An American in Bath
For its first UK commission, the US design firm Oehme, van Sweden has created a New American-style garden in a very British setting
So what, exactly, is a New American Garden? The curious can find out by visiting the American Museum & Gardens at Bath, where a new garden of this name opened last year and is now in the first f lush of its maturity. The garden is notable because it is the only British project completed thus far by the Washington DC-based firm of Oehme, van Sweden & Associates (OvS), founded in 1977 by German plantsman Wolfgang Oehme and American landscape architect James van Sweden (both now deceased). OvS established itself early on as the distinctively American voice of what came to be known as the New Perennial Movement in naturalistic planting, later developed by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf and adopted to varying degrees by many British designers. The American version of the style is considerably bolder and more robust in appearance than the European look, chiefly because of the difficulties created by extremes of climate across much of the USA. OvS has tended to use a fairly minimal palette of plants – which it knows will survive and thrive – deployed in broad swathes and large groupings, as opposed to the rather more mingled approach of the Europeans.
An American garden at the American Museum is clearly an appropriate idea, and it is fascinating to see the OvS style in a quintessentially British setting. What is more, lead landscape architect Eric Groft – who worked closely with Wolfgang and James and might be described as the ‘keeper of the flame’ of the OvS style – has used the opportunity to create a visual celebration of the development of the firm’s planting style. Before any planting could go in, OvS worked on a masterplan for much of the 125-acre estate, clearing the views down into the valley and flattening and extending the lawn immediately adjacent to the Georgian mansion that contains the museum. The New American garden’s design is based on the concept of a circuit walk around the entire two-and-a-half-acre space, an idea taken from Thomas Jefferson’s garden at Monticello.
Visitors enter via a pair of jaunty entrance pavilions, their form based on that of a Regency tea caddy exhibited in the museum. A terrace provides views across the whole space, and in season the scent emanating from a collection of American roses (hybridised in the USA) rises up from below. This intervention feels slightly out of kilter with the rest of the planting, but one is soon immersed in ‘ first-phase’ OvS planting near the house, featuring rudbeckias ( R. fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’, tall R. maxima and R. laciniata ‘Herbstsonne’), achilleas and three kinds of nepeta, bolstered by miscanthus grasses and old standby Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’.
In its first season the scale appeared rather awry because, as Eric wryly comments,
“The perennials have consistently over-achieved, while our famous grasses have
The American version of the New Perennial Movement is considerably bolder and more robust
The design is based on the concept of a circuit walk, an idea from Thomas Jefferson’s garden
under-achieved.” In addition, certain plants that might play a supporting role in the USA have in the UK taken centre stage, notably the tall Allium ‘Summer Drummer’ and acanthus plants which grow to 2m. The alliums mingle with achillea and rudbeckia, though Eric notes with a slight sense of wonderment that he has never seen the achillea flowering at the same time as the rudbeckia in the USA. Hylotelephium ‘Herbstfreude’ appears as a key OvS foundation plant – “We often use it at path corners,” Eric explains, “just to hold it all down and let the fireworks go off beyond.” Those fireworks might include simple, muscular combinations, such as globular alliums with feathery pennisetum grass and spiky acanthus, or bristly purple Liatris spicata with clump-forming Coreopsis verticillata ‘Zagreb’. A group of five Magnolia virginiana provide a sense of scale next to the building and a screen wall.
The tone of the planting alters appreciably as you wander down towards the lip of the valley and along a new path made at its edge. A more woodlandy feel has been introduced with a glade-like canopy of tulip trees (still young) and large groupings of Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ and H. arborescens ‘Annabelle’, euphorbia, deschampsia, daylilies, blue agapanthus, Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’ and Viburnum opulus ‘Compactum’ for autumn colour and berries. There is also a small eruption of desert planting featuring American prickly pear Opuntia humifusa and aeonium, fringed by panicum grass.
The path descends towards the base of a turf amphitheatre, where great swathes of lysimachia create what Eric describes as a ‘white hush’, with groups of Miscanthus x giganteus ‘Aksel Olsen’ and bands of rudbeckia. “What I didn’t anticipate was everything blooming at once – and for so long!” Eric says. As it stands, the New American Garden forms an interesting counterpoint to another nearby garden within easy reach: Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth, in Bruton, Somerset. A twin visit provides the ideal opportunity to compare and contrast the European and American approaches.
USEFUL INFORMATION
Address American Museum & Gardens, Claverton Manor, Bath BA2 7BD. Tel 01225 460503. Website americanmuseum.org Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11am-4pm until 22 December; 14 March to 1 November, 10am-5pm. Admission £7.50.
What I didn’t anticipate was everything blooming at once – and for so long