Putting the Concept on Show

When is a conceptual garden not a conceptual garden?

When it’s a show garden, silly.

Visitors to Hampton Court this year surely found themselves questioning the difference as the conceptual and show gardens squared up to each other across the Garden Walk. And the contrast (actually, that should be comparison) was brought into stronger relief when I spoke to Judy Cornford who designed The Eye of the Internet Maze. “I entered it as a conceptual garden,” she said, “but they asked me to be a show garden.”

For me, The Eye of the Internet Maze was a quiet star. Its strong sculptural quality, with clean lines and contrasting textures, made it no surprise to find that Judy trained as a sculptor. She is also shameless in her use of puns.

The garden’s inspired by the problems faced by the older generation when getting to grips with the Internet, so the running water feature by David Harber – the pupil of the “eye” – represented, said Judy, “The everlasting flow of knowledge, which we can all access when we know how.” To reach it you have to skirt puzzlement and confusion (the monkey puzzle trees, and Sarcococca confusa), and think outside the Buxus sempervirens (that’s Box, in case you weren’t sure).

The concave blocks of conifers, steeply trimmed are… Yup, the steep learning curve. And the black leaves of Ophiopogon planescapus nigrescans that subtly edge the conifers? “They’re the eyelashes,” giggled Judy.

Most fascinating was the Wire Netting plant, Corokia cotoneaster, which comes from New Zealand, proved a challenge to track down in this country, and represents the Net. It looks dead, tangled and spiky, but is actually soft and yielding when you dare to grab it.

And how is Judy coping with the Internet? “Not well,” she said. “The problem is that there are so many different ways to do things on the computer. Someone tells you how to do something one way, someone else says something different.” But friend and fellow garden designer Jo Kent, who was helping to set up the garden, was having none of it. Judy, she protested, had learnt a lot since she started over two years ago.

“I’m persevering,” said Judy. And given that Judy completed a degree in Garden Design at Sparsholt College in 2009 and, at 70, now designs gardens full-time and has just won Silver with her first garden at Hampton Court, it seems highly likely that no little old computer is going to stand in her way.