Rain, rain

Endless rain, seemingly, has everything shooting up at amazing speed, including weeds. Local grasses are in flower, creating a kind of foggy haze over the garden. Once these early grasses turn brown, they'll give it the look of a meadow, and the rapidly emerging perennials will stand out against the tawny background.

Something to look forward to because, frankly, I'm bored by all this.

In the first few years, I thought technique alone--experimenting with a garden in a most inhospitable place, going about it without any soil improvement, relying only on "right plant, right place," and editing out the failures--would be enough, but it isn't. I need more from the garden. The "idea" of sustainability is poor sustenance.

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of emotions in gardens (seeing gardens, making gardens, designing gardens) so it's disquieting to have sunk into this funk. I think the problem may be this:  I need people in my garden, need a conversation, stimulation, insight. In a pinch, a tranquil sunset will do.

But for now, a photo tour, also boring because photos fall far short of the reality of being in the garden.

So ... to list the plants, across the pond, Darmera peltata, Petasites x hybridus, Japanese irises, Carex muskingumensis. The large foliage plants are a prime source of interest (at times, even pleasure) in this early season.

Darmera with Ligularia japonica ...

Across the way, a Cercesis canadensis 'Hearts of Gold' planted last year and in the distance, poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum) in flower. It will quickly die and turn an unpleasant brown. Unlink most of the large plants, this one does not retain structural interest, so I'll cut it as soon as seed has matured. There's plenty coming up below it.

Thank goodness for Marc Rosenquist's sculpture. It adds another level of complexity (dare I say meaning?) to the garden. It asks questions, makes me think, suggests metaphors, sparks fantasies of swirling motion (a wheel, a galaxy, the Axle Tree?), raises issues of taste, of aesthetic appropriateness. It reaches outside the garden.

View from the back, looking toward the woodland garden. One of many Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' is just to the right of Marc's sculpture, which has become a place, a reference point. I could even say it links the garden to the rest of the world, to ideas of art, history, culture, the universe.

Bracken, one of my favorite plants, is a legacy plant. It may have been here a century or more. Who could know? It was here before my garden certainly. People give it a bad rap because it tends to spread at the edges. Not nearly as invasive as many other plants, and it moves slowly.

This isn't a pretty picture but you can see the developing L-shaped Hornbeam hedge and the bench it's intended to surround. Someday it will define an end to this corner of the garden, and hide the deer exclusion fence behind.

That hedge, should it ever come to pass, may also become an artifact, like Marc's bronze, that adds to a conceptual appreciation of the garden. I want it to work at multiple levels. In the present, as a visual demarcation of one corner of the garden (with the unavoidable question of what lies beyond), as a spatial device to give an emotional sense of safety and enclosure, and practically, as a screen to hide the deer fence. To anyone with a little knowledge of gardening history, it will also refer to a centuries old garden culture, to the entire history of British gardening, beyond that to Renaissance Italy and even ancient Rome, creating a conversation between those traditions and my naturalistic garden. (On further thought, that's a heavy burden to put on a hedge, but I suppose it can serve as a reminder of the more formal elements of Western gardening tradition.)

Below, the serpentine wall seen from the area of the bench. I need to work on this. The Petasites japonicus is growing over a well drained wastewater leaching field and isn't entirely happy here. The stone wall, as a reflection of the Hornbeam hedge, might itself suggest a more appropriate planting, but one I'm not yet aware of.

A 180 degree turn gives a view across the garden. Siberian irises here will be divided and spread across the field. The ordered row of Thuja occidentalis across the garden has to be seen in the context of the Hornbeam hedge and the stone walls throughout the garden.

I don't mean that there is any specific meaning intended here. But I do enjoy evoking aesthetic and cultural references, and seeing my garden as an embodiment of the historical concept of "garden," of finding a place in garden culture, so that Rome and Rousham hover in the background and are present with me. I can't control what it might be for others.

And then, the garden is simply a place to sit, perhaps alone ...

... or in conversation.

The planting below speaks to the emotional power of images. Years ago I saw a photo of an Oehme van Sweden-designed planting with Miscanthus 'Silberfeder' in the background and mixed Pycnanthemum muticum and Petasites massed at its feet. Though I'm not yet able to define the emotional appeal of that planting, even many years later, I felt it was appropriate for this spot, not least because the environmental conditions were suitable, but also because I loved the shapes of the plants and their effect in combination. It's most effective later in the season, when the Pycnanthemum turns white and the Miscanthus is in bloom.

Perhaps the key to the interest of this planting is its playfulness, with the dramatic contrast of the large, funnel-shaped leaves against the very small ones. But it's also more than playful. It recalls some of the more frightening children's fairy tales. The growth is so vigorous, it's almost threatening. At the least, stimulating in an aggressive way.

Though the bracken is very different, it has much the same aggressive in-your-face effect ...

... like a wave about to wash over you.

The circle of red logs ... merely decorative? Gardens don't speak in sentences, so you have only emotional affect to go on. And of course a long tradition of associations with circles, and with the color red.

A strange planting, some intentional, some not ...

... dominated at the moment by Poison hemlock ... is this for some witch's brew? Is this a Maurice Sendak garden? Perhaps there's something to that connection, a certain outsized, exaggerated quality. More so later in the season when many plants grow much larger than people. Then I've noted some visitors prefer to stay near the house, safely removed, up on the little hill.

Straight lines and curves ...

... forms emerging from the chaos of early summer grasses ...

... box and Bergenia, footed by a sedum found in the wettest part of the garden ...

... and irises.

Is gardening only a hobby?

This is it. I have no lawn.

Well, in the USA it's hard to think of it in any other way, isn't it? Just check iTunes for garden podcasts, or any media directory. What category do you find "gardening" in?

I was listening to Ken Druse's Real Dirt podcast recently. I always enjoy Ken's podcasts, especially his interviews. Last week he talked to Bart Ziegler, gardening columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Ziegler's is a thoroughly enjoyable gardening column, far superior, in fact, to most available in US media. I like the guy, so please don't think this is an attack on him, or on Ken.

But at the end of the interview, Ziegler's closing remarks just set my teeth on edge. Well, actually, it started earlier. Ziegler talked about his "yard," not about his "garden." Not a mortal sin, I suppose, but so revealing about American attitudes toward gardening.

Okay, the offending words that set me off:

"Learn to relax. It's only a garden. This is not brain surgery. It's supposed to be a hobby, it's supposed to be enjoyable, and if you end up driving yourself crazy, it's neither of those..."

In context, there's nothing wrong with this, I agree. But in the US, it's come to be almost the only acceptable attitude toward gardening. We mow our lawns (we all have lawns, don't we?), we spray Roundup on the dandelions, we grow native plants if we're of a certain political persuasion, we grow vegetables to feed ourselves (the newest widely condoned fad), we may even weed if we're "serious" gardeners. Hell, we may even sit and take pleasure in our yards (or gardens ... but most of us think using the word "garden" may be pretentious).

There's far more to it than this. Gardening has a long and illustrious history--thousands of years--as a very important part of human culture, often as the place for practice or contemplation of spirituality, aesthetics, philosophy (the "good life"), even politics--yet our culture relegates it to the "hobby" category. What happened?

Can anything be done? If you're interested, take a look at this website:  thinkinGardens. The people here are at least trying to change things. The site is British, of course, but gardening is much more highly valued there than here. So take it where you can get it.

Garden Diary: Practical Paths, Visual Structure, Metaphorical Leanings

 Midway in life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.

- Dante, The Divine Comedy

A friend recently sent me a CD of photos he took in the garden last summer, almost exactly a year ago. He visited before I started replacing the messy, temporary wood chip paths--which had just washed away yet again in a heavy rain--with much more substantial gravel paths. This was a propitious gift; it helped me clarify my goals in this garden on Federal Twist Road. 

(And that quote from Dante? I have to admit it doesn't at all express my own present state of mind, but I do believe it captures a universal human paradigm that we find in the subtext of many gardens, certainly in mine.)

When we bought the house five years ago, the land was covered with 50-year-old cedars. To make room for a garden, we had sixty or seventy cedars felled, chipped, and removed. I asked the contractor to leave several large piles of wood chips for use in making paths. At that time, I had no clear plan, but knew the chips would come in handy. As the garden took shape, I used the wood chips to lay out the paths that defined the garden. There were very few plants at that time, so these pathways were what defined the layout of the garden.

These chips were certainly useful and easy-to-work-with material but, over several years, they proved to have many disadvantages. They easily washed away in heavy rains, they decomposed and sank into the wet clay, they required constant replenishment, and possibly most important, they didn't make a pleasant walking surface. The garden is wet through most seasons, so the wood chips (above) often left visitors with an unpleasant sense of walking through a soggy field ... highly atmospheric, but not a pleasure up close ...

Last fall I began the laborious, and costly, process of building new gravel paths. (With help, of course; I couldn't transport those tons of gravel, by hand cart, myself.) The process took about seven months, with work only on weekends, and a long work stoppage during the heavy snow of winter. The new gravel path (below) makes a solid walking surface well above the wet. Even more importantly, the contrasting color and mass of the gravel add a strong visual structure, providing a clear sense of direction, making spatial relationships easier to grasp, and linking together the different parts of the garden.

Below, on the backside of the garden, you can see the old path tended to fade into the background ...

... while, in dramatic contrast, the gravel replacement (below) rather forcefully carries the eye through a series of curves ...

... and creates a strong sense of direction and anticipation. What is out of view just around the corner?

In August 2009, the path at the east end (below) was virtually disappearing ...

... but by August 2010, the gravel path (below) has become an armature guiding the view across the width of the garden, highlighting the shapes, colors, and textures of the plantings (and clearly showing where plantings need to be improved, especially along the more sharply defined path edges).

Similar story at the west end, which last year was a flat, static field, with little sense of anticipation, and a generally messy appearance...

... the gravel path (below) juts forcefully into the profuse plantings, creates a felt bodily desire to move forward, a beckoning.

Looked at from the high point of the house (to the upper left above), the paths draw out the subtle lines of the landscape--like a graphic or a musical interpretation of the hydrologic flow patterns of the land--calling to mind a river or a stream flowing across the surface and down the gentle slope toward the creek at the bottom of the valley.

The paths also function at a conceptual level; the sense of physical movement they create also suggests a metaphorical journey, and by extension a mindful questioning--certainly an age-old gardening concept, particularly in Japanese gardens. Thanks to that gift of a CD from a friend, I've been better able to articulate my intention to myself. (To find my way out of the woods, so to speak.) I'm aiming to create a sensually appealing environment, but one that goes beyond the physical environment to evoke a thoughtful repose and contemplation of larger questions.

Photos of bark paths by Ragnar Naess

Why do I garden? What's that, again?

The boredom imposed by our heavy snow cover is getting on my nerves. I've been planning changes for the spring--adding hornbeam (Carpinus betula) hedges and columns in my mind (above), planting a curved border of alder (Alnus gultinosa) and willow (Salix koriyanagi 'Rubikins') to screen the close-side view of our eight-foot-tall deer fence in an arc extending off the edge of the picture on the right, wondering how alder will take to hard pruning or coppicing (I chose it because it will grow in my extremely wet conditions), planning addition of extensive groundcovers of carex and low grasses. To what end all these plans? Why do I do it? Some practical reasons, certainly. Adding structure to contrast with and contain the wildness (aesthetic improvements), adding mystery by obscuring parts of the view, hiding an unattractive feature. Manipulation of the three-dimensional garden pallet. But this omits other important parts of the garden, at least for me.

A recent post on the Hegarty Webber Partnership blog, highly critical of those who think gardens must have a message, has been nagging at me. First I want to to say I only wish the American gardening scene entertained such a variety of ferment and conflicting attitudes toward gardening as we find in the UK, one aspect of which Lesley and Robert criticize on their blog. On this side of the Atlantic, we have a much more limited range of concerns--the predominant "how-to" approach to just about everything gardening, usually limited to the very practical (how to grow tomatoes, the seven best plants for a sunny border). Or to the politically correct:  the native plant garden, the sustainable garden; even some, not up with current trends, want to know how to make an "English garden," whatever that is. In the US, we're very message oriented in a different, much more limited way. Nothing too artsy, nothing too serious, unless you're vegetable gardening, truly a profound undertaking on which the fate of the world apparently depends.

In the UK, the range of discussion is much broader, though they have silliness too. Over there, all of this can become highly personal, emotional, even intellectual, and frankly I find that stimulating. Of course, the UK has gardening personalities in numbers that far outdo us; that adds an entertaining overlay of innuendo, cattiness, and backbiting.

But to return to the nagging thought spurred by the Hegarty Webber blog, I'm considering whether I should feel guilty that I want my garden to have a message, or more correctly, messages. Why do I spend all this time planning changes in the garden? Why do I garden?

I'm reminded of a meeting with several engineers a few years back. We were discussing a proposal for new work when, out of the blue, I said I'd rather be gardening. One engineer asked me, "Do you do flower gardening or vegetable gardening?" I had no answer. I don't define gardening in that way. I answered, "Ornamental gardening," but that really didn't close the gulf of misunderstanding that existed between us. I found it difficult to express my feelings about gardening.

So what have I been doing in creating a new garden in these wet woods over the past five years? I think, first, I've been making a place where I can indulge my delight in plants and the process of plant growth. I, like most gardeners, am profoundly affected by plants and am moved almost to poetry to see them piercing the cold earth, growing, blossoming in spring. You can almost feel it, can't you? The bud swelling imperceptibly, the haze of color tinting the extremities of the trees where they touch the sky.

Then looking at the landscape, seeing the world at that larger scale, where individual plants, the earth itself, blend into a greater whole, a new level of complexity governs. A landscape can evoke pleasurable memories and sensations, or unpleasant ones (think Auschwitz, for example). Landscape is the world in which we live. Of course, our perception of landscape is different to different times and cultures. In 17th century Great Britain, wild and mountainous landscapes were frightening and to be avoided. These are the same mountainous prospects the Romantics taught us to see as sublime. Landscape evokes thoughts of past engagement and travels to near and distant places, routes of travel, maps, the shape of the land, its folds and creases, what that shape suggests as metaphor, and what it says, scientifically speaking, of the ancient past, of geology, and of time, both eons and seconds, constant change, a rivulet that will become a river in thousands of years, the low angle of late sunlight on the trunks of the trees as darkness comes on at end of day. A whole range of sensations, memories, thoughts converge in the experience of a landscape. Some sensual and emotional, some intellectual.

We want to imbue this landscape with meaning as a way of understanding our world. It's easy enough to find glib meaning in the unattractive or outright ugly aspects of landscape, as in a highway strip mall on its way to economic demise, or any of the many aspects of ubiquitous urban sprawl, easy enough to interpret such changes as a sign of social ill or economic failure, perhaps a critique of unfettered capitalism.

As gardeners today, most of us seek out "pretty" aspects of landscape (I ignore for now those "artists" who engage with the un-pretty). Consider the High Line, the new elevated urban park in New York City. This is one interesting example because it was an ambiguous "object" that some liked very much and others wanted to demolish. The High Line is interesting because it changed what many would have considered a waste, derelict industrial structure into a world class park, one that has opened to almost universal approval. On first take, you might think the making of the High Line was an act of redemption, because to some it was not "pretty"; it was an industrial relic. But pretty is a relative thing. To many, including myself, it was a potent symbol and a testament to how nature quickly reclaims the works of man (a little of Ozymandius here:  "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair"). Does the High Line have a meaning? Certainly. It's an urban pastoral. The abandoned elevated rail structure, simply because it was inaccessible and left alone, made itself into a wild garden through years of self-seeding and protection from disturbance high above the streets. Two men with vision and an organization capable of raising several hundred million dollars has, indeed, "redeemed" the High Line, but that redemption was really the prevention of its demolition and reconstruction as a safe, highly complex, and expensive urban jewel. But the amazing park that has emerged is nothing more than a refinement of what already existed (with plantings designed by Piet Oudolf, no less). So the High Line does have a meaning. But it's an ironic meaning, a retreat from the urban environment that created it, lacking the grittiness of the city in which it was born, elevated safely above the streets, with attendants and guards, with spectacular views, particularly at night, when it's safe as can be, unlike most big city streets. It seems we can find meaning almost everywhere we look.

I locate the garden somewhere between simple love of plants and the complex feelings we can have about landscape. The garden is a middle point, between the microcosm of the individual plant and the macrocosm of the landscape, and by extension the earth, the universe. In part, it's a place of protection, a safe haven, a place where "every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make him afraid." But it's more than that for me, and it failed to be that for many in the past. In fact, it has been the opposite. My garden is in a place where men, and women, witnessed struggle, failure, even genocide. The individual lives that ended on this land, the hopes and fears of the Native Americans who lived here, the hard lives of early white settlers can't be known specifically and in detail, but these people most certainly lived pleasantly and badly, and died, whether of violence, disease or old age, throughout these gently rolling hills. Not to recognize this is almost a desecration of the past. This is a place that has known pain and fear, and it is appropriate that a garden in this place gently remind us of that.

After this lengthy rumination, I must say I agree with much of what Lesley and Robert have to say in their blog post. They criticize those who say a garden must have a message, those who oversimplify in the name of belief, who aren't able to stop and smell the roses. A garden must first of all give pleasure. A crocus in blossom can just be a crocus in blossom. It doesn't have to stand for something else. But of course, it can. Archibald MacLeish's Ars Poetica, a classic of 20th century American poetry, comes to mind (yes, it really just popped into my head, its ending line). Just substitute the word "garden" for "poem" and you have it:

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

                     *

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

                    *

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean

But be.

A Philosophy of Gardens by David E. Cooper

We all - certainly most of us - take joy in observing the first golden shoots emerging in spring, in planning aesthetic improvements for our gardens, in contemplating the garden at twilight, some of us may even enjoy weeding.

I'm convinced that gardening is much more than that, that in fact it is preserving knowledge and ways of being in the world that are in danger of being lost.

This isn't a review, only a brief note to say that I just finished this not-easy-to-read-but-certainly-worth-it book by David E. Cooper, a Professor of Philosophy at Durham University in England. David Cooper was featured speaker at one of the recent Vista lectures at the Garden Museum in London. I listened to the podcast of the lecture with interest, and to the prickly, engaging question and answer following it. The book is about the meaning of gardening; why we do it.

We do it for many reasons, of course, but apparently no one has attempted a rigorous analysis of this question, at least not in the last couple of centuries. I understand I'm probably among the small minority of American garden bloggers and blog readers who might have sufficient interest in this question to read Cooper's book. I recommend it to those of you who share that interest. You may want to try the podcast first but, frankly, I found Cooper's manner of presentation a little off-putting, certainly highly academic. The book itself, though demanding, offers greater rewards.

Why do we garden? Out of context, the answer is a little bare so I make no attempt to paraphrase it, only saying this book gives answers to the question of "why The Garden is distinctive and why The Garden matters."

(image: Amazon.com)