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Derek Jarman & Prospect Cottage

 

by Anna Tolfree MALA

28th November 2013

 

Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman

31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994

Born in Northwood, Middlesex, England

 

 

Derek Jarman was a man of very many talents. It would do no justice to label him as a moviemaker, a painter or a gardener, although these are the things he is best known for. He has been referred to as a film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener, political activist, painter, controversial filmmaker, gay rights campaigner, poet and a as writer.

The key trait that made him so successful at so many different things is his ability and unashamed confidence in expressing himself. Whether that is on paper, through drawing, painting, writing diaries, poetry and movie scripts or setting scenes and building relationships.

Derek studied at King’s College London from 1960-1963. He then studied for another four years at Slade School of Fine Art.

 

The strength of his work as an artist was composition; not just aesthetically but also in terms of a narrative. Landscape and Landscape II are early works by Jarman, which create a sense of isolation and a vision of landscape as a reflective space. Later paintings such as Avebury Series No.4 (1973) are so simple yet engaging. They create a real sense of depth. This painting in particular hints at Derek’s taste in landscape. Boulder like forms sitting heavy on the horizon, contrasted with strong vertical elements within a level expanse. This painting could well be an interpretation of the landscape at Dungeness, which Derek would first visit over a decade after painting this scape. Or the painting could be thought to reflect the famous garden he would go on to create there. Howard Sooley, who was a close friend of Derek’s and compiled the book Derek Jarman’s Garden, describes the context within which the garden at Prospect Cottage sits:

 

“It would be hard to describe the setting as romantic or bucolic, particularly with a nuclear power station in the background.  But the harshness of the landscape, particularly in a biting easterly wind, is mirrored in the garden.  The electricity pylons and driftwood monoliths cut a sway through the shingle and scrubby plants, punctuating the horizontals of the beach and Romney Marsh.”

 

 Derek sidestepped from fine art to film making via set design, further developing his ability and understanding of composition, arrangement, massing, space and movement. In his lifetime Derek produced 11 feature length films, the most well known being Caravaggio (1986) and Sebastiane (1976). He also made over 30 short films and over 20 music videos for artists such as Bob Geldof, The Sex Pistols, The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys and Bryan Ferry.

 

On the 22nd December 1986 Derek was diagnosed as HIV positive.

He had travelled to Kent on a spring afternoon of that year to find bluebell woodlands, which would be a location for filming a feature length film called The Garden (1990). Derek and his friends took a detour from the bluebell woods to the Pilot Inn pub in Dungeness, in order to try ‘the finest fish and chips in all England’. On the way Derek fell in love with the little wooden fishermen’s cottage sitting on the shingle of the Ness. The landscape seems melancholic and isolating to many people but Derek found comfort and beauty in that. With his illness taking hold of his life and his work, Derek moved away from London and bought Prospect Cottage in 1991. He was to make a home and a garden there that changed the way many thought about how a garden or what a garden should be. His garden was for life and nature to grow and to be, in all its rugged beauty. 

 

“The word paradise is derived from the ancient Persian -‘a green place'.

Paradise haunts gardens, and some gardens are paradises. Mine is one of them. Others are like bad children - spoilt by their parents, over-watered and covered with noxious chemicals. The only chemical I have used is against the slug, which devours my Crambe cordifolia. I'm very selective - the Crambe maritima acts as a good slughouse and I like the look of them crawling across the sparkling leaves, after a shower.

Other paradises: Christopher Lloyd's Great Dixter up the road. Gardens that deny paradise: Hidcote Manor, known to us as Hideouscote, which is so manicured that not one plant seems to touch its neighbour. The National Trust must have a central nursery as all their gardens look like that. You won't find this in Great Dixter; it's shaggy. If a garden isn't shaggy, forget it.”

Extract from Derek Jarman's Garden

 

It is at Prospect Cottage that Derek spent his last years. His deteriorating health prompted a shift in his focus from filmmaking back to painting and creating his garden.

 

An appreciation of the colours of landscape and the seasons are clear in his later works of art. Time passing and the notion of time standing still became inherent in his work and in his thoughts during his struggle with illness. Meanwhile the garden became a place of solitude and contemplation for Derek.

 

 

“I can look at one plant for an hour, this brings me great peace. I stand motionless and stare”.

Extract from Derek Jarman's Garden

 

 

 

 

THE GARDENS BEGINNINGS

 

The garden is said to have started by accident after Derek used a piece of driftwood through practicality (as there is much lying around on the Ness) to stake a dog rose. The landscape in this area is constantly battered by the elements and creating a garden there was no mean feat.

 

“Prospect Cottage sits more or less in the middle [of the Ness], parched by baking sun and drying winds in summer, with no shade to be had for miles in any direction. In winter, sea storms rage, while biting Siberian winds push through the shingle and up through the floorboards of the fisherman’s cottages strung out along the road to the lighthouse”

Howard Sooley

 

There are many quotes from Derek Jarman that create a nonchalant impression of his gardening approach such as, ‘plonk the plants in and let them take their chances’ and ‘the garden accidently happened’. However, once you read a little more of his diary entries about the garden it becomes clear that he was a modest yet very knowledgeable plants man who had a passion for plants and gardening since he was a boy. There are many plants such as mimosa that had relevance in his life, a story and meaning to him personally. Another plant that had a character to Derek was valerian:

 

“The verges of the road along the Ness are pink and white with valerian in June. My own is just budding in early May...

…I have always loved this plant. It clung to the old stone walls of the manor at Curry Mallet which my father rented in his early fifties, and grew in the garden of the bomb damaged house at the end of the road which the airman Johnny, my first love, took me to on his motorbike, with my hands in his trouser pockets – so valerian is a sexy plant for me.”

Extract from Derek Jarman's Garden

 

He enjoyed the narrative of plants and followed the traditions. For example, planting elder by the door to ward off witches. A notion from Neopagan Folklore that has resulted in many cottages in England having mature elders planted right against the wall of the house.

 

"Elder be ye Lady's tree, burn it not or cursed ye'll be"

The Wiccan Rede

 

Jarman’s live or let die attitude, in such a hostile setting, was not born from an half-heartedness or negligence but from true appreciation for the plants that strive to grow against the odds and bring beauty to a desolate landscape. 

 

“You can’t take life for granted in Dungeness: every bloom that flowers through the shingle is a miracle, a triumph of nature. Derek knew this more than anyone”

Howard Sooley

 

Derek often lingers on descriptions of the emergence of blooms or the withering and passing of seasonal plants in his diary entries. This acceptance of transience was very meaningful to Derek during his time at Prospect Cottage. He embraced the changes that nature set upon the garden. Therefore, the garden evolved over time and the plants that were there were happy there, without being spoilt or neglected, they were thriving.

 

THE DESIGN

 

 

 

Derek was not a landscape architect or a gardener, he has no formal training in planning and developing a garden design, plant lists or management and maintenance regimes. The garden at Prospect Cottage was a personal project. As an intelligent and passionate man he made decisions about design elements and compositions based on many factors from practicality to a personal connection. For example, plants were chosen for colour or for being local or rare, for being good for wildlife or for the story they told, such as the elder. Some plants ticked multiple boxes, some tick few but Derek liked them and they survived. 

In terms of composition, there are a few notes in Derek’s sketchbooks that show prior thought in terms of planting layout. The diagrams look much like a stage or set layout. Although there is little evidence of the planning of structural and planting composition there is much reflection on it in Derek’s diaries. As a man with an innate ability to create affective compositions, many cogs will have been turning as he built his garden layout piece by piece. Circles of coloured pebbles in the front garden grew as he collected them during his walks on the beach. Flotsam and jetsam scavenged from the shoreline create the strong vertical punctuation that is reminiscent of his early paintings. Railway sleepers are reused to create raised beds for vegetable and herb gardens. These raised beds create shelter for the bees that he keeps and the gorse and wood sage planted nearby provide food for the bees. The garden has purpose as well as beauty and wildlife; even creatures such as slugs that are often seen as pest are appreciated here (as long as they don’t devour Derek’s Crambe cordifolia).

The front garden is orderly whereas the back garden has more freedom. In the front garden Derek uses strong repeated geometric shapes and structures. There are no boundary fences as is common on the Ness. Therefore people are free to walk through the site. This has always been the way at Dungeness, partly due to the strong winds and the difficulty of securing fence posts in the shingle and partly due to restrictions of the SSSI classification. It is an interesting concept to have no boundaries and no real paths within a garden. It enhances the feeling of freedom and the vastness of space. 

 

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