Garden Designer Interview: Duncan Heather

Thursday, October 24, 2013 at 10:18
In our series of interviews with garden designers that have a plethora of knowledge and talent, we at Notcutts were lucky enough to have caught up with one of Europe’s most successful garden designers, Duncan Heather.
Duncan Heather When reading Duncan Heather’s biography you can’t help but be impressed. He is one of Europe’s most successful garden designers, winning five gold, one silver and one bronze medal along with three best show awards for his work. Duncan trained under and worked for John Brookes – one of the most influential garden designers of the 20^thCentury. In 1991 while working for Mr Brookes who is known for the world famous Denmans garden in West Sussex, Duncan was offered a directorship, something he declined in favour of concentrating on his own design practice in Henley-on-Thames.
Duncan splits his professional time working on a variety of garden design projects with lecturing at the Oxford College of Garden Design. He is the Founder and Principle of the college, since its inception in 1992, Duncan now offers a diploma course which can be obtained via online lectures, tutorials and video lectures.
We were lucky enough to catch up with Duncan to discover what it was like to train under and work with John Brookes, and what he believes is the key ingredient to a well thought-out and executed garden design.
What was it like to train under and work with John Brookes?
I rate John as one of the top designers of the 20^th Century and he will go down in history as such. I was very privileged to be his design assistant and one of a handful of people to work with him. Working with him gave me a deeper insight into how his design philosophy (called Pattern Analysis) works, although he has written numerous books about design. It was this insight that helped me to set up Oxford College of Garden Design and reach the goals I wanted to achieve.
John developed ‘Pattern Analysis’, which is the polar opposite of the ‘SAD’ technique most garden designers are taught, allowing designers to create modern art within the garden.  The boundaries of the garden, act as a picture frame.  With the house always being the most important element of the design. An imaginary grid is setup, which is unique to the site and is created using the proportion of the house. As a result all the patterns created within the picture frame, relates back to the house in scale. The spaces within the design, can represent water, paving, lawn or planting and the lines dictate where a hedge set of steps or wall can be placed.

It sounds as though you have been extremely influenced by John Brookes, even mentioning his Pattern Analysis as a way of teaching. How does the Oxford College of Garden Design differentiate with ‘John Brookes: An introduction to garden design’?
John is no longer teaching a face to face course, but does teach a four-week online course with my sister school, MyGardenSchool . The classes I teach with Oxford College of Garden Design are intended to teach those who are wishing to become professional  garden designers, whereas MyGardenSchool aims to teach horticultural classes to the general public.
Both John and I co-wrote the classes taught at MyGardenSchool, and John is available to answer any questions, help with any design elements people may have and mark their work. He is very much involved in teaching and has embraced new technology throughout his career. We are both very excited about online learning, and I really believe this is the future; within a decade I believe all universities will be teaching their lectures this way.

You and Elspeth Briscoe founded MyGardenSchool  the world’s first virtual gardening school and you’ve also launched MyPhotoSchool. When you’re not lecturing how do you spend your time? I’ve noticed your garden is quite large, have you found time to do all the garden chores yourself?
My wife Carol, does most of the gardening, but yes I do a little work here and there. I tend to use my time to build and run my businesses, blog, do a little SEO and teach online. I am very lucky when it comes to how I spend my time. I love gardening and this is my full time job and photography is a great hobby of mine and I’ve been able to incorporate this into my work load too.  MyPhotoSchool was founded after our Flower Photography course proved to be the most popular class we had to offer and since then we have been able to ask top photographers to teach at our online school.

Following your article ‘Would you be a better Landscape Designer if you were Dyslexic?’ and being dyslexic yourself, do you believe it has made you a better designer?
Those with dyslexia tend to see things more holistically. We’re more arty than analytical. Do I think it has made me a better designer? I think it has helped. I struggle less with visualising what I want to do. When I walk into a garden, within half an hour I have a clear plan of what I intend to do with that space.
What do you believe to be the key ingredient to a well thought out and executed garden design?
The house and site are the main factors for every garden design. What a lot of people believe is the most important aspect of garden design is the client, but what I want to create is a garden  with longevity. Although the client is important, after all they are paying the bill, you also need to ensure the next owners like the garden too. It has to work with the house and location. The style and location of the house needs to be put at the forefront of any design, whether it is a countryside setting or in a more urban environment. The architecture is the main focal point; it is the beginning and end of all design. The design then has to revolve around it.
What influenced your garden? Are there places you like to source inspiration from?
I have a two acre garden, which is located in a heavily woodland environment. One part of my garden is filled with beach woodland which makes it difficult to grow anything, not even brambles could grow under the trees due to the lack of light. So in the second part of my garden, I removed 60 of the trees and create two woodland glades. One is grass and the other is a natural duck pond.
What inspires me is light. When you walk into a church with beautifully painted stain glass windows and they catch the light it can be breathtaking, and often makes the hairs on your neck stand up. This is what I have created in my garden with mounded flower beds (two to three feet high); it’s wonderful to see plants with a natural back light. This height, or having the border westerly faced, ensures that you can create shafts of lights. When I walk through my garden, I will get a different feel at all times of the day. Playing with light quality inspires me and if a designer gets it right, you can create shadows that dance on the grass and take the art of design to another level.

Do you think Chelsea Flower Show is a good place to start pulling ideas for your garden if you’re a novice?
To me the Chelsea Flower Show is a complete waste of time. The RHS are not going to like what I say, but I feel it’s the same old designers, techniques and gardens just rehashed year upon year. It is dated and irrelevant.
I always suggest to my students that they go to the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire in France. Each year 30 gardens are built by architects, designers or anyone who is artist and not bogged down by planting. They create mind blowing art installations within hedged exteriors that are not large in scale, but gigantic in artistic flare. They use sound, light, water, reflectivity, shadow and mirroring to create something that pushes the boundaries in design.

Trees seem to take centre stage in your garden; what do you look for when buying a young tree?
I take a look at the roots to make sure it is healthy and prefer pot bound trees. I look out for a good, strong trunk that is damage free and has a good head of branches with two or three leaders, and often opt for trees with 8-12cm to 16-18cm girth. I prefer to plant young trees as they don’t need as much TLC as mature trees and tend to get away more quickly. 
What advice can you offer those wishing to build a magical garden from scratch?
Take your time; a garden isn’t like a house and you can complete the build over the course of many years; but do have a master plan to work with. If you don’t feel you have the qualifications to draw up a plan, bring someone in to help you and don’t be afraid to gain help in building your garden.
Although this is a cliché, the garden is an extension of the home, especially now as we can incorporate the outside sofas and art. I use photography in my garden to create an art installation; experiment with different ideas. Segregate parts of the garden with natural walls or use meshing with photographs for a modern twist; this is especially great for urban environments. Light control is also great to experiment with as you can create all sorts of atmospheres.

What does the magic of gardening mean to you?
In the spring time I love to go outside, sit on my deck with a glass of wine and listen to the birds singing. There is nowhere else I’d rather be and my wife and I never chose to travel in April because of this.
The garden is the most magical retreat and if you get it right you can create a real oasis. In urban environments you can use the sound of water to mask on-going traffic or add screens to create privacy. When you sit in your garden the pace of life changes, your quality of life improves in this space you’ve created

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5 Golden Landscape Design Rules

 

Rule 1: The House is the Most Important Part of Any Garden.

You can’t ignore it! It’s almost always the largest, most dominant structure in the garden. Your journey starts and ends with the house and therefore any garden plan, should always start from the building and work outwards.

Rule 2: The Designers Main Objective is to Link Building with Site.

Probably the most important rule of all and yet the one that is least understood. This rule applies to any landscape scheme, whether residential or commercial. If the design is to be successful, then it must blend the building seamlessly into its environment. To achieve this, the designer needs to be able to combine symmetry with biology, i.e. architecture with landscape. Because most buildings are made from geometric shapes and the garden is essentially a biological environment, great care is needed to join these two opposing forms together. Try linking them too quickly and they will clash, creating a meaningless amorphous squiggle where the house looks like it’s just landed from space.

Rule 3 All shape close to the house should be Symmetrical.

This follows on from rule 2. Because the building is predominantly made up of straight lines based on squares and rectangles, the area around the building should copy these geometric, mathematical shapes to help link the house with the garden. The terraces, paths, formal pond and planting beds should be designed using straight lines.

If you don’t believe me, I will try to convince you by using an interior design analogy. “You would not put an amoebic shaped rug into a rectangular shaped room. Instead you would use a geometrical rug/carpet.” The same rules of interior design are just a relevant for outside design. The lawn is the carpet of the garden and the worst thing you can do, is to put a wiggly edged lawn into a rectangular shaped garden. Creating wiggles and squiggles won’t make your garden look natural. Nature makes it natural! As soon as you add planting to a straight edged border the plants grow and spill over and soften all the hard lines.

Rule 4 Use a Grid to help you Design.

Because you want your garden to link back to the house, it make sense to use shapes and pattern on your plan, that relate back to the scale and proportion of the building. “The Scale of the Grid is derived from the Mass of the Property”. Every grid is unique to site. This may in reality appear subliminal, but using a grid which is derived from the proportions and scale of the building means that all the patterns you use for the garden plan, relate directly back to the house and the grid also acts as a guide for the designer so they can quickly check size and scale of different features.

Rule 5 There are No Rules.

This isn’t strictly true because I have just given you a small sample of some. However you first need to understand the rules of geometry and design before you can break them. If we all stuck rigidly to rules, we would end up with some very dull design, but conversely, few universities and colleges give any clear guidance to design teaching, so that students graduate without a clear design philosophy.

At the Oxford College of Garden Design we run a professional On-line postgraduate level course and together with our sister site MyGardenSchool we also offer 4 week On-line short courses in all aspects of gardening. One of the main reasons our students have been so successful, is that we do teach a design philosophy by verbalising and explaining why something works and why something doesn’t.

The Society of Garden Designers; a damp squib washed up on the shores of mediocrity.

Are so called professional body; the Society of Garden Designers, has forced through what I consider to be the worst piece of legislation in its pitiful 30 year history.
It has decreed that from 2010, if you want to apply to become even a lowly corresponding member you have to submit work before a panel of your peers to be weighed, measured and no double found wanting!
Its bad enough having to apply for full membership in this patronising and archaic fashion, but to expect potential probationary members to go through this as well is frankly bonkers.

The importance of Telephone Technique!

Today’s video tutorial is on telephone technique and the importance of opening and closing a sale

FEE SCALE

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Chaumont! Probably the best garden show in the world?

Chaumont: Gardening! –From Erotic to Rude.
As I write this blog I am reminded of a rather embarrassing episode that happened to me a couple of years back, when I visited the USA to do a radio interview on European garden trends.

It was for “W.H.B.S.Y. -coming to you from down-town Sacramento” (or something like that– all these radio stations sound the same to me!)

I had flown into San Francisco, on the late flight the previous evening.  Then driven 3 hours north east to Auburn, downed the better part of a bottle of California Red before collapsing in to bed, only to be woken at some ungodly hour the next morning, to drive back down the freeway to Sacramento, to do the “Garden Guru’s” 9am Saturday morning radio show.

Not surprisingly I was a little jet lagged, if not a little hung over. Definitely not a good combination when doing live public radio!

I was also extremely nervous, unlike UK radio, when you are lucky to get a 10 minute slot, this show was on for a whole hour with me being the only guest. The way I was feeling, I wasn’t sure I could manage 60 seconds let alone 60 minutes.

The studio was not what I had expected either and was little bigger than a passport photo booth. Rob Littlepage, who was standing in for the Don Yacuzami (the regular Garden Guru) squeezed his way back into the room and donned his headphones.

I sat down next to him but couldn’t get the door closed as my chair leg was blocking the entrance. After some discussion the door was left open and the producer Rick (or Ricky as he preferred to be called) bustled off into the next kiosk where he sat down behind a large glass screen and a bank for dials and buttons.

As I watched the seconds ticking away on the studio clock the intro. music faded in, sounding suspiciously like the theme-tune to the Archers:-and we were off.

Things started well, Rob did the introductions and thanked our sponsors. I manages to talk coherently for the first 20 minutes being periodically interrupted by callers phoning in to ask questions or publicise local events, the most notable being a ‘Toe-mat-toe tasting’, at the local nursery. “32 varieties!!! ……… I don’t know they had 32 varieties.”

I had just started to relax and let my concentration wane when Rob asked me about the contempory Garden show at Chaumont in France. All of a sudden I had a complete panic attack.


I should explain at this point that the French garden show has a theme each year and this year, typical of the French was ‘eroticism’. Knowing how prudish middle America can be, I new that this was not the subject for a Saturday morning breakfast show.

Unfortunately my mouth had other Ideas. Like a frozen rabbit caught in car headlights, I heard myself discussing one particular garden dominated by a pair of large 15ft high pink breasts.

My mind was screaming stop, but my mouth just kept on going. Rob had lost the plot at this point and was having a fit of the giggles.

The producer was wildly flailing his hand across his throat in a sawing motion and I was only saved by the timely interruption of an advert for ‘Sun Dance computers’.

On listening to a tape of the show afterwards, I had even managed to describe the viewing tower behind the garden for those people who wanted a birds-eye view of the giant mammaries.

Oh well, that’s probably the end of my radio career.

Nesting Marigolds

As for Chaumont sur Loire I would thoroughly recommend a visit even if you don’t like gardening. I take the student from the Oxford College of Garden Design there every year.  The Chateau is situated at the top of a cliff overlooking the river Loire and the show is situated in the park behind the castle in about ten acres. You enter, down a spiral staircase build into the hollow of a tree.

Cross a bridge over a 50ft gorge to some steps on the other side and finally, up into the show ground. The exhibits are identical in shape and size and each surrounded by a beech hedge.

Giant Corset

The exhibition attracts submissions from around the world with

every designer interpreting the brief in a different way.

From a nest of pink Marigold cloves to erupting luv bubbles (yes I didn’t understand this one either!) to a giant corset that you both walk through and round to a garden designed to imitate lingerie

Erupting Luv Bubbles

The setting is beautiful, the gardens imaginative and the restrant is to die for. It has to be one of the best (if not the wackyest) garden shows in the world.
For further information on Chaumont-sur-Loire
Tel: +33 (0) 254 209922
www.chaumont-jardins.com

 Negligee screening

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Specifications for Garden Designer Pt 3

The relationship between drawn and written information

On the smallest of schemes, annotated details may be all that is necessary and putting specification and drawing together may also assist the contractor.

However, on larger projects there is a danger that the specification will become dispersed onto several drawings, with repetition and contradictions creeping in. To avoid this, it is recommended that all the specification is found in one place. The drawn details can then linked to the appropriate specification description by systematic cross referencing, using the specifications own clause numbers.

This then leaves the question of the more general information such as the quality of topsoil or the strength of mortar? It is rarely adequate to leave such details to the expertise and discretion of the chosen contractor. In order to provide a professional service to your client, it often requires at least a few pages of specification separate from the drawings attached to the planting schedules, or the letter of invitation to tender.

An imperfect solution

I have touched on some of the obstacles which confront the designer and the contractor when faced with agreeing and achieving the desired standards on site;

• the need for reasonable financial certainty without being too restrictive,
• the huge amount of technical and contractual knowledge required;
  
• the designers’ time needed to tie up the more important loose ends,
  
• the absence of a simple appropriate standard form of contract.
  

Few projects are standard. Most are unique ‘prototypes’ designed and detailed from scratch.
Using an identical specification on every project, is therefore not only inappropriate, but may also be dangerous.

The concept of a ‘model’ specification is rather different from a standard solution because, the ‘model’ specification is designed to be edited by the designer to remove all extraneous information and to insert any additional information the particular project requires. The result is a tailor made document which should help the contractor.

Producing a project specification takes time and eats into the fee but the time is reduced with practice. No specification can be totally comprehensive. The designer’s decision on what to put in and what to leave out is a matter of judgement. That judgement will be made based on several factors such as the complexity of the project, the known competence of the contractor and whether the designer will be visiting site during the construction phase. Specification writing tries to be exact but in practice is an imprecise art.

A ‘model’ specification

The essentials of a ‘model’ specification are three-fold:
First it provides a familiar ‘structure’ within which every subject has its logical place.
Finding the appropriate instructions becomes quicker and easier because of this.
Secondly it can provide a check list of subjects which may need the designer’s attention. The designer can decide either to delete the subject as inappropriate or to include it with or without amendment.
Finally, by offering the designer a model clause the designer has guidance on written style and technical content.
I am sure that many designers have heard of the NBS Landscape Specification or the more modest publication “Specification Writing for Garden Design”(2) These model specifications can provide help and much needed technical guidance for the hard pressed Garden Designer. Writing a specification from scratch is a very daunting task; using a model specification makes that task considerably easier.

Even the best project specification and drawings in the world will not produce high quality work from a poor contractor. Things are less likely to go wrong with a good contractor. So every designer’s priority should be to assemble a list of good local contractors.
Then, provide them with all that essential specification information in writing by one means or another so that a proper price is tendered. Things are less likely to go wrong if the contractor has tendered a realistic price and is in possession of all the relevant information from the start. If things do go wrong, you and your client are better protected if the required quality is defined clearly and concisely.

Specifications for Garden Designer Pt 2

Most designers find specification writing a necessary evil.

Is it even necessary?

In a limited number of cases a formal specification document is probably not needed provided the essential information is given to the contractor in some other written form.

The two types of information

The written information traditionally included in a specification is divided into two main categories –the contractual obligations commonly known as the Preliminaries and General Conditions (the quality of workmanship and materials). Essential content of the Preliminaries which are vital to most projects are the start and finish dates, insurance and health and safety requirements. There are, of course other things which may need to be agreed such as the protection of existing trees, the arrangement of stage payments for work completed or the limitation of working hours, but these matters are often partly covered in a standard form of contract such as those issued by the JCLI, JCT.

The problem is that none of these standard forms of contract is entirely appropriate for small garden projects and even when they are used, they are usually completed after negotiations have taken place and a price agreed. Vital information such as the examples given above is needed before the contractor can tender a firm price. The designer is therefore left with the need to confirm such matters in writing at the beginning of the tendering process.

The options for defining quality

Before attempting to answer the above, let us first consider the question of quality. Unlike contractual and administrative matters, quality is very much more difficult to define. One way is to specify a brand name, but this may financially restrict the contractor unnecessarily.

Another method is to refer to Standards, published by the British Standards Institute or to other standards such as the National Plant Specification. Incorporating another standard by reference is often the most comprehensive and fool-proof method. However this requires a degree of knowledge about the content of those standards, both by the designer and the contractor and this is not always available.

Thirdly, the designer may write a description of quality themselves. To do so, requires practice and the development of a concise and an unambiguous style of writing and requires an depth of knowledge and skill that only the most accomplished parishioners should attempt.

In a limited number of instances, the most direct method of controlling quality is a reference to an agreed sample. This approach can be particularly appropriate for the appearance of hard landscape features like paving or walls.

The sample may be one which is constructed on site by the contractor prior to the start of the main work, or a previously constructed project preferably by the same craftsman. The advantage of a sample is that the client can be fully involved and can understand exactly what they are getting right from the start of the contract.

The use of samples

allows the contractor and his craftsmen to contribute to the creative process and gives them a positive involvement which not only draws on the contractors’ expertise but raises the craftsmen’s commitment and morale.

Monitoring the performance of the contractor is also simplified by making a direct comparison between what is built and the agreed sample.
So not every specification for quality depends solely on a long written description, but, given that there are several possible approaches to specifying quality, all of them in the end will require a degree of written clarification.

Q&A
Do you always right a specification?

Do you use a 'Model Specification' or do you write your own clauses?

Please let me know I'm always interested in you feed back and comments

Why Good Designers Need To Be Good Problem-Solvers Too

Behind every good garden designer you will find – a problem-solver extraordinaire because no design, whether you’re creating a sculpture, a piece of furniture or a beautiful garden will work unless you crack the challenges the project presents.

As the great 20th Century American landscaper once stated: Function Follows Form which, for the designer, means an alchemy of science, common sense and artistic flair or, if you like, a kind of “magical marriage” that needs to take place.

When we teach garden design, we introduce two entirely polar approaches to designing space which is often a difficult concept for students to grasp. You have a given site, which is a given shape and a building (the house or the office if you are landscaping a different kind of project) and your job, as the designer, is the blend the architecture with biology.

This is no mean feat, especially when dealing with smaller spaces and at the same time you are considering the functional or logical organisation of the space you are also working with the artistic element that will appear to effortlessly blend the building with the land.

The first of our two design approaches is what we call Pattern Analysis Design (PAD). Faced with a site plan, the designer creates an interlocking pattern as they design the garden and then allocate different materials – grass, water, paving, planting for example, to each space. This is the design method favoured by the brilliant British designer, John Brookes OBE, but is sadly often very misunderstood.

The second design approach is Survey Analysis Design (SAD) which, as its acronym implies and without the introduction of Pattern Analysis Design as well, can often lead to, literally, very sad, uninspired designs. With the SAD approach, the designer is looking purely at the functional side of how space is allocated and placing the key elements – the terrace, the garage, the vegetable garden – before considering the overall design of the plot.

The fact is, you need to be able to combine both these approaches to design a space that really resonates with its environment and to do that, you need to understand how people behave in a particular space and keep that in mind as you design.

One of the best examples of this is to think about what people do when they walk up to your front door and ring the bell. They ring the bell and they then step back away from the door. What that means, for the designer, is that the area around the front door is a key space which needs sufficient paving to allow someone to step back but still remain in the door “zone.”

A narrow pathway leading to that front door will force visitors to march along, crocodile style and the person who opens the door will not be able to see everyone who is approaching. Similarly, a path to the bench at the bottom of the garden needs to be at least 1.5m wide to allow two people to walk comfortable alongside each other.

So a huge part of good design requires an understanding and appreciation of ergonomics and the psychology of how people use space. Without this, no design, however impressive on paper, is going to work for the people using that space and without this understanding, no design will work properly.