Monty Don on Bunny Mellon’s Oak Spring garden
from American Gardens
The main terrace – and there are numerous seating areas within this part of the garden – is paved with stone quarried from the estate. Apparently, two men laboured over this for months, cutting the individual slabs, ferrying them all to the garden and then, with great care and skill, laying them. Bunny Mellon was watching them at work one day and a corner of one of the slabs got broken. The workman lifted the stone and was about to replace it when Bunny stopped him. Leave it, she said, I like it. Then she got a hammer and went round deliberately chipping and breaking others with the precision of an artist with a brush. Into the gaps she had created she sprinkled flower and herb seeds, which quickly grew and spread into the cracks, giving this newly laid terrace a patina of age. This was the epitome of her style, encompassing a certain patrician grandeur and absolute self-confidence with a result that was expensive and meticulous and yet appeared modest and natural.
Result versus process.
And so for day 2993
20.02.2015