The Daily Telegraph Garden designed
by Christopher Bradley Hole
The 2013 Daily Telegraph garden was a contemporary and contemplative composition inspired by three ideas: the making of the English landscape, the Japanese approach to garden making and by modern abstract art.
The garden was a representation of England as a wooded landscape from which openings were cleared to allow settlement, civilisation and cultivation.
English native trees and shrubs were used in a graphic way to create an understory which expressed the way a field pattern has been superimposed on the land. The humble hazel, symbol of the working forest, was shown in a new ‘designed’ form. Oak was shown as a structure – a colonnade of columns crafted from English green oak.
The garden was partly inspired by the book 'In Praise of Shadows', by Japanese writer Junichiro Tanizaki, and his observation of the calm and depth of meaning, such as you would find in handcrafted objects, houses and landscapes.
