The European New Wave planting movement has decisively affected his work during the past decade, but he comes from quite a different tradition.
Originally trained as an architect, Christopher Bradley-Hole is a thorough-going Modernist, committed to the doctrines of functionalism, asymmetry and architectural unity that that design ideology espouses. A style much influenced by the European New Wave movement, yet horticulturally richer. There has been some backlash from the cognoscenti as a result, but the popularity of this approach when realized at a high level has not diminished.īradley-Hole’s take on a traditional walled garden, where a grid of steel-edged paths contains complex drifts of grasses and perennials like Joe Pye weed and persicaria. The look was given mass appeal in the late 1990s and early 2000s by an upsurge of gardening “makeover” programs on British TV, promoting the delights of decking, barbecues, “water features,” architectural plants in stainless-steel planters and cobalt-blue pots for decoration. This crossover between horticulture and Modernism was a typical British compromise that actually worked rather well. Brookes was influenced by California Modernists such as Thomas Church, but his work and that of his British followers has always been distinguished by an abiding interest in plants.
This design trend was a development of the functionalist, Modernist ideas of John Brookes, who came to prominence in the 1970s with grid-pattern gardens that were emphatically designed for people and their leisure needs, rather than for horticulture, which had previously been the British tradition.
#Modernist garden design free#
FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER: Plants, Design Ideas, Gardening Solutions & More!Ī chic urban look, particularly for city gardens, has been very much in vogue in the UK since the mid-1990s, when it was promoted by (among others) Dan Pearson and Stephen Woodhams.