Editor’s letter
Wildside, the garden of pioneering plantsman Keith Wiley, is the most exciting and innovative garden in Britain today. Designer, gardener and builder, Keith has created Wildside from the land by his own hand, carving pools and canyons to make spaces inspired by the natural landscape. Broadleaf trees with repeating forms, such as magnolias, apples and acers, thread parts of Wildside together underplanted with perennials, there are pine and birch trees on higher ground and lower, open areas with hummocky grasses punctuated with vibrant colour. Wildside takes its cue from the plant communities that Keith has visited worldwide and modified to make a garden, with energy and originality at the fore.
At the cutting edge of design, gardens are becoming increasingly understated and less garden-like. In US architecture there is a vogue for modernist houses that play on the concept of barns and other farm buildings, with gardens that blur the boundaries between a house and its setting, to the point that there appears to be almost no garden there at all. In this issue, design critic Tim Richardson visits an ultra-naturalistic garden designed by San Francisco-based garden designer Ron Lutsko in California’s Portola Valley.
Formerly the head gardener at Soho House and Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Anna Greenland is an expert kitchen gardener. Her own small garden in Oxford is an extension of her kitchen, and in it she grows lots of delicious things to eat and cook. With an emphasis on productivity and flavour, think sherberty lemon verbena leaves, menthol-flavoured English mace flowers, the sweetest outdoor tomatoes and the nuttiest, most flavoursome squash.
Anna recommends her favourite varieties to grow from seed, for keen gardener-cooks, accompanied by plentiful tasting notes.
I hope you enjoy the issue,