Moon garden

   
   Today, gardens where only white flowering plants grow, are called moon or white gardens. Various shades of green, white or silver foliage, as well as different structure of leaves, blooms and plant shapes add to their versatility. Often, we will find shades of blue and rouge among the flowering plants there. At night, this garden is at its best: in the darkness, all colours disappear except for the white, which glows generously in the moonlight.
   In India, before the Mughal Empire, noble people enjoyed the so called moon gardens, where they could find refuge from tiresome midday heats. Such gardens were full of cooling channels and fountains, fragrant plants and trees giving shade so desirable.
 

    It looks like it is in the 19th century where we have to look for the origins of white gardens as we know them today. An American writer and gardener Eleanor Perenyi in her book Green Thoughts says that at that time, fragrant plants were very highly regarded, something we frequently take for granted today. Very often such plants had white blooms and flourished in exotic countries. Tube roses and gardenias, because of their elevating aromas, were particularly cherished – not only by poets, but also by plant collectors. Only rich aristocrats could afford having luxurious orangeries or green houses, where such plants were grown. This might be the reason why moon gardens are so closely related to refined luxury right until today. By the way, in the beginning of the 19th century, collectors started bringing innumerable quantities of roses unknown in the Old Continent before. Such roses were very fragrant and charming, though had low frost and disease resistance. Later, these roses were used by selectors for creating breeds more suitable to our climate.

   
    Golden age of white gardens began in the 20th century, reaching its climax in the middle of the century. Gertrude Jekyll, a famous English gardener, was among the first to acknowledge the importance of colour in the garden. She created a number of monochromatic gardens, including blue and grey. A wonderful Sissinghurst White garden (England, Kent) must be the most famous and, to many, the most beautiful white garden in the world. It was created by an English writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West, together with her husband, diplomat and author, Sir Harold Nicolson, in 1931 as a rose garden, and later transformed into the White garden. Until this day, pure white-flowering plants are grown there, with green and silver foliage.
 

   
    Since then, white gardens have settled firmly in the history of gardening, and the number of people fascinated by this idea only grows.
   As far as Lithuanian history of gardening is concerned, we will hardly find any white gardens before the end of the 20th century (but who knows?..). But our 19th century aristocrats definitely had luxurious, state of the art orangeries or hothouses, where exotic, white-flowering fragrant plants flourished. However, close to mansions, a number of simple white-flowering plants enjoyed Lithuanian sun as well, such as jasmines, peonies, old roses… And, while having an evening walk when they flowered – be it near modest paths of a park or in a lavish parterre, you might have felt as if you were in some mystical dreamy moon garden.
   Following our visions, we also create our modest and small white garden. It is our true joy and constant source of inspiration.

 

Lina Krasnovaitė, 2016 m.