A collaboration, or a battle, with nature?

The pond at 6:04 a.m.

I've been thinking of my garden as kind of collaboration with nature. My pond, dug this spring, has no liner. It's just a hole in heavy clay. The soil that came from the hole now fills in behind a new dry laid stone wall surrounding the base of the house.

I have thought of this as sustainable garden practice, a collaboration with nature. But is it really? Can one really collaborate with nature? The pond isn't natural; it's man-made, even without a liner. I'm thinking this idea of collaboration is a false concept. What I'm doing is really a kind of battle with nature. Not the kind of chemical-laden battle a farmer does growing a corn monoculture in the American Midwest, but a battle nonetheless. A gentle battle. Nature, or nature's saturated clay in winter, kills monarda; I plant something else. Rudbeckia maxima thrives; I plant more. I can only do what nature allows. Nature bosses me around.

Ian Hamilton Finlay's garden Little Sparta contains many references to war and conflict: images of machine guns, battleships, hand grenades. Up to now, I haven't been able to understand what all the militaristic imagery is about. I think I'm beginning to get the point.

One can try to do no harm, but collaboration is out of the question. Nature is in control, unless we destroy it; and we may succeed.

Gardens Illustrated

I've been a subscriber to Gardens Illustrated for years. I find it a much more substantial and informative publication - for example, its focus on people and places, little on 'how to' - than gardening periodicals I know in the U.S. GI's large, rather lavish format makes it a rarity in this world of rising paper and production costs, and it provides access to a larger world of gardening and horticulture than you normally find in U.S. publications. The magazine makes an effort to appeal to a worldwide audience, so you'll read about gardens in the U.S. and many other countries, not just the UK. It's not cheap, but worth the price.

This month's issue features Piet Oudolf's redesign of the garden at his home in Hummelo in The Netherlands in an article written by Noel Kingsbury, who has collaborated on several books with Oudolf. If you're an admirer of Oudolf's work, get this issue.

I've added a link to the GI website (top right), which makes available podcasts you can find nowhere else, as well as previews of upcoming features and events. I drive long distances twice a week, from our house in Brooklyn to our country house in the Delaware River Valley where my garden is, and the GI-posted podcasts fill the hours with pleasure (and learning - yes, this is a gardening nerd). The content is very different from any garden-related radio or TV programming in the U.S.

On the GI website, you can look forward to podcasts on two recent Vista lecture series discussions about the works of Ian Hamilton Finlay (April) and Ambiguity in the Garden with David Cooper (June). (For postings on other Vista lectures, look up 'Vista' in the Content Labels sidebar on this page.) GI has also recorded a Museum of Garden History lecture with Richard Reynolds about Guerrilla Gardening, which will soon be available, and will also be recording Tim Richardson's symposium about 'The New Conceptualist Garden' at the Tate Modern next week (9 July 2008).

Get out your iPod or MP3 player, and start listening to more than music. You can download directly from the GI website or from iTunes.