Rectilinear ripples (thanks, Calvin)

Argillite chimney

Another round of navel gazing ...

In response to many helpful comments on my problematic reflecting pool design, I'm working on a solution suggested by Jill Nooney (bedrockgardens.org), a New Hampshire garden designer, in a comment on a recent post. She asked, "Is there any structure within sight that would reinforce an orthogonal theme"? That started me thinking about rectangles and squares, and how I could use existing geometry at the site to integrate the square pool into a rambling garden full of curves.

One of the notable features of my garden is the use of local stone, a very hard sedimentary stone called argillite. It is colored a dark blue-black, black, and many tones of grayish brown, is rather glass-like, and tends to shatter when hit hard or cut. It also makes a ringing sound when struck by another stone. This phenomenon is so notable argillite was called "blue jingle" and "blue jingler" in past times. I have plenty of argillite, piled into long stone rows by the people who farmed this land in the nineteenth century. I'm not sure what kind of farming they did, but there is evidence they had orchards, probably peach orchards. This was a large peach growing area back then, railroads were built to carry the produce to New York City, but a blight killed all the orchards, ending a thriving industry.

At present there are two prominent and highly visible uses of argillite in the Garden at Federal Twist:  a rectilinear dry-laid stone wall (see below) around the base of the raised hillock on which the house sits--effectively a plinth for the house--and a large, tall chimney (above) that rises probably ten feet above the roof peak, topped by an unusual curved, wing-like steel ornament, which is original to the 1965 house, the point being that the ornament draws attention to the chimney, making it more prominent than it would otherwise be.

Argillite dry stone wall, like a plinth supporting the house

Looking at the new pool area with the house in view (below) you can see how the chimney, the house (also a rectangle, though not of stone) and the "plinth" stone wall create a multilevel orthogonal construct, defining three descending parallel plains in the abstract.

Now imagine a similar low stone wall of argillite to support the gravel bed, built parallel to and located four or five feet out from the existing stone wall. There you have it, an orthogonal base for the new reflecting pool, made of the same stone as the existing wall and house chimney. The rectilinearity, similar materials, colors and textures of the chimney, the house, the plinth wall, and the new gravel containment wall will reinforce each other and create a multilevel series of rectangular structures that provides a solid grounding for the square reflecting pool.

Imagine a new, lower stone wall surrounding the gravel bed, extending the rectangular shapes out from the house base.

Last weekend we brought in a huge amount of argillite (below) to support the gravel bed. Unfortunately, I had it laid in curves. So imagine this stone relaid in straight lines to form a low rectangular support wall around the gravel bed. Parts of the new wall, the end at the left in the photo below, for example, need to be well laid in a neat pattern, emulating the existing wall behind, so they look essentially the same and visually reinforce each other.

This new low wall will form a rectangle, or group of intersecting rectangles, extending out from the point at which the two parts of the plinth wall meet. No, I don't intend to move the pool, but I do want to adjust the gravel bed to shape it into rectangles and more closely align it with the pool. I plan to move out the concrete pavers, to level the surface of the gravel bed, and to work out a way to add planting pockets at the edges of the new low stone wall, creating small, better drained planting areas, and increasing my options for close planting around the pool area.

Below is a distant view of the pool area, showing the chimney, house, and plinth wall last spring after I burned and cut the garden. The new rectangular structure supporting the reflecting pool will appear to be an extension of the house and its associated geometries. I think it shows this "orthogonal design approach" may be the solution I'm seeking.

I'm reluctant to ask for further opinions, but I can't resist.

Just a reminder (below) of what you actually see from this distance earlier in the fall.

Garden Diary: March of progress

I take a risk posting photos of my garden at this time of the year. Will you understand that gardens change continuously throughout the year? Will you view these photos knowing a perennial and grass prairie (a very wet prairie in this case) has to be appreciated for what it is now, even though not a traditional 'vision' of early spring, and viewed with its later season potential held gently in the mind's eye? This is the most barren time of the year, standing water, mud where the soil is disturbed, but all this is natural and appropriate (though a sheet of daffodils is possible, and hoped for, some day; possibly Caltha palustris; in fact, many plants with 'palustris' in their names).

If the top photo looks suspiciously like the one in my March 16 post, look more closely and you'll see the elevated stone planting bed at the end of the pond is nearing completion. Last Saturday while I mowed the remaining perennials, burned the Miscanthus giganteus and cut multiflora rose at the edge of the property, Joel and his father almost finished the stone structure. You can see from a distance it acts as a visual extension of the pond.


But all is not as planned. I tried to avoid the amoeba shape Peter H. criticized. I wanted to get a graceful curve in the stone, but either my communication ability or Joel's skill weren't up to the task. There is a definite S-curve here, but the final product is a rather clunky looking affair. It still needs some refinement, to be done next weekend, when ten cubic yards of "top soil" arrive to fill it and, I hope, leave some to spare.


We have to remove the plants stranded inside the stone walls. Now that the frozen ground has thawed, we'll be able to do that.

This is not what I expected but I'm trying to persuade myself that appropriate plantings will make this all work together as a unified structural feature. I can't afford to redo it.


I'm trying to visualize this in the photo (below) of the same area from last fall. My intent has been to plant a large oakleaf hydrangea to visually join the stone and the pond, and to use some form of evergreen topiary (simple) to create a sense of formality against the wildness of the rest of the garden.


Now I'm thinking more freely of other options. Perhaps a solid ground cover of Bergenia x 'Winterglut'. The red foliage would make a striking sight in winter and complement oranges of a new bank of Salix alba 'Britzensis'. I know the bergenia holds up well through all kinds of weather (I have it on the terrace outside the house, where it's a pleasure to see against the gravel surface). Perhaps a ground cover of bergenia under the topiary ... I'll know better by mid-summer.

Garden Diary: Structure

Much of the structure of my garden is native stone (argillite, known by old timers as "blue jingle" or "blue jingler") made into dry laid walls. So far we've built 300 to 400 feet of low wall at the base of the little manmade hill that raises the house above the wet landscape and along a curving path on the west side of the garden. Now I want to use the stone to build a raised linear planting area.

This will be at the far end of the little pond (shown above), which is about 40 feet long. Picture first a stone wall, 8 to 10 feet long, cutting diagonally across the end of the pond - a full visual stop, perhaps with a slanting top, rising from left to right (I haven't decided about that yet). On the other side of that transverse wall will be a raised planting area, trapezoidal in shape, at least 4 feet wide and probably 20 or 25 feet long. This stone planter will echo the shape of the pond, but will "bend" to the left. It will be about 18 inches high.

My garden is so wild I need to add more structured, formal elements for contrast. This new feature will make it possible to grow plants that can't survive in my wet clay soil. I'm thinking the new planting may be as simple as a row of boxwood balls - a formal, repetitive pattern as counterpoint to the naturalistic background planting. But that's still to be decided too.

The next photo shows the same area from another perspective. I have to move quite a few plants - winterberry hollies, a button bush, several aster tartaricus 'Jin Dai', assorted water irises... But that may be the easiest part.


The black and white photo highlights the roughly rectangular area in the center where the new stone planter will be. Here is the rough shape of the new stone feature, in plan view.

Garden Diary: Reminders for Spring

Days shorten and nights get colder. By late winter, I'll be in a fever ordering new plants, or at least regretting what I can't afford, and those practical changes I see so clearly now will fade into the background. So ... start a to do list for next spring:

1. Move the big miscanthus away from the garden path. It flops too much in the fall. A great touseled look, but it blocks the path. Replace with something more vertical: panicum, calamagrostis, a shrub?

2. Move several big Aster tartaricus 'Jin Dai' from the front garden to the back, along the transverse path to join the ones already there. They will create a corridor of late fall color against the browns and russets of the grasses. They don't get enough sun in the front to bloom.

3. Pull out the so-called Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' from the front garden. I bought these cheap at a big box store and they are impostors - at least they don't behave like the other Gracillimus I have. They're seeding themselves everywhere. Destroy all seedlings. Fortunately they're easy to recognize.

4. Remove the Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' and 'Yaku Jima' that are blocking the front entry walk and replace them with either a smaller miscanthus (Adagio?) or vertical grasses.

5. Add small bunches of low grasses (Deschampsia cepitosa, Sesleria autumnalis, carex?) and big leaved perennials (bergenia, ligularia?) along the new stone wall. For early color, perhaps some bulbs that can take the wet conditions? These will look good from the house, and interrupt the bare linearity of the wall.

New stone wall

6. Move the Carex grayi from north side to the woodland garden on the west. Replace with pennisetum variety.

7. Finish this list before spring.

Garden Diary: Lines and perspective

Building a long, straight stone wall at the base of the house has created an opportunity for structural interest in my somewhat amorphous wetland garden. Viewed from the path at the western end of the garden, the wall carries the eye across the garden to a group of ragged cedars (Juniperus virginiana) that have become a focal point.


So - what do I do with this "feature"? As soon as I have the financial means, I'd like to hire an arborist to remove the dead lower branches of the cedars, leaving simple, clean verticals topped by evergreen clouds of foliage. I've seen this treatment of cedars at William Faulkner's house in Oxford, Mississippi (see photo below). Once that's done, the area calls out for some focal object, perhaps sculptural, but certainly affordable.

The intervening area is probably the wettest in the garden. While I would like to use structural hedging to order the space and contrast with the wilder plantings, I haven't found appropriate shrubs for such wet conditions. Gardening in this place certainly does impose severe constraints. Some kind of physical structure may be the answer.

I have to remember this is a wet prairie (though an artificial one) and I can't stray too far from that concept.

Garden Diary: Using the Landscape as Guide

The Setting
The landscape at Federal Twist is the result of centuries of natural processes as water has drained from higher elevations down to the Lockatong Creek below the house, eroding and refining the landforms left by the advance and retreat of the ice sheet in the most recent glaciation. The landscape also shows the effects of various cultural overlays. The Lenni Lenape lived and hunted in this area for centuries, but left virtually no visible trace, though they certainly left artifacts of their civilization. Eighteenth and nineteenth century farmers cut the virgin forests, cleared stones to make new fields, and built the stone rows that form grids throughout the surrounding woods. Much later, in 1965, a major cultural change was introduced with the construction of what is now our house on an earthen platform elevated above the surrounding land, providing a view across the then open fields to the hills on the far side of the Lockatong valley (now mostly obscured by forest). Over the intervening decades, the house platform has changed drainage patterns, affecting the ecology of the area. By interrupting the flow of water down the natural slope to the creek, and forcing larger flows around each side, the earthen platform has created extremely wet, almost boggy areas at each end of the house, resulting in new ecological niches that will become part of my new garden.

Stone Wall: Imitating Curves in Nature
We have used native stone from old stone rows on the property to make a low, dry laid stone wall around the base of the earthen platform on which the house rests. On the end of the house we just finished building a curved wall that reflects the shape and direction of a small natural drainage channel. You can see how the curve of the wall partially follows and complements the shape of the channel in the photo above.

I plan to excavate a canal-like pond that will appear to flow from, and be fed by, the small drainage channel. The excavated soil will be used to fill in behind the new stone wall. In the next photo, you can see the start of the pond excavation (now interrupted by winter). The green hose, extending back about 40 feet from the water toward the woods, suggests the S curve of the pond, which will carry the curve of both the wall and drainage channel further into the garden (excuse the logs and debris; this is sort of a construction site).

Governing Concept: River Broadening into Delta
As shown in the next photo, taken from the opposite side, the curved wall serves another purpose. Since the main entrance to the garden is via a curved path through the woodland garden, the wall adds a visual momentum, opening the view to the garden as you walk down the path. This curve, in fact, has given this garden transition - from shade to sun, from woodland to open garden - a logic and flow that I didn't anticipate. Think of the narrow mouth of a river (the restricted entry space and wall) as the river rounds a curve and opens into a wide delta (the garden proper). This powerful concept has emerged gradually, as individual pieces of the overall design have fallen into place, and demonstrates, at least to me, the value of a "slow gardening" approach.

The view back to the house from the garden (next photo) shows the straight line of the wall, which will demarcate the wet prairie plantings below the wall, from the drier habitat plantings to be created at its top and extend up the slope.


The garden will develop in harmony with the natural landscape and setting. I have only to learn to read the landscape and interpret symbols left from the past. And, to the extent possible, practice sustainable design, reusing materials and resources from the site.