British garden designer Stephen Woodhams is quite pleased with the elongated, super-modelish bay trees in shiny, too-small pots outside the Morrison Hotel in Dublin.
They illustrate perfectly one of his three prime ingredients for successful design: "playing with scale". In other words, eccentric proportions draw the eye to look again at what might otherwise be commonplace. In the Morrison case, instead of a hackneyed bit of bay-in-pot door-dressing, we see something "almost like an art installation".
Playing with scale could be as simple and inexpensive as "putting three galvanised dustbins in a row and planting them with blue fescue grass. Steely grey. It would look superb!" he enthuses. Good hard landscaping and clever lighting complete Woodhams's recipe for excellent contemporary design: "You could do a garden that has just those three elements."
"But what about plants?" I wonder, like a hopelessly old-fashioned thing. "Well, plants . . . You don't always have to have plants , you see," he replies. "That's the interesting thing about it. You could just have a line of stone balls all in a row." Such a garden is ideally suited to "someone who travels nine months of the year - or it could be a bachelor's pad."
Actually, such plant-scarce, flower-free, minimal gardening isn't a new thing: it worked quite well for various designers of the 17th century Anglo-Dutch school. At that time, nature was newly tamed, and to show that this unruly force had been put in its place, gardens were strict geometrical dominions picked out in precise topiary and floored in contrasting ribbons and blocks of coloured sand, seashells, brick dust and coal. (And, bachelors or not, the aristocratic owners of such creations had gardeners by the score, so it wasn't an exercise in easycare gardening.)
As it happens, Stephen Woodhams does like plants - although not pampas grass or yellow flowers - but he uses them in a restrained and studied fashion. Graphic squares excite him, especially when composed of softer plants such as bronze fennel, heuchera and chocolate cosmos: "a very cottagey plant: but if you plant three plants by three plants in a square, oh! it's magical. "
"I don't like fluffy herbaceous borders, I don't believe in `fluffy'. Well, I do . . ." - he changes his tune diplomatically - "because I have clients who want fluffy herbaceous borders, but I get more excited if someone is willing to take the plunge." Taking the plunge, incidentally, may mean committing yourself to some pretty unusual gardening practices: "All the gardens I design you have to hoover every week," he says. "With some of my contemporary minimal gardens, a leaf out of place can ruin the whole look." Woodhams is reluctant to divulge the names of clients -"maybe next year". But he does eventually volunteer Michel Roux, for whom he has designed a herb garden and a garden for a private dining area ("built primarily for the Queen") at the Waterside Restaurant in Bray, Berkshire. And he is working with an Irish client, although he can't remember the exact location. "Does Dublin 4 sound right?" he asks tentatively. "It does," I assure him.
The Dublin project is linked to an "exciting" modern house and should give Woodhams the opportunity to practise some of his favourite ideas. These include "dissolving walls", where the inside and outside are seamlessly joined by running the same floor surface - "maybe cut limestone" - from house through to garden. "Linear lines" (is there another type of line, I wonder irreverently?) are also a device he uses in planting, and which he predicts will be a future trend: "We're going to see lots of threes and fives in straight lines. A line of something, a line of something else."
Other fashions for the next century (and which he is fostering in this one) are copper - "this is going to be what I call my `copper year' - and sandblasted glass and neon: "you're going to see neon like you wouldn't believe!" As for plants: "Astelia is going to be right out there - that's a definite hot tip!" Other silver and grey-foliaged plants are ` `right out there" also, along with red flowers, grasses and evergreens. Classic box will remain stylish (thank goodness: think all those purchasers of £100 box balls) and white lavender will be very chic. "I'm not sure what I feel about white lavender," I confide anxiously to Woodhams. "You're going to feel just fine about it!" he says encouragingly. "It's a gorgeous plant! En masse it is fabulous. Plant it in squares, definitely." I feel better already. And I feel better for meeting Stephen Woodhams, brim full of energy, ideas and optimism. "England and Ireland used to be the great gardening capitals of the world, but we've sort of lost that title to Europe", he says. "We have a lot of catching up to do, and I hope that I may be one of those people who is helping to push those barriers."
Stephen Woodhams's new book, Portfolio of Contemporary Gardens, has recently been published by Quadrille (£25 in UK)
Stephen Woodhams's website is www.woodhams.co.uk