Embryonic ideas
The garden of Spanish landscape architecture practice Lur, is a test bed for the pair’s exciting planting approach
IN BRIEF
Garden for landscape architecture practice Lur, featuring several imaginatively themed garden areas. Basque Country, northeast Spain. Two hectares.
Variable alluvial soil, mostly acidic. Maritime temperate with high summer temperatures.
USDA 9. maxima,
Acorus calamus
NOEL KINGSBURY
PHOTOGRAPHS
Agarden that is a challenge to get to creates a sense of anticipation and heightened awareness at the final arrival, and negotiating the narrow lanes of the wooded valleys south of San Sebastián in the Spanish Basque Country to reach this particular garden certainly generates a sense of intrigue. There is so much that is familiar – the oaks and the surrounding hills mean this garden could easily be in Wales – and an initial overview of the plant selection is reminiscent of many a British garden. But, here it is as if someone has taken a range of familiar plants and arranged them in a way that is completely new. It is quite extraordinarily refreshing, and, one of the most stimulating gardens I have ever set foot in. Welcome to Lur, which means earth in Basque. Lur is not just a garden, it is also the landscape architecture practice of Iñigo Segurola Arregui and his partner Juan Iriarte Aguirrezabal, who have been working together making gardens in the Basque Country for many years while using the garden around their studio as a test bed for many of their ideas. “We wanted to use it for research,” says Iñigo, and indeed there is something of a feeling of many things being tried out: a green roof, a meadow, colour combinations. But there is also a powerful energy and highly inventive creativity.
All enclosed in the embrace of a valley, the sides clothed in a mixture of oak woodland and pasture.
The design of the garden was inspired by the shape of the egg. As soon as you arrive in the garden you might first notice Pittosporum tobira ‘Nanum’ growing in egg-shaped cement blocks in the area opposite the studio. Then there are egg-shaped blocks of unmown grass in the area known as the Pradera (or meadow) to one side, and the shape is repeated in many of the other areas of the garden.
“We multiplied the ovoid shape in a fractal way,” says Iñigo, “using it at different scales to accommodate the various spaces of the garden, each one defined by beech hedges. At the same time, some yews were trimmed like big standing eggs.” Exploring the garden is like a journey through an organic labyrinth with a series of experiences defined by the clear theme in each space. Some are themed by colour, or foliage, or some other clear focus, such as the one filled with primitive plants – what is known as the Jurassic Garden.
If there is a familiarity to some aspects of this garden it may be down to the pair’s links with the UK. Iñigo came here in his teens to study English, and was inspired by the cottage gardens he visited. In particular he cites the gardens of Sissinghurst in Kent and, across the Channel, Le Jardin Plume in Normandy as gardens that have a made a big impact on his thinking. “I wanted to be a landscape architect before I knew what one was,” he says. Later he went on to study landscape architecture in Edinburgh, as did Juan, albeit at different universities.
With this background in mind, Lur makes sense as a British garden with a radically different approach to line – curved rather than geometric. The big, open Pradera can be seen as a lawn, an empty green space, away from the intensity of much of the planting. Unlike a traditional meadow much of the grass is mown, with eggs (that shape again) of long grass, although as Juan explains, these areas don’t produce many wildflowers. “It is too lush and the growing season is too good for the grass, but Lythrum salicaria has been successful,” he says.
Creating colour-themed gardens or borders was a big part of British gardening in the 1990s, but then became unfashionable, so it is good to see it being revisited here, and especially on such an ambitious scale. The Pradera leads into what is known as the Mirror Garden, where an oval pool, both large and deep enough to swim in, is backed by a border dominated by yellow flowers and variegated foliage. Beyond this are other smaller gardens, before the planting segues off into the woods. Innovative transitions are another distinctive part of this garden. Another is seen near the studio where a pastel-hued perennial border bleeds into it the bark mulch groundcover, with odd plants or small groups on their own, so the border lacks a clear edge, as if plants are escaping.
On the other side of the Pradera, there are more enclosed areas, including a White Garden although with its dramatically positioned rocks and grasses it is a world away from the garden famously created by Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst. “White is the easiest colour to work with. I love white,” says Iñigo. Alongside his White Garden – essentially two gardens, one concentrating largely on planting the other on structure – Iñigo has created a White Hydrangea Garden, where the likes of Hydrangea quercifolia and H. arborescens ‘Annabelle’, are the leading players among a chorus of soft-white planting. This along with the Coloured Hydrangea Garden forms a large area that Iñigo has dubbed the dignifiquemos a la hortensia, or dignification of the hydrangea, in which he hopes to dispel the plant’s kitsch associations.
At the heart of this garden is a desire to rethink and reframe many of the most popular garden ideas.
Spanish culture is remarkably inventive, and it is refreshing to see this inventiveness turned to gardens.
USEFUL INFORMATION
Find out more about Iñigo and Juan’s work at lurpaisajistak.com
Facing page When seen from above, the egg shapes that dominate the garden at Lur come to the fore. Sandwiched between two areas of smaller, colour- or foliage-themed gardens are two large, ovoid gardens. At the top, is the area known as the Pradera, or meadow, an area of mown grass with egg-shaped patches of grass and wildflowers allowed to grow taller. Below this is the Mirror Garden with its egg-shaped pool and yellow colour theme. To the left is the practice’s studio with its grass roof and a series of egg-shaped cement planters filled with Pittosporum tobira ‘ Nanum’.