Let's Hear it for Good Design - in Gardens or Websites

What Garden Design Magazine does better than anyone is show us what's new and exciting in the art of garden design - and oh, what an ART it is.  In "Why English Gardens Still Rule" we meet Dan Pearson, who "unites a love of plants and the natural world with a kind of stylish functionalism" that appeals to younger gardeners.  So naturally I went to his website to check out his work - no can do.  If YOU can figure out how his website works, let me know. 

So you see, this post morphs quickly into a critique of websites.  And with thanks to Garden Design for their update on outstanding garden designers, here are a few others with Crappy Websites:

• Tony Heywood's site is annoying beyond words - hard to read, slow to browse, too-dark photos.  Too bad, coz the projects look damn good despite the presentation.
• Arne Maynard's site is confusing, busy, and hard to navigate.
• Ann Pearce's site has tiny, frustrating photographs.

So-so Websites:

• The Bannermans' site offers some good photos but they don't give the viewer a sense of the garden at all and they take forever to load.
• Christopher Bradley-Hole's site has more of those too-dark photos and not enough of them. (Reminds me of the joke about the restaurant with bad food - and such small portions.)
• Julie Toll - my notes on her site read "mediocre."

Websites that Wow:

• Fiona Lawrenson's site wows big-time.  And isn't that the purpose of designer sites??
• Andy Sturgeon's site is very good, with great photos.
• Claire Mee's site is uniquely good.  It offers great project photos, plus shots of Claire trekking in Bhutan with clients.  Now that's cool.
• Tom Stuart-Smith's site excels in wow.  Big, gorgeous photos, several for each project.  A winner! Read more about Tom...

The really hot designer in England (we're told he epitomizes the state of British garden design) seems to be Tom Stuart-Smith, who merits a 4-page spread in Garden Design and lots of Chelsea medals. His designs are the marriage of clean design to the love of plants, uniting the English tapestry tradition of intense herbaceous borders with the new naturalistic and eco-friendly movement - think Gertrude Jekyll meets Oehme, Van Sweden. Gang, we don't have to fight the old design v. plants battle; Tom here shows us we can have it all - with the exercise of a little discipline, you impulse-buyers.

Finally, a happy news item.  Dan Hinkley, everyone's favorite plant explorer and owner of the late and "deeply missed" Heronswood Nursery, is Garden Design's new columnist! The executive editor tells us he'll be "taking us with him on his travels, introducing us to his circle of extraordinarily well-informed, well-traveled green-thumb friends for whom the whole world is a garden." His first column takes us to North Vietnam, New Zealand, Berkeley, CA, and the Yucca Do Nursery in Texas. Ya know, I used to think I had to travel the far reaches of the globe myself but it's so tiring.  So thanks, Dan, for doing all that schlepping and reporting back to us.

[Photos:  Top, by Fiona Lawrenson; center, by Claire Mee; bottom, Hinkley (left) with partner Robert Jones.]

Comments

[The County Clerk]

The website in question (up top) seems to need a flash plug in. (I have it, so I was fine.) But then the Navigation Tools on the FIRST PAGE don't seem to work. So it looks screwy... like it doesn't work. One might be prone to stop there, but don't.

If you click the words under the picture, you go more places... each navigable by clicking little white squares. The point is this: there is plenty of stuff to see there.

And by the way, this post has given me a total "jones" for summer." It is 11 degrees. Thanks. Now my day is lost to daydreams.

But happily so.

[Gloria]

I have admired Dan Pearson's work since seeing it highlighted as one of 10 top designers changing landscape design back in the 1990's.Piet Oudolf was one of the others as was Alain David Idoux whose work is wonderful.
U.S. designers took longer to change led of course by the west coast.

I noticed in Dan pearson's own garden that the style becomes rather like most gardener's that love plants,very full.
Dan said in a quote that he was growing as a designer becoming more of a purist, learning restraint. Very true in his public work.

[Gloria]

Wolfgang Oehme and James Van Sweden
have been doing an awesome job here in america. Although Oehme is from germany since teaming up with James Van Sweden they have created many wonderful american gardens.
Isn't it strange that it took germans and the dutch to begin appreciating american native plants and a style of landscape that best portrays them?

I love this from the
Oehme/Van Sweden website...
Design Philosophy:
The New American Garden
Do gardens have to be so tame, so harnessed, so unfree? What's new about our New American Garden is what's new about America itself: it is vigorous and audacious, and it vividly blends the natural and the cultivated."

--James van Sweden

In sum, it is a basic alternative to the typical American garden scene--more relaxed, less like a formula, and more sympathetic to the environment. Plants chosen for the New American Garden, especially perennials and ornamental grasses, require less maintenance, no deadheading or pesticides, and only limited water and fertilizer. These plants welcome change seasonally and, as they mature, botanically.

[Peggy]

I was able to access Dan Pearson's web site while I was signed in on AOL! Here is the url to the second screen. Give it a try.
http://www.danpearsonstudio.com/index_02.html

The photos of his design projects in England are worth the visit to the web site.

[Jill Nokes]

Apologies for commenting here, as this query is not pertinent to the story above. But am I hallucinating, or did you have a story in the past couple of weeks about an estate in England that was given a make-over by Piet Ouldof? The photos were really fascinating, but now I can't remember where I saw it. If you have time to remind me, I would appreciate it.