Arne Maynard and Martha Schwartz come from opposite ends of the spectrum of modern garden design. Both formalists, they draw upon the vocabulary of the classic formal garden — topiary and hedge, knot and parterre, avenue and allée — and transmute it into something modern. But whereas Maynard links the garden with the wider agricultural or pastoral landscape, creating parterres of corn or waving grass, and stilt-hedges of whitebeam, crab apple or purple-flowering Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum), Schwartz uses artificial turf, plastic trees and brilliant colour in a frank invocation of the man-made environment.
The Vanguard Landscapes and Gardens of Martha Schwartz (Thames & Hudson, £36; offer £28.80) consists of an introduction and photographic essays by Tim Richardson on all 32 of Schwartz’s projects to date, together with three enormously interesting essays by Schwartz herself. Wit is Schwartz’s stock-in-trade, as in her notorious Bagel Garden (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979) which incorporated two different sorts of bagels as a repeated motif within a conventional box parterre. Her rooftop Splice Garden for the Whitehead Institute (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986), was a garden of two halves — one French Renaissance, the other Japanese Zen, in only half-playful reference to the institute’s work with gene-splicing — again composed entirely of artificial elements.
Schwartz is essentially a conceptual artist. She takes as her starting point some facet of the site’s history — sometimes ecological, but more often human — which she then expresses in her design. Her most important UK work to date, Exchange Square in Manchester (2000; pictured right), features a long curving watercourse of fractured stone blocks, like a dried-up river bed, alluding to the course of the ancient Hanging Ditch which once flowed there. But the rationale for the development of the site as a whole — two different surfaces, two different levels, linked by a series of curving stone benches-cum-retaining walls — reflects the need to glue together two different areas of the city, one old, one new, and to provide non-prescriptive space for people to use. For Schwartz, “It’s about people, fundamentally.”
As the point of this book is to study, in detail, Schwartz’s remarkable designs it is a shame that many of the photographs are flat, lacking in atmosphere, and even, in some cases, poorly reproduced.
For Maynard, climate and locality are the dominant factor in developing the design. He loves vernacular materials: earth and turf walls, picket fences, park rails, cobbles and flint; long grass, mown paths and wildflower effects. His latest book, Garden Design Details (Conran Octopus, £30; offer £24), is all about creating clean strong lines and simple effects. In an illuminating text he stresses the importance of structure, but structure as not necessarily something complicated. The way you mow your lawn or cut your hedge can transform your garden from something ordinary into something exciting. The book is divided into three sections: verticals (hedges, walls, etc), horizontals (lawns, meadows, water) and punctuation (focal points such as fountains, ornament, seating and buildings), with a final section consisting of eight case studies of gardens from around the world by Richard Warner, Nicole de Vesian, Tom Stuart-Smith and Maynard himself, showing how these elements can be combined. He calls the book “an inspirational portfolio of images and ideas”. The photographs are ravishing, and provide an introduction to the work of some of the best garden designers working in the modern idiom.