Garden Obelisk City

The garden obelisk goes in. (Well 10 of them actually). In the Rill Garden -

one of the garden design projects that we have been engaged in for some time in Gloucestershire.

We have posted about this project before in Pastel Border Designs.

Very much an interactive process, this garden room. Our lovely and very knowledgeable clients made it very clear when they engaged us to produce a concept for their whole garden that they wanted a dialogue. With a good flow of ideas in both directions. The dialogue has continued over several years. And this individual area of their garden has in truth received more to and fro than most!

And in the end, the design of this garden room relates both to our original garden concept but also to their own ideas.

We have designed the planting, but with free flow of plant thoughts in either direction.

And the obelisks are no different.

We decided the placement of them in the scheme, but our clients selected the type and the colour. We suggested the rose for them and they suggested the clematis.

And this does strike us as a very happy way of working.

Less the garden designer as a kind of 'taste martinet' imposing his or her own ego on a space and more the garden designer as a collaborator with the client.

A few years ago I suggested obelisks to a client who looked puzzled and then asked with some concern whether I did not think that obelisks were 'rather twee'.

I suppose had I really thought that I would not have suggested them!

And I am seriously not thinking that these guys are twee!

One of the eureka moments on the garden design course which Lesley and I both undertook before we started to design gardens was when our tutor, the celebrated garden designer Christopher Pickard, showed what happened when you introduced height into the garden. How it defined the space.

Here, with 10 of the guys,  there is verticality and definition and then some.

It is almost a city of spires!

They flank the walkway with its central rill which leads from the circular pond.

They also flank a seat and the entrances into/ exits from the space.

Helping to bring balance and order to an area that actually has rather a strange outline shape.

With any design there is a stage in implementation when you think that it is getting there.

And with the hard landscaping and planting nearing completion

And the lovely landscape contractors getting the positioning of the obelisks millimetre perfect, this is it.

Yes the humble garden obelisk is delivering the goods!

R and L