Beth Chatto
Beth Chatto (* June 27, 1923 as Beth Littleford ) is a British nursery owner.
Life
Chatto spent her childhood in Great Chesterfield, Essex. Even as a child she was responsible for a piece of land in the garden of her parents. She attended Colchester County High School for Girls and was then trained as a teacher. Chatto was a member of Colchester Flower Club, where she learned to compile cut flowers. In 1943, she married Andrew Chatto (* 1909), a fruit gardener from Radlett in Hertfordshire, who had lived for a time in the U.S. ( Laguna Beach, California). He came from a London publishing family (his father Andrew Chatto ( 1841-1913 ) founded in 1873 the publisher Chatto and Windus, which grew out in 1855 by John Camden Hotten justified printing ). Her husband Andrew was very interested in plant ecology and although he never published, he collected numerous data on selected ecozones, which he also einsah Russian literature. He was strongly influenced by the German plant sociology. His archive is now, available through the help of garden writer Noel Kingsbury, the Hardy Plant Society and numerous volunteers on the Internet ..
The couple first lived in Colchester at the home of Andrew's parents. Built in 1960, the family of the modern Bungalow House White Barn on a brownfield site on Andrew Chattos fruit nursery and moved from Colchester to Elmstead Market. Chatto helped in the nursery with her husband. With the help of Andrew Chatto, she started a garden around the house to create. Only the old oak trees were preserved, everything else has been redesigned. So Chatto removed old field walls with a bulldozer, to make room for ornamental plants, and leveled a badger, around 1960 to create their "Mediterranean Garden ".
The fruit nursery was closed in 1970, and sold the land, after which the family lived, which was founded in 1967 ornamental nursery Unusual Plants.
Beth Chatto wrote numerous books on the plant of ornamental gardens in " problem situation" (dry, moist, shady ) and undertook from 1983 international lecture tours, partly together with Christopher Lloyd, Australia, Canada and the United States. They also traveled to Morocco and South Africa. Beth Chatto is also interested in music, with Christopher Lloyd, she attended operas in the exclusive Glyndebourne.
Her husband died after a long illness, he suffered from emphysema, 1999. The couple had two daughters, Diana and Mary.
Garden
The garden is situated in Elmstead Market Chattos at Colchester in Essex, a very dry for the English region with an average of 510 mm of precipitation per year and strong easterly winds. It is located on a terminal moraine, the soil consists of gravel, sand and boulder having an embedded chalk.
On the site, there was also a piece of marshland with sources. Chatto designed the drainage ditch to four rectangular ponds that are surrounded by marsh plants. Here lies the bog garden today. Here grow, among other Gunnera, pink ornamental Knöteriche ( Persicaria bistorta ), pike herbs, bamboo, ferns and swamp cypress and numerous brightly colored primrose hybrids. The England very popular Japanese hostas in their different, often variegated varieties are used ad nauseam.
In 1989, Chatto in the shade of giant trees in a forest garden. Here snowdrops, daffodils and numerous hybrid hellebores grow in many pastel colors. In the spring bring red and yellow crown imperial some color in the flat landscape.
An article by Graham Rose in the Sunday Times made Chattos dry garden throughout the UK known and led in 1978 to the publication of her book The Garden dry. The famous gravel garden was to demonstrate the English garden enthusiasts for the " drought year " in 1976 that a garden could do without irrigation. Chatto planted in winter 1991, the former entrance to her house and the unpaved parking lot with plants from Mediterranean and steppe areas. A hedge of Leyland cypress trees provided protection against the wind. The substrate consisted of gravel, but had been improved with humus, as Chatto had their 90 -meter-long "Long discounts " created here in the 1960s, following the example of Gertrude Jekyll. The outlines of the beds followed the then-popular principle of " island beds " and were created with the help of a garden hose into swinging lines, which should mimic a dry river bed. Chatto mixed drought-resistant plants from all continents, the gravel garden contains so Mexican Palm lilies, agapanthus from the Capensis, American agave and Australian eucalyptus trees. Different types of cistus, Holy herb, Hebe, Allium, gypsophila, holly and spurge are very often used. Conifers such as cypress set vertical accents, the North American sumac makes in the fall for flashy colors. Since the installation of the garden was not watered, but thrives excellent. The use of gravel followed the use of bark mulch and straw to keep the garden easy to maintain. When selecting plants Chatto had access to the peripheral studies of her husband. As she admits, she did not follow his advice often.
Since the installation of the gravel garden Chatto registered meticulously the daily rainfall, and her letters to Christopher Lloyd describe in detail each downpour. In Germany, however, she felt disturbed by the sound of a heavy rain country.
Chattos interest in ecology did not mean that they renounced the use of poisons or peat. For the discounts they recommended the "thorough " application of the defoliant 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, this could prevent, however, that the plants propagated itself by seed. She recommends paraquat ( in the EU not allowed) to destroy lawns, Basamid (not approved in Germany ) to earth to " sterilize " and Azulox against ferns. Even after she was changed to " organic " gardening, the roads were still regularly treated with poison.
The garden is open to paying visitors. Opened in 2006, Chatto a café ( tea room ) on the site, where visitors can buy souvenirs and knick-knacks. The well-ordered vegetable garden, which is not accessible to the public, became a haven for Chatto.
Their staff includes the head gardener David Ward, who is responsible for the propagation of the plants. Fergus Garrett worked as a gardener for Chatto, before he moved to Great Dixter to Christopher Lloyd, who gave him more creative freedom.
Style
Chatto rejects high maintenance lawns. Their gardens come up on the ponds, largely without fixed installations from, they are characterized by the arrangement of plants. Accent plants such as Agave americana, candles palm lily or tree heath could be used in place of conventional statues or gazebos. As paths and steps are concrete panels that were created by the husband after her statement in homework. Chatto pays special attention to differences in the foliage and uses plants with large leaves as an accent plant. The change in the foliage was a holiday for the eyes and mind. Frequent use panaschierter varieties in the gardens destroyed deliberately every impression of closeness to nature, the visitor is at all times conscious of being in a show garden.
As a design principle used them like the triangle. She warns that a lack of principles in the garden, as elsewhere, Chaos call .. Color is for Chatto in garden design less important, it stresses that color schemes are often einstellten by itself. Overall, however, they preferred traditional, " delicate " color combinations. But it posed, for example, pink and yellow together, to the horror of Christopher Lloyd. When creating a discounts they stayed first of all to the appropriate environment, then click the form and leaves of plants. Only then do the flowers. The basic planting of the border could be loosened with annuals, herbs and perennials due to repeat certain colors or emphasize. But even a self- sown plant could loosen up a scheme. Overall, I'm always on the correct scale. To avoid an "ice - cream soda " effect, it sets plants with large leaves between those with lots of colorful flowers.
As a favorite plant Chatto called the True bindweed.
Influences
The eccentric plant collector and artist Cedric Morris influenced very Chatto, the plants in his collection formed the basis of their nursery. As a further influence she calls the gardener Graham Stuart Thomas of the operation the Sunningdale Nursery in Surrey. Other plants they received in the 1970s by the "Iris Countess ' Helene von Stein -Zeppelin in farmhouse in running. She was amazed to find so many plants that were completely unknown to her from England. Later she moved plants from the nursery Ewald Hügin in the north of Freiburg, which specializes in drought-resistant plants.
Width effect
Chatto put their plants in the exhibitions of the Royal Horticultural Society in Westminster, since 1976 Flower Chelsea on the show before, where she won ten gold medals from 1977. Was novel in that it also unmodified plants showed by their breeding and exhibition ordered according to ecological criteria.
The success of Chatto has marketed her plants made very popular, so they can be found in the UK now used in many home gardens and have the novelty value they still possessed in the 1980s, quickly lost.
In 2008, the Garden Museum dedicated an exhibition in Lambeth Chatto.
Works
- The Dry Garden. London, Orion 1978.
- The Damp Garden 1982 ( New illustrated edition 2004).
- Plant Portraits 1985.
- The Beth Chatto Garden Notebook, 1988.
- The Green Tapestry, Perennial Plants for the Garden. Harper Collins 1990.
- Dear Friend and Gardener, letters Exchanged in between Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd, 1998.
- Beth Chatto 's Gravel Garden, 2000.
- Drought resistant Planting (photographs by Steven Wooster ). London, Frances Lincoln, 2000. ISBN 978-0-7112-1425-5
- Beth Chatto 's Woodland Garden, Shade - Loving Plants for Year-Round Interest ( photography by Steven Wooster ) Cassell 2002 ISBN 978-0-304-36366-7 (reprinted as Beth Chatto 's Garden Shade, 2008).