An article from James Fenton in The Guardian: Flower Power Not sure if I agree with "Nothing wrong with a crowd"
What I think Fenton says: A great garden is one done with brio and panache. It's a place to draw the public yet also feel cloistered. In publishing, my day job, there are various measures of success. One one level is the paying-the-bills level. Sometimes that dominates (the less local ownership, the more that dominates). Another level is if you ID and serve a certain market. My garden, success or not, is a way to welcome neighbors and also a place for me to putter. Studley Royal, with just its name, has quite a bit more to live up to than my garden does. The two have different constituencies and therefore different measures. I may be rationalizing my weeds.
Being from brit heritage myself i think what he is referring to is the ability to be able to accomodate a gathering within smaller beds etc..such as was common during visits of locals or dignitary of the time....this is the beauty of English gardens....something for everybody...spaces for crowds and spots for peoples to talk more intimately, blending the landscape to effectively join the surrrounding buildings and the purposes of their people at the time. Cheers Deb :)
In my opinion any garden, small or big, if it it gives pleasure to one's all senses is a graet garden. It should be Pleasant to eyes, sounds of water, birds, wind; feel of soft cool lawn to bare feet, something to taste: may be fruits, vegetables; fragrances of flowers, freshly mowed lawn etc. Just good to look at is of no use. How a blind person would appreciate that?
Great gardens not unlike great works of art - to be appreciated by each of us on different levels. Scale or size of a garden is but one aspect. Comparing large estate type gardens with more intimate ones seems to me somewhat akin to comparing a Rodin sculpture with Mount Rushmore...hmm... maybe that's a bit of an extreme example :).
