Century & Sensibility: Hestercombe & The Highline

Century & Sensibility

HESTERCOMBE & THE HIGHLINE

Pairings are important.  Some people think eating the "right" food with the "right" wine makes a great meal.  Matching a landscape designer with a plantsman can also make a great garden.  

The Jekyll/Lutyens duo live up to their reputations.  Hestercombe is a duet.  As good a plantswoman as Jekyll was, it is the container that Lutyens created for those plants that make the garden amazing.  As I walked around Hestercombe, I was reminded of another duo right under my nose.  Piet Oudolf, the plantsman of The Highline and Field Operations, the landscape architecture firm that recreated/invented the container for  The Highline.

Oudolf/Field Operations pairing is another example of the melding of two intentions seamlessly coming together.  The hardscape is a perfect evocation of the origins of a former railroad track and the planting design is both a memory and imaginative creation.  This is the genuis of Oudolf.

These two gardens are about partnerships; partnerships that  create a whole  greater than the sum of the parts.  As I begin my Fellowship with the National Trust/Royal Oak Foundation, I hope my partnership will be a reciprocal collaboration.