Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Gardener and garden designer, best known for her work at the National Trust Garden at Tintinhull, and a leading author and lecturer on garden design.
On the island
Eight records
I wanted to connect myself, as it were, with America, because my grandmother was American... I find it's quite emotional for me... it's the sort of Romeo and Juliet thing. And it also is the sort of date when I was at Cambridge and we were listening to things like that.
James Galway and The Chieftains
This is right back to my childhood in Ulster, and it's the Londonderry air... it was written in Limoveddi, which isn't very far from my home, so I thought it was very appropriate.
This is Kathleen Ferrier singing... it was written in the Glens of Antrim in Northern Ireland... it's extremely emotive from me and I really love it.
Dove SonoFavourite
One of the very first operas he and I went to together was the marriage of Figaro, so I've chosen the Countess singing devisono... it expresses how one quite often feels oneself... you seem to have enormous number of mountains to climb.
Variation No. 3 from Cello Suite
Jacqueline Johnson and the Oxford Cello Ensemble
Mark Judas Clarke is my nephew and my godson... he helped me choose all my records for this programme, and this is something he's written.
Praise to the Holiest in the Heights
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
I've chosen because of my husband John. He really loved Elgar... I think he would like as well.
This is really it's the words in a way which I love most... it gives one a sort of feeling of the country and landscape.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
I'm just having it because I love it and it seems a fitting end to our discussion.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:10Which is more important in gardening, the practical or the artistic?
I think really both are terribly important. I just know that I didn't really want to garden till… I went at the end of my twenties to Tintinhall… it was the first moment when I realized gardening was about beauty… I think that is tremendously important, but I believe that you probably could be a very good designer without being practical. But I think all my writing and designing depends on the experience I've had as a gardener.
Presenter asks
5:32How did you come by Tintinhall? Did you apply?
Yes, I suppose I did, more or less. I knew that I was going to separate from my first husband, so I wrote to the Gardens advisor of the National Trust… within a few weeks he wrote back and said that this house the tenant was leaving. And would I be interested? It wasn't a job. We actually paid them rent.
Presenter asks
15:09What was it like when you first got to grips with the garden at Hadspen?
Well, luckily for me, Relly, my mother in law… wasn't at all interested in gardening. So the garden had been made by my husband's grandmother… Rather neglected… It was full of bindweed and grand aldar and, really frankly, a mess. It is about nine acres. So that was a great challenge… I realized that I must learn a lot of garden history… I joined the Garden History Society and visited a lot of gardens, and visited particularly Italian gardens, which was a huge hugely important moment in my life.
The keepsakes
The book
Henry James
I thought I would take the one that I think is the most difficult, which is the Golden Bowl. Um because in a way it's a sort of detective story, and I think that you can read it again and again and find different meanings to Henry James's extraordinary sentences.
The luxury
I really want to take my laptop computer with me because I would like to try and write a novel.
Presenter asks
20:22What is it about gardening that makes it therapeutic or an escape?
I think what it does for me… is that you are always working feeling an optimist because you don't get immediate results. You're working for six months ahead. This whole time scale thing… is what I find the therapeutic thing… I believe it is because you're always thinking of the next year, and you're always incredibly optimistic about it. You think that next year I'm going to have the best blue salvia border in England or in the world… And I think that's what keeps you going, because you're imagining… this wonderful visual image of beauty.
Presenter asks
21:34Why did you decide to write a book about gardening?
Well I didn't really decide I was going to write a book about it. I went to Woolworths and bought a typewriter… and I said to a publishing friend, I'm now going to write my magnum office. I had no idea what I was going to write, and he said, Well, actually, I was thinking of writing asking you to write a book about the sort of restoration you've been doing at Hadspon. And I frankly didn't really believe him… about six weeks later he rang up and said, Are you doing a synopsis for me? And I said I didn't know you were serious. And then sat down and did it. I didn't find it at all easy. I had to learn a huge amount… because I wasn't trained as a gardener, one is very aware of being in a way an amateur breaking into a professional world, so you've got to be ahead to be particularly careful.
“I think I really probably like the writing best of all. Because of the writing, of course I do a lot of garden design. And the two things combine in making you continually or in a sort of learning process all the time.”
“It was the first moment when I realized gardening was about beauty, because it was such a wonderful garden. I mean, it was like going to look at pictures in a museum, in a gallery. You came out of it almost exalted.”
“I think America has in many ways transformed me. Now you have to be very careful when you come back to England not to behave in that way, because the English wouldn't like it at all. But it has helped me grow in confidence.”
“I think what it does for me, and I suspect it does for other people, is that you are always working feeling an optimist because you don't get immediate results. You're working for six months ahead. This whole time scale thing that you're working for is what I find the therapeutic thing.”
“I think again, it's rather like gardening. I mean, I would be optimistic about being rescued. I don't know that you would survive if you thought it was forever. I think you would feel there was going to be a ship hoving into sight quite soon.”
“Really, the passion of my life is Henry James. I admire his writing more than anybody else's, and I thought I would take the one that I think is the most difficult, which is the Golden Bowl.”