The British Utilitarian Minimalist Garden

John Medhurst

There was no Chelsea Flower Show this year, no opportunity for the latest garden designers to bend over backwards to create 'stunning' gardens that cost a fortune, look good for a week and condemn any gardener, eager to emulate them, to years of hard work, heartbreak and disappointment.

No matter. What they, the Royal Horticultural Society and its vassal designers, fail to realise is that these gardens are not just 'last year', they are 'last century'. Unobserved by the horticultural elite, garden design has moved on and left Chelsea and Chelsea-inspired gardens behind in favour of a more beautiful and practical solution to modern garden design.

Each century has had its dominant garden fashion. In the 16th it was the Dutch garden. In the 17th the French gardens of Le Nôtre. In the 18th century the English landscape garden was the choice of the rich and powerful, the 19th saw the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement and the 20th the modernist school.

It is possible already, at the start of the third decade of the 21st century, to determine what will become the dominant garden design movement of the era. The British Utilitarian Minimalist Garden has arrived!

The B.U.M . Garden has arrived.

To be completely truthful there were isolated examples to be seen in the late 20th century but it has stormed away of late so that there is scarcely a street, at least in London, where it cannot be seen and admired.

Like all the great gardens of the past, these are designed to display the wealth and good taste of the owner, and in the 21st century it must necessarily be the motor car that demonstrates the affluence and discernment of the householder.

It is the motor car that demonstrates the good taste of the owner.

The motor car takes pride of place in the garden, standing prominently and proudly before the dwelling, a declaration of the discrimination and status of the owner, a fitting focal point for a modern garden. In some gardens it is not just one but two or even three vehicles that are gathered to express the aesthetic interests of the household.

No property is too small for a B.U.M. Garden.

It is necessary to provide the wheels with a solid, viable surface and it is here that the concrete block has been universally employed to achieve a smooth, enduring carpet for both tyres and feet.

In early examples of the genre the hard surface was limited to a space just large enough to allow for the vehicle and for a pedestrian to cross the garden to the house. Pusillanimously, it even permitted a fringe of greenery to encircle the paving or left a solitary tree to mar the prospect. But with a stroke of genius, a bold and enlightened solution to the tyranny of plants has emerged and the entire frontage of the house, wall to wall, fence to fence, is now graced with a good, dependable, solid, concrete mosaic.

Indeed the patterns laid across the paved surfaces in coloured blocks of various hues have to be seen to be believed. You may be sure that there is no room for weeds in gardens like these.

Good, solid, dependable, concrete mosaic.

I think that the seminal moment for this bold development in garden design can be accurately traced back to 1976. It was in this year that the art world was rocked by the exhibition at London's Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain of course) of one of the works of that renowned minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. Entitled Equivalent VIII, it consisted of a rectilinear expanse of 120 bricks laid on the gallery floor. The work became the centre of a storm of controversy, fully expressed in the national press, and Arthur Payne of the Tate was quoted in the Evening Standard as saying 'These bricks have really brought the public in; nothing has attracted as much attention as they have.'

It is perhaps one of the best known works of modern art. Originally there were eight different configurations but the Tate only bought one as a separate work of art, which some said diminished the work, detaching it from the rational complexity of the original installation. Andre had realised that his sculpture should be low whilst canoeing on a New Hampshire lake and sought to keep his piece as level as the water. Not everyone agreed about the value of the work of course: the Daily Mirror thought it to be 'a load of rubbish' and that particularly reactionary critic Brian Sewell contemptuously declared that now any householder could buy himself some bricks and have a masterpiece in his garden. How right he was for that is exactly what has happened, and true to Carl Andre's original conception, the bricks are laid as low as water in a lake.

Now, you might imagine that when the cars are in use away from the home such gardens become featureless but you would be wrong. Strategically positioned around the garden are additional items, elegantly designed mobile sculptures, that are not only functional in providing receptacles for rubbish, but can be moved from place to place so that one is never bored by sameness and can, on a weekly or fortnightly basis, change the appearance of the garden by moving their locations.

Elegant mobile structures.

For some, actually positioning the mobiles themselves is too unadventurous and the local authority operatives are allowed to leave them wherever they wish, adding surprise to mobility, for these sculptures are indeed supplied by the local authorities, who are always concerned about the streetscape and are pleased to improve residents' gardens by, initially at least, offering the artwork free.

Any who seek further distinction can and do personalise the vessels (containers is too mean a word to describe them) by sticking colourful plastic over the original black finish. This is frowned upon by the purists who are content with the pristine archetype.

The effect of these secondary focal points in the garden is augmented by smaller plastic receptacles that prove the owners' concern for the environment by advertising the recycling of paper and bottles. Hiding them away in the house or garage might suggest a lack of responsibility in this respect.

There are two schools of thought regarding the definition of 'minimalist' in the context of these gardens.

Many limit the ornamentation in their gardens to the council-provided receptacles and feel that any further personal expression betrays an excessive interest in outdoor space and perhaps an immodest desire to stamp their personality on the street.

Others, not content with the elimination of plants (which rather annoyingly tend not only to grow and dominate but infiltrate drains, lift up paving and scatter leaves and other litter over the forecourt), add inoffensive, controllable plastic plants to the scene in plastic pots. These require no watering or other tedious attentions.

Plastic plants frame the front door. Pity about the street tree.

I have heard it argued that British Utilitarian Minimalist gardens cannot in fact be gardens at all as they contain no living plants. This is easily countered by reference to the Zen gardens of Japan, some of which do not have plants either, and here in Britain there is not even the need to rake the gravel, a considerable drawback to the Japanese idiom. No doubt learning from the British experience, the gardens of Kyoto will soon be enhanced by concrete blocks.

It is, I suppose, inevitable that the possession of master­pieces of this kind creates a concern in the minds of owners regarding the safety of their artwork and this has resulted in the perhaps regrettable tendency to hide gardens behind concealing walls or fences, depriving the passer-by of the delights of the genre.

What delights lie hidden behind the protective walls?

More considerate minimalist gardeners use railings to contain their masterpieces, but in either case the previously untidy tendency of allowing spaces filled with unsightly plants to dominate the streetscape has, once and for all, been eliminated.

The masterpiece revealed behind railings.

There would seem to be no limits to the expansion of this exciting new art form. There are still streets in London and other British cities where the British Minimalist Garden has yet to penetrate, though this will surely come. Fine examples can even be found in the countryside.

Masterful handling of levels in this countryside garden.

The government's intention to create garden villages throughout the country will provide ample opportunity for the furtherance of this movement in Britain and I am confident that just as the British landscape garden spread around the world in the 18th century, so the 21st-century equivalent will advance around the globe, particularly since in India and China, the new powerhouses of the east, English-style garden city developments are already under construction.

Friendly neighbourly rivalry in finishes.

Now that the garden has been rendered not only practical but beautiful there can be no reason why owners cannot spend their leisure hours watching television, delighting in the antics of Monty Don or Alan Titchmarsh, safe in the knowledge that there is no need to attempt to emulate these out-dated and unfashionable exponents of a dying art form.

Since Planning Permission is not required before creating a British Utilitarian Minimalist Garden, there can be no excuse for anyone to shirk responsibility towards the advancement of this outstanding art form and I call upon all who have not yet embraced the movement to do your bit towards the spread of the BUM idiom. I am sure that we can confidently look forward to a time when every street in London is enhanced by concrete and not marred by plants, for blind, unimaginative authority cannot step in to halt its advance.

The dangers of allowing plants to dominate the garden.

John Medhurst

September 2020