ASLA UTAH AUGUST 2024 NEWSLETTER

UPCOMING EVENTS

**BioGrass Sod Farms Lunch & Learn Wednesday, Sept. 18th, 12:00pm WHERE: 8630 S. Redwood Rd West Jordan UT 84088**

**PARK’ing DAY 2024 Friday, Sept. 20th, 10am - 6pm WHERE: 9th & 9th, Salt Lake City**

**SAVE THE DATE ASLA Utah 2024 Awards Event Thursday, October 24th, 5:30-8:30pm More details soon**

————-—SAVE THE DATE ————-—— ASLA Utah 2025 Annual Conference Dixie Convention Center, St. George, Utah! Friday, April 11th, 2025

**ASLA National Conference 2024 October 6-9, Washington DC.** **MORE INFO HERE**

Leadership Express

Paul Stead, ASLA Utah President

If you are interested in getting involved with ASLA Utah Chapter contact: Tyler Smithson, @tyleraslautah@gmail.com

Inspiration from England

Geoff Ellis - ASLA Utah Memorial Fund Manager

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to England to attend the Chelsea Flower Show, the world’s premier horticultural exhibition. The displays, some of them installed at a cost of more than $100,000 each, were truly impressive and well worth seeing, although the crowds were an experience that I’m not eager to repeat. We also visited some of the most famous gardens in the southern and central parts of the country. England is renowned for its gardening tradition, and the places we saw did not disappoint.

At one end of the spectrum was Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill. It represents landscape design on the grandest of scales, where an entire lake was created out of farm fields, and hundreds of acres were converted into a rolling, pastoral landscape just to provide a suitable setting for a Baroque palace of gigantic proportions. Formal gardens, vast meadows, lush forests, and miles of tree-lined promenades were planted to emphasize the importance of the estate.

At the other end of the spectrum was Barnsley House, with a relatively modest garden of four acres. It is a horticultural gem by the 20 th -century author and gardener Rosemary Verey. She began as an amateur knowing very little about garden design but soon demonstrated an instinctive talent that not only brought admirers but also commissions to design gardens for King Charles and Elton John. She combined garden styles in a thoughtful way that creates a harmonious setting rather than a clashing hodge-podge, and she popularized the idea of making herb gardens and even vegetable gardens into something ornamental rather than hiding them away.

Sissinghurst Garden offered insights not only into garden design but also the darker side of history and the brighter side of human relationships. Originally a grand Elizabethan castle, it was later used as a prisoner-of-war camp. By the time the writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson bought it in 1930, it was in ruins and the courtyards were full of rubbish. Yet they saw its potential and went to work creating something more beautiful and unique than they could ever have created in a more convenient empty field. He provided a firm, orderly, architectural vision for the garden, while she filled it with exuberant masses of flowers, shrubs, and vines, giving life and richness to the design. Dark green hedges and ancient brick walls divide the garden into outdoor rooms, each with a distinctive theme, such as the White Garden, the Purple Border, the Rose Garden, and the Cottage Garden. Creating Sissinghurst was a shared passion for this odd couple (you can find out more about them in the book “Portrait of a Marriage” or the television series of the same name), reflecting their unconventional yet loving marriage.

We also visited Hidcote, a beautiful estate that provided the original inspiration for outdoor garden “rooms,” and Hever Castle, the ancestral home of Anne Boleyn. Both of these places have a U.S. connection, as it was wealthy Americans who restored them in the early 20 th century and brought them to their present glory. Our tour was rounded out by Kiftsgate, Kew Gardens, Wisley Garden, Batsford Arboretum, and King Charles’ Royal Gardens at Highgrove, where we were not allowed to take photos because of security reasons. All of these places were well worth seeing, and we drooled over the lupines, foxgloves, clematis, and other flowers growing to a perfection we can only dream of in the desert.

In Utah we are not blessed with the abundant rainfall and mild climate of England, nor do we have romantic ruins and castles with hundreds of years of history. Therefore it would be difficult to create truly authentic English gardens here. Nevertheless, there is much to learn from them, such as a sense of form and color, a responsiveness to the constraints and opportunities of a site, a love of plants both for their own sake and what they can contribute to a design, and a willingness to let garden plants thrive and look their best in the locations that best suit them.

What an amazing experience it was to board a plane in SLC and arrive several hours later in a foreign country! I highly recommend traveling to see gardens in other parts of the country and other parts of the world, if you can. You will come back with fresh ideas and a new perspective on gardening in Utah.

ASLA UTAH EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ELECTION RESULTS

PRES. ELECT

JESSE ALLEN

Special Thanks to ASLA Utah 2024 Sponsors & Corporate Partners for their Support!

Platinum Sponsors
BioGrass | Great Western Recreation | Rain Bird | Victor Stanley

Corporate Partners
Bockholt Designs | Calsense | Denton House | Io LandArch | SEGroup

ASLA UTAH AUGUST NEWSLETTER