PATRICK BROWNE, JOE O’SHEA, MARTINA REGAN AND …...bring it to the bigscreen. The movie, which is...
1
20.03.16 / 7 G arden designer Mary Reynolds is up in Dublin for the day, cramming in meetings, an interview with The Sunday Times and a client visit before rushing back to Wexford. She arrives at my door after a talk with the capital’s lord mayor, Críona Ní Dhálaigh, about more sustainable ways of gardening. Reynolds is radiant, and dressed in a big tweed coat, a fetching cap and smart ankle boots — “Fifteen quid,” she says, laughing. “I wear them for meetings. I’ve got my wellies in the car.” She exudes warmth and kindness, and has a mad, multicoloured laugh that comes flying out of her. If you’re new to gardening, you may not have heard of Reynolds as she has been lying low in recent years. She was last in the public eye on a regular basis on RTE’s Super Garden television programme, where she was a presenter and mentor from 2008 to 2012. Her most remarkable moment, however, was some years earlier in 2002 when she won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show for her Tearmann Sí: a Celtic Sanctuary. It was her first (and only) foray into the mercilessly competitive arena of the world’s most prestigious gardening event, and at 28 years old, Reynolds was the youngest female designer to win a gold for a show garden. That year, of the 19 show gardens, just three were awarded gold, and the plot next to hers, designed by Prince Charles and Jinny Blom, garnered only a silver. Reynolds’ naturalistic creation drew on the Wicklow landscape around her then home. Enclosed by a dry-stone wall, it featured native Irish species including venerable, gnarled hawthorns. The rath, monumental stone thrones and fire bowl at its centre drew on elements of Celtic mythology. The garden heralded the homegrown romanticism of her style. Draughts for her designs are works of art, intricate and lovingly crafted, painstakingly drawn by hand. “I’m lucky that people don’t ever ask me to change anything,” she says. And then gives a great yelp-laugh: “That would be a problem!” The designer had a couple of dizzy years following her Chelsea coup: presenting on BBC television and making gardens in several countries (including a tribute to Yeats’s poem The Stolen Child at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London). At Farmleigh in Dublin, in 2003, she created Bunchloch (Foundation Stone), a gentle, grassy landform with a granite bowl at its heart and concentric ripples populated by nine granite “planets”. Not long after, she became a mother, and the pace had to slow. When her son was three and her daughter barely one, Nature trail You can check out a trailer for Dare to Be Wild, pictured, on Mary Reynolds’ website, marymary.ie. The film, based on her Chelsea Flower Show adventure in 2002, had its first Irish screening at last year’s Dublin Film Festival, but it does not go on general release in Europe until this summer. Grow for it Body of work Pick up a copy of The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture our Land and Ourselves, by Mary Reynolds, with beautiful illustrations, right, by Ruth Evans. It is published by Green Books — £19.99 (€25.85) — on March 31 and will be available in bookshops nationwide. Jane digs . . . Flowers, Fruit & Vegetables: a wrapping paper book from the Natural History Museum (Pimpernel Press, amazon.co.uk: €16.80). [email protected] PATRICK BROWNE, JOE O’SHEA, MARTINA REGAN AND EMMA COOPER Reynolds separated from their father and embarked on the perpetually demanding life of a single parent. She cut back on design work, taking on just a handful of projects a year. “The kids come first, and everything else comes second — even earning a living comes second. We always have enough. We are just lucky,” she says. “I don’t have what you would call a conventional life. We do really simple stuff like go for walks, watch movies and have lots of friends over for dinner. But we don’t have holidays and all those things. We live on very little, but we have a very nice life, and they are really healthy and happy, thank God.” That simple life is about to get more complicated. This summer sees the general release of Dare to Be Wild, starring Emma Greenwell as Mary Reynolds. The film came about when the designer was working on a garden for writer and director Vivienne de Courcy, who in turn became so enchanted by the unlikely Chelsea story that she was determined to bring it to the big screen. The movie, which is generously larded with romance and magnificent land- scapes, is “uplifting and happy, and very beautiful”, says Reynolds. “Myself and the kids are going to Japan for the premiere, which is so cool. We’re so excited. It’s a bit like winning the lottery.” The designer attended a special screening in Dublin last year. “I was so nervous. The interviewer said, ‘So, how do you feel about it?’, and I said, ‘Well, the sex scene was interesting. That was the best sex I’ve had in years.’ And there was just this deathly silence. And then Vivienne laughed, thank God.” The end of this month brings another long-term project to fruition when the Wexford woman’s extraordinary book The Garden Awakening is published. “I worked on it for years: I wrote it at night when the kids were asleep.” The book was borne out of a need to help JANE POWERS GARDENS There’s something contrary about Mary Wexford designer Reynolds, whose Chelsea success is the focus of a new film, says the Earth suffers — and we all need to heal it R edrow, one of the UK’s biggest housebuilders, has just published remarkable research that shatters notions about market demand for sustainable building. The company surveyed 1,730 prospective new homebuyers and found 82% were willing to pay more for a sustainable home. Most surprisingly, low energy bills were a higher priority than a garden, parking space, amenities, external appeal/design of the home, fittings and appliances. The findings aren’t surprising, as they corroborate Irish studies I’ve mentioned here before. For example, a report on the effect of BERs on Irish house prices from 2013 and 2015 by economists at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Oxford University and the London School of Economics showed protest — is restricting demand. Irish people may be willing to pay more for a sustainable home, but in many cases they are unable to express that demand, limited by what the banks will lend. Desire for sustainable homes is strong — so where’s the support? of its portfolio — but it hinders getting homes built. Prices are rising but the 20% deposit requirement on mortgages — a sensible move, as much as the industry might gnash its teeth in Buyers are increasingly keen to use renewable energy, such as solar power precisely formulated conceptual tool that clever people have devised to help us gain an abstract understanding of a complex world. “It does not, nor should it be expected to, give us in addition an accurate and complete description of any particular real-world market.” This simplistic model is useless for making sense of the current Irish property market, which remains contaminated by the festering carcass of the Celtic tiger. Supply is inadequate in terms of the right kind of properties, even in the most tenuously right locations. The crash made many developers bankrupt, or as good as, and without the appetite and wherewithal to build homes. The banks are restricting what they will lend, so some of the developers returning to building are going to third-party financiers to get bridging finance to make projects happen. At the same time, with property prices being pushed up by lack of housing supply in a recovering economy, land prices are rising. That might suit Nama, which has a vested interest in seeing land prices rise — and, with it, the value JEFF COLLEY GREEN LIVING Our market must be revamped to help the growing numbers willing to pay more for low-energy houses A-rated homes attract a premium of 9%-11% compared with equivalent D-rated homes. A warning: those studies looked at asking prices, so these surveys tell us how much vendors are asking for rather than how much buyers are willing, or able, to pay. You might ask that if buyers want to pay extra for sustainable buildings, what’s the point in raising energy standards under building regulations, or getting councils to make the passive house standard a mandatory requirement — as Dun Laoghaire- Rathdown has done? Simply leave supply and demand to take care of it? Reality isn’t that simple, and markets aren’t that efficient. In their book Microeconomics in Context, economists Neva Goodwin, Julia Nelson, Frank Ackerman and Thomas Weisskopf wrote: “Supply and demand analysis is a useful, Reductions in taxes and development levies on new homes are not the answer. In fact, though it may be an unpalatable truth to landowners, tax increases in the form of a site valuation tax would help matters by penalising land hoarding. While the departing government’s proposal to offer such concessions subject to falling below certain price ceilings appears reasonable, it seems difficult to work in practice. Will it encourage developers to build unviable homes — poor- quality speculative shoeboxes — in the hope people will panic buy? Or will the government struggle to set the price ceilings at the right level to attract developers, without causing unnecessary price inflation? A simpler approach is to compel the banks to offer better lending terms for low-energy buildings, something I have written about before. This wouldn’t cause property price inflation in general, as it wouldn’t manufacture new buyers out of thin air. Instead, it would increase demand for new homes, which tend to be more energy efficient, thanks to improvements in building regulations. If that pushed up new-build prices, vendors of less-efficient homes would have to carry out job-creating energy upgrades or drop their prices to compete. Irish people aren’t stupid; they are bound to share an interest in sustainable building with the British homebuyers surveyed by Redrow. But only when we give them the tools to express that interest will we see preferences turn into action. people take responsibility for their own patches of this Earth. Over the years Reynolds found that some clients “weren’t prepared to form their own relationship with the land. I was the go-between. And I couldn’t hold that many spaces any more”. The book is far from mainstream, and one of its central ideas — that land feels pain and joy, and needs to be minded with love — will be greeted with derision by some. Nonetheless, however one phrases it, there is no doubt that our planet is in trouble, and our sloppy and greedy stewardship is to blame. “Our role is one of guardian,” says Reynolds. “It’s not of user and taker, which is what we have been doing. If you see the land as being where everything comes from, it’s like our mother — everything comes from the Earth and her atmosphere. She’s f****** worn out, like. She can’t give us anything else!” So, the book is about how to “step up and cop on and grow up and start to take care of the land” — which may sound fuzzy but it’s not. After showing us how to reawaken our love for our planet, the author gives plenty of solid instruction on how to design, plant and maintain our gardens sustainably. Reynolds’ approach may be unor- thodox, but she has no lack of clients. At present she is working on the New Ross library park in Co Wexford. “It is a pesticide and herbicide- free park. And if it works there they are going to expand the idea, which is wonderful.” Wexford county council’s will- ingness to go along with her ideas is an affirmation of Reynolds’ life mission: “Initially I was trying to save the world and then I realised I couldn’t — but if I could save my little bit, and if everyone saved their own little bit, we’d be doing something good.” Mary Reynolds, right, dreamt up, clockwise from above, Brigit’s Garden in Galway, featuring basketwork swings, and the garden at Camel Quarry House in Cornwall, crafting her designs with intricate drawings made by hand
Transcript of PATRICK BROWNE, JOE O’SHEA, MARTINA REGAN AND …...bring it to the bigscreen. The movie, which is...
20 .03 . 16 / 7
Garden designer Mary Reynoldsis up in Dublin for the day,cramming in meetings, aninterview with The SundayTimes and a client visit beforerushing back to Wexford. She
arrives at my door after a talk with thecapital’s lord mayor, Críona Ní Dhálaigh,aboutmoresustainablewaysofgardening.Reynolds is radiant, anddressed in a big
tweedcoat, a fetchingcapandsmartankleboots—“Fifteenquid,”shesays, laughing.“I wear them for meetings. I’ve got mywelliesinthecar.”Sheexudeswarmthandkindness, and has a mad, multicolouredlaugh that comes flying out of her.If you’renewtogardening,youmaynot
have heard of Reynolds as she has beenlying low in recent years. She was last inthe public eye on a regular basis on RTE’sSuper Garden television programme,where she was a presenter and mentorfrom 2008 to 2012. Her most remarkablemoment, however,was someyears earlierin 2002 when she won a gold medal atthe Chelsea Flower Show for herTearmann Sí: a Celtic Sanctuary.It was her first (and only) foray into the
mercilessly competitive arena of theworld’smost prestigious gardening event,and at 28 years old, Reynolds was theyoungest female designer towin a gold fora show garden. That year, of the 19 showgardens, justthreewereawardedgold,andthe plot next to hers, designed by PrinceCharles and Jinny Blom, garnered onlya silver.Reynolds’ naturalistic creation drew on
the Wicklow landscape around her thenhome. Enclosed by a dry-stone wall, itfeatured native Irish species includingvenerable, gnarled hawthorns. The rath,monumentalstonethronesandfirebowlatits centre drew on elements of Celticmythology. The garden heralded thehomegrown romanticism of her style.Draughts for her designs are works of
art, intricate and lovingly crafted,painstakingly drawn by hand.“I’m lucky that people don’t ever ask
me to change anything,” she says. Andthengivesagreatyelp-laugh:“Thatwouldbe a problem!”Thedesignerhadacoupleofdizzyyears
following her Chelsea coup: presentingon BBC television and making gardens inseveral countries (including a tribute toYeats’s poemThe Stolen Child at theRoyalBotanic Gardens at Kew in London).At Farmleigh in Dublin, in 2003, she
created Bunchloch (Foundation Stone), agentle, grassy landform with a granitebowl at its heart and concentric ripplespopulated by nine granite “planets”.Not long after, she became a mother,
and the pace had to slow. When her sonwas three and her daughter barely one,
Nature trailYou can check out a trailer for Dare to Be Wild, pictured,on Mary Reynolds’ website, marymary.ie. The film,based on her Chelsea Flower Show adventure in2002, had its firstIrish screeningat last year’sDublin FilmFestival, butit does not go ongeneral releasein Europe untilthis summer.
Grow for itBody of workPick up a copy of TheGarden Awakening:Designs to Nurture ourLand and Ourselves, byMary Reynolds, withbeautiful illustrations,right, by Ruth Evans. It ispublished by Green Books— £19.99 (€25.85) — onMarch 31 and will beavailable in bookshopsnationwide.
Jane digs . . .Flowers, Fruit & Vegetables: a wrapping paper bookfrom the Natural History Museum (Pimpernel Press,amazon.co.uk: €16.80)[email protected]
PATRICK BROWNE, JOE O’SHEA, MARTINA REGAN AND EMMA COOPER
Reynolds separated from their father andembarked on the perpetually demandinglife of a single parent. She cut back ondesign work, taking on just a handful ofprojects a year. “The kids come first, andeverything else comes second — evenearning a living comes second.We alwayshave enough.We are just lucky,” she says.“I don’t have what you would call a
conventional life.Wedo really simple stufflike go for walks, watch movies and havelots of friends over for dinner. But wedon’t have holidays and all those things.We live on very little, but we have a verynice life, and they are really healthy andhappy, thank God.”That simple life is about to get more
complicated.Thissummerseesthegeneralrelease of Dare to BeWild, starring EmmaGreenwell as Mary Reynolds. The filmcame about when the designer wasworking on a garden for writer anddirector Vivienne de Courcy, who in turnbecame so enchanted by the unlikelyChelsea story that she was determined tobring it to the big screen.The movie, which is generously larded
with romance and magnificent land-scapes, is “uplifting and happy, and verybeautiful”, saysReynolds. “Myself and thekids are going to Japan for the premiere,which is so cool.We’re so excited. It’s a bitlikewinning the lottery.”The designer attended a special
screening in Dublin last year. “I was sonervous.The interviewersaid, ‘So,howdoyou feel about it?’, and I said, ‘Well, thesexscene was interesting. That was the bestsex I’ve had in years.’ And there was justthis deathly silence. And then Viviennelaughed, thank God.”The end of this month brings another
long-term project to fruition when theWexfordwoman’sextraordinarybookTheGardenAwakeningispublished.“Iworkedon it for years: I wrote it at night whenthe kids were asleep.”Thebookwasborneoutofaneedtohelp
JANEPOWERSGARDENS
There’ssomethingcontraryabout MaryWexford designer Reynolds, whose Chelseasuccess is the focus of a new film, says theEarth suffers — and we all need to heal it
Redrow, one of the UK’sbiggest housebuilders, hasjust published remarkableresearch that shatters
notions aboutmarket demand forsustainable building.The company surveyed 1,730
prospective new homebuyers andfound 82%werewilling to paymore for a sustainable home.Most surprisingly, low energy
bills were a higher priority than agarden, parking space, amenities,external appeal/design of thehome, fittings and appliances.The findings aren’t surprising,
as they corroborate Irish studiesI’vementioned here before. Forexample, a report on the effect ofBERs on Irish house prices from2013 and 2015 by economists at theEconomic and Social ResearchInstitute, Trinity College Dublin,Oxford University and the LondonSchool of Economics showed
protest — is restricting demand.Irish peoplemay bewilling to paymore for a sustainable home, but inmany cases they are unable toexpress that demand, limited bywhat the bankswill lend.
Desire for sustainable homes isstrong — so where’s the support?
of its portfolio— but it hindersgetting homes built.Prices are rising but the 20%
deposit requirement onmortgages— a sensiblemove, asmuch as theindustrymight gnash its teeth in
Buyers are increasingly keen to use renewable energy, such as solar power
precisely formulated conceptualtool that clever people havedevised to help us gain anabstract understanding of acomplexworld.“It does not, nor should it be
expected to, give us in addition anaccurate and complete descriptionof any particular real-worldmarket.”This simplistic model is useless
formaking sense of the currentIrish propertymarket, whichremains contaminated by thefestering carcass of the Celtictiger. Supply is inadequate interms of the right kind ofproperties, even in themosttenuously right locations. Thecrashmademany developersbankrupt, or as good as, andwithout the appetite andwherewithal to build homes.The banks are restrictingwhat
theywill lend, so some of thedevelopers returning to buildingare going to third-party financiersto get bridging finance tomakeprojects happen. At the same time,with property prices being pushedup by lack of housing supply in arecovering economy, land pricesare rising.Thatmight suit Nama, which
has a vested interest in seeing landprices rise— and, with it, the value
JEFF COLLEYGREEN LIVING
Ourmarketmust be revamped tohelp the growing numberswillingto paymore for low-energy houses
A-rated homes attract a premiumof 9%-11% comparedwithequivalent D-rated homes.Awarning: those studies looked
at asking prices, so these surveystell us howmuch vendors areasking for rather than howmuchbuyers arewilling, or able, to pay.
Youmight ask that if buyerswant to pay extra for sustainablebuildings, what’s the point inraising energy standards underbuilding regulations, or gettingcouncils tomake the passivehouse standard amandatoryrequirement— as Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown has done? Simplyleave supply and demand to takecare of it?Reality isn’t that simple, and
markets aren’t that efficient. Intheir bookMicroeconomics inContext, economists NevaGoodwin, Julia Nelson, FrankAckerman and ThomasWeisskopf wrote: “Supply anddemand analysis is a useful,
Reductions in taxes anddevelopment levies on new homesare not the answer. In fact, thoughit may be an unpalatable truth tolandowners, tax increases in theform of a site valuation taxwouldhelpmatters by penalising landhoarding.While the departinggovernment’s proposal to offersuch concessions subject to fallingbelow certain price ceilingsappears reasonable, it seemsdifficult to work in practice.Will it encourage developers to
build unviable homes— poor-quality speculative shoeboxes—in the hope people will panic buy?Orwill the government struggle toset the price ceilings at the rightlevel to attract developers, withoutcausing unnecessary priceinflation?A simpler approach is to compel
the banks to offer better lendingterms for low-energy buildings,something I havewritten aboutbefore. This wouldn’t causeproperty price inflation in general,as it wouldn’t manufacture newbuyers out of thin air. Instead, itwould increase demand for newhomes, which tend to bemoreenergy efficient, thanks toimprovements in buildingregulations.If that pushed up new-build
prices, vendors of less-efficienthomeswould have to carry outjob-creating energy upgrades ordrop their prices to compete.Irish people aren’t stupid; they
are bound to share an interest insustainable buildingwith theBritish homebuyers surveyed byRedrow. But onlywhenwe givethem the tools to express thatinterest will we see preferencesturn into action.
people take responsibility for their ownpatches of this Earth. Over the yearsReynolds found that someclients“weren’tprepared to form their own relationshipwith the land. Iwas thego-between.And Icouldn’tholdthatmanyspacesanymore”.The book is far from mainstream, and
one of its central ideas — that land feelspain and joy, andneeds to bemindedwithlove — will be greeted with derision bysome. Nonetheless, however one phrasesit, there is no doubt that our planet isin trouble, and our sloppy and greedystewardship is to blame.“Our role is one of guardian,” says
Reynolds.“It’snotofuserandtaker,which
is what we have been doing. If you see theland as being where everything comesfrom, it’s like our mother — everythingcomesfromtheEarthandheratmosphere.She’s f******worn out, like. She can’t giveus anything else!”So,thebookisabouthowto“stepupand
coponandgrowupandstarttotakecareofthe land” — which may sound fuzzybut it’s not. After showing us how toreawaken our love for our planet, theauthor gives plenty of solid instruction onhow to design, plant and maintain ourgardens sustainably.Reynolds’ approach may be unor-
thodox, but she has no lack of clients. At
present she is working onthe New Ross library parkin Co Wexford. “It is apesticide and herbicide-free park. And if it workstheretheyaregoingtoexpandthe idea, which is wonderful.”Wexfordcountycouncil’swill-
ingnesstogoalongwithherideasisan affirmation of Reynolds’ lifemission: “Initially I was trying tosave theworld and then I realised Icouldn’t — but if I could save mylittle bit, and if everyone savedtheir own little bit, we’d be doingsomething good.”
Mary Reynolds, right, dreamt up, clockwise from above, Brigit’s Garden in Galway, featuring basketwork swings,and the garden at Camel Quarry House in Cornwall, crafting her designs with intricate drawings made by hand
