The seed catalogs are beginning to roll in, and I’m daydreaming about sunshine, green leaves and ripe tomatoes. There’s something special about choosing your seeds and plants for the upcoming growing season — maybe it’s the anticipation of what you’ll be eating, and maybe it’s the potential you have to grow your own food. Or maybe it’s because, deep down, we all just want to be farmers. Whatever the reason, it’s time to start looking through catalogs, store shelves and the still-closed doors of our local greenhouses to start planning this year’s garden.

For my garden design inspiration this year, I’m looking at one specific garden. The garden was created by Jim Nelson in North Kingstown, R.I., and it is the most unique and beautiful home garden that I’ve ever seen. Jim’s garden is not only beautiful, it’s also ecologically friendly; his ingenious design incorporates many materials that would have otherwise gone into the dump.

I was able to see Jim’s garden during the height of the summer. I had heard about this garden, but that in no way prepared me for the reality of it. When I first saw it, I wondered if Jim secretly had the staff of Better Homes and Gardens doing the planning and maintenance. This garden is beyond gorgeous, and there are so many elements in it that add to the quality and beauty.

The garden takes up every inch of the back yard, but it doesn’t make you feel claustrophobic or boxed-in. That’s because it isn’t barricaded by fencing; instead Jim makes use of a “borrowed view.” This technique was also often used by Frederick Law Olmstead (a famous park designer who designed Central Park) to frame a view that isn’t necessarily on the same property. So instead of feeling contained by tall fences, the end of Jim’s garden is open and draws your gaze along the length of the garden, giving you ample opportunity to admire all of his hard work.

Jim was lucky enough to work at a local elementary school where they were replacing the old marble in the bathrooms with plastic. Instead of letting this marble go to waste, Jim saved it and has built the most stunning work tables, fences and garden walls that I’ve ever seen. These beautiful marble pieces would even make Martha Stewart envious.

The pathways in the garden are also made with reclaimed materials. The bricks that create the garden paths were painstakingly taken from local beaches where they had washed ashore. It is possible that these bricks once made up a lighthouse that was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane. This brick walkway acts to keep weeds under control, and the sun-soaked bricks can heat up the surrounding soil more rapidly.

My favorite part of the garden isn’t the gorgeous marble work tables, the adorable garden gates, the smooth reclaimed brick walkways or even the stately arbors. My favorite parts are two sets of octagonal glass frames that Jim uses as cold frames and soil storage areas. I’d never seen anything like these before. I wondered where Jim had found these seemingly custom-made cold frames/soil storage units. But again, Jim rescued these from going into the landfill. What I thought were custom-made cold frames are actually the old light fixtures from the school gymnasium that Jim set in the ground for his own uses.

Jim’s garden (or “man-cave,” as his family refers to it) is by far the most beautiful home garden I have ever had the privilege to see. His unique design and use of found or salvaged items is truly astounding. Instead of relying on store-bought items, Jim created a gorgeous garden from items he was able to find or rescue. Seeing this garden has completely changed my image of using recycled materials in landscaping. Let Jim’s garden act as inspiration for you to find items to reuse in your home garden. Keep on gardening, Jim.

In this context, a Modernist design proved to be almost unrecognisable even as
a garden. “I remember the day a lot of TV companies came in,” Christopher
says. “A big influence on me was [architect] Tadao Ando and Japan, and the
Japanese company just walked straight past our garden while it was being
constructed. Everyone else was making gardens with tumbledown walls and
roses – and this TV crew literally thought my garden was the toilet block,”
he says with a laugh.

For Charles Moore, who commissioned Christopher, it was an opportunity to
create a garden that was “striking, bold and theatrical – I felt it would
have been a pity if the Telegraph had played safe with the
opportunity. I liked the thought of having something classical and modern at
the same time.

“I remember Terence Conran coming along to the garden,” he adds. “Tony Blair
had won the election a few weeks before [May 1 1997] and Terence Conran
said, ‘New Labour, New Garden’. Of course I wasn’t remotely interested in it
being New Labour, but I did want it to be different.”

Professionals were immediately aware that Christopher had done something
rather special. “It did mark a threshold in one respect, which was that
Christopher was a practising architect,” recalls Michael Balston, landscape
designer and seasoned RHS show-garden judge. “The manipulation of space was
very subtle and that hadn’t really been done before. It had this cleanness
about it. It was focused, yet there was a whole world there.

“It wasn’t a question of the facile ‘garden room’ idea. It was what we used to
call filtering – the creation of spaces beyond, which could be seen as
through a veil. And it was all integrated: the space, the materials and the
plants all locked together.”

Tom Stuart-Smith, who vies with Christopher as the most successful Chelsea
designer of recent times, says Christopher is one of the two contemporary
designers who have influenced him most (the other being Dan Pearson). “That
was a pointedly intellectual garden and it was so amazingly refreshing and
modern in the context of Chelsea at that time,” he says.

“Christopher made it smart to want a new-looking garden. And there was so much
going on in it – he has this curious reputation as a minimalist, but there
were so many little incidents and details.”

For Mary Keen, it was the way the planting was integrated with the overall
design that was most interesting. “He was always thinking of the whole
picture rather than the detail; the plants were put in at the end. He was
innovative with the planting – it was very spacey.”

Indeed, in the context of garden design at that time, when borders could be so
pumped up with plants they looked like they were on steroids, Christopher’s
“border” in the Latin Garden looked positively sparse. “I remember Simon
Hornby [then RHS president] coming along,” he recalls, “and he said, ‘We
love the spaces between the plants’. That wasn’t something I really thought
about. It seemed quite natural to me.”

There was also an element of innovation about the plant choice – the use of a
pared-down palette of striking plants, little colour variation and a
backdrop of grasses. In 1996, as part of his preparations for Chelsea,
Christopher made his first visit to Piet Oudolf’s now-celebrated nursery in
the Netherlands. They hit it off and talked plants, and Christopher returned
with various specimens including the unknown Thalictrum rochebrunianum he
would later use in the garden, causing a minor sensation, a plant which
is now firmly in the garden design repertoire.

Looking at images of the Latin Garden now, it’s hard to believe that it seemed
so radical just 16 years ago. But that’s a reflection of how influential it
proved to be. After 1997, modern gardens became a fixture on the Chelsea
scene. So far none has surpassed the original and best, but perhaps 2013,
Chelsea’s centenary, will be an auspicious year.

TELEGRAPH GARDEN 2013

The Telegraph garden for Chelsea 2013, designed by Christopher
Bradley-Hole, is a contemporary and contemplative design, inspired by the
English landscape, by the Japanese approach to garden making and by modern
abstract art.

Christopher says: “The garden is a representation of England as a wooded
landscape from which openings were cleared to allow settlement, civilisation
and cultivation. English native trees and shrubs are used in a graphic way
to create an understorey which expresses the way a field pattern has been
superimposed on the land.”

The garden reflects Bradley-Hole’s personal passion for the English landscape
and also his visit last year to Japan, which has long been an inspiration
for his design ideas.

As well as blocks of box, yew and beech, which form the field landscape, oak
is shown as a structure – a colonnade of columns crafted from English green
oak.

View
the 15 show gardens at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show

Watch
Christopher Bradley-Hole talk about his 1997 Telegraph garden

The redevelopment of the former Lyndale Garden Center site is getting closer and closer to reality.

While site developer The Cornerstone Group hasn’t locked down all retail tenants or finalized the housing portion of the project, it has released the most recent renderings of what the site—which will be aptly named Lyndale Gardens—could look like.

According to the designs, which can all be seen in the photo box above, the developer plans on both apartment and townhome style housing units, with many of the townhome units having a perfect view of Richfield Lake. In addition, multiple areas of public space are still a big part of the site’s design. The design shows a splash pad, community oven, community garden, walking trails, market pavillion and a performance stage.

The only nailed down tenant is Lakewinds Natural Foods, a co-op grocer with two metro area locations. A purchase agreement for the old Lyndale Garden Center building and land was finalized in early January. The agreement changed the developer’s original plans to rehab the building for retail use.

An exact start date for construction has not been set. The development firm’s president, Colleen Carey, told Patch in an August 2012 interview that she would’ve ideally wanted to start in the fall of 2012, but it was best to wait for all the leases to be finalized.

“My timeline would be as soon as we can get the tenants in place,” she said in the interview.

Small retailers or restaurants interested in leasing space can contact The Cornerstone Group via e-mail at info@tcgmn.com.

Richfield Patch will continue to update readers as more information becomes available.

Related articles:

• Lyndale Garden Center Developers Team Up With Farmers Market For Community Event
• Richfield Community Members Weigh in on Lyndale Garden Center Redevelopment Plans
• ‘City Loses $500K in Kensington Park Foreclosure’—Or Did It?
• Lyndale Garden Developers Team Up With Farmers Market For Community Event
• Developer Unveils Initial Lyndale Garden Design Plans
• Developer to Host Lyndale Gardens Open House Monday

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