New Statesman -- garden design winners
 

No 4251
Set by Helen Cox
Some people have claimed that the plants gardeners grow and how they organise their gardens reflect their class and politics. We asked you to send in a written proposal for a garden for a well-known personage from a landscape designer who has considered his or her client’s preferences in this light.

This week’s winners
A hard one to judge this week as there were so many excellent suggestions. Hon menshes to: Nicholas Holbrook for Rupert Murdoch’s garden (“One flowerbed will be devoted entirely to sunflowers. Another will be filled with sky-blue flowers. A third one will contain a wide variety of foxgloves . . .”); Alanna Blake for Gordon Brown’s (“Hard landscaping is the key to this garden: dry-stone walls, solid paving and impressive rockeries. formed from massive lumps of granite . . .”); Josh Ekroy for George Osborne’s (“ . . . an avenue of very old chestnuts with pockets of fool’s parsley”); and Richard Nye for Sherlock Holmes’s (“I note your particular interest in Cannabis indica . . .”). £25 each to the three winners, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, Una McMorran

God
I suggest we start with some good, variable lighting, perhaps 50 per cent full on and the remainder in varying shades of not-being-on. That’s an engineering project, so I propose we leave implementation to you.
Water is always a good idea – lakes, seas, oceans – precise size and shape to be agreed, but we find that 70 per cent water and 30 per cent land usually appeals.
Jungle areas can be fascinating, particularly if stocked with relatively dangerous creatures, to provide that frisson of excitement so often missing from more formal gardens. However, a few deserts can supply the variety you are looking for, and we will need some remote icy areas, creating a sense of adventure for those looking beyond their front door.
What you populate it all with is up to you, but following recent unhappy events in the Garden of Eden, we suggest that, this time, you omit the humans.
Brian D Allingham

Nick Clegg
Some gardens are planned with an eye to future maturity, but for you I think we should plan for immediate impact, the “now”, just in case. Boundaries? – some soft hedging, nothing thorny or prickly, no aggressive or invasive species, nothing “showy”. Shall we say privet? Within the garden, how about fences with built-in seating? Sustainable wood, of course. I don’t see you as a clipped-edge military-precision concrete-path person, so I suggest gently winding paths, circling the main features, with a tendency to unresolved and shady endings. A sundial, reminder of passing time, might make a focal point. Could you get a consensus for a maze? Overall tone? – a lot of green, obviously, but with yellow-ish tones for definition: plenty of cover and dappled shade to avoid harsh exposure to rougher elements. We could underplant with honesty, forget-me-not and probably rue. Not sage, though.
D A Prince

Brian Sewell
My client’s passion for Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks should suggest that a swathe of dianthus is essential. Low-growing plants, picking out the symbol of his beloved Mercedes motor car, will break the elegant symmetry of a sweeping lawn. In contrast, a rose bed – at its centre a life-size marble statue of David –will be surrounded with the perfumed variety, in flesh tones, of the rose Champagne Moments. Close by we suggest a group of erect hostas as we feel our client would enjoy the phallic symbolism. Another certainty is a pond edged with a scattering of narcissus, where he can delight in the pond’s reflective properties. Planted by a vintage ornamental lamp post – a tribute to his two constant companions – will be a Rosa canina and a red-stemmed dogwood tree. His political allegiance will be revealed when the bed of spring bulbs flower! We suggest something characteristically prickly would be appropriate, such as a Silver Queen holly tree
Una McMorran

George Osborne
The garden we propose for our client will provide an original and striking environment, and be a great asset in entertaining foreign dignitaries. The whole of our client’s 17-acre estate will be covered with a robust strain of Venus flytrap, a magnificent plant that embodies all the best traditional values of British Conservatism. Scattered throughout the grounds will be specially equipped observation arbours, where our client and his guests (potentates or old school chums) will be able to see, at close hand, how the plants consume their prey. The sight of creatures vainly striving to escape their fate will undoubtedly be a source of inspiration. That the victims are all invertebrates will resonate with our client’s well-known contempt for the “spineless”.
Ian Birchall

Brian Allgar aka Nicholas Holbrook has an hon mensh this week.