Jinny Blom: An Interview with the Author of 'What Makes a Garden'
The second book from landscape designer Jinny Blom, What Makes a Garden, draws on all aspects of gardens and garden culture. Photography by Britt Willoughby Dyer, from What Makes a Garden. A garden that Jinny designed for Hauser & Wirth at their hotel the Fife Arms in the Scottish Highlands. A reconfigured garden (and estate) in the Cotswolds, England. Q: Do you find that more and more people are still getting switched on to gardening, even post-pandemic? An English country garden, designed by Jinny Blom. The great optimism is giving people access to their own little patch of earth to mess around with; I think it’s very important. Steps into the garden at the Fife Arms, Braemar, Scotland. It’s not something you’re fiddling with all the time, it performs in a different way, and it gives a different kind of pleasure to look at. A lantern that Jinny designed in a garden that she designed in Tuscany, Italy. That’s why I wrote the book the way I did, because I think the question of “what makes a garden” has to go back to different cultures. At the back of Jinny Blom’s own garden, near Oxford. And if you let a patch of ground go fallow, you just end up with a whole load of junk; you don’t end up with a thing of beauty. A clean, well-made terrace in the Cotswolds. Q: How important is hard landscaping in this time of fuzzier gardens? Q: Another quote from your book: “The interface between good gardening practice and regenerative agriculture is a fast-closing gap.” With so many related ideas bouncing around the world of gardens and gardening, what’s your advice for the overwhelmed? Dark hips and coloring foliage that give roses added value year round. None of us are carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, and every little helps.