Thursday, April 21, 2016

Another 1st Rule of Garden Design

Design your garden, 1st, from inside your home.  Design your garden, 1st, for the depths of winter.
.
If your garden is gorgeous in winter, it is gorgeous all year.
.
The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey is perhaps the best Garden Design book.

TARA DILLARD: THE QUEEN'S POT:

Pic, above, from my previous garden.  30 years, creating a cottage garden.  Moved no plants/field stone/bricks when I left last May, only brought focal points & potted plantings & 7 large quartz stones.  Weeks later, seeing the pile of cottage garden 'stuff' at our ca. 1900 American farmhouse I knew it was inappropriate.  Beloved had his large work truck and 5 of his men on site, I let them gather 2 truckloads for the thrift store.  I stood and pointed and watched the bits/pieces making up a garden seen on TV, in magazines/books, tours, drift away.  Bits/pieces that made up my life.  Nothing to be done but take swift action.  Impossible to live a new life chapter, dragging past chapters.
.
The view, above, is now all lawn.
.
Christopher Lloyd said, The garden dies when the gardener dies.    
.
Because money was nonexistent during early decades at my cottage garden I volunteered at garden symposiums, to get inside free.  Wildly, it was Providence placing me where I should be.  How else to have had lunch & traipse gardens with Christopher Lloyd when he came to lecture, how else to have had lunch & traipse gardens with Rosemary Verey when she came to lecture?
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO T

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So agree but happily not my experience. My Calgary garden and house were bought by a gardener. Whenever we are back there to visit our kids we do a very slow, creepy drive-by and wonder of wonders it looks great. She has made some changes of course but has kept a lot of the favourite vistas. I think she gets me and appreciates my vision. I doubt it will happen to this garden down the road but I can hope. If they don't like raspberries they will have their work cut out for them. Talking about work cut out... I need to work on the winter window views. I enjoy your posts thoroughly and learn something every time.

Lydia said...

This garden was nearly a blank slate when we arrived here nearly 30 years ago. We don't get snow here- so seeing how it looks while seated in the spa as the sun goes down- that is the best way to decide what is working - and what isn't in the garden. The other places we lived, one had a glorious spacious kitchen, the next had a master suite and walk in closet bigger than all together are here. But with this house has- is a garden which hugs and enriches our lives. Blessings.