Garden Design Elements: Without Considering What Plant Goes Where

Several years into my Garden Design career, reading yet another Garden Design book, the author seamlessly mentioned trees sited for their long shadows in fall.  Me like that !  A new toy.  A new domain.  New scope for the imagination.  Another layer to wield amongst the grand scheme of layers.  Who wouldn't like a Garden Design rule demanding of you, Design Shadows.  Shadows are yours to command.  Take shadows, have fun.
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Shadows, below, oh my.


Pic, above, here.
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Bringing interiors alive, below.  When late fall arrives, create the classic indoor mini-greenhouse still life.  A bit of the garden inside, and lovely view from outside.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Have a few worn out garden tools?  Make a bouquet, screw it into the wall, inside.

 
Pic, above, shot in my house. 


Pic, above, here.
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Garden Design begins inside your home, from the views looking outside, above.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Instead, above, of ubiquitous turgid foundation plantings & lawn, benches/gravel at the foundation to your home.


Pic, above, here.
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Choose a color theme for your garden.
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These are merely a few non-plant inputs to the realm of Garden Design.
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I must really put a class together about this topic.  It's my topic, just made it up.  Too fun.
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This topic really lets your inner creative, go-go-go.
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What should be planted here?  Really?  Well, that is a terminally mundane question. 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Zone of Magic: Work = Love

When did 'work' become a bad word?  Certainly, the entirety of my lifetime.  Now, 'work'  has a floating zone of meaning.  Quite a few epiphanies getting here, the work of a lifetime, zero pun intended.
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Within vocation, I know work to be, Work = Love.  Discovering work in the landscape is pure washing-of-the-servants-feet.  A privilege.  Finally, 5 years ago, having chickens for the first time.  Guess what chickens taught me about gardening?  Not something to be told, instead, experienced, gaining full depth of this particular lesson, perhaps the most important lesson, beyond Work = Love.  Do you already know what chickens taught me about gardening? 
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Stewardship.
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This epiphany in breadth/depth/width/height beyond measure.  Once arrived, stewardship in the landscape metaphor, gave way to the doors opening to all parts of my life.  I am here for stewardship.  We all are.  Fun to put it out there, remembering well, many decades of others putting their 'idea' out there, knowing they were crazy.  Ok, I'm crazy for this, guilty as charged, proud of it.
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Here's the thing, have found my tribe at this layer.  More, get to see stewardship and work = love, in action, in others.  Humbling, and educational.
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In the realm of gardening, Garden Design, my mission, for decades, create, promote, educate.  Create a beautiful garden, promote the right plant in the right spot, and educate about plants-maintenance-design. 
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"Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives."  Charlie Munger.
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Bigger picture, in the landscape, macro/micro, how to get a neighborhood to realize improving their landscapes improves property values for all, decreases HVAC expense for all?  Money, as incentive.
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Certainly, money, is an incentive.  What are the myriad incentives to garden, landscape, garden design, for the majority of people?  How to get, in the garden realm, from work equals dreadful to Work = Love ?
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"I think I've been the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.  And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther."  Charlie Munger.
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"A lot of success....in business comes from knowing what you really want to avoid."  Charlie Munger.
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Humorously, at the front end of gardening, moth to a flame, every garden cliche to avoid, that-be-me.  How was I to know, gardening/landscaping/garden-design is counterintuitive?  There was no resource listing what to avoid in landscaping, gardening, Garden Design.  Now, that-be-me.  More than a 180 about what it takes to have a beautiful garden, the collateral narrative of a life, 180 too.  Did not see that coming. 



Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Centuries of wisdom, above.  Garden Design course in a single picture.  At the front end of Garden Design, I did not see, aka understand, all this garden wields, nor did I like this type of Garden Design.  Remember, well, that girl.
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Now?  I can teach a 3 day class on this Garden Design, above.  And have.  Teaching at the Atlanta Botanical garden.  Check, for 2 decades.  Teaching at the local college, check, and award winning there, too.  Remember, where I began, not liking the garden, above.  Get the memo, it's a life memo too, Work = Love, and stewardship, and etc....... 
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Better than a life memo, a G*d wink.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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More Charlie Munger, below.

"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.

Choose clients as you would friends.

The best armour of 0ld age is a well-spent life preceding it.

When you borrow a man’s car, always return it with a tank of gas.

If only I had the influence with my wife and children that I have in some other quarters!

Take a simple idea and take it seriously.

In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables — like the discount warehouses of Costco.

Don’t do cocaine. Don’t race trains. And avoid AIDS situations.

We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning and which pays you three to one.

You’re looking for a mispriced gamble. That’s what investing is. And you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced. That’s value investing.

It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn’t get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.

A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.

All intelligent investing is value investing — acquiring more than you are paying for.

You must value the business in order to value you the stock.

No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use his checklist.

There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn’t awash in cash — and I don’t want to go back.

…it never ceases to amaze me to see how much territory can be grasped if one merely masters and consistently uses all the obvious and easily learned principles.

Once you get into debt, it’s hell to get out. Don’t let credit card debt carry over. You can’t get ahead paying eighteen percent.

If you always tell people why, they’ll understand it better, they’ll consider it more important, and they’ll be more likely to comply.

Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.

You don’t have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long time.

Three rules for a career: 1) Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself; 2) Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire; and 3) Work only with people you enjoy.

I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave.

I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.

…being an effective teacher is a high calling.

I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart…

Without numerical fluency, in the part of life most of us inhibit, you are like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

In my life there are not that many questions I can’t properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compound interest table."

Garden Design: From Low Order Thinking to Emergent Behavior

Chairs, below, come in aluminum.  Don't know if these are.
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At the front end of wanting a pretty landscape this type of garden, below, was intimidating, for the most ridiculous of reasons.  Aside from assuming great expense, it got worse.  Who was I to have a garden like this?  Certainly a low order of mentality.
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"There is a kind of shrewdness many men have that enables them to get money.  It is the shrewdness of the fox after the chicken.  A low order of mentality goes with it."  Sherwood Anderson, 1876-1941, in a letter to his son.
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Low level thinking, I was spot on. 


Pic, above, here.
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"Inspiration exists but it has to find you working." Pablo Picasso
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".....acquire power over your aye and no and learn to hold and withhold them in accordance with your higher aims."  W.E.B. DuBois in a letter to his daughter.
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Plantaholic, no worries about Garden Design.  Getting the plants I wanted, arranging them beautifully, while delightful in the micro, macro was the true hunt.  Ah, seeing past the low order of mentality.  (One must keep a sense of humor about our past selves.)
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See plant I love, buy it, until about age 26.  That was my low order power thinking.  I was that fox just-a-gittin'it-after-the-chicken.
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"Power laws are interesting because they reveal surprising correlations between disparate factors as a mental model, power laws are versatile, with numerous applications in different fields of knowledge." Shane Parrish. 
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Moving further from the fox just-a-gittin-it there are linear relationships, 'twice as big requires twice as much, non-linear relationships 'don't need twice as much for twice as big' they're a more efficient system.  Finally, there is the complex system, a system made up of myriad components, called emergent behavior.  Emergent behavior, "In many instances the whole seems to take on a life of its own.  Almost disassociated from the specific characteristics of it's individual building block." Geoffrey West.
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For the time & money my first landscape, in my early 20's, quickly showed "Diminishing returns: Point where more input yields progressively less output."  Shane Parrish.  Also known as my inspiration to work harder, buy books, take classes, get another college degree, horticulture.  That first garden made from love, but low order thinking, was not what I wanted.  I was smart, energetic, in deep desire, yet the garden, awful.
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Garden Design is not the fox after the chicken, nor linear thinking or non-linear thinking, and more than a complex system.  Garden Design is Emergent Behavior.  Layers of garden design rules compound upon themselves, how could they not, working with living materials, weather, and the non-linear relationships of much of this narrative between layers and their collateral 'amplify results'.
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Still with me?
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"Any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish is the only way to Be Happy."  Eugene O'Neil.
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Back to the garden, above.  It's a Garden Design course in a single photo.  Hi density/low density, canopy, understory, walls, floors, focal points, entries, axis, double axis, comfort, dining/furnishings, Nature, invitation, pretty all year, even in snow.  Further, if plantings are chosen wisely, they will be deer proof, need no irrigation/chemicals, little pruning.   
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Modernity of Historic Garden Design: More You

Shoes, below, centuries old.


Pic, above, here.
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Garden Design, below, centuries old.


Pic, above, here.
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Shoes & Garden 'read' modern.
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"..that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection."  Lord Bacon, written centuries ago. 
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Discovering this Dutch Garden Design, above, I was excited to discovered who designed it.  A new talent?  Who could this be?  Simple, elegant, functional.
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Instead, centuries old.  So modern, it feels like a conversation, no, a new friend and discussion about Garden Design. 
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Why is it a new gardener is convinced they will recreate the wheel of Garden Design?  That would be me, decades ago.  Now?  Blessed to have left that persona in the rubbish heap.  More, with a knowing smile, not persona, ego.  Counterintuitively, historic Garden Design is about becoming more 'you'.  A proscenium for your life.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T 

Engine of Providence

Low Tara Turf, below.  From 1st meeting adored its charm, character, function.  Here, perfectly balanced with formal pruning, canopy, open, woodland beyond.
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Did you immediately understand all these things too?


Pic, above, here.
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Oddly, decades after falling deeply for Tara Turf, an epiphany.
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More than 'aesthetics', pure function.  Engine of Providence.
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Tara Turf next to canopy/understory are maximum pollinator habitat.
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My adoration/desire no different than the attraction a bee has for flowers.  None.
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Life at its most basic.
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Tara Turf, indeed.  Drama. Bees have known, since bees have been.
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Maximum pollinator habitat can increase crop yields by 80%, do the math.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO T
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TARA TURF

TARA TURF IS UNIQUE TO EACH REGION. 
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TARA TURF, in GA, is a mix of grass-moss-clover-mondo-ajuga-dandelion--mazus-and what the wind blows in. Add crocus, dwarf daffodil, thyme if desired.
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TARA TURF is mowed at 1-2-3 heights, below. Beneficial to wildlife, organic, sustainable, fragrant, low maintenance, eco and only uses rainwater.

                           Pic, above, I shot at Sissinghurst.

TARA TURF, mixed heights, above, in England.
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Studying landscapes in Europe I noticed, NO LAWNS. TARA TURF is used commercially and residentially.
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New neighborhoods lack smell and mixed insects. Did you know there are more good bugs than bad bugs?
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Old neighborhoods smell like my childhood. Clover, grass, bugs, dirt, all the good things.
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Most new neighborhoods have deed restrictions outlawing TARA TURF.
TARA TURF, I shot, in England, above.
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The outlaw label, against TARA TURF, should be amusing but the stakes are too high.
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The cost of mow-blow-go is too high. Lawn mowers are not regulated. One hour of lawn mowing is equal to 11 hours of driving a car.
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Fertilizer, insecticide & fungicide kill machorizal fungi, and are toxic to groundwater.
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 TARA TURF, I shot, in Italy, above.
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And drain into groundwater. Atrazine in our drinking water was on the front page of NY Times 8-23-09. TARA TURF uses no chemicals.
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Yes, I design lawns. Preferring TARA TURF but using what deed restrictions require. 

Edward Slingerland: Wu-Wei in the Garden

Most requested by clients/students?  "I don't want to spend a lot of money, it must have little maintenance."  This is what I know for sure.  Replying in detailed response to that pair of demands, via Gardenese language, no one accepts, no one.  From those who have asked, of course.
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"Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons."  Alan Watts, The Way of Zen.
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"Things become complicated only when we think about them."  Alan Watts.



Pic, above, here.
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"Trying to force a lock bends the key.  For which reason a truly intelligent man never forces an issue."  Alan Watts.  (I must try harder to prevent bent-key-thinking.  Better, when bent-key-thinking intrudes into my life, from another, "I'm not listening to your bent-key-thinking.")
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"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.  When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax and float."  Alan Watts.
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Wielding this style Garden Design, above, rich, humorous, humbling.  Further along the Garden Design archetype than whence begun.  Few immune to the Garden Design archetypes path.  Nothing new, existed well before cuneiform records.
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Humorous?  Simplicity, above, gives you, you.  Richest construct in your life, you.
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"We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives.  As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves.  The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot "  Alan Watts.
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Funny?  In my garden, there is no 'me'.  In my garden, my body hears what my brain cannot.  In my garden, I am gone, with the body remaining present.  Follow your bliss, find where you experience eternity here, Joseph Campbell truths.  In my garden there is no me, no time, no hunger, no tiredness, no awareness of bruising/bleeding, no sense of want, no fear, expansive joy.  Deeper, at the conclusion of being in my garden, answers arrived to questions known, and unknown, ahead of being in my garden.  Epiphanies from spirit, without fear.
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Seek presence over productivity.  Gaining maximum productivity, though not sought.  .
"All to easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is."  Alan Watts. 
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Before I had a language describing being in my garden I labeled it, "The best selfishness ever."  After a few years realized it is grace.  How could it not be grace?  Epiphanies too many, too potent, life changing.  Bounty of resources, from garden epiphanies, beyond measure.  Into the realm of E.M.Forster describing a multi-millionaire woman, one of his characters, as having no 'resources'.  Interesting.  Letting go, giving up control, is a resource. 
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"The brainy modern loves not matter but measures, no solids but surfaces."  Alan Watts. 
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There are places to "Transcend our futile strategies for controlling life and surrender to its living essence."  In the garden, merely one. 
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"We have been taught to believe that the best way to achieve our goals is to reason about them carefully and strive consciously to reach them. Unfortunately, in many areas of life this is terrible advice. Many desirable states — happiness, attractiveness, spontaneity — are best pursued indirectly, and conscious thought and effortful striving can actually interfere with their attainment."  Edward Slingerland
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Your act of choice, is my Garden Design writing.  Write an article about how to dig a hole?  No longer do I confuse the map for the territory, noise for signal.  Though I'm wicked good about digging a hole with a shovel or auger attached to a Caterpillar.  Pure noise, how to dig a hole if you're wanting a good garden, you in your Garden is signal territory.
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" For the early Chinese thinkers … the culmination of knowledge is understood, not in terms of grasping a set of abstract principles, but rather as entering a state of wu-wei. The goal is to acquire the ability to move through the physical and social world in a manner that is completely spontaneous and yet fully in harmony with the proper order of the natural and human worlds (the Dao or “Way”). Because of this focus on knowing how rather than knowing this or that, the Chinese tradition has spent a great deal of energy over the past two thousand years exploring the interior, psychological feel of wu-wei, worrying about the paradox at the heart of it, and developing a variety of behavioral techniques to get around it. The ideal person in early China is more like a well-trained athlete or cultivated artist than a dispassionate cost-benefit analyzer."  Edward Slinglerland     
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"Our excessive focus in the modern world on the power of conscious thought and the benefits of willpower and self-control causes us to overlook the pervasive importance of what might be called “body thinking”: tacit, fast, and semiautomatic behavior that flows from the unconscious with little or no conscious interference. The result is that we too often devote ourselves to pushing harder or moving faster in areas of our life where effort and striving are, in fact, profoundly counterproductive."  Edward Slingerland. 
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Clients with gardens getting-there the fastest?  All women, ages 40+, and a gay couple who travel the globe for their work, and are 30+/50+. 
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"Some of the most elusive objects of our incessant pursuits are happiness and spontaneity, both of which are strikingly resistant to conscious pursuit."  Maria Popova
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" Wu-wei literally translates as “no trying” or “no doing,” but it’s not at all about dull inaction. In fact, it refers to the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. People in wu-wei feel as if they are doing nothing, while at the same time they might be creating a brilliant work of art, smoothly negotiating a complex social situation, or even bringing the entire world into harmonious order. For a person in wu-wei, proper and effective conduct follows as automatically as the body gives in to the seductive rhythm of a song. This state of harmony is both complex and holistic, involving as it does the integration of the body, the emotions, and the mind. If we have to translate it, wu-wei is probably best rendered as something like “effortless action” or “spontaneous action.” Being in wu-wei is relaxing and enjoyable, but in a deeply rewarding way that distinguishes it from cruder or more mundane pleasures."  Edward Slingerland.
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"We’re drawn to people with wu-wei, Slingerland argues, because we inherently trust the automatic, unconscious mind due to a simple fact from the psychology of trust — because spontaneity is hard to fake, we intuit that spontaneous people are authentic and thus trustworthy. But Western thought has suffered from centuries of oppressive dualism, treating intuition and the intellect as separate and often conflicting faculties — a toxic myth that limits us as a culture and as individuals. Fortunately, Slingerland points out, recent decades have brought a more embodied view of cognition acknowledging the inextricable link between thought and feeling and debunking, as Ray Bradbury so eloquently did, the false divide between emotion and rationality. (We’ve seen, too, that metaphorical thinking is central to our cognitive development, and metaphor is itself rooted in emotion.) The Chinese tradition, on the other hand, has a millennia-long history of cultivating a more integrated model of the human experience..."  Maria Popova .
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If you haven't discovered Maria Popova yet, you're going to be glad you have now.
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Letting go, and finding eternity, in the garden, has made my life.  Those in my tribe, share this joy.  This is your garden.  Not me writing about when to deadhead your peonies. 
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Within each Garden Design, from a historic template, wu-wei/grace/abiding, is the bonus.  Guaranteed. 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Landscape Choices

Choices from the heart, below.  Why so rare?


Pic, above, here.
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"Honesty has a power that very few people can handle."  Anon.
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Make the choices for the garden in your heart.  Manifest.  Live.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Mastering the Art of Garden Design: Not What You Think

At the front end of planning your garden, from personal experience, if there is a problem with the outcome, those problems reside in you, not the garden.
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Assumptions about where to begin, "What plants will I have?", wildly, achingly, charmingly, sweetly, misplaced.  Going a step further, I did, decades ago, realized my initial assumptions beyond arrogant.  Worse, arrogance aimed at Nature.  There for me to wield.  Ha.
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Before we have language, we see Nature.  For most that unspoken language, remains throughout life.  Seeing through a glass darkly, thinking as a child type of stuff.
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Getting the horticulture degree, still, did not unlock the door to creating a beautiful garden, understanding Nature's language.  Off to Europe for decades studying historic gardens.  Designing/installing gardens all the while as vocation.  Dots on the Garden Design map emerged, some connected.  Map is not territory. 
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Having lunch at a client's farm, decades from my starting dot, standing inside her kitchen, looking through to the potager, a dot, outside the realm of Garden Design, appeared, and connected all the  dots.  The master dot.  Epiphanies are a drug of choice.  This one simple, seen since birth, yet zero comprehension for decades. 
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Providence never separated ornamental horticulture from agriculture.  Man's folly, made the separation.  Separation dot date?  Onset of the Industrial Revolution, late 19th century.  Until then we  lived with Nature.  The dot was clear.  Without it, death.
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"The eighteenth century was the culmination of thousands of years of agrarian society.  The nineteenth century would bring in the Industrial Revolution to America.  Until then, most societies based their economies on the raising and trading of crops, so nature was always in control.  People measured the work day by the rising and setting of the sun, and one hailstorm or flood could ruin a year's work.  Everyday life was an ongoing struggle against nature.
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Historically when people have been able to raise enough crops and food to sustain a comfortable life, they have challenged nature even further by turning their outdoor environment into a living art form, a pleasure garden.  Most societies have even given the garden religious significance.
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A garden is a balance between measured, human control on one hand and wild, mystical nature on the other.  It is the place where humans attempt to create their particular vision of an idealized order of nature and culture.  A garden is not just the opposition of unpredictable nature and organized society; it is the mediating space between them.  Human intellect, intuition, nurture, and spirit meld together in a garden.  Since culture shapes both the form and meaning of a garden at a particular place and time....."  Barbara Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805.     


Pic, above, here.

How little can you have in your Garden Design?  When I design a garden, the last question I ask myself, "What can I take away, and it holds together?"
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Inside a garden, above.  Outside a garden, below.
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Ironically, at every price point client, I'm told, "I don't want to spend a lot of money.  It must be easy to take care of."  These gardens, above/below.  Get it right.  Macro and micro.  Master dot.  Maximum pollinator habitat exists where hi density meets low density.  No, this garden isn't agriculture for man, it is agriculture for Nature.  Hence, us.
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Feed the bees. Without them we perish.  Basic.  Simple.  Nature knows, we forgot.  More to this Nature 'stuff', Barbara Saludy alluded to it richly, above.  Cadence.  Will get to that another day. 

 
Pic, above, here.
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One of the most potent Garden Designs you'll see, above.  Tara Turf, meadow mowed at differing heights, with a mix of plantings suitable to the zone, attracting myriad insects, attracting myriad mammals, (reptiles too, love my lizards), in turn attracting different genres of insects, mammals to the hedging and wild wood beyond.  Nature in full cycle, master dot included, high density mixed with low density.  While providing for property value increases, HVAC expense decreases, less maintenance, no chemicals, no irrigation.  Easily maintained with unskilled labor.  Of course the goal is to maintain as much as you can yourself, placing mind/body/soul into Nature's realm, Nature's cadence.  As long as you can.   
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Designing gardens, I design simple.  As requested.  After the concept plan, it's normal to receive requests for more 'stuff'.  Here's the negotiation.  Put this plan in first, if you want more later, easy.  Of course the final plan always includes a few of those extras.  If I don't put them in, the client will liberally dose the garden themselves.  Better to be like Barney Fife, Nip It.
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With a proper garden design, epiphanies daily.  Epiphanies that will change your life.  How could Nature not do that for you?  Example?  It's almost fall, when the trees drop their leaves, baring themselves naked ahead of winter, they are being fed by what they let go of.
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Meditate on that.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Garden Narrative: 20's vs 50's

Layers of narrative, below.  At the front end of learning Garden Design professionally, mid-20's,  this type of garden, below, equaled the type of home it fronted.    At that front end, this garden was also too simple, too rigid, too formal, too boring, too lacking.  Oh my what 3 decades have wrought.


Pic, above, here.
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Now I see the narrative of this garden as pure joy, wisdom and a proscenium for your life.  Infinite scope for the imagination.  Importantly, easy to maintain.  No drama, your life, fully, enough. 
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More, a Garden Design for any era, any architecture.   
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"The best of life is life lived quietly where nothing happens but our calm journey thru' the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.
-John McGahern".
Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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We are back from 10 days in Maine with a bit of Boston.  Portland, Freeport, Kennebunkport, Bar Harbor and more.
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One particular morning, staying at a B&B, still a private home built ca. 1880, on the shore in Bar Harbor, I arose early in excitement, knowing the coffee was awaiting, and exactly where I was going to sit and fully live.  The owner was awake and about, and as I carried my coffee to the porch, an older gentleman, already sitting and fully living, with a great deep voice said, "Good morning."  I replied in kind.  We two continued our full living in the greatest of silence, that symphony of Nature and ocean.
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An hour passed, the owner came outside to ask if we were ok.  The gentleman replied, "We are sharing a deep companionable silence."  She left.  We continued that deep companionable silence.  A few minutes later Beloved arrived, soon breakfast would be served and the day had begun its new threads.  "Take joy", Tasha Tudor signed off with.  Yes, indeed.
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Early morning view, Bar Harbor, Shore Path Cottage.

Playgrounds & Microbiomes

Too many times I'm told, "We must have a lawn for the children."
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'Poppycock' my grandfather would say.
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Chose his word in mission to the front porch/yard, below.
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He was a doctor, he served in WWII.  Member of the greatest generation.
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How many of the greatest generation had the ubiquitous lawn-to-play-on ?  Few.  Instead, it was their generation bringing that lawn into ubiquity once they returned from war.
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Fun, below.  Makes me want to play seesaw too, a doll, and a dog in a wheelbarrow, plenty of running around space.  Scope for the imagination as Anne of Green Gables said in earnest.
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Today, will site my oldest wheelbarrow near the fig & meadow.  Laskett always follows me to the fig bush.  Up he goes, into the wheelbarrow, camera click.
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Better, I'll put a vintage Christening gown on him, to wear in that wheelbarrow.
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Play.  It's contagious.
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Remember well, playing quite hard growing up.  Designing gardens with children, I know to give them 'flow' around entire house.  Solid fence at a side of the house?  Up and over they go.  I did.  No professor in college for horticulture mentioned 'flow' for children in Garden Design.  It is intuitive.
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Twenty years in to my Garden Design career I went to a Feng Shui lecture.  She, the expert, can't remember her name, certainly put 'flow' around a home into her lecture.  With slides to back it up.  Sweet.
 

Pic, above, here.
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Now, this photo reads as a scene from a movie.  We traded for foundation plantings, monoculture tidy lawn, homeowner association rules, deed restrictions, and out the window went this scene, above.
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Complaints about lack of outdoor childhood play have been written about for decades now.  More, scientific studies are arriving showing our bodies need many layers of microbiomes found, yes, outside.  When will the study arrive proving the 'play' construct of childhood is Nature's way of getting us those Microbiomes.
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Swath of lands my childhood play included ranged from our yard, friend's yards, empty lots, the saltwater lake, a street over, behind our house, and a peninsula of land in Galveston Bay 2 blocks away.  Bless that era.  The peninsula, which I considered mine, is now fenced & gated, a sign-in sheet for entry, which the police check, and warnings of all types.  Warnings.  Seriously?  It was my playground, no fear, pure fun.  Different world now.  More important than ever to include play spaces.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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More than making sure children have play spaces, make sure you have play spaces.  A conservatory with vintage furnishings, invite girlfriends for lunch or in the evening for wine/canapes, best 'tea party' ever.

Relandscape vs. Delandscape

Ok, I get the house statement, below.  Well done.
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Landscape?  As my dear friend Susanne Hudson will say, dinky-is-stinky.
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Two approaches, below.  First approach, quite common, decades of experience with this 'issue'.  Build a fine home, there goes the landscape budget.  This home, below, can handle a lower landscape budget.  I would go much lower with this landscape budget.
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How?


Pic, above, here.
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Remove every foundation shrub, above, tuck lawn all-the-way to the house.  Done.
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If I had the chance to live in this home, very nice, lawn to the house, and a dense evergreen hedge at the curb.  More, slant the hedge higher at the right to lower at the left, copying the roof pitch in reverse.
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At present I 'see', "No budget for landscape."
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Merely removing the foundation plantings says, "Architectural choice, bold.  Nothing dinky-is-stinky here."
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This home a good example, removing-ugly frees the house to breath and show its beauty.  TV garden shows are always about adding landscape to make the house better.  It's not uncommon, with older homes especially, removing landscape makes the house better.  Perhaps this should be a named genre, Delandscaping.
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Take it away.
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Hope Delandscaping is a new arrow for your quiver.  Another way to 'see' landscape.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Lovely tree pruning, above.  
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It's not often I take out an entire foundation planting, perhaps 5-6 times in 3 decades.  Yet, 100% of those 'husbands' said, "I would have ripped it out first day we moved in if I knew my house looked this good."  And they all had waited years.

Penelope Bianchi: Garden Template

Concise architecture, verdant vining vertical lawn, primitive shutters, hi Victorian crenelated benches, potted plantings, no foundation plantings, gravel to the house, diminutive light above the door, the pair of poodles in welcome, no lions here, rich restraint, you have me at first glance.
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At a jobsite yesterday, this garden, below, in my head.  A more formal vernacular French, yet it will be lapping gravel to the house, potted plants, benches against the home, and vine on the home.  


Pic, above, here.
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Client hired me in an emergency.  Angst in her voice at the first phone call.  She had purchased a new smokehouse made to historic templates, and it was arriving in 2 weeks.  Where to place it?  Going full French, by request, I knew exactly where to place it.  Bless & grace in historic Garden Design 'rules'.  Zero fear siting her new 'toy'.  More, she wanted it sited at the edge of their new potager and orchard.  Delightful, the more constraints a garden has, the easier to design.
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Her husband is a garden zealot also, but the poor dear man travels like the wind across the globe for his career.  He had to trust what we were doing with the smokehouse.  Cannot imagine what that felt like for him.  We knew to get the smokehouse right, it must also make him beyond happy when he returned.
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Better than siting the smokehouse correctly, we got something larger.  A garden will inform you when it's pleased.  Their garden said something quite nice, a huge double check.  Approaching their home, from the main approach to the front door, and from a slight angle, as above, it's a Money Shot.
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Wildly excited at this discovery, I told the client right away.  When she saw it, she called her husband right away.  Once he got home, it was obvious to him too.  Three garden nerds in a pod.  High-fiving our Money Shot.
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Meeting with the grading contractor at their site today.  They've got grading, and oodles of other necessities ahead of photography.  You can be sure, their before/after, will include this photo, above.
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Why?  Once you get the memo about Historic Garden Design Rules, you'll be using them too, they're for every site.  Promise.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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I love Penelope Bianchi's garden.  Heart-on-my-sleeve, LOVE.  More pics of her garden here.  Penelope Bianchi's website, here.  Somehow, before internet, social media, love for Penelope Bianchi's garden arrived in a magazine article.  Years pass, blogging etc arrives, and now I love Penelope too, the person, and her garden.  Penelope's interior design and gardens must be imprinted onto your skillset templates.  Consider this your best homework assignment ever.    

House & Garden Well Matched

Perhaps not your cup of tea, below, but a perfect cup of tea nonetheless.  Deer proof boxwood, evergreen, punctuated topiaried forms amongst the green meatballs.  Low maintenance, drought proof, no bugs.  Amusing, the slight stone dry stack retaining wall.  Great thought went into needing/not needing it.  We see which won.
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Trees lovingly pruned, small space, several rooms & hallways & walls.
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Huge invitation to enter with the pair of urns, graced with stone steps.
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Have a seat in the parlor, chairs/fence using black makes the small spaces 'larger'.
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House used wisely as the backdrop focal point.  Incredible restraint with the house, great simplicity, dozens of choices made, each with the answer, 'No'.  Modesty of the entire package, house & garden, displays a wise heart.

"A garden is not a picture, but a language.", Henry Mitchell.


Pic, above, here.
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As time passes, above, I would prune the meatball hedges into simple hedges, no rounding, letting the rounded topiary shapes 'pop' more.  Better than my thoughts, it would be more fun being friends with this gardener, above, and enjoying it unfold through their head/heart/hands.
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Great joy in getting the call from a gardening friend, "I'm going to move that hedge by the house, and put a gate in the fence near ......"
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Irma update.  Hope it's the last.  Power came on last nite, att phone service came on while we slept, over 3 days without.  Beloved's team cleared, chain-sawed, raked, blew, etc. all yesterday.  We're back to a new normal.  Sunlight has changed with many large lost limbs, new scope for the imagination.  A Georgia Power team & a Tennessee Power team got our power restored, we're on the main drive in the historic district.  Side roads will get power today/tomorrow.  They had greater storm damage.

Plantswoman Into Garden Designer

After acquiring an  American degree in horticulture, educated to be a guy in a truck mowing grass, blowing clippings, siting plants in outcurves/incurves to grow oversized for extra monetizing pruning, needful of fertilizer, chemicals to kill Nature, and a real nice irrigation system, let's not forget the yearly replenishment of mulch, and twice yearly exchange of colorful annuals, all bundled into a tidy yearly contract, $$$.  Hey, who needs more?  Me.
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Late 20's when I began decades of European travel, studying historic gardens, I didn't have words to describe what I was seeking, only words describing what I didn't want about gardens, a few above.  In lieu of words, I was listening to my heart.  Traipsing off, sure of discovery, unaware a pupil of E.M.Forster for sure.
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Blessedly, the first study tour, England & mostly Scotland, I got the memo.  More, the memo arrived, narrated by General Patton, aka George C. Scott.


Pic, above, here.
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When I hosted my own garden show on CBS-TV their mantra was, don't-tell-me-SHOW-me.
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Exactly how I learned across Europe.  Their historic gardens full of show, and loaded with delightfully intuitive conversation, 'tell', from all the gardeners & owners the sites had the privilege of working with across centuries.
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Quite the example, SHOW, above.  About lost all my knee strength seeing this, decades ago.  Understanding ALL.  Immediately, understanding all.  Where that comes from, intuitive understanding, aka epiphany or koan, I metaphor to my Muse.  Like it was said toward the end of Dr. Zhivago, 'A gift'.
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In hindsight I went to Europe a horticulturist/plantswoman, returned a Garden Designer.  If I was told this would happen, zero chance I would have believed it.  None.
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What did I hear General Patton say from all those years ago?  "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"  Quite the proper image popping into mind.  Bombs exploding, Patton winning, he spoke like a warrior, the type I knew.  Age 10, seeing the film when it came out at the theater with my family.  Dad the NASA engineer made it obvious Patton had nothing on him with language or results.  Though, sister/me were deeply impressed at the dinner table one evening, while Chris Craft was director at JSC, dad said, "Chris Craft has the foulest mouth of any man I've met."  We silently made knowing eye contact, "We must hear this Chris Craft."   Ha, never did.  But the awe remains.  Amusing, now, when Beloved says, "You can dog cuss."  A skill I don't use often, perhaps when the little toe on the right foot is broken standing on the bow of a boat trying to hitch the hook from the hoist inside the boathouse.
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Patton's bombs exploding, from the clip, are pure Joseph Campbell, Power of Myth, slaying the dragon, every scale of its hide a metaphor of "Thou Shalt."
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Why tell these stories, above?  These stories are the people hiring me, for decades.  People who've intuited their rabbit hole, gone in a little, maybe a great distance, yet for the Thou Shalt's of their lives, not the full distance.  Job, children, health, many Thou Shalt's, yet intuiting all, without words, just able to still hear a bit of their distant heart.  My life, needing to work for filthy lucre yet a heart unable to stay in the dire depths of Thou Shalt, instead, creating my own job, and taking it.  Collateral with infertility, a great wealth of time granted, honoring that gift, jumping into the rabbit hole, seeking & finding what the heart spoke without words.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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JOSEPH CAMPBELL (words of Chief Seattle, 1852): “The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky, the land? The idea is strange to us. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, all are holy in the memory and experience of my people. We’re part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. Each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father; the rivers are our brothers. They carry our canoes and feed our children.

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If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. This we know: the earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the earth. All things are connected, like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

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“Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? What will happen when the secret comers of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? The end of living and the beginning of survival. When the last red man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any spirit of my people left? We love this earth as the newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it; care for it as we’ve cared for it, hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. 
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Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all. One thing we know, there is only one God; no man be he red man or white man can be apart. We are brothers, after all.” 
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Bold letters mine.  The 'dire' I had to run from, choosing to live, not merely survive.  Beware of choosing to live, it rocks the boat for others in your life.  Bigly.

Stone & Flow Garden Design

Macro: Islands in the gravel, no edges.  Meandering flow, as if the gravel were water.
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Micro: Small space, high function, drifts of plantings make the space 'larger' axis views into beauty from the home.
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Crazy: Using green-meatballs and I like them.


Pic, above, here.
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Garden Design Class, above, in a single pic.  Color echoes a delight, furniture choices/materials perfect.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Thank you for continued calls, texts, emails about Harvey in Houston.  Mom is dry, kept her power, worst damage are fronds from her palm trees fell.  She said they needed pruning anyway.  Many homes in her neighborhood flooded.  Sister still evacuated, home is dry, and a scare this morning with new mandatory evacuations placed on her neighborhood.  Put her address into the interactive map, she's 4 blocks away.  Hundreds of homes already flooded in her neighborhood, ahead of this new mandatory evacuation.  Keeping hope, she too stays dry.  Prayers for all, people/pets/wildlife/livestock, affected by Harvey.

Layers of Nuance in a Stone Wall

Perhaps for a party, below, the pair of potted hydrangeas?  Love of hydrangeas, past president of the American Hydrangea Society, here, the beauty of meadow, woodland, and sloping hills are too great, to me, to stop the eye with potted hydrangeas.
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Well before these thoughts, there was conversation, deeper, about how to cap the stone wall at entry to meadow-woodland-sloping hills.  Did you already notice that delightful, well constructed, expert nuance?  More, the strong choice made.  Beyond subtle, yet their minds didn't stop with the cap on the wall.
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Did you see that too?  I'll go slow.  Wanting your eyes/brain/heart to see, on its own.


Pic, above, here.
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Hope it sails a thousand ships.
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Quite a sure hand with stone capping, all at the same height.  Yet the crescendo accelerates.  Imperceptibly, the pair of hydrangeas rest upon stone 'columns'.  Notice their slight corners blending into the wall?
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Well done.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
  

Side Yard Real Estate

Commonly, side yard real estate is ignored.  Perhaps a nod to creating a 'nice' pass-through, at most.
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They got the memo, below.  An entire garden room in their 'side yard'.
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More, they completed every layer of the memo.  Gravel to the house, no foundation planting, and a wall, evergreen shrubs, for privacy.  Pure architecture.  


Pic, above, here.
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Off topic, a sign of the current era of nursery plants, above.  Since the debacle of 2008, commercial nursery contraction, retail nursery contraction, wholesale grower contraction, decent plants are rare.  Plantings at the edge of the graveled garden room, above, are the new normal.  Prior to 2008, my team would have returned those plants as culls.  Worse, guessing from the photo, in addition to fertilized spindly growth, they're probably loosely rooted, perhaps a season or 2 from being bumped up into larger containers.  In the era prior to 2008 it was considered unethical to sell plants newly bumped up/not rooted in.  Now, normal.  It gets worse.  The new normal costs much more.  Labor a huge cost burden to growers, then, again, labor a huge cost burden to crews planting.  Patented plants add another layer of cost.
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A new generation of labor crew leaders has arrived since 2008, how are they to know the new plants at the edge of the gravel garden room, above, are culls?
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For decades, new plantings had to be turned for their best 'front' at planting.  Humorous concept, now, when plants have no 'front' at all. See the gravel, above, thru the foliage of plantings along the concrete?  In the past, plants were so full of vigorous lush foliage, zero gravel would be visible thru them.
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A recent job, we indeed received gorgeous thick lush plants, heavy in their pots & well rooted.  Good timing.  The wholesaler is probably weeks from bumping up plants that haven't sold, into larger pots.  
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Of course Home Depot, Lowe's, and Wal-Mart each forced consolidation of the retail nursery sector prior to 2008.  Most of their current plant purchases are on contract, with the plant wholesaler agreeing to unload/stock shelves with their employees, and take back plants that die or look poorly.  Another layer of cost to you, the retail plant buyer.
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Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.  Could not have imagined these industry changes when I began working it ca. 1985.  Of course back in those days, it gave me my Garden Design career.  The family nursery I worked for did not offer Garden Design, nor keep any employees who did Garden Design.  Why?  Their attitude was an employee doing Garden Design, on their own time, would steal plants.  Why didn't they think an employee doing Garden Design would be buying plants from them?  A customer, not thief.  Their thinking proved detrimental, they bankrupted & had to sell.  Our nursery team mentioned more than once, 'wish they would give us a pay/purchase option in company stock'.  Ironically, the company owning that nursery now, is employee owned.  Go team !  
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT

Serendipitous Focal Point

Approach, below.



Obvious, below, pair of urns as back drop to the bench.  But wait. there is more.



Look what happens, below, with one of those urns from above.



When I'm designing gardens on site or in my office, this 'game' always happens.  Designing historically, and receiving serendipities, above.
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Makes me laugh out loud, every time.
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The serendipities are sign posts, "You're doing this right."  More, knowing my Muse is in league with the same Providence as, above.  They're all having a party while I'm working.  This 'work' my party ticket.
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Work a poor word for my livelihood.  One meaning includes, "...the absence of pleasure."
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Anyway.  All of the above merely letting you know when you get it right, you'll receive party tickets too.  Along with a gorgeous garden.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Pics from Ben Pentreath.

Double Axis: Focal Point Technique

Double Axis.  A focal point must have a focal point at both ends of its axis..
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Amazing, the things they do not teach you in school.
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Focal point bench, below.  Sitting in the bench, you must create a focal point in the opposite direction, bottom.




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Got it?
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Do it.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Pics from Ben Bentreath.
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And most think Garden Design is some sort of voodoo, its practitioners thinking up la-ti-da maybe this/maybe that a bit here a bit there.  Nope.  Garden Design is pure templated known geography zero recreating the wheel its mechanics laid bare for all the world to see.  See.  Therein lies the problem.  Pure seeing.  My best epiphanies about garden design came years after looking, not seeing.  The map is not the territory.  Gardens that do not satisfy are exactly drawn from the known map.  Beautiful gardens expose the territory here, and other realms.  Want that?  Get you some.  Bemused I am about how befuddled I was before seeing the territory, trying to follow the map.
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Best compliment ever, recently.  A Canadian client said I was PECULIAR.  Ok, thank you.  In truth it's peculiar to me, trying to live by the map.  Been there done that.  Once you hop off the map, into the territory of your life, there is no going back.  Why would you?  Got it?  Do it.  Want it?  Get it.
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Warning.  Not for the faint of heart.  Leaving the map, for your territory, is exactly where the ancient mapmakers, before knowing the world was round, foretold at map's edge, Beyond this point there be dragons.  Remember the dragon, breathing fire at all who would take his virgin girl.  Every scale of his hide a 'Thou shalt not'.  That fact is living according to your life's map.  Killing that dragon is living in your life's territory.  Got that?
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From, In the Field,

"The privelege of a lifetime is being who you are.

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What you have to do, you do with play.

Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.

The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.

Being alive is the meaning.

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The warrior's approach is to say "yes" to life: "yea" to it all.

Participate joyfully is the sorrows of the world.

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

When we talk about settling the world's problems, we're barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.

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We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
If we fix on the old, we get stuck. When we hang onto any form, we are in danger of putrefaction.
Hell is life drying up.
The Hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must be killed.
If we are hanging onto the form now, we're not going to have the form next.
You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

Destruction before creation.

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Out of perfection nothing can be made.
Every process involves breaking something up.
The earth must be broken to bring forth life.
If the seed does not die, there is no plant.
Bread results from the death of wheat.

Life lives on lives.

Our own life lives on the acts of other people.
If you are lifeworthy, you can take it.
What we are really living for is the experience of life, both the pain and the pleasure.
The world is a match for us.
We are a match for the world.

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Opportunities to find deeper powers with ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life.
We are not there until we can say "yea" to it all.
To take a righteous attitude toward anything is to denigrate it.
Awe is what moves us forward.
As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don't bother to brush it off.
Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you.

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Eternity is a dimension of here and now.
The divine lives within you.

Live from your own center.

Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss.

The society is the enemy when it imposes its structures on the individual.
On the dragon there are many scales. Every one of them says "Thou Shalt."
Kill the dragon "Thou Shalt."
When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child.

Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss.
You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.

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Follow your bliss.
The heroic life is living the individual adventure.

There is no security in following the call to adventure.

Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

To refuse the call means stagnation.
What you don't experience positively you will experience negatively.

You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.
Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path. You are not on your own path.
If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential.
(note: this is what the Holy Grail is all about... not some cup --dv)
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The goal of the hero trip down to the jewel point is to find those levels in the psyche that open, open, open, and finally open to the mystery of your Self being Buddha consciousness or the Christ.
That's the journey.

It is all about finding that still point in your mind where commitment drops away.

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It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
THe very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.

You find the jewel, and it draws you off.

In loving the spiritual, you cannot despise the earthly.

The purpose of the journey is compassion.
When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.

The goal is to bring the jewel back to the world, to join the two things together.

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The seperateness apparent in the world is secondary.
Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen, but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today, the planet is the only proper "in group."

You must return with the bliss and integrate it.

THe return is seeing the radiance everywhere.

Sri Ramakrishna said: "Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond."

If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you. But you must be ready for it.

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The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.


A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation:
"As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm.
Jump.
It is not as wide as you think."

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Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers, "JOSEPH CAMPBELL AND THE POWER OF MYTH

Ep. 4: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth — ‘Sacrifice and Bliss’

June 24, 1988

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In the fourth episode of The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers and mythologist Joseph Campbell discuss the role of sacrifice in myth — including a mother’s sacrifice for her child — and the need for all of us to find our sacred places in the midst of today’s fast-paced world. In this clip, the two discuss where heroism can be witnessed in modern society.

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Watch, or read the transcript, here.