, to the better ways of gardening, and to bring to bear upon the subject some consideration of that combination of common sense, sense of beauty and artistic knowledge that can make plain ground and growing things into a year-long succession of living pictures. Common sense I put first because it restrains from any sort of folly or sham or affectation. Sense of beauty is the gift from God, for which those who have received it in good measure can never be thankful enough. The nurturing of this gift through long years of study, observation and close application in any one of the ways in which fine art finds expression is the training of the artist’s brain, and heart and hand. The better a human mind is trained to the perception of beauty the more opportunities will it find of exercising this precious gift and the more directly will it be brought to bear upon even the very simplest matters of everyday life, and always to their bettering.’

'I am strongly for treating garden and wooded ground in a pictorial way, mainly with large effects, and in the second place with lesser beautiful incidents, and for so arranging plants and trees  and grassy spaces that they look happy and at home, and make no parade of conscious effort. I try for beauty and harmony everywhere, and especially for harmony of colour. A garden so treated gives the delightful feeling of repose, and refreshment, and purest enjoyment of beauty, that seems to my understanding to be the best fulfillment of its purpose; while to the diligent worker its happiness is like the offering of a hymn of praise.'

'And a garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. “Paul planteth and Apollos watereth, but God giveth the increase.” [cf 1 Cor 3:6] The good gardener knows with absolute certainty that if he does his part, if he gives the labour, the love and every aid that his knowledge of his craft, experience of the conditions of his place, and exercise of his personal wit can work together to suggest, that so surely as he does this diligently and faithfully, so sure will God give the increase. Then with the honestly earned success comes the consciousness of encouragement to renewed effort, and, as it were, an echo of the gracious words, “Well done, good and faithfull servant.” [Mt 25:23]'

PS In case anyone is wondering, she is related to the Dr Jeckyll after whom Robert Louis Stephenson named the character in his book Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jeckyll was the good guy!