Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Italian Meadow


Studying historic landscapes across Europe for almost 2 decades I was lucky to 'get it' about the use of meadows in Landscape Design.  Meadows stole my heart.  Meadows near Lucca, Italy save me from the tedium of traffic, standing in line & etc.  Give me an unpleasant task, or person, and my brain/spirit leave for Lucca.   

 Of course I have a meadow, above.  Set in the 1" spaces between gray flagstones in the formal Tea Olive Terrace.  (Alas, the stone you see is my foot trail.)
Rimmed with the formality of an abelia prostrata hedge & etc., above.
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In my meadow (can the start of a sentence get better?) English daisies bloom in Spring, rudbeckia fulgida x fulgida bloom summer-frost, annual blue ageratum bloom late summer, mazus reptans has it's tiny orchid blooms numerous months, then weeks with only stone.  Cold stone formal.  And I delight in that change.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Sir Edwin Lutyens put meadow straight up to, and touching, Sir Christopher Lloyd's Great Dixter.  THAT is where I 'got it'.  Hope you know about Lloyd's mother too.  An early naturalist.  A DEMENTED person offered to pull up my meadow recently.  Thinking it was weeds.  My college for ornamental horticulture & landscape design in USA?  It was horrible, teaching me to landscape like Mr. Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go-Commodify-Everything-I-Touch.  And to design from the street looking at the house.  Still makes me cringe.  Before Jesus even the Romans knew where to start a landscape design; from inside.  Loved my time in Israel studying landscapes.  Oh my, Puppet Barbuda came out to play a bit this morning.

4 comments:

Jean Campbell said...

My seven-foot goldenrods are a meadow of their own, complete with their own snake.

Divine Theatre said...

Guffaw! I love your humor!

Lydia said...

Your travels must be why your gardens "read" with wisdom and timelessness.

Anonymous said...

I am kinda new......so forgive me. I missed this post.
My darling husband's family is from outside Lucca! A hill town. I have the best story!
A little mountain town outside Lucca.....called Matraia!
After the war, Adam's grandfather paid to restore the bell tower of the little church. We bombed all the bell towers in the hill country!
There is a big plaque in his honor! I will try to find a picture!