Monday, June 6, 2011

Form Follows Function at the Oxford Botanic Gardens



It is impossible to visit the University of Oxford Botanic Gardens without first passing by the rose garden in front of the Daubeny House, a building of Magdalen College that shares the property. The rose garden, while small, embodies the characteristics of a traditional western garden: symmetrical, elegant, and immaculate. Without paying any entry fee passers-by can walk through this small garden and imagine it as a shadow of the landscape one might see beyond the stone walls of the Oxford Botanic Gardens. Such expectations would be theoretically flattering, though unfounded.


The Oxford Botanic Gardens finds its origin not in pleasure or aesthetics, but in purpose. In the early 17th century Sir Henry Danvers provided the first endowment for a scientific garden. The site has served as a resource for natural medicine and scientific research ever since. The centuries of history behind the garden are embodied in the landscape layout of the premises. The large and central Walled Garden constitutes the oldest part of the design. Other areas of the Oxford Botanic Gardens—the Rock Garden, the Water Garden, and the greenhouses—exist outside the original walls as more recent additions.


Besides telling the chronology of the gardens, the landscape plan also tells the story of an aesthetic evolution from symmetry to asymmetry. The Walled Garden is organized upon a central axis that runs from Danby Arch, near the entry to the gardens, to the passage out to the Rock Garden at the opposite end. Two conic topiaries, the only two plants in the garden pruned into a purposefully aesthetic shape, frame the central walkway punctuated by a circular fountain at its centre. Other paths cross the Walled Garden in perpendicular grids, establishing rectangular greens where geometry continues to prevail in regularly sized rectangular plots. Each plant is labelled with a scientific exactitude that complements the symmetry of the garden. However, despite this framework of symmetry the Oxford Botanic Gardens is no typical English rose garden. Besides the obvious lack of roses, the landscape occasionally breaks the rule of symmetry. Trees sparsely flank the regular walkways at irregular distances; evergreen trees stand in proximity to deciduous trees with obvious incongruity.


The asymmetry increases as visitors pass through the wall at the far end of the Walled Garden and gain an initial glimpse of the Rock Garden and plots beyond it. An oval pool welcomes visitors to this new vista and establishes a deliberate deviation from the superficial regularity of the Walled Garden and its circular pool. Roughly hewn stones covered in flora surround the oval pool in a steeped fashion, though the formation rises higher on the left side than the right. The right side seems to overcompensate where the stone encroaches further out onto the central axis pathway than on the other side. Beyond the rock garden, paths extend in diagonal and curved fashions, contrasting with the vestiges of symmetry evoked by the rectangular plots of the fruit, vegetable, and herb collection on the east side of the yard. On several of the larger plots of land nothing grows at all, the soil lying fallow for future gardening.


The shift towards asymmetry beyond the Walled Garden is unmistakable, though one might attribute it to the irregular boundaries of the outer garden. However, no such excuse exists for the final and most modern area of the Oxford Botanic Gardens, the greenhouses. Each greenhouse has regular rectangular perimeters—a blank canvas for the landscape architect. Yet, rather than conforming to the conventions of symmetry, the landscape of each demonstrates a unique, concerted effort to explore the possibilities of asymmetry. The largest of them, the Palm House, appears conventional upon first entry. A straight path down the middle of the greenhouse mirrors the effect of the Walled Garden, leading to a central point. However, this central point is not a circle but an oval, oriented askew from the axis that the entry pathway suggests.


This oval, hearkening back to the oval pool in the rock garden, heralds an experimental asymmetry that pervades the rest of the green houses. The remaining area of the Palm House is divided by organic undulating pathways that radiate from the central oval. The plant border of the insectivorous room juts out unexpectedly, piercing the rounded rectangular floor space. The Fern room embraces asymmetry with a more thematic awareness; its spiral floor echoes the unfurling of a fern frond.


The asymmetry of the greenhouses is both unexpected and refreshing. However, these deviations from the norm would not be as noticeable or poignant without the contrast of the more traditional Walled Garden. The Walled Garden does not represent a weak point of creativity in the layout of the Oxford Botanic Gardens, but rather the source of aesthetic power and cohesion. It is the standard by which the experimental landscape architecture comes to life. By no means homogenous, the Oxford Botanic Gardens conveys a sense of aesthetic wholeness that is sure to affect both the casual visitor and the serious explorer. Though it is no English rose garden, the Oxford Botanic Garden’s offerings are far more complex, interesting, and (at the very least) useful.

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