MODERN LOVE

It's groovy, baby - minimal aesthetics and sculptural plantings help to define mid-century modern garden design

- Mary Lovell-Smith

Undergoing a revival in recent years, the pared-back minimalism and strong lines of the mid-century modern movement are more usually associated with architecture and interior design.

Landscape architecture and garden design, however, were and are also fully fledged participants in this most optimistic of aesthetics. Their emphasis is on natural materials with rock, stone, unpainted wood featuring heavily, alongside concrete blocks. The plantings tend to be less complex, more considered. The look is bold and self-assured. Gardens are to be lived in, not just looked at.

Just because your home’s architecture is not mid-century modern does not mean that you cannot have a mid-century modern garden. As in interiors with furniture, whatever and however many elements of the movement you fancy can be incorporated into your garden or adapted to fit it.

HARD LANDSCAPING

Crazy love

Patios and terraces are to the '50s and '60s what wooden decks were to the '90s and beyond. That is, ubiquitous, though the former is more enduring and attractive than the latter. Commonly, these areas, along with paths and steps, were paved in flat and irregularly shaped pieces of rock, flagstone, or slate fitted in together rather like a jigsaw and grouted with concrete. The technique, which originated in the earlier arts and crafts movement, came to be known as crazy paving. Achievable by amateurs and professionals alike, the less skilled the creator, the crazier the effect. It was a layout that highlighted the stone's lithoscape, that is, its weathered patina, mineral colours, veining and natural patterns. Definitely mid-century but not modern was the painting of the grouting.