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On the face of it , he ’s a most unlikely mentor for this generation of ego - consciously American gardeners . But ask the drawing card of the new , distinctively native panache that has grown up on this side of the Atlantic over the past few decades and a disproportionate parcel lecture of their debt to Englishman Christopher Lloyd .
Christopher Lloyd in typically colorful mode . Photo by : Andrew Lawson .
The truth is that “ Christo , ” as he is make out to an astonishingly broad circle of horticultural admirer and champion , has made a long and distinguished calling of confounding expectations . Son of a well - to - do man of affairs - turned - body politic - gallant , Lloyd inherited a famed garden along withGreat Dixter , the 1450 ’s manor house house in which , at 84 , he still hold up * . Edwin Lutyens , Gertrude Jekyll ’s design partner , had helped Lloyd ’s father ( a noted gardener in his own right ) position out the complex of yew hedgerow , lawn , paths , terrace and borders that skirt the house , and the son could somewhat have been expected to content himself with wreak curator . He could have give the years of his stewardship , National Trust manner , to uphold the position quo . or else , Lloyd took a level in horticulture at the Wye College campus of the University of London and proceeded to make the Great Dixter garden distinctively , gloriously his own .
He became famous in part for his plantsmanship . That was what impress a young Dan Hinkley on his first visit to Great Dixter in 1980 . Seven years later , Hinkley would found Heronswood , the nursery that has become the pre - lofty source for new and rare garden plant life in the United States , and he recall his get together with Lloyd as crucial in his own development as a plantsman .
Great Dixter ’s billow perennial borders . Photo by : John Glover .
What struck him was Lloyd ’s particular sensitivity . His genius , Hinkley realized , lay not only in his cognoscente ’s centre for a higher-ranking mintage or cultivar , but also in the daring vision with which he used his finds . Lloyd ’s style of planting is not the harmonious pastels of English tradition . Rather , he quiz the limits of contrast , oppose discordant peak and foliages to take his coolly architectural landscape with drama . He will , for example , combine the luminous orange tree of a Saint John ’s chamomile ( Anthemis sancti - johannis ) with a magenta purple of an Armenian crane’s bill ( Geranium psilostemon ) , or the bold foliage of a stout Japanese banana with the majestic haze of self - sow Argentinian vervain ( Verbena bonariensis ) .
That point , Lloyd ’s willingness to countenance plants sow themselves and observe their own place within the garden , exemplifies what Marco Polo Stufano say made him hump Great Dixter “ from the first bit I saw it ” in 1967 . Stufano was a young piece in a hastiness then , having just train over management of Wave Hill , a overleap 28 - Accho estate that , over the next couple of decades , he would wrench into the most exciting public garden in the United States . He did n’t meet Lloyd on that trip ; intent on view as many English gardens as potential , Stufano had no time to talk . There was a potent gumption of the man , though , Stufano says , in the “ freedom ” with which he used the plant .
Great Dixter ’s wildflower meadow . Photo by : Clive Nichols .
Stufano would pick up on the use of self - seed plants in his own garden qualification at Wave Hill : “ We always counted on ego - sowings . ” What he witness at Great Dixter , though , on that first tripper ( he has returned many time since and now calculate the proprietor as a friend ) was far more than this simple joke . Lloyd was an early advocate of hayfield gardening ( he credits his female parent with first bringing wildflowers into the area of rough grass through which one approaches the house ) . He has , harmonize to Stufano , a all important fondness for species - type plants or for cultivars in which the wild thanksgiving and beauty persist . This cave in his planting an over-the-top fluidity . At Great Dixter , Stufano found none of the “ paint - by - number ” planting in sharply define block that he so dislike in American gardens of that era ( the late ’ 60 and early ’ 70s ) . or else , Lloyd allow the plants intermingle .
“ They impulsion , ” explains Stufano . “ They flow , they descend over each other , they climb up each other , they fraternise with each other . ” Yet , he append , “ always with an middle to color combining and textural combining . ”
That most difficult horticultural reconciliation deed , of loosen the constraint on the works without abdicating aesthetic control , is something we as Americans still postulate to study , accord to Stufano . Hinkley says that on a visit this past summer he found a example for horticultural matureness : Lloyd ’s appetency for works novelties seems to have slackened , sweep over by a fascination with wrench startling new flavour out of tried - and - dead on target plants by juxtapose them in unexpected ways .
It is Lloyd , though , who ( typically ) has the last word . Soon after taking on a young horticultural partner in crime , Fergus Garrett , in 1993 , he wrote of how the two of them had just ripped out Edwin Lutyens ’ uprise garden to make blank space for an “ exotic garden ” in which they would experiment with plant combinations destine to create a tropical burden in late summer and fall . “ We ’re going places , ” write Lloyd , then well into his senior years , “ and it ’s exciting . ” If there is a flavor of American horticulture , that must be it .
- Lloyd pass on away shortly after the issue of this article and has been greatly escape ever since .
