Over the past few years, my interest has gradually evolved in matters relating to the outside of our house. It is going from keeping our house outside cleaned up, to making observations about what type of plants the previous owners had planted, to a keener appreciation that a garden presents more than what the eye initially discerns.
Over the past few years, with a few seasons under my belt, I think there are three aspects to consider when one is contemplating a garden:
Architecture: It is perhaps quite easy to level the ground and throw some grass seed and be done.
It is another matter, to eye the landscape and ask what are some possibilities with it. As I have gone around and looked at both gardens in the neighborhood, gardens of mansions such as the ones in Newport or the public gardens; it is now abundantly clear to me that the layout and the landscaping underlies how the garden evolves.
My favorite aspect of a garden's architecture is what one might call tiering. Creating levels that allows one to generate a different look, feel and utility of different spaces (much like how rooms inside a house can have different look and feel and utility).
In particular, I am attracted to the use of stone walls for tiering.
Seasonality: It takes a few cycles to appreciate this. As we pass by someone's house our eye might pick up an overall sense and then in particular notice some green and some color.
And sometimes there might be one color or one shape that attracts the eye. But generally not much beyond that.
Upon close inspection, every plant and indeed every leaf and every flower follows a rythmic pattern. Getting to know how plants behave over a season - ie when they bloom, when they shed, allows one to then blend this seasonal behavior into the above architecture.
When I walk our dog through our neighborhood over the years, I notice with some of the front yards show a different face pretty much every month.
It occurs to me that they (or their designer!) have been strategic about which plants they place where in the garden, such that when the peak cycle hits for a particular variety, then the garden shows a different look and feel.
It is actually amazing to watch this happen over a period of time.
Aesthetic: Architecture and Seasonality can be categorized as the science of gardening. What makes the garden pop, it seems to me, is one's ability to combine color, with shape, with placement with timing.
There is a lot of personal preference at play here. Ever notice some house overflowing with color and flowers. Others bare with none. I have a preference for blues. My wife abhors yellows.
This aesthetic characteristic is certainly hard to come by. Perhaps one can imitate, or one can learn by trial and error.
But when all these three elements come together, a garden really comes into its own.
What I find interesting about a garden is that over a period of time, as you tend to it, every square feet of it becomes familiar to you. You become familiar with each of the plants. You know how they behave. The garden as a whole responds to you, and responds to you in different ways throughout the year.
It takes time, effort and patience - but bringing up garden is rewarding!
Notes:
The New England poets seem in particular to take to gardens quite a bit. Here are three of the more famous of these, that I have visited:
Over the past few years, with a few seasons under my belt, I think there are three aspects to consider when one is contemplating a garden:
Architecture: It is perhaps quite easy to level the ground and throw some grass seed and be done.
It is another matter, to eye the landscape and ask what are some possibilities with it. As I have gone around and looked at both gardens in the neighborhood, gardens of mansions such as the ones in Newport or the public gardens; it is now abundantly clear to me that the layout and the landscaping underlies how the garden evolves.
 |
| Tiering |
My favorite aspect of a garden's architecture is what one might call tiering. Creating levels that allows one to generate a different look, feel and utility of different spaces (much like how rooms inside a house can have different look and feel and utility).
In particular, I am attracted to the use of stone walls for tiering.
Seasonality: It takes a few cycles to appreciate this. As we pass by someone's house our eye might pick up an overall sense and then in particular notice some green and some color.
 |
| Cherry Apple Tree in the Fall |
Upon close inspection, every plant and indeed every leaf and every flower follows a rythmic pattern. Getting to know how plants behave over a season - ie when they bloom, when they shed, allows one to then blend this seasonal behavior into the above architecture.
 |
| Cherry Apple Tree in the Winter |
When I walk our dog through our neighborhood over the years, I notice with some of the front yards show a different face pretty much every month.
It occurs to me that they (or their designer!) have been strategic about which plants they place where in the garden, such that when the peak cycle hits for a particular variety, then the garden shows a different look and feel.
 |
| Same tree - blooms for just 2 weeks |
It is actually amazing to watch this happen over a period of time.
Aesthetic: Architecture and Seasonality can be categorized as the science of gardening. What makes the garden pop, it seems to me, is one's ability to combine color, with shape, with placement with timing.
There is a lot of personal preference at play here. Ever notice some house overflowing with color and flowers. Others bare with none. I have a preference for blues. My wife abhors yellows.
This aesthetic characteristic is certainly hard to come by. Perhaps one can imitate, or one can learn by trial and error.
But when all these three elements come together, a garden really comes into its own.
 |
| Longwood Gardens, Philadelphia |
What I find interesting about a garden is that over a period of time, as you tend to it, every square feet of it becomes familiar to you. You become familiar with each of the plants. You know how they behave. The garden as a whole responds to you, and responds to you in different ways throughout the year.
It takes time, effort and patience - but bringing up garden is rewarding!
Notes:
The New England poets seem in particular to take to gardens quite a bit. Here are three of the more famous of these, that I have visited:
Emily Dickinson's Garden
Amherst, MA
The Robert Frost Trail
Middlebury, VT
H.W. Longfellow's Garden
Cambridge, MA
9 comments:
We visited the Rockefeller estate; you have to stop by if you happen to be in the region, stunning gardens and artwork in the mansion.
http://www.hudsonvalley.org/node/175
I am totally in agreement with you. A garden is not just a bunch of trees and plants. It is the aesthetic way in which they are arranged to convey a certain feeling.
For example, the Japanese and Chinese give the most serene and calm feeling. The gardens like Longwood, or those around palaces like Varsai give grandeur.
Gardens like that at Ootachamund give you a feeling of intimacy. So, one can have such a beautiful feeling when in a garden.
To create one is much more fascinating and rewarding !
Prakash,
I fully agree with you. I my opinion it is not just growing few trees and some bushes. It is some thing like what a painter does. You should be able to visulise how the garden looks like when all the plant are put in place. You put life into the garden when you pick up the right plants season wise, color wise and place them in the correct place. In fact gardening is an art and is an almost a full time job. Just by planting few plants/trees here and there does not end it all. You have to keep it tidy and look after the plants on daily basis.
I fully agree with you. I my opinion it is not just growing few trees and some bushes. It is some thing like what a painter does.
You should be able to visulise how the garden looks like when all the plant are put in place. You put life into the garden when you pick up the right plants season wise, color wise and place them in the correct place. In fact gardening is an art and is an almost a full time job.
Just by planting few plants/trees here and there does not end it all.
I have an ardent interest in gardening. We brave the
odds stacked against us - unfavourable weather, lack of enough water,
quality of water - to maintain our garden and lawn.
I understand what you say about seasonality. Even though we don't have sharply demarcated seasons, the plants have them.
In different cycles they bloom imparting varyind moods. We had a gorgeous Poinsetia which would turn flaming red every December until somebody asked, "How ever did you manage to grow this in Chennai?
One of our very close friends is considered to be one of the best landscape architects in the world: Katherine Gustafson. Has done some of the great public spaces. She works in clay by hand then has her team translate her designs into computer-generated drawings. The most uncompromising person I know (to the chagrin of some of her high-and-mighty clients. Google her.
Well written and brought a big
subject in small and aesthetic
presentation.
It took me back in time to reflect
the thoughts and descriptions of
"Kaavya Kanyalu" in ancient scriptures
spending time in their gardens. I have
no knowledge in other languages but
in Telugu [and of course in Sanskrit] there
is a great importance given to gardens
and in particular the flowers and the
fascination associated with young ladies
on one side and with God on the other.
Thanks for bringing some joy !
May be you can listen to a couple of songs
to know what I mean.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck_S0RT-ayo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW8e1qOVj9c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd5xLjDmet0&feature=related
This post puts you squarely in the over-the-top category, even if Kant thought that landscape architecture was the highest artform.
He had an excuse though, he was a prussian who didn't get out much.
Have faith my friend… I can (in fact you might remember that I already have done so) go left v right even with the topic of gardening.
E.g., using French gardens as a metaphor for the French Enlightenment’s deification of Rationality:
As opposed to the British garden as metaphor for the less idealized, less-rational, (that is, more human) English Enlightenment:
And speaking of poets, and apropos your early posts on poetry, there’s an interesting piece in The New Atlas which not only serves to find unity in our different ways of communicating (poetry v philosophy), but also makes the point that Jonathan Swift had a larger message beneath his satires than the surface morality most take away from them.
As do I beneath my bloviations on politics.
And you might note, especially as it relates to my last long post (on the NYT’s Atlas Spurned piece) he and I are on about the same central point. Though, of course, I have the benefit of so much more available scientific knowledge than did he. Though, on the other hand, I don’t have the benefit of his genius.
This time the hat tip goes to the NYT’s The Stone blog post in which the link to the TNA piece (see below). takes you to this terrific. Swift, like me, is focused on the ancient Greek aphorism that to be wise one must first, “Know Thyself”. And that includes staring with a deep understanding of the nature of human nature, and then its implications for politics, and well, everything else too:
At the New Atlantis, an essay pits Swift against the philosophers on the concept of truth.
Oh, and you’ll note, Swift’s message works for gardening philosophy too…. (Hint, stay English)
Though my writing habits betray it, I’m in sympathy with that William F. Buckley quote about politics being the obsession of the quarter-educated.
But also with his answer to the follow-up question, ‘Then why do you write so much about it?’ ‘Because,’ he drawled with his branded wide grin, ‘politics just won’t leave me alone.’
Also because it’s the interface with the masses regarding much of what interests me most. Further, the approach to these issues I’m most familiar with is philosophy. And that discipline has been all but entirely politicized due to the much-lamented rise of ‘isms’ in the last century. Even now it’s hard to come up very far from the dark, heavy bottom of arcane fundamental ontological/logic technicalities toward the lighter, livelier surface of everyday relevance without first encountering the sharks of ideology.
So I try to connect the shallow eddies of politics with the slightly deeper waters of the continental shelf (not, I hasten to add, to be confused with Continental philosophy!) with glimpses of what is to be found in the depths just beyond. If only I had Swift’s ability to draw one in with engaging similes, metaphors, allegories and parables….
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