Audley End House & Gardens

Audley End house and gardens was an interesting place to visit, with lots of interesting information about the history of the site and dynamic ways of displaying it and getting the visitor involved. The grounds retained a lot of their orignal character, with the river and landscape still the same as set out by Capability Brown. The old partere style garden is there, seasonaly planted now, which gives a snap shot into the past. Audley house is in great condition and the tour was very informative. Access to the house is only possible through booking a tour, which limits the amount of people let through which prevents over wearing. The grounds and house are well laid out and give full access and thought to the public, while holding on to the essense of the historic building.

A bit of inspiration...

Recently got in touch with the lead garden designer of one of the Maggies Cancer Centres in the UK, she was a doctor before becoming a designer so i thought she would be ideal to get some advice on my healing garden from, but didn't really expect a reply. But she did reply and was really helpful and had some interesting thoughts so i thought i'd share it on here...

 

 

Hello Sam,

Your assignment for Metis sounds very exciting and thank you for the comments on Maggie's Cheltenham which was a learning curve for me. There is quite a bit of literature on the market on 'healing' gardens and I suggest you do some internet research which I'm sure you have already started.

I have been helping several students write theses on healing gardens and it has been interesting to hear the results from their questionnaires about the garden handed to visitors at the cancer caring centres. The general opinion is they talk mostly about large structures (sculptures or trees ) in the garden which could hardly be defined as 'healing' but rather something that stimulates conversation between visitors which takes their mind off their problem (s).

A healing garden also needs to be calming and relaxing and the colour green is considered the most relaxing colour in the spectrum – at Maggie's Cheltenham I designed little grassed mounds at the entrance the purpose of which was to create such an atmosphere – and it seems to work. The sound of water also has relaxing qualities so I would suggest including this in your design. Most visitors also appreciate colourful plants. Plenty of seating areas.

Hope these few suggestions help and good luck!

With best wishes

Christine

Dynamic Composition Montage

Sam Daly Dynamic Montage

Critique of Dynamic Montage Development

• Title and name are not dynamically placed in composition.
• Items like masking tape, frame etc were not specified to add in brief.
• Montage is quite flat, not 3D.
• Title is not relevent to composition.
• File size was very large- hard to save and slowed the PC.
• Went straight into composition without pre-planning in sketchbook.
• Struggled with the college printers so had to go elsewhere and pay more to print.
• Image came out very dark and did not quite fill the page.