The center of it all

Marc Rosenquist's bronze is most prominent in late winter when all the herbaceous perennials and grasses have been burned and cleared away, leaving a flat, largely empty field. Ironically, it becomes even more important in the summer, when the rapid plant growth makes it increasingly hard to see.

As the plants grow around it like a slowly rising flood, its fat, vertical presence becomes the focal point of the garden, a point of reference that plays with one's sense of scale--it's much larger than you think it is--making perception of relative sizes more ambiguous, but at the same time making it easier to judge distances, actually making space more visible. I guess you could say it introduces a perceptual playfulness into the garden.

It's so different from anything else, it exudes a sense of mystery. It seems both alien and at home, dramatically contrasting with the soft plant materials, yet echoing their shapes in permanent form.

The color is very different from the colors of the plants (at this time of year), but it's the same as the color of the house and the stone walls and the bark of the trees pressing in at the edge of the garden.

Mounded leaves of Silphium terebinthinaceum (Prairie dock) and Rudbeckia maxima have similar size and shape, though I think their similarities actually highlight their differences.

Even the lacy verticals of Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) share similar visual resonance with the bronze, though they are certainly very different in form.

Do I go too far if I relate the bronze sculpture to  my circle of red logs amid tall cedars (Juniperus virginiana)? I don't think so. If you see curves and lines in the abstract, just about anything in the garden relates to this object. Like musical theme and variations, thematic statement and answer.

Likewise the mounds of Miscanthus, daylilies ...

... the rounded box balls ... and across the path, the more generic mounds of mixed perennials with emerging spikes of Filipendula rubra, Silphium perfoliatum, Salix alba 'britzensis'  and Thuja in the background.

... even the purplish color of the Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecrecker' relates to the browns of the sculpture.

Moving away from that central point, the rising path beside the pond goes off into the woodland garden ...

... where a turn back shows you the wide prairie field ...

... and in the middle of it all, Marc's sculpture, still visible from a distance ...

Two months of change

Early April ...

... to June ... quite a change, don't you think? Scary ...

Garden Diary: Mid-May

I was busy and neglected to post some mid-May photos, so here goes ... The garden is quickly changing from a flat plain into an undulating mass of planting, making a new landscape as the individual plant forms emerge from the earth.

On this rainy day, we start in the woodland garden looking down toward the main prairie garden ...

Ground covers are essential to controlling weeds. Here Ajuga 'Caitlan's Giant' and Sweet Woodruff (Galium orodatum).

Planting the utility area, where piles of chipped trees were stored for years, with Carex pennsylvanica, Pulmonarias, ferns, Helleborus foetidus ... who knows what else? Have to see what works here.

Out into the rain soaked prairie ... looking down the long pond.

Ligularia japonica ... it's becoming a magnificent specimen ... three others haven't attained this size, but they get less water ...

Massed plantings of Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' and Iris virginica against a background of horsetail (Equisetum arvense), which become significant structural elements as they grow larger ...

These giant coneflowers (Rudbeckia maxima) have become a signature plant in the garden. They're everywhere, even starting to self-seed. I read they like dry conditions, but they have thrived for years in my wet clay. Off to the left, one of two spreading colonies of Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecracker'. The color makes them a dominant presence in the garden.

Shaggy boxwoods and bergenia ...

One of three Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst' for early color.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis), a native ...

Marc Rosenquist's bronze, which is becoming an organizing feature of the garden (more on that in another post). Its dominating presence draws the eye, and its shape strongly echos many plants (particularly the more formal shapes of Thuja and box).

More Rudbeckia maxima (there are many such surprises) ...

Another source of early gold, Euphorbia palustris, with Miscanthus ...

And bracken ... it was here before I was, and it will stay. Beautiful form and autumn color.

The mid-garden sitting area, added last year. That wretched Magnolia 'Little Gem' is coming out, to be replaced by ... what? Grasses? Cercis canadensis 'Hearts of Gold'?

A self-seeded Silphium perfoliatum, which came up last year, has grown like topsy, as they say.

Many of these self-seeded Silphium laciniatum have appeared this year. Can they take the competitive pressure and grow? I don't know so must wait and see.

Another self-seeder, Eupatorium perfoliatum, a native that just appeared three years ago.

A planted Sanguisorba, amid native Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis).

Views from a bedroom window.

The Bad Tempered Gardener by Anne Wareham

Anne Wareham’s new book, The Bad Tempered Gardener, is irreverent, honest, funny, gossipy, and personally revealing. It's one of those books that practically reads itself. I didn't want to put it down.

Anne isn’t well known in the US, but in her home UK she has a reputation for stirring up quite a storm of controversy. She questions the status quo, the veneer of complacency that permeates the gardening world, the unspoken rule that one can say only polite things about gardens, never be critical or even honestly analytical. She annoys people—and many are important people in the British gardening firmament. Anne does have the manner of the elephant in the china shop, which she readily admits.

She also sees the gardening media as being complicit in all this. Not to say they are evil; they need to sell books, magazines, TV shows, and of course everyone wants to see pretty garden pictures; almost no one wants serious discussion or critical analysis; this is a sign of our times. Anne is one of the few, apparently, who is bothered greatly that gardening is relegated to an irrelevant place in our culture. She asks why that is. She apparently can’t stop herself from wildly gesticulating and pointing lewdly when she sees the Emperor walking naked in the street.

Anne Wareham takes “The Garden” seriously. She wants the garden to return to the important position it held in past times and cultures. I think she’s on to something:  the diminished importance of the garden as an artistic and moral work in our culture—now viewed as a hobby, like making model airplanes, or at the opposite extreme, as an expensive trophy of the wealthy—is a symptom of something out of kilter at a much deeper level. (I should admit my bias here; I’m on her side of this issue.)

A miscellany in the good sense, with a bit of biography, soul searching, garden history, media criticism, funny stories (“I hate gardening”), all presented as a series of generally chronological essays, varying widely in subject and tone, it’s just the kind of book you can dip into at any time of day or night; great for commuters. A collection of thematically related essays, generally covering the making of her garden, The Veddw, on the border of Wales, The Bad Tempered Gardener, to my  mind belongs with a group of fine, lesser known works, some classics. At the moment only a handful immediately come to mind, and they are all personal and idiosyncratic in some way—Eleanor Perenyi’s Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden, though you would probably have a hard time imagining two more different sensibilities, Mirabel Osler’s A Gentle Plea for Chaos, likewise a vastly different style and voice from Anne’s, G. F. Dutton’s Some Branch Against the Sky. They may disappear from sight for long periods, then be found again, bob to the surface on some metaphorical seashore, perhaps to be republished, or used copies will be ordered from Amazon or Ebay. They’re like messages in bottles, simply there in the mass of garden media “noise,” carrying messages that may be found by like minds in the future, perhaps to spark new ideas at a more propitious time.

As I was looking through the latest issue of Gardens Illustrated this week, I was wowed by the photos, but the text hardly registered as anything more than a neutral ground against which to display the photos. Even when I read an article, I was left thinking, ‘What’s the point of this?’ Perhaps someone designed, or had someone else design, a beautiful garden, but to what end? A few pleasant places to sit? Pretty vistas and plant pictures? Dramatic allees of hornbeams or pristine topiary? A  spectacular display of garden talent? Why is there no consistent concern with meaning, with aspiration for making something more than pretty gardens?

There’s no slickness in The Bad Tempered Gardener, no “garden porn,” though Charles Hawes' small garden photos give us helpful windows into The Veddw. I think of the glossy garden magazines, innumerable books displaying the gardens of the wealthy or famous—all surface glitter, stimulating unrealistic aspiration among the less well-to-do, giving The Garden a romantic glow but no meaning beyond the appreciation of a well designed stage set.

We need more books full of words about gardens. This one is funny, annoying, stimulating, and immensely sad. Please read it with an open mind and see if you don’t find much to think on.

Judy's visit to the High Line

On her visit to the High Line last weekend, Judy had only her cell phone camera with her. These look pretty good. Good enough to make me want to put railroad tracks into my garden.

Glimpse of the High Line

Friend Judy Mann visited the High Line yesterday and sent me this photo, asking the name of the tree:  "...quite glorious, but I never saw anything like them before. Do you know them?"). My answer:  Purple smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria), exact cultivar not known.

I'd normally have described this as a scraggly specimen in need of a drastic pruning. But this planting makes me see it anew. And quite striking it is, with its awkward pompons stretching toward the open sky, and the contrasting low perennial surround. (And note there are several more in the distance.) The High Line is doing interesting, creative work, delightful horticultural accents to the Oudolf-designed plantings, and obviously entertaining park goers. These eye-catchers are capturing the public's attention and making them want to know more. A good thing.