Veranda The Art of Outdoor Living
The idea of garden rooms is as old as gardens themselves. Our ancestors conceived of heaven as an enclosed garden and The Garden of Eden was the unspoiled place where harmony and happiness reigned… before humans concreted over most of it and left a little patch out the back with a bird table to encourage wild life. Now even this little patch of paradise is under threat as recent trends in garden design have encouraged the time poor inhabitants of modern cities to deck and pave it over. Meanwhile front gardens are increasingly lost to ‘car ports’ as greedy local authorities paint our roads with yellow lines. The result is that London, much admired internationally as a garden city, is losing the equivalent of two and a half Hyde Parks every year. The loss of our green spaces is inevitably damaging both to our environment as well as to our sense of well being.
We obviously need a masterplan to encourage ours city authorities to value our green spaces, and Birmingham’s recent bid to become a garden city to rival Singapore, as well as Thomas Heatherwick and Joanna Lumley’s garden bridge project over the Thames are definitely steps in the right direction. But we also need to inspire and educate people on the many possibilities for outdoor spaces and reverse the damage done by popular programmes such Garden Force. Alan Titchmarsh apologised for being partly responsible for the phenomenal decking boom, and so he might: Retailer B&Q had sales rise from £5,000 in 1997 to £16 million in 2001!
I suspect that vast swathes of Greater London’s suburbs may not be the target market for beautiful books on garden design like Veranda, The Art of Outdoor Living; but the democratic possibilities of photo sharing on mass media will undoubtedly ensure it reaches a wider audience. The visual feast of photographs from Veranda magazine’s impressive catalogue will not be suitable for everyone’s pocket or garden but they will inspire, just as Charlie Dimmock did in her own special way.
