Garden Diary: Down on River Road

Hey! Look at this... yet another post on my city garden to be. I'll try to remember to label these "Garden Diary" so potential readers will know obsessive navel gazing continues in this quarter.

I caught sight of this clearly man-made planting driving by on the river road a couple of weeks back--a grove of sycamores underplanted with boxwoods.

Another thought for the city garden. But instead, I'd have a small grove of Sunburst Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst') underplanted with box. With one important addition ... spots of randomized perennial planting worked into the box matrix. The surface might be gravel, or gravel with stone.

Not exactly copied "from nature" since this is a utilitarian planting in a nursery, but one example of the place of chance and contingency in garden making.

I'm recalling Dan Pearson describing the planting technique he developed for the newly landscaped area in the enormous Millennium Forest project on Hokkaido in Japan. On a Gardens Illustrated podcast, he described the development of "modular" planting groups that were used to cover a large area of newly created garden, filling the space between the public entrance facilities and the more distant forest.

The hosts of the discussion, Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury, had brought up the idea of random planting, which is having a great surge of interest among gardeners in central Europe, and they asked the panel of Dan Pearson, Cleve West, and  Andy Sturgeon what they thought about this concept, and were they using it in their work.

The following is my attempt to transcribe spoken dialogue and it tends to ramble a bit, but I think you get the point. Describing the making of a meadow of cultivated plants that took inspiration from regenerating woodland floor at the Millennium Forest, Dan said, "We made about 18 zones, which were large drifts ... that may have only had 5 or 6 plants ... and then I worked out what I thought [would work] ... a guess, because I didn't know what this climate was going to do with this plant combination I was putting together ... I'd choose maybe one emergent plant that would be very tall and fine ... and one plant that would be a groundcover, something for early in the season, something for late ... I came up with this system whereby the plants were put together in this very random arrangement that was an absolutely fascinating exercise ..."

The important point is the use of random planting combinations, and having the willingness and knowledge to follow the changes in the plantings as they thrive or not in their various microclimates. Here are some images of the Millennium Forest project on the Dan Pearson Studio web site.

So this concept I'm thinking about for my new city garden is very much not about the crude, ugly  layout I will show below, but about a process whose outcome is uncertain, and demands continual engagement and willingness to commit to working with what comes. (Does this really differ from any other kind of gardening, I ask myself. Not really.) I realize the process Dan Pearson describes is taking place on an extremely large scale, not in a small garden, but I'd like to think about how random planting might work in the smaller context.

I suppose it's best to define what is meant by "random" in the context of a small garden. In this case, not a totally random distribution of plants, but a selection of plants "right" for the conditions and then a kind of ad-libbing, grouping and positioning plants without a preconceived planting plan in mind, working in the moment. This is more easily said than done, but an interesting way of engaging with the garden design process.

My intent would be to use a limited pallet of durable, long-season plants grouped with box balls to create a unified visual effect. For a start, the list might include tough plants I've had success with in the past--Bergenia, Helleborus foetidus, Epimedium, various Carex and ferns, even an occasional tall plant--Thalictrum, Angelica gigas, Inula sonnenspeer, Sanguisorba tenuifolia alba--if I could work them in.

I'm no graphic artist or draftsman, and I'm limited by my use of Excel as garden drawing software, but here is a crude representation of the concept I'm talking about. The groupings and distribution are not intended in any way to represent a final design. Only to suggest a concept.

Two or three small chairs, Bertoia chairs as one example, might be moved around the garden as wanted, so the gardener and visitors can sit in private, where neighbors can't see through the tree canopy. The chairs would need to function as sculpture.

Vines and groundcover plants, plants I probably haven't even yet imagined, might go into the narrow strips along the fence lines.

Though this is in no way a garden "design," I find it an interesting concept to contemplate during the coming cold months. I'm thinking this would involve continuous change to more or less degree, room for lots of trial and error, or simply change or not, as desired. Not so much a garden concept perhaps as a way of living.

And of course all this could be brought to a full stop and fixed to some degree, whenever necessary or desired.

Talking Gardens

Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury lead a talk with Dan Pearson, Cleve West, and Andy Sturgeon on the latest Gardens Illustrated podcast. This is GI's annual lecture held at the end of last spring's Chelsea Flower Show (where Cleve West's garden won Best in Show).

I find this discussion fascinating because I've become quite comfortable "translating" the British garden world into the world I know here in America. The conversation ranges from the application of the New Perennials style to small gardens (and whether that can even work ... Dan Pearson makes a case for it), how availability of plants has changed (the selection of shrubs is much more limited and they are harder to find; perennials are far more available), to Cleve West's interest in the so-called Sheffield School of gardening (scientifically selected seed mixes for randomized planting), and Dan Pearson's clear description of the benefits of layered planting (an imitation of natural layering of plants ... starting with trees and shrubs, down to the understory of sun loving and shade tolerant perennials).

We have little offering this richness of subject matter and intellectual stimulation available on our side of the Atlantic. Perhaps, because our country is so large and diverse, it's just not possible for such ideas to make it into the American media, which isn't friendly to garden-related subjects, except in "life style" or "how to" formats. Listen and see what you think.

Vista Lecture Series: Eelco Hooftman of GROSS.MAX

As part of the continuing Vista lecture series in London, Gardens Illustrated has released the podcast of Eelco Hooftman's discussion of the recent work of GROSS.MAX, a cutting edge landscape design practice located in Edinburgh. Not only does Eelco talk fast, he has a heavy Dutch accent, so I recommend you give this podcast at least two hearings. It's full of creative insights and approaches to the urban landscape, yet grounded in a centuries old landscape tradition. One of the practice's newest projects, and a high profile one at that, is their work at The Royal Botanic Garden, Kew. Tim Richardson's exchange with Eelco at the end is particularly lively.

Am I the only person crazy enough, or interested enough, to listen to a podcast multiple times? Give it a try. You may like it. To play the podcast, click here. To download it, right click instead and Save Link As.

Great Gardens of America by Tim Richardson

Garden criticism hardly exists in America, and Tim Richardson is a British garden critic. What does Richardson have to say to us? If you read his new book Great Gardens of America, which I highly recommend you do, expect something new. This is one of those rare garden books of ideas. You will learn new things about gardens and the process of making and keeping gardens.

Great Gardens of America is a critical analysis of 25 gardens in North America. With many beautiful color photos by Andrea Jones and a large format, Great Gardens offers visual interest most of us seek in such books. But this is much more than a photo book of gardens. The text is more important than the pictures, which really serve to illustrate Richardson's points and pique the readers' interest. Tim has selected a disparate array of gardens, though he does find a unifying concept in all of them. He writes about how the gardens came to be, the interactions between owners and designers, cultural and historical influences of other gardens from other cultures and times, how successfully the garden designers achieved their goals, critical issues of garden maintenance and preservation. This is a book of ideas and - I mean this in the most complimentary sense - an educational book that will deepen understanding of gardens.

American Gardeners are no longer 'Poor Relations'

The place of American gardens within the cultural landscape of the rest of the world, especially Europe,was an issue of great concern and some embarrassment in the early days of our republic, and even well into the 20th century among such cultural icons as Edith Wharton and Henry James, who believed American culture lacked the maturity and depth of a great civilization, and who found it necessary to virtually "become European" to find the acceptance they required of themselves. Culturally, Americans had seen themselves as the poor relations of their western European forebears. This has not been the case for many decades now, and Tim Richardson's Great Gardens of America has put that question to rest yet again.

The Difference

Most Americans with gardening savvy know this already, so Richardson's survey of American gardens does not even bother making this point. The new thing Richardson brings to the table is an understanding of how American gardens differ from the gardens of Europe. That difference is both a cultural and a historical one. The European garden began with an enclosed space that offered protection from the dangers of wilderness and marauding strangers, the hortus conclusus, essentially a protected courtyard or small walled garden, and it has traditionally kept that sense of inward-lookingness, with a focus on garden structures rather than views into surrounding landscape, and with garden rooms, hedges and walls, borders, ha has that keep wilderness at bay. Even with the 18th century landscape garden, the sense of openness was achieved only by ownership of the entire visible landscape, undertaking vastly expensive manipulations -- moving entire villages, changing the courses of rivers, to achieve the illusion of natural vistas and scenes that were, in fact, highly contrived.

As Mr. Richardson points out, American gardens generally are outward looking, with an openness to the wilderness, in many cases even finding their origins in imitation of wilderness. Among wealthy classes with the resources to spend lavishly on their American gardens, and even when designing gardens highly derivative of European gardens, their Beaux Arts or Arts and Crafts gardens took on a character that was newly American, and in the end very different from their European models.

I'll quote directly from Richardson's "Introduction - What is it that makes American gardens 'American'?"

"So what is it that makes American gardens 'American'? The key difference between America's gardens and those of Europe can be traced back to this idea of a society's relationship with nature. Put simply, the American mode of gardening appears to be framed by the nation's historic embrace of the wilderness ideal. Using a necessarily broad-brush approach, it can be observed that American garden-makers have taken a much more open and embracing attitude to the concept and reality of wilderness. This is a theme that struck me time and again in American gardens, which are quite often clearly beholden to European design styles - styles which can then be seen to be have been decisively tweaked or tonally altered. In America, even in cases where the detail of the design was initially inspired by European examples, it seems that the beckoning natural landscape will often be harnessed to set the tone of the garden as a whole. Vistas in America, for example, can just as often be wide and general, as opposed to object- or building-focused, as they are in Europe. This lends many of these gardens an expansive, unbounded feel, quite at odds with the European tradition where an attempt is often made to fence out wilderness by means of enclosures. Even the English landscape park, an ostensibly 'naturalistic' approach to garden making, had as its object a highly particular version of the pastoral which often involved redevelopment of the existing topography. The view may have been expansive, but it was always clearly under control:  managed. The European mindset of enclosure was given its richest artistic expression in the cellular Arts and Crafts gardens of the early twentieth century. There are several examples in this book of the ways in which the enclosure instinct was usurped or altered by American garden makers.

These differing attitudes emerged from specific historical contexts. In Britain, for example, from the medieval period, another word for wilderness or unfenced land was 'waste'; it was considered the domain of bandits and dangerous wild animals. In America such places early on became synonymous instead with the idea of plentitude and potential, at least in the mind of the populace at large, as opposed to those who actually lived out their lives on the frontier."

The Critic

Richardson calls it as he sees it. While he finds a great deal to admire at Stan Hywett, a renowned Arts and Crafts garden in Akron, Ohio, he is very critical of the garden's management, which has let parts of the original garden fall into disrepair while using scarce funds unwisely to introduce an "unattractive new conservatory with gift shop and 'butterfly world', various poorly finished paths and roadways ... and a massive Great Garden, which was clearly over-ambitious in that the levels of maintenance needed to keep such a large area of intensive horticulture ... in pristine condition are, it would appear, simply not available at the property. It seems an odd decision, too, for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to sponsor a new garden in front of the conservatory while those areas of Stan Hywett's landscape that were developed by the firm's founder suffer serious maintenance problems. One cannot blame the gardeners; this is a management issue. It is to be hoped that Stan Hywett's trustees - and a new chief executive who should be in post by the time this book is published - will in due course redirect such resources that they have away from ambitious new projects and towards core elements of the historic garden..."

This is an exciting book. It is a joy on a purely visual level, and it offers much more to those who want to learn something new about some of America's great gardens, who want to better understand why they are great, how they relate to their historic precedents in other parts of the world, and why they are unique to this continent and the places in which they exist.

The invisible garden

"When you talk about beauty in the context of the garden are you talking about a series of beautiful scenes that stay in the mind, or are you talking about some sort of all-pervading sense of beauty which you can take away with you? What are the modes of beauty which you think a garden can offer which may be of value? ... I mean, talking about the Italian tradition, so many of those gardens are about the invisible qualities of the garden rather than the visible ones."

- Tim Richardson, talking with Penelope Hobhouse at the April 2009 Vista Lecture in London

Penelope Hobhouse Vista Lecture

Well, not a lecture really ... a question and answer session with Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury at the recent Vista get together in London.

I'm apparently one of the few who can find time to listen to podcasts, probably because I drive from the city to the country and back (two hours each way) every week. Ms. Hobhouse talks about how she started gardening, her thoughts on herself as a garden designer vs. a writer, the history of the garden, especially the "Paradise Garden" of the Middle East, and Islamic influences on gardening. Was the European garden tradition directly influenced by Islamic gardening via Sicily? We won't know for sure until Ms. Hobhouse finds time to research and write the definitive book on this subject. But this is one of many topics of discussion I found fascinating.

You can get the podcast via the Gardens Illustrated website here, or for free on iTunes. You can also listen on your computer. For a first-hand report on the evening, go to Noel's Garden Blog.

I'm a podcast fan, but I find there are far too few interesting podcasts on gardening. If you know of good ones, please let me know by leaving a comment.

Dan Pearson Vista Lecture

Dan Pearson is an extraordinary garden designer with a deep understanding of the importance of making a garden appropriate to its site. On the latest Vista lecture podcast, he talks about some of his work in Britain, but the major focus of his talk is his work on the epic Millenium Forest project in Japan. Both areas of his work share in common a primary concern with first understanding the history, use, landscape, and ecology of a site.

You would think gardeners in the US would take more interest in what is happening in the rest of the world, but there still seem to be many barriers between gardeners on this continent and those in other countries. New ideas in British gardening are particularly interesting, both for their own work, and because our common language makes the wider world of European garden design more easily available to us through them. I don't mean to exclude Australia and New Zealand, but the vast seasonal differences there, ecological differences, and totally different plants seem to make close communication even more troublesome for Americans - except for our West Coast and other areas that share Mediterranean-like climates.

Dan Pearson has established a notable body of work you will probably take an immediate liking to if you're not already familiar with him. I hope you will take the time to listen to his Vista lecture at this link. If you open a second window, you can see images of most of the gardens he talks about on his web site. The podcast is also available for free download on the iTunes site.

The question & answer session, hosted by Vista sponsors Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury, is really fascinating, especially, for me, Noel Kingsbury's question about "randomized" plantings using mixtures of plants carefully selected for specific ecologies and sites, an area where the Germans and Swiss have pioneered creative approaches to highly attractive, easily maintained gardening.

Dan's book, The Garden: A Year at Home Farm, tells the story of his first large-scale garden design, which marks his emergence as one of the current masters of design in the UK. I recommend it to anyone with interest in the subject of garden design in tune with site and ecology.

By the way, Dan Pearson is the guest editor of the January issue of Gardens Illustrated magazine.

Gardens Illustrated has resumed publication of podcasts of the Vista lecture series at the Garden Museum in London. This series of thought-provoking talks, accompanied by lively question and answer, is one in a series of lectures presented by Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury.

David Cooper, professor of philosophy at the University of Durham and author of A Philosophy of Gardens, talks about whether we need a philosophy of gardens. (Of course he thinks we do.) Many American gardeners probably have no interest in a highfalutin lecture on the philosophy of gardens, but I recommend you give this a listen if you have a serious interest in gardening, either from the perspective of a visitor of gardens or as a gardener.

Click on this link to go to the Gardens Illustrated Vista podcast page, where you can download or listen to the podcast.

Gardens Illustrated - Conceptual Gardens Podcasts and Galleries

At long last Gardens Illustrated has published podcasts of The New Conceptualist Garden Symposium, sponsored by the Society of Garden Designers at the Tate Britain last summer.

Tim Richardson's introduction and each speaker's presentation have been edited as separate podcasts, making it easier to navigate the multiple speakers. While you can conveniently download these from the iTunes site, the Gardens Illustrated website also contains links to image galleries accompanying each presentation. You can link to the Conceptual Garden page, or go directly to the list of separate podcasts, which can be played on your computer while looking at the accompanying photo galleries, or downloaded individually.

Don't miss a talk by Fergus Garrett at the Royal Horticultural Society Wisley Dahlia Trials, also on the webpage.

Avant Gardners: 50 Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape

This isn't a book for the cottage gardener or the complacent. It is certain to spark a powerful response in many readers – if it has many readers. Conceptual landscape design is not a subject of widespread interest in most gardening circles, certainly not in North America.

Avant Gardeners may delight you, annoy you, frustrate you, spark new insights about gardening and design. I have to confess my prejudice. I appreciate the work of some conceptual landscape designers. I’ve always liked Martha Schwartz’ playful park at Jacob Javits Plaza (we call it “the Federal Building”) in New York City – liked it years before I even knew it was designed by Martha Schwartz – even before I knew Martha Schwartz existed. But I dislike many of the conceptual landscapes in this book.

Admittedly, some are beautiful, or so appropriate to place, I can’t deny their relevance to the urban world: I’m remembering the first landscape in the book, designed by Atelier Big City, a small, mainly concrete park for hanging out and skateboarding under an elevated bridge approach in Montreal that seems a perfect solution for an almost-waste-space. While most conceptual landscapes are urban, some are not. Wigandia, for example, William Martin’s ecologically appropriate garden-cum-artwork on the side of a volcano in Australia is full of plants that thrive in drought, and it stands as a direct, even polemical, criticism of the prevalence of "British style" gardens so inappropriate to Australia, a land of sun, heat and scarce water resources.

Tim Richardson defines a conceptual garden as a landscape designed using a single overriding concept: "Conceptualist landscapes are predicated on ideas rather than plants or the architectural use of hard materials. Such spaces are underpinned by a single concept, or visual motif, which informs every aspect of the design." Many conceptual gardeners use no plants, some only artificial materials. Others design what appear to be more conventional gardens, with plants and hardscaping, but the design is controlled with strict intellectual discipline.

Mr. Richardson is a very good writer, and an agile and informed thinker about gardens. I come away from Avant Gardeners feeling disturbed, not quite able to see why many of the conceptual landscapes in this book are not more aptly called outdoor conceptual or installation art. Some choices seem to be arbitrary. Perhaps it doesn't matter and Mr. Richardson's point is just to stir things up.

I can't read his intent but, for me, this is the point of the book: to question the very meaning of the word "garden", to push the borders of our understanding of gardens, and to open up new possibilities. Whatever your reaction to this book, it will make you think about what a garden is. And that’s a service to the culture of gardening throughout the world.

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.

Chelsea links

I don't usually follow the Chelsea Flower Show but this year I stumbled on Cleve West's blog reporting the day by day building of his show garden. To get a feel for what it's like to be a part of this manic event, go to Tilth & Tillage and read about how it all comes together. To see the best of the gardens, and get an amazing 360 degree tour of each one, click this Telegraph link. You'll also find an interview with Tom Stuart-Smith, who got Best in Show, I think for the 6th time. Regardless of how you feel about Chelsea, you'll find some beautiful gardens here.

Gardens Illustrated has a podcast interview with noted garden critic Tim Richardson, garden designer Dan Pearson, and Chelsea judge Andrew Wilson.

(The photo is of a frog in my pond.)

If only ...

If only this ephemeral stream were about 400 feet east of its present location, I'd have it in my garden. Am I a hopeless romantic?

Well not in every way... I got Tim Richardson's new Avant Gardeners ("50 Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape") last week. With its emphasis on conceptual gardens, it's a strong antidote to lingering romanticism. Richardson's writing is, as usual, stimulating, full of ideas, and a delight. I won't try to evaluate the book because I haven't finished it. Unfortunate that it's not a larger format though; it's rather hard to see the point with such tight page layouts. And I definitely find the graphic design to be lacking, really dated (think psychedelic 60s). It doesn't do the content justice. Nevertheless, I recommend you buy the book. The essays alone are worth the price.

Vista Lecture Series Podcasts from Gardens Illustrated: Rozsika Parker on Gender and Gardening

Gardens Illustrated has published the third podcast in the Vista lecture series, organized by Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury to complement publication of Vista: The Culture and Politics of Gardens, a collection of provocative essays on - yes, you guessed it! Gardening. It's available in the U.S. on Amazon.com.

From the GI website: "Writer and psychotherapist Rozsika Parker joins hosts Noel Kingsbury and Tim Richardson to consider if men and women garden differently. This is a lively discussion with lots of contributions from the floor bringing up aspects of history, culture, genetics and economics both in terms of the amateur and professional gardener alike."

To download the podcast, go directly to the GI website. It's near the bottom of the page.

Vista Lecture Series Podcasts from Gardens Illustrated: William Martin

Gardens Illustrated has published the second podcast in the Vista lecture series. This kind of thinking about gardening isn't happening anywhere I know of in the US. (If I'm wrong, please let me know.) For any of you with an interest in gardening that goes beyond the "how to" or Japanese beetle control, please listen to this lecture series - and read the book of essays edited by Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury, Vista: The Culture and Politics of Gardens. It's available for a shamefully low price on Amazon.com. I quote from the GI website:

"Considered something of an agent provocateur in the horticultural world, William Martin describes himself as 'an artist whose ideas find their best expression in the garden'. In his talk he considers the complex relationships between landscape, environment, culture and society as revealed in his own garden Wigandia in southern Australia. Find out more details of William Martin’s work at www.wigandia.com."

GI's description has tamed Mr. Martin, I'm afraid. He's an iconoclastic, provocative, sometimes insulting, personality, with much to say. To listen to the podcast, click this link.

To download it, go directly to the GI website.

Vista Lecture Series Podcasts from Gardens Illustrated: Kim Wilke

A new podcast, the first in a new lecture series, is available from the BBC Gardens Illustrated website. A link at the bottom of this post will take you there. Here I quote directly from the GI website:

"Authors Tim Richardson and Noël Kingsbury are currently hosting a series of monthly invitation-only debates at The Museum of Garden History in London. The series is prompted by the pair’s recent publication Vista: The Culture and Politics of Gardens, and aims to consider the connection between gardening and the wider cultural world. A selection of lectures are being recorded exclusively for Gardens Illustrated and released as podcasts." This is the Museum of Garden History web address: www.museumgardenhistory.org.

"Landscape architect Kim Wilkie, whose projects include the V&A Museum garden, talks about 'The Uses and Abuses of History', discussing the issues of authenticity and appropriateness when it comes to garden restoration. How do we interpret the past and what are our responsibilities? Kim draws on his own experiences at Villa La Peitra in Florence, Heveningham Hall, Suffolk, Boughton Park, Northamptonshire and a private house in Hampshire, leading a lively and interesting debate."

Click this link to listen to the podcast (you'll need QuickTime player).

Garden Diary: The Garden in Time

My garden is in the first ridge of hills above the Delaware River, on a slope above the Lokatong Creek, a rocky stream tumbling down the three miles to the river.

This land has been inhabited for thousands of years. Over a much longer period, the landscape has been shaped by geologic processes, erosion and the other effects of weather, and by the animals and plants that have lived on it. People too have shaped it. This was the home of the Lenni Lenape Indians before European settlement; they very probably hunted the forests that surround my garden and camped along the Lokatong Creek just below our house. Then European hunters, and later, settlers came, learned to live with the Lenni Lenape - William Penn wrote of them with respect, even as he took their land. Eventually the new people exterminated the Lenni Lenape, built stone houses we still live in over 200 years later, cleared fields for farming, making the ubiquitous stone rows I see in the forest around my garden, built mills along the creeks for grinding grain. Soldiers of the American Revolution traveled throughout these hills, starved, sought shelter here, were part of Washington's crossing of the Delaware about 20 miles to the south. In the 19th century, descendants of the European settlers introduced new cultural artifacts of the early industrial revolution, constructing canals along both sides of the Delaware as need for commerce and better transportation grew, and using the water to power their factories. Then the steam engine and railroad turned those vital industries into history. And the industrial revolution moved to other places.

I'm trying to make a garden that is appropriate to this place - that acknowledges the geology and forces that shaped the land, its layers of history, the cultural landscape shaped by human beings, ecological processes, and native plants and animals. How can a garden be affected by such history and cultural change? I'm exploring this concept in a book of essays, Vista: the culture and politics of gardens, edited by Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury. Two essays in particular resonate with my desire to make a garden appropriate to its place: Psychotopia by Tim Richardson, which attempts to reinterpret "sense of place" in new terms, and NYC WTC 9/11: The Healing Gardens of Paradise Lost by Lorna McNeur, which explores some of the symbolic and cultural issues surrounding the transformation of Manhattan's landscape before and after 9/11.

Today few people can conceive of gardening as serious work. The very thought is absurd to most Americans, where a perfect lawn and attractive foundation plantings reduce the concept of garden to tidiness, practicality, and self satisfaction.