If you made it to the AAUW’s 24th annual garden tour last week, the desire to do something in your own backyard or patio is probably still making your mouth water. Some advice from landscape designers is recommended before that first shovel goes in the ground.
Traditional European design dictates that an outdoor space follow the interior layout locating “room spaces” as in a home. That works beautifully, especially for Oxford style architecture or anything from Italy, Spain or even the Colonial Indian styles. But a home in the manner of the Prairie style, or in Frank Floyd Wright’s “Fallingwater” style, then other options may be better suited for that space.
I’d recommend reading about European and Japanese design principles for landscaping. It will give you some valuable ideas about new problems. It’s easy enough to dig a hole and plant a tree. Watering will keep it alive and feeding it will help it thrive — and that’s good. But having a space that is planted so the view from a door or window where you sit inside the house, or a space that draws you out of doors even in winter, is perhaps a higher calling for a garden space.
As I pore over “Tasha Tudor’s Gardens,” one of my favorite coffee table books, I see the European concept of flowers for every season working hand-in-hand with a deep love of the process of growing things. Her garden style is much more my mother’s style of “if one rose is good, then two are better.” The book’s text is by Tovah Martin and photographs by Richard W. Brown. The book is a visual masterpiece showing love for the life of growing things.
One huge difference in Western and Eastern garden styles is sheer quantity of land. Where British-based design can be done on small plots, it usually requires acres, Asian style can be found in smaller spaces, miniaturized, with more stones and water than flowers.
Any book on Gertrude Jekyll’s English garden designs will give a great foundation for Western and even cottage style plantings. Her designs are used yet today and alongside Jens Jensen’s, are considered the bible of design for the British garden.
According to Erik Borja, author of “Zen Gardens,” the Japanese concept of outdoor spaces is opposite of Western concepts of the garden as a home extension.
“In Japan” he said, “the garden is seen as another world, and one that is entirely disconnected with the living area.” He said the rationale for that it is nature (the outdoor spaces) that dominates. In the book he takes the reader through his own Japanese inspired garden, modified to use some Western exceptions, it has the aesthetics of the Far East.
“Once the threshold of the house is passed,” he wrote, “one enters a world of dreams and the imagination, and all the elements that make up the garden must contribute to this impression of unreality.” This is not a fairy garden (even though a fairy garden is fun). The Japanese space imparts permanence over prettiness.
In Jamestown, the architecture is very Western, and Craftsman style dominates the older homes. There are some magnificent buildings here, and garden space is limited, if in town. That’s why planning carefully is so important. Most garden spaces need some hardscaping, or at least paved or defined walking paths. The Jekyll book on Arts and Crafts Gardens or Frank Lloyd Wright’s book on The Gardens of FLW is well worth your investment.
Paths need careful planning and some engineering. But before actual construction, a design, a map if you will, is a good idea. Then, before the design is done, research your home’s architecture and look at some garden examples appropriate for that structure.
Websites are helpful supplements to books, as are owners/employees at area plant nurseries. Some flowers or evergreens seen in our lovely picture books cannot grow in zone 4, so a chosen plan may need a replacement plant. Research is vital in order to not make costly mistakes.
If anyone has an idea for this column, contact Sharon Cox, PO Box 1559, Jamestown, ND 58402.
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