Weeding the Web

Morgan Stanley's Garden moves into Great Ormond Street Hospital - Chris Beardshaw on DIY SOS Big Build

Given the complex nature of many of the conditions treated here, parents can often spend months on end at the hospital. And for some of our smallest patients, the hospital is the only home they’ve ever known.

Dr Vin Diwakar, Medical Director at Great Ormond Street Hospital

"Fallen Deodar" by Jilly Sutton, carved from a fallen Himalaya Cedar (Cedrus deodara). Known for carving large heads, Sutton sandblasts and limes them to create their textured finish. The sculpture has a quiet emotion that can be read several ways.

Put this way, you can see how great a gift a garden might be. In a children’s hospital like Great Ormond Street, which is so geared up to helping patients and families get on with normal life under abnormal conditions, the lack of somewhere to go to think quietly and escape from the bright lights and constant noise of a large hospital has been sorely felt.

Not any more. Joining the school where children can continue their education; a chapel; a Citizen’s Advice Bureau; parent accommodation and other services, is a green retreat right at the heart of the hospital. And we get to see all the complications of its installation this week on BBC’s DIY SOS Big Build.

The water reflects the tree canopy and sky.

A garden in a well

Given the brief, it’s not surprising that RHS Gold-winning garden designer Chris Beardshaw leapt at the chance to take on the challenge. Two-fold, it demanded, not only the creation of a garden in a difficult space, but one that Morgan Stanley would be proud to sponsor at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

“It’s the first one I’ve done which has been quite as specific,” Chris told me at the show in May. Fortuitously, the size of the finished garden is very close to the standard plot size at Chelsea. Sixty extra square metres, not in the Chelsea design, are taken up with an additional terrace and pathways.

“It’s two storeys up over an old Victorian roof,” Chris said, “in the well of a ten-storey building, so there’s very little light direct into the garden.” It’s also overlooked by Intensive Care and the arterial corridor in the hospital. He first visited the hospital to talk about the challenges of a garden within its confines a year earlier. “We wanted the most people to see it most easily. It is at the genuine heart of the hospital.”

Light coloured flowers bring light into the shadows.

It is very much a contemplative space. “The point is this is for parents,” he added. “It’s a green chapel, somewhere they can catch their thoughts.”

Clinicians appreciate the need. “Having a quiet space can be invaluable, providing a much-needed place to pause and think when needing to make difficult decisions,” said Dr Diwakar. London has plenty of green spaces, but for some they’ve never been an option. “Things can change for our young patients in a single moment, so even a five-minute walk away from the hospital feels just too far.”

Garden design reflects Great Ormond Street philosophy

It was talking with the clinicians, parents and patients that helped Chris create the philosophy of the garden. “The way in which the hospital works makes a unique relationship between parents, clinicians and children. In many hospitals you tend to hand yourself over. Here there’s a genuine dialogue.”

In the design, this element resolves itself into groups of threes—of pavilions, types of Cornus, circles. “Many parents feel as if their child is flawed. I also try to capture the fact that childhood is perfect. In geometric terms, the circle is the perfect form.” In the Taxus baccata topiary domes and pools of planting, and the main circle of planting that intersects with the canal, he represents this perfection.

'Joy' by John O'Connor, based on his daughter, Isla, shows a child aiming to reach the heights.

Planting-wise, there is no coherence or obvious order, to reflect how children flit and move unrestrained. “It represents the ephemeral nature of childhood,” said Chris. Childhood is also represented by the statue 'Joy' that stands at the end of the canal, based on the artist's daughter Isla, who has “a boundless sense of elation”. “You think you know them for a split second," says Chris, "then there’s a glint in their eye and they change. Here the play of light changes with the water, waterlilies open and close. It’s a different experience each time.”

An awkward spot for a garden

Less obvious in the design are the constraints presented by the site. The deep well of enclosed space could have made it claustrophobic, but it has a tree canopy that breaks up the impression of overbearing surrounding walls. Deep shade is dealt with using lush planting, including Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’, Arum italicum ‘Marmoratum’ various hostas, geraniums, paeonies, primulas and Dryopteris, but neither of these challenges was the most important consideration.

"Each acer weighs 3.5 tonnes and they sit on the original columns that support the roof.” The roof structure also demanded planting beds of 700mm, filled only with a lightweight growing medium. “It all governed how we utilised space.”

Happily the constraints work to create a classical geometry that adds the desired serenity to the tapestry of trees, topiary, hedging and herbaceous plants. They also didn’t hinder Chris, sponsored by Morgan Stanley, from gaining a Gold at RHS Chelsea.

Nick Knowles with Chris Beardshaw and the rest of the DIY SOS team on site at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Don't miss it on DIY SOS Big Build

We’ll hear a lot more of the technical challenges when DIY SOS’s Nick Knowles and his team are shown transporting the garden across London and craning full-size trees over the buildings, not to mention his scepticism that such a small green space can help parents who are watching their child in pain.

It promises to be a fascinating and, yes, emotional programme. “This project is one of the most significant and poignant gardens of my career,” said Chris. I know I’ll be glued to BBC1 Thursday 10th November at 8pm.

NB In case you're wondering, as I did, what happened to the canal when the garden moved to Great Ormond Street Hospital, it was decided not to include water as it was not worth the risk of water-borne diseases in a hospital situation.

 

Dutch Flowers exhibition at the National Gallery

Dramatic lighting, nuanced texture, burning colour - each picture in Dutch Flowers, just opened at The National Gallery, is like a whole theatrical performance in itself. 

N-0796 Jan van Heuysum Flowers in a Terracotta Vase Jan van Huysum Flowers in a Terracotta Vase 1736 Oil on canvas 133.5 x 91.5 cm © The National Gallery, London. This is the picture that copyists are most likely to ask permission to reproduce and it's full of Rococo exuberance.

 

You might think that the show has been cleverly scheduled to coincide with The Year of the Garden here in the UK, but actually it's just coincidence. What's prompted the exhibition is the arrival of several Dutch flower paintings on long-term loan from a private collection; they're combined with ones owned by the gallery, to create a 200-year progression of the art of flower painting.

Jan Breughel the Elder, Still Life with Tulips, Chrysanthemums, Narcissi, Roses, Irises and other flowers in a Glass Vase. 1608-10. Oil on copper. 35 x 25.2 cms. © Private Collection, Hong Kong.

Curator of Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Betsy Wieseman, is especially delighted with the picture that kicks off the show (above). "This is an incredibly generous loan," she said, "and very important as it allows us to start from the beginning."  By Jan Breughel the Elder in 1608, it carries the essence of the genre: ornate vase, numerous different flowers, a combination of the real (the botanical exactitude) and the ideal (all seasons together in one vase, and not a spotty leaf in sight).

For gardeners, as you've probably already spotted, it's a fascinating display. Around the walls you'll find anemones, primulas, honeysuckle, morning glory, striped canary grass, Spanish Iris, columbine, Narcissus tazetta, Hyacinth, Tulipa gesneriana... I could go on. What makes these paintings so fascinating, though, is that they don't just wow us with their accuracy.  "Dutch flower paintings' naturalism and detail resonates down the ages," said Wieseman. "but they are also portraits, given the same importance as human beings." This is what holds our attention.

When flowers were first depicted in their own right, at the turn of the 17th century, this emerging genre was inspired by increasing scientific interest in horticulture. New botanical gardens in The Netherlands provided opportunities for academic study, an international trade in exotic cultivars had sprung up and, by the 1630s, Tulipmania had taken hold.  Even though prices for exotic bulbs soon crashed, the Dutch fascination with flower painting continued. Perhaps this isn't surprising when you realise that nearly 200 new species of flowers were introduced to The Netherlands in this century.

Jan Davidsz. de Heem Flowers in a Glass Bottle on a Marble Plinth, about 1670 Oil on canvas 50 × 40.9 cm Private collection © Photo courtesy of the owner

As you progress around the walls (the paintings are all in one room), something becomes clear: developing taste, which is all the more fascinating for what it tells us of contemporary society. Early pictures are flat, symmetrical, with everything visible, as befits a picture that wants to display the blooms with botanical accuracy. These are 2D display cases. The flowers glow against a dark background that turns their colours into jewels. Some are blooms that are too precious to be cut, so this was a way to bring them into the house. For some of those commissioning the pictures, it was a way to boast of their prize specimens and the artist would be instructed in what had to be included. One conjectures that some blooms were included more as wishful thinking - with hopes to impress by pretending to own one? "Quite possibly," laughed Wieseman. And just think, with a glowing rendition on the walls of your study, you'd never have to utter the pathetic cover-up, "You should have seen it last week..."

In keeping with fashion (think, contemporaneous Dutch vanitas pictures) earlier flower paintings include a vanitas element - the falling petals and insect damage to remind the viewer of the ephemeral nature of beauty and that we are all mortal.  As the decades progress, bouquets take on asymmetry; blooms - even expensive ones - are depicted overlapping with others rather than shown complete, to create a more natural sense of depth. In Jan Davidsz de Heem's Flowers in a Glass Bottle on a Marble Plinth (above) the flowers seem to explode outwards; the glass vase reflects the window. Increasingly Baroque, compositions use curves and strong axes to add depth and movement. Jan van Huysum introduces dramatic lighting which, passing through the bouquet, creates a sense of space. Detail is still meticulous, though; even the mosses are identifiable.

Rachel Ruysch, Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Tulip, 1716, Oil on canvas, 46.5 × 36 cm, Private collection, © Photo courtesy of the owner

By the end of the 18th century, style has changed again. Backgrounds are lighter, and the bouquet has often been moved, in its ornate vase, out into the garden. Some of the arrangements are impossibly top-heavy. There's an air of fantasy but the Rococo sense of lightness has been replaced by a heavy hint of classicism. The cornucopia includes fruit, dead birds, fish and nests of eggs, not as an injection of vanitas, but as the artists' way of broadening the genre, as Jan Davidsz arguably had a hundred years before by including hops and wheat in his bouquets.

Jan van Os Fruit, Flowers and a Fish 1772 Oil on mahogany 72.2 x 56.7 cm © The National Gallery, London. Impossibly top-heavy.

Changing fashions in horticulture are also visible. Tulips, irises and roses are pretty constant, but from 1730s double hyacinths are fashionable and, offering an irresistible horticultural challenge, pineapples enter the scene.

If flower paintings have, till now, seemed a minor strand in art history, this small but exquisite show puts them in a deserved spotlight. Quietly, though, they have always attracted attention.  "They're absolutely among the favourite paintings in the Gallery," said Wieseman. "The most requested painting by copyists is Jan van Huysum's Flowers in a Terracotta Vase."

The exhibition is free and runs until 29th August. And by what appears a lovely coincidence, various English Heritage properties have planted up their gardens with contemporaneous tulips.