Tinker, tailor... and a sailor

Lush tobacco plants by the old Rettig tobacco factory at Luostarinmäki (which translates to 'Cloister Hill") museum in Turku, an old Finnish-Swedish university town where I spent my school years.

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As much as I love visiting castles and manor houses and their gardens, I find the history of ordinary, common people often more touching. Luostarinmäki in Turku (or Åbo in Swedish), offers a most fascinating glimpse to the homes and lives of the craftsmen and other professionals that lived in what was the capital of Finland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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These 18 blocks of houses, streets and courtyards are the only wooden buildings that were saved in the Great Fire of Turku in 1827. They were a living neighborhood until 1940 (I never miss to point out to my girls the house where my friend's grandfather was born and raised), when some far-sighted townspeople understood to preserve them to the future generations as an open air museum.

* The orange daylily, Hemerocallis fulva, is a hardy perennial often found in old gardens. I think its slender stems and long strappy leaves are more striking than many of the new cultivars...
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The people who lived at Luostarinmäki were proud craftsmen and professional townspeople with their own homes and workshops: tinkers, tailors..., and while there were no soldiers, there was a sailor, whose touching little house was filled with blow-fish and seashells that he had brought from the seven seas.

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Observing the meagerness of life here is always gripping, especially when thinking that the inhabitants were not by any means the poorest of the society. The houses are small, the rooms tiny and the amenities few, but there is a silent, dignified beauty in everything. Tools and things are well-worn and carry marks of a hard life, but they were made to last in the hands of their users, and to be mended, not to be thrown out.

*One of the narrow, quiet streets at Luostarinmäki, earlier full of life and sounds from humans and animals alike... Picture from Wikipedia Commons.

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From a gardener's point of view there is not much to be seen, as most of the plants there were grown for their economical value like the lush tobacco plants above. An occasional bower of lilacs, a long-lived cluster of orange daylilies or other seemingly self-sown old-time perennials are some of the few ornamentals that bring colour into the tiny courtyards. Many roofs are covered with birch-bark and grassy, flowering turf, which shows that vegetative roofs aren't something invented by our generation.

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In a way, it would be lovely to see more old-time plants and perennials at Luostarinmäki, but then, the museum would loose some of its authenticity, as ornamental gardening was clearly out of reach for the people who lived there. Instead, strolling through the narrow, grassy streets and small courtyards was a sobering lesson in times when "less is more" was not a choice, but a reality of life.

For the benefit of body and soul: Sagalund in Kimito

Small wooden carts in the gardens of Sagalund.
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While in Turku, or Åbo in Swedish, in the southwestern coast of Finland, my parents took us to the charming outdoor museum of Sagalund in Kimito, founded in 1900 by teacher Nils Oskar Jansson. Jansson was a devoted admirer of the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné, and believed strongly that gardening had an inspirational, uplifting effect on the young souls he was entrusted with.

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First of May gardening tool inspection at Vreta Folkskola, Sagalund, in 1906.

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Every spring, his students were instructed to bring tools from home to the school: a wooden trowel, a small rake, a basket and a little cart for transporting soil, mulch and manure, and for hauling away waste to the compost. Each year on the first day of May, all students stood in row while the tools they had brought were inspected. The students were also encouraged to take home bulbs, seedlings and plants in their small carts.

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Nils Oskar Jansson wrote to his students in the early 1910s:

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"The purpose of gardening is to benefit both the body and the soul. (...) The needs of the soul should be nourished by making the nearest grounds of the home as flourishing, blooming and attractive as possible. This is achieved by growing all kinds of fruit trees, shelter belts of green trees and well-tended hedges, and by saving and pruning what nature itself has planted in the place."

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I especially liked his thoughts about the connection between gardening and the characteristics of a soul:

"What is planted and grown bears witness to the home owners disposition; idleness and negligence do not thrive in gardens, and coarseness and wickedness do not like flowers."

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Next week, the school year starts again here in Seattle. I wonder if we are doing as good job as Nils Oskar in nourishing the young bodies and souls of our children...

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A cuppa in the garden: Cafe Koloni at Olle Nyman's atelier

Sitting in the shade of the old linden trees by Olle Nyman's atelier at Cafe Koloni in Saltsjö-Duvnäs.

I've always been a cafe person. I love sipping from a cup of steaming tea or coffee and observing passers-by, alternatively resting my eyes on something soothing and beautiful, like a stunning view or a flower-filled garden. Not many places can combine both, but Cafe Koloni is one of them, and that's why I keep going back there when in Stockholm.

*A gathering of houses; above, the cafe at the left and the house where Olle Nyman lived on the right. Below, the studio to the left, and Olle's atelier to the right.

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Situated in Saltsjö-Duvnäs some 8 kilometers from the city, Cafe Koloni is tucked away in a white-washed wing in a gathering of houses, an atelier and a studio that used to belong to the Swedish artist Olle Nyman. You can choose to sit either inside the building or in the adjoining herb garden, or further away in the old fruit orchard. If you choose your seat carefully, you can watch sailing boats glide by on the adjoining inlet of Duvnäsviken.

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Entrance to the veranda at Olle's house.

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Despite it has lost some of its initial "hidden gem" atmosphere, Koloni still is one of those rare places where you can sit surrounded by the graceful patina of the 18th and 19th century buildings, listening to the whisper of the old lindens. After your coffee, you can check out the annual exhibition in the studio; it always has a connection to either Olle Nyman or Saltsjö-Duvnäs, and even the name Koloni refers to Olle Nyman's time when he together with his artist friends filled the place with a buzz of creative activity. A place well worth a little day trip, especially for those with artistic ambitions... whether they are gardeners or not.

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On the balcony, an undated painting by Olle Nyman. It shows a couple on one of the buildings at the Koloni towards the inlet of Duvnäsviken; one of my favorite paintings of his in all its simplicity...

Ulf Nordfjell at Millesgården

Ulf Nordfjell's vegetative spheres built with pratia plants at the main terrace of Millesgården at Lidingö near Stockholm.

Since last year, Ulf Nordfjell, a Swedish landscape architect maybe most know for winning the "Best in Show" award at Chelsea in 2009, has been invited for a long-time collaboration with the the gardens at Millesgården, home and atelier of the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles and his Austrian wife Olga who lived there during the first half of the 20th century.

Flowerbed inspired by Josef Frank's fabric called Aralia; detail with a Ricinus plant.

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During this second year into Ulf's work with Millesgården, he co-operated with two colleagues to build an exhibition called "Between Sky and Sea", to create interest and breathe some new life to the almost century-old gardens there. Initially, I wondered how Ulf's Nordic, poetically modern style would go together with the quite pompous, Mediterranean influenced style of the gardens, but he had combined both quite elegantly, building huge spheres covered with delicate little blue star creepers, and filling the flower borders with delectable flower combinations.
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"Fuchsias are the most feminine of plants" according to Ulf. He placed them in classic terracotta pots at Olga's terrace.

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Mediterranean notes were provided by rows of laurels, olives, fuchsias and lemons planted in classic terracotta pots on the terraces, and they seemed to thrive and complement their monumental but historically sensitive surroundings quite naturally. It still felt like Ulf's work at Millesgården was in its early stages, and I am curious to see how it develops over the coming years.

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Lemons in terracotta pots in front of one of the ateliers.

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Millesgården is situated on Lidingö, an island just outside Stockholm city center. Carl Milles, who had initially studied cabinet making and carpentry before leaving for Paris and studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, became a hugely successful sculptor with numerous commissions both in Sweden and internationally. Between 1931 and 1950, Carl was professor at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA, and delivered at the same time several public and private commissions at both sides of the Atlantic. Millesgården is a monument for his life's work where everything is on a grand scale, from the buildings incorporating Carl's ateliers to the stone terraces and replicas of his sculptures.

Bredablick revisited

The entrance flower bed as seen from the house towards the drive way. The round stone on the left is a pebble from the nearby beach.

No, I'm absolutely not comparing my house and garden to Brideshead in any way... nor was Bredablick, my garden, after our two years of absence in such a horribly gloomy condition as Brideshead was when Charles Ryder unexpectedly returned there as head of his brigade.

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Lower part of the same flower bed as above...

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When arriving in Sweden, I first felt quite uneasy to see my garden and house called Bredablick, "the wide view", named so after the lot of land where they are situated. Having had such an intimate relationship with my garden - cutting back, clearing, weeding, mulching, planting, always with soil under my fingernails - I was full of anguish to see how much had survived a break of two years and three summers. Of course, I've had someone to do the basic maintenance, but as anyone who has ever gardened knows, a garden must be loved, not just maintained.

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And still another view of the same area, with an old apple tree in the front.

To my great relief, many plants had survived, even if there were casualties: my shady flower border was almost gone, with only some ferns and a couple of Lilium martagons and Astrantias persisting in front of the huge, old lilac hedge. I chose them not only because of their lovely looks, but also because they are supposed to be highly tolerant towards both shade and neglegt, but I guess they too have their limits. In my entrance flowerbeds some plants had thrived and some not. Sadly, the hollies (Ilex meserveae 'Blue Prince') that I had planted in a bout of "hardiness zone optimism" had shed almost all of their leaves, so I had to cut them back to a height of only one feet. I hope that they grow back before we return (which should be in about two years time...), but until then, what was supposed to be a a dark, glossy green fond behind the perennials in these highly visible entrance flowerbeds, consists now only of a bunch of meager sticks with a couple leaves sprouting from them.

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The front lawn, where I usually grow islands of daisies and other meadow flowers...The large buxus was planted in the 1930s and the small babies by me for a couple of years ago.

Otherwise the Hostas were thriving and should have been divided, an impossible task given the hot, dry weather while we were in Sweden. Many of the peonies had grown fatter, and all lady's mantles, Alchemillas, were having a ball, spreading happily into all flowerbeds and self-seeding all over the gravel drive together with the Geraniums. I was hoping to have time to transplant even some of them to better positions, but our days in Sweden disappeared quicker than it took the glistening sprinkles of water from our garden hoses to be absorbed by the needy, parched soil...

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Bredablick, part of the "wide view"... Limestone paving and a lavender hedge to the left.

And there I was, happily toiling in my garden again, not noticing as time flew past. I was secretly feeling a bit ashamed of that I don't feel like this in my garden in Seattle, despite all its abundance and possibilities... And then, in Robert Pogue Harrison's thought-provoking book Gardens - An Essay on the Human Condition I found a passage that describes what I hadn't been able to formulate:

A garden that comes into being through one's own labor and tending efforts is very different from the fantastical gardens where things preexist spontaneously, offering themselves gratuitously for enjoyment. (...)
Unlike earthly paradises, human-made gardens that are bought into and
maintained in being by cultivation retain a signature of the human agency to which they owe their existence.

Deck for outdoor dining behind the house.

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Somewhere between the lines above, there might be the reason for my inability (at least not yet)to get attached to my Seattle garden: it was designed and planted by someone else, and despite all my pottering around, I have not really been creating anything of my "own". Maybe, creating and taking care of a garden is what is needed for being able to truly appreciate and enjoy it and its beauty. At Bredablick, I started with an overgrown, weed filled jungle and worked hard to leave my mark and make it into a garden. Despite my absence and the fact that it still is very much a work in progress (or isn't a garden always just that...), I feel that it still carries "a signature of my human agency"... and maybe that is why I continue to love it so much.

The sun coming up behind the nearby islands, all wrapped in early morning mist.

PS - thank you, Farmor for all help with getting the garden at Bredablick back in shape.