Garden Diary: Musings on memory, pleasure and structure

Going down into the garden at this time of year is like becoming small again, like a child. I've never been able to say why I admire large plants, why I delight in being surrounded by towering grasses and perennials, but I think this pleasure comes from childhood memories - memories of hiding in banks of blossoming vetch in the vacant lot next door, the privacy and solitude of a secret room inside a colony of wild plum bushes.

A Simple Love of Plants
The candelabra-like spent flower heads of Prairie Dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) rising to ten and twelve feet in the photos above and below add a sense of magic, suspended as they are, like vegetable jewels, on amazingly strong stems above the surrounding plantings, dancing entwined with tall black-beaked, seed-heavy rods of Rudbeckia maxima. (Click on the photos to see detail.)

This is the same pleasure most gardeners find in plants, a simple passion for plants, a sensuous response to THE PLANT. Period. It has little to do with aesthetics of the garden as a whole.

Private Meanings
On another level, appreciation of a planting can be a door to a personal world of private meaning. The plants in the next photo, delicately accented by flowering panicles of Molinia 'Transparent', can be seen as metaphor; they bring to my mind the quantum foam conceived by physicists, where matter and energy dance at some subatomic level, matter popping into and out of existence, changing into energy and back to matter eternally, a bubbling brew where we confront the hard edge of existence, being and non-being.

Analogy as a Way of Seeing and Understanding
Musical analogy is another pleasing way to see a garden - think variations on a theme - the infinite variety of plant shapes, textures, leaf forms, movements, rhythmic changes over time - revealing similarities and differences in form, bearing, or other attributes. Below, mounds of Miscanthus 'Silberfeder', their ribbon-like foliage echoed in altered form by the tall wavy arms of the Japanese Fantail Willows (Salix sachalinensis 'Sekka') behind them, contrast with the big, low leaves of the Petasites at their base (the bass viol in this musical analogy?) ... in late summer the dusty silver of Mountain Mint (Pycnantheum muticum) flowing through it all like the sparkling high notes of a piccolo.

What is Structure in a Naturalistic Garden?
Below, a simple garden path defines the edge of the open space and of the garden, the boundary - a reminder of the garden's structure, largely invisible at this time of peak growth. Naturalistic as the garden is, even approaching wildness, particularly to more traditional gardeners, this is a structured space. The structure takes its impetus from the river delta-like drainage flow across the garden, from the linear pond at the entrance into the open garden, from the native stone walls emulating ancient stone rows built here in previous centuries, and from the circular clearing in the woods that defines the space of the cultivated garden - and from the plants themselves, placed to reflect similarities in form and structure, planted to create drifts, to create a visual sense of movement, even to tell a story.

While it's possible to enjoy the plants alone, if the whole isn't more than the sum of its parts, a garden is little more than a private collection of perennials, shrubs and trees. Without structure, it could just as well be the plant growing-on part of a nursery. Structure holds it all, helps give it meaning, and evokes an intellectual pleasure - each part fitting into a perceived whole. Piet Oudolf's gardens, for example, use blocks of single species to create structure, strategically placed shrubs and topiary to manipulate the sense of depth, hedges to hold the looseness of the naturalistic structure.

Open space, the void that makes possible the view through and across the garden, given emphasis by the red circle of logs at the vanishing point in the photo below, is intrinsic to its structure - open space bounded by the wall of surrounding wood, but with occasional glimpses into corridor views opened by tree felling, or simply views into the interstices between the trees (an effect much more pronounced in winter when the leaves have fallen). And above it all the dome of sky opens the garden to the universe, yet is circumscribed by the circle of trees that enclose the space, too closely I think. Closed openness, like a nest.

Pleasure in Detail
As I walk through the garden, likeness and difference, similarity and contrast return my eye to the material aspects of the garden: a sanguisorba given by a fellow gardener, Mirjam Farkas, so different in structure from the flowering Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpureum) behind it, yet so similar in color, brings to mind another reason for gardening, many as they are - in this case the pleasure of differentiating between similar and dissimilar things, something we observe in small children playing with shaped objects ...

... or simply delighting in the detail of small things.

Or taking pleasure in durable, sturdy form as with this Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra 'Venusta'), still giving a good show two months after its blossoming time in spite of a summer of heavy rain.

Distance, Space, Large Scale Structure
Thick as the garden is planted, the architecture of the space reveals itself only over distance. The vertical cedar trunks 300 feet across from the viewpoint below provide a reference point, making it possible to "see" the intervening space.

Moving to the left, the distant framework stays the same, while the foreground changes, showing different plant forms and plant combinations. Here panicums, irises, a lone cimicifuga (actea), Silphium perfoliatum, Arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), Miscanthus giganteus on the right.

Moving left, looking across the pond (hardly visible), petasites, cattails (typha), Sweet Bay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana), river birch in the mid-distance, floppy flowering Miscanthus 'Silberfeder' at the far side.

Transient Structure of Plants
And last, a closer view, taken with a small aperture to gain maximum depth of field, bringing multiple layers of the scene into focus. This foreground, the plants themselves, are transient structure, changing from hour to hour, day to day, season to season - the abstract and concrete in interplay, visible and invisible structure making the garden.


More Questions
In the end, this post raises more questions than it answers. Plenty of room for exploration of the concept of structure, especially in naturalistic gardening, remains. The role of memory as a starting point and source of pleasure is clearer. What gives pleasure is, of course, a highly subjective thing. I know from personal experience that many people are uncomfortable, if not frightened, in my garden, in most cases I think because they are intimidated by plants larger than themselves. But I'm not trying to start a movement.

High Line at Night - Again

Click on the picture to see Judy's photos of our early evening visit to the High Line.

High Line at Night

We visited the High Line last night - not the way I hoped to see it for the first time, but it was a revelation none-the-less. Crowds of strollers, visitors in twos and threes, groups, loungers. The lighting even made it possible to enjoy some of Piet Oudolf's low plantings. But the big surprise was the mass plantings of Prairie Dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), which invisibly perfumed the air with a unique fragrance for several hundred feet - like a silent message in the dark. Like an unexpected gift.

Chanticleer revisited

Over a long 4th of July weekend, Phil and I drove down to Chanticleer, just outside Philadelphia. On my first visit last September, I was in a frenzy of plant madness and couldn't properly see the garden. This time, I realized why Chanticleer bills itself "a pleasure garden." It's a fun place, with wild juxtapositions of color and texture, risky plantings you may not like, or you may love. At least they'll make you stop and think.

Below an artistic joke: a grove of ceramic bamboo, with red rooster's combs randomly spurting out.


The "Serpentine" - last year it was planted with bronze sorghum; this year I'm not sure what's coming up. Beans?

Sporobolus heterolepis, a favorite in many parts of the garden, always brings a smile to my face. It's a stunning grass, but humorous too, a cartoon mop head. A buried gnome?

This area warms my heart because the designers decided to make the most of a wet area infested with Equisetum arvense (Horsetail). Bowles Golden sedge for some color highlights. Even some weeds.

Several beautifully carved bridges add an artful tone. This one evokes a feeling of magic or a fairy tale world.

In an out-of-the-way place, someone has been playing with paving made of clay tiles and slate buried on edge.

A sunburst in stone ...

And another, cruder than the first, but perhaps just waiting for a little gravel and age to bring it to completion.

The water wheel accompanied by Thalictrum and ferns ...

An entire field of Sporobolis heterolepis. Last year it was an unbroken expanse; this year it has a path mown through, with Echinacea dotted here and there.

Another Echinacea at the top of the hill. I don't know which one, but it has hairy stems and leaves.

A humorous planting, with skinny Rudbeckia maxima in the background, and rotund verbascums toward the front. Of course, "front" is relative since you can approach this island planting from any direction.

A stone sofa with a stone TV remote just visible resting on the right arm (your left). To either side are stone easy chairs.

One of Chanticleer's many creative groundcover plantings, here decorating the entrance stair to the Tennis Court Garden.

Lots of gold in this garden. Cercis 'Hearts of Gold' like a fountain behind a veil of Calamagrostis a. 'Karl Foerester'.

Still in the Tennis Court Garden, a golden Catalpa behind Salvia sclarea (Clary sage).

Another bed in the Tennis Court Garden. I think I liked the plantings last year more, but I also enjoy knowing I'll always find Chanticleer trying something new.

One of several hand-crafted boxes holding plant lists.


The "formal" courtyard garden behind the main house - more exuberant gold ...



Experiment in color and texture near the swimming pool. Last year a deep purple form of cotton was a featured plant in this area.

At the top of a hill is the stone 'ruin', rebuilt where an estate house was torn down. Here, a stone trough with tender plantings.

A very successful naturalistic garden at the top of the hill. The orange of butterfly weed carries the eye around on a visual exploration.

A weeping hemlock has its own personality.

In fact, many of the exotics are almost like characters in some story I don't yet know. You could have a relationship with this yucca.

An unidentified lilly ... but an appropriate symbol for this pleasure garden.

More on the High Line

My friend Judy Mann has made a second visit to the High Line. Although I work probably a mile from it, I haven't found time to visit yet, but I'm enjoying Judy's photos. Take a look at a slide show and see how the Piet Oudolf-designed plantings are doing now that hot weather has finally arrived in NYC. To see the entire photo album, click on the picture above.

Great Indian Plantain (Cacalia muhlenbergii )

The silhouette of this plant attracted my attention from a moving car several weeks ago. The photos don't really capture the dramatic form that caught my eye speeding by at 50 mph. I stopped last Sunday to get a closer look.

Though I've never encountered Indian plantain before, I thought I'd seen similar plants in some of the nursery catalogues I use, so I went on a search, only to discover there are several different Indian plantains. This one has jagged, angular foliage held at a uniform angle (maybe 60 degrees) from the horizontal. Combined with the rigid stems of the plant, they make for a striking effect against a uniform background. I believe this is Cacalia mulengergii, Great Indian plantain, but correct me, please, if I'm wrong.

The umbelliferous flower heads are decorative, but the foliage and overall figure of the plant are what make this plant unique. Now I'm on a search to find it for my garden.


This close-up gives a better view of the foliage as well as the reddish stems.


This specimen is growing on private land, about 25 feet from the roadside, in the Rosemont Valley near our house in western New Jersey.