A Divisive Garden

Failure or ?

The garden at Veddw is our joint life’s work. A great many people might say the same about their garden, while being very different by way of their dedication to growing vegetables, having plant collections, or simply gardening for pleasure.

I wanted something a bit different. A garden that would acknowledge and honour the history of the land it sits on and which would be as beautiful, exciting and adventurous as a garden can be. Or at least, one made by two unrich people with one day a week help. Neither of us have been contaminated by any training or horticultural education.

We’ve been at it for thirty nine years, starting with a field on either side of the house. And we open to the public, of course - what would be the point of those ambitions if we didn’t?

Thirty nine year old garden

However, maybe not many people have heard of us. We get groups visiting from all over the world, we have appeared in books, magazines and on televsion, but still, I have the impression that not many people have heard of us. We’ve not hit that critical spot that most makers of all different kinds must wish for: a certain recognition.

And the best and brightest of the professional garden world have yet to visit, with one or two wonderful exceptions. It’s a big question for us - why have the best and brightest not wanted to visit? (Even those living in the same county?) Is it me?? I have no idea and hope I don’t die not knowing. I may keep writing pieces like this until someone tells me. If you know - please tell us.

We don’t have many reviews on Google or TripAdvisor - but here’s a couple to whet your appetite:

Don’t bother

Disappointing. Car parking not sufficient. Garden more overgrown than anticipated - lacking structure or any kind of theme or shape. Not worth the £9 entrance fee at all.

Off kilter is not my style

Not my style of garden; the hedge maze-esque borders reveal garden ‘rooms’ where the plantings, art and aphorisms all seem designed to make one feel off kilter. I didn’t feel much joy or peace when visiting.

So quite often we think ‘failure’.

And then sometimes, someone will give us extravagant, enormous praise, and we think - we’ve made something bloody special here. Wow.

“Veddw is about the best contemporary garden I’ve ever seen. You are genuinely original. It’s powerful. Truly astonishing.” = from someone who should know what they’re talking about, in private correspondence.

“What is great about this garden is not just that it reflects back at us the history of its people. What lifts it into being a serious work is how it takes these themes and gives them a twist, and at the same time twists the language of gardening.” Bridget Rosewell.

"I discovered there were modern and secular interpretations of this tradition – gardens that reflect, illustrate and develop personal philosophies and ideas of beauty; gardens that really are a form of art: Little Sparta, the late Ian Hamilton's garden in Lanarkshire; Charles Jenks' Garden of Cosmic Speculation; the Veddw, Anne Wareham's garden near Monmouth. These gardens are an open-ended, always changing ways of exploring personal meaning and the interior world; they are lovely places that hold together nature and culture; they find meaning in very mundane processes – and these are silent." Sara Maitland

This is a garden which is very ambitious; it is intellectual and experimental, occasionally provocative, but for the most part beautiful and relaxing. Noel Kingsbury

So. Who knows? We open the garden and we feel vulnerable. We know we are being examined by disappointed vegetable growers and plant persons. Then sometimes a big lift comes - and here’s one of them.

Our first Substack visitor and reviewer, Peter Richardson: -

who has kindly agreed for me to reproduce his review here. It follows his account of two other garden visits he made last Sunday: -

“But wait! What’s this a mere hour and a half down the road? It’s a garden I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time, it’s Veddw!

Exclamation marks are appropriate here, we’re on the other side of the coin. From the very first paving slab inside the gate I knew this was something else and OH! That first view coming in! What a wonderful thing to walk into. I’m not sharing it, you can visit and catch your own breath.

This is a very gardeny garden. It reminds me of The Laskett but welcoming and calm and tranquil. If you ever went to that other garden you may know what I mean, if you never did (you may never now) then you know all you need.

Veddw (yes, I’m back on topic) is a perfect echo of landscape. The construct of eyes and minds who are capable of knowing what the heart needs (my Cambridgeshire heart told me it needed to sit and lo, a seat there was. Many seats, each with a character of its own, each hard to leave.)

I find this kind of everything-in-it’s-right-place-ness hard to get my head around. When these Yew were planted was it known they were going to be cuboid sentinels? And what about those over there? Were they always going to be menhirs?).

By far my favourite of the seats, I felt so right here. This is one of the vaguest reviews I’ve ever written.

I’ve worked with gardens which were Designed and this doesn’t feel the same. This feels like Place. Oh this is hard to say! All these bloody feelings!

I didn’t get any of this in the previous two gardens, that was all logical praise/criticism. And now here’s me reduced to a wobbly mess of objectivity.

My (long suffering) husband (who gets dragged around to lots of gardens and never forgets to bring a book and snacks) actually said it was such a beautiful place he wanted to return. CRAZY TALK.

And now I’ve eaten the local cheese, eaten pickles, glugged something, slept in an actual flipping castle.

Let’s see if I’ve got enough bandwidth to upload…”

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So this week, we’re feeling good.