Gardens are Frivolous

Gardens are Frivolous: So go outside and get silly.

Readers of this blog know that I am endlessly fascinated by planting design in all its historical and contemporary forms. The human impulse to arrange plants for our own pleasure is so utterly frivolous and entirely unnecessary that it attracts me even more as a topic of study. Farming and vegetable gardening are logical, right? After all, we need to eat. But ornamental gardening is a deeper mystery. It is as if gardeners are compelled by some atavistic duty to scratch in the dirt like hens.

Remember: I make a living designing, writing, and teaching about gardens, so I have much to lose by claiming that garden-making is frivolous. But let’s be honest: it is pure silliness. We ornament and embellish our dwellings with flowers; we weed and mulch to prevent natural succession from happening; and we create little dioramas of nature in our yards. The more I think about the whole pursuit, the more absurd it is to me. I wonder what anthropologists from another planet would say about these rituals.

Hold on, you say: there are many good reasons for gardening. Yes, of course, there are many reasons for gardening and many benefits of gardening, but ultimately, none of these really justify a garden. Nor do we need a justification. In fact, I’m personally weary of feeling the need to defend gardening, of trying to turn it into a solemn or academic subject. It isn’t.

So what if it’s silly? Yes, exactly! So what! Accepting that garden-making is frivolous is the first step of liberating it from all those forces that try to tame it: the real estate industry, good tastes, garden designer’s need to justify themselves, eco-evangelism, or the horticultural industry. It frees us to take risks, act foolishly, and embrace failure.

That gardens are frivolous is exactly why so many of the great gardens in history have been designed—not by professional garden designers—but by gardeners who made their own gardens their life’s work. British garden writer Tim Richardson wrote an excellent essay on this phenomenon. It makes sense. Professional garden designers don’t have the luxury to take risks. It’s too expensive and requires too much of the owner. The home gardener, on the other hand, can spend decades cultivating an emotionally powerful, personal vision. They can get silly.

And it’s high time for us to get silly. The recent focus on native and sustainable gardens has had many benefits, but one of the unfortunate side effects is the rather lugubrious, solemn tone it’s added to garden-making. I don’t mind the zealotry of eco-evangelists—in fact, how can you create anything lasting and beautiful without a bit of zealotry? But please, let’s not take our gardens too seriously.

Let’s make gardens with our hearts, not just our heads. Give me exuberant plantings dripping with emotion; richly layered spaces that thrill me with color and chill me with darkness; and above all, give me romance. Let’s look upon our tiny plots with the inspired eyes of lovers, lost in a vision of what can be. And if our yards don’t love us back, don’t give us what we hoped for, then let’s double down on our bets and try again. It’s a fool’s strategy. But I’ve always been a fool for a one-way romance.

Why the Perennial Border Matters

Why mastering this high maintenance style will make you a better gardener.

The British perennial border has been out of vogue in the last decade. Cast off as high-maintenance relic of old estates, the perennial border has never really found a place in the American landscape. Our yards are too small. And so many of the great British examples have full time garden staff to take care of them. But the final blow to the perennial border has been dealt by bold visionaries like Piet Oudolf ( the Dutch “New Perennial Garden”), Oehme, van Sweden (“New American Garden”), Dan Hinkley, Beth Chatto, and many others who have busted perennials out of the border and spilled them into the larger landscape. This new aesthetic eschews high maintenance dead-heading, watering, and transplanting required by a perennial border and instead embraces plants’ natural forms, patterns, and ecological succession.

I consider myself a devotee of this new approach to herbaceous planting. I even wrote a series about getting beyond the perennial border. But this past spring I have had a revelation: the old-fashioned, high maintenance, not-particularly-American perennial border matters. Not only does it matter, but mastering the perennial border will dramatically improve your skills as a gardener and designer. This is particularly valuable for all you naturalistic and native gardeners. Let me tell you why.

Sissinghurst

My wife and I began a garden in a new house last summer. We bought a rather generic-looking midcentury ranch house and decided that the best way to make the house look better was to drape it in gardens (distraction is our only hope). We planted a perennial border in our sunny side yard. The idea to plant a perennial border was not so much because we love the look; instead, it was more a strategy to deal with my obsessive plant collecting. Quite frankly, I needed a place in the yard that could absorb my manic garden energy. What better than a fussy, British-style perennial border? Other parts of the garden will be more intentionally serene and restrained, but the sunny border is meant to be an over-the-top riot of color and texture.

So when I started last year, I approached designing the border the way I do with larger landscape plantings: I selected a bunch of voluminous, ground-covering, filler perennials. While filler perennials—that is, vigorous perennials that spread quickly and “fill-in” the ground—work well in larger landscape settings, the end result of my border was a rather soft, hazy blob. It was like looking through a blurry camera—there was nothing sharp or distinct to give the garden focus. In larger landscapes, big masses of filler perennials create contrast and variety from the sheer scale of the massing. But in this smaller border, it was monotonous.

Frustrated by my initial attempt, I decided I needed to expand my education. I’ve arranged perennials for years, but I’ve never really studied a British-style border. How do they get pop week after week? I knew exactly the source to turn to: Christopher Lloyd.

Spring Inspirations: What I’m Planting this Year

Last year, my wife and I began smothering large sections of lawn in the house we moved into. We decided to create two very different garden zones on each side of the house. On one side, we’d have a traditional perennial border—an area we could constantly fuss and change. On the other side of the house, we are planning a native garden inspired by a woodland opening. The two gardens will be a kind of yin/yang—one fussy, self-conscious, and highly maintained; the other simple and evocative of particular moment in nature.

So while the future native garden is being smothered, we are busily adjusting the border. For perennial borders, my formula for creating them has gotten simpler over the years. First, I start with a handful of simple base plants (typically filler plants like grasses and reliable perennials) and then add accents plants with annuals, bulbs, and ephemerals. What I like about this formula is that I don’t have to replace the entire border to do something new. But with annuals and bulbs, I can change enough of the accents so that the border looks entirely different from year to year.

Spring Fever: The Latter Phase

My spring mania is finally tempering, and fortunately, I did not hurt anyone in a plant-induced craze. Except my wallet, of course. My house still looks a band of maraudering garden pirates attacked it--seed packets are still strewn all over the house; my bedside table is a precarious stack of plant catalogues and garden books; and you can follow the trail of dirt-covered shovels, trowels, and soup spoons from the bedroom to the back door—which remains permanently open in the last few weeks.

Thomas Rainer to Speak at LAHR Symposium

I'm pumped about attending this year's annual LAHR Symposium hosted by the U.S. National Arboretum.  I will be speaking on "Contemporary Planting Design Using Native Plants."  It is a part rant and part how-to speech that looks at how to artfully abstract native plant communities into bold, modern garden spaces.

This year's theme for the symposium is described as "Inspiring New Directions."  Here is the official blurb:

The 26th annual Lahr Symposium explores the work of landscape architects, authors, and gardeners who were inspired by native plants to change their career paths to pursue unique callings. From journalist turned naturalist to researcher turned native fruit aficionado, these individuals explain how native plants have influenced their work. Learn how native plants can foster creativity in the garden and inspire new insights into nature and landscape design.

For complete program details, including a map and directions, see the Lahr Symposium brochure .  Registration fee includes lunch and early access to the Native Plant Sale. Fee: $89 ($71 FONA) Registration required.

Note: This year the symposium will be held at the Beltsville Area Research Center at 10300 Baltimore Blvd, Beltsville, MD.

Spring Fever

It happens every year about this time. The soil warms and roots begin to stir. The slant of light from my window grows a bit longer. A few subtle shifts—a few degrees of warmth, a few minutes more of light—and I erupt into a fit of howling lunacy.

When the earth shifts, it is like some enzyme gets triggered in my brain that tips everything off balance. I become plant obsessed, soil obsessed, garden obsessed. Yes, I am fully aware that when it comes to plants, I am already borderline obsessive. Already I write, teach, speak, and make my livelihood with horticulture and landscape. But in spring, my seemingly controlled curiosities turn into wild hysteria.

Remember how Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk, right? It feels exactly like that, except without the muscles (could have used those . . .) Mild mannered landscape architect turns into raving plant lunatic. The other night, I awoke at four in the morning thinking about the soil in my garden. Did it have too much organic matter? Should I move some leaf mulch over against the house? Which edging should I use for the path I’m planning in the border? Fieldstone? Can I get it square enough? How would I set that so that it looks crisp? And what plant would work best with those brown colors in the stone? It needs to pop, so maybe orangish—no, that won’t work next to all those red blooming plants.

2012 Speeches

For readers in the Washington, D.C. metro area, there will be several opportunities to hear me speak about topics related to my blog posts.  Here's how the schedule is lining up:

Why We Plant.

Garden design magazines and blogs dedicate a lot of space to answering the questions "how" and "what" to plant.  But in the last few weeks, I've become rather fascinated with the question: why do we design with plants?  In many ways, planting design is one of the most frivolous, silly activities I can think of. That’s not to say it doesn’t matter. But it is certainly not necessary, like paychecks or vaccines or heart surgery. It is a pure extravagance, something we do for our own pleasure.

We can survive without gardens, yes, but the question is, can we live without them? What I love about plants, in particular, is their ability to reveal the invisible world. The way a grass moves in the wind, or the way a seedhead glows when backlit by the setting sun. The goal of great planting design is not simply to arrange pretty plants in pretty patterns. When garden design becomes another form of interior decorating, it loses its soul. No, what interests me is creating landscapes that are more alive than we are, but in a completely different way. When we enter into a landscape brimming with life and let that life enter into us, let it move through us, then we get a glimpse of the horizon we were created for.

Perennials to Interplant in Grasses

Of all my plant obsessions, herbaceous plants are among my favorites. Several years back, I remember walking through the woods with a colleague, a tree expert. After several hundred yards, we laughed at each other. He was always looking up at the canopies, and I was always looking down at the ground—scanning the forest floor for herbaceous plants. It is my perpetual posture: head down, scanning right to left.

Amorpha canescens

As a perpetual ground-scanner, I’ve recently had a revelation about the way many perennials and grasses are meant to grow together. This revelation has influenced the way I design.

It’s actually quite simple: many perennials from meadow/prairie ecosystems have evolved to grow within a matrix of grasses. While that is not a particularly ground-breaking concept, it does challenge the way many perennial gardeners arrange their plants. Most perennial gardens focus heavily on forbs (blooming perennials) that are scattered one by one in planting beds. Grasses, if used at all, tend to be added as specimens or accents. But if you consider the way most meadow perennials grow, this ratio should be reversed. The grasses are meant to be the dominant plants with forbs emerging through this matrix.

Consider the morphology of an Echinacea (Cone Flower). Echinaceas typically have low basal foliage and tall spindly stems which support the flowers. This very structure is designed to help the plant grow out of a lot of grasses. The low foliage first emerges in late spring before the warm season grasses emerge, grabbing sunlight to ready the plant for its flowering. Once the grasses put on their height, the Cone Flower sends up its flowers on delicate stalks. The grasses support the flower (like a stake). If you’ve ever had perennials flop over, it may be because it is missing its support system.

As a gardener or designer, this does not mean that your perennial gardens need to be mostly grasses. It does, however, provide a real opportunity for people interested in designing with ornamental grasses. I love the look of large masses of ornamental grasses in a landscape. They are easy, low maintenance, have a long season of interest (particularly in winter), and add a wonderful looseness and spontaneity to a landscape.

Dalea purpurea growing in grasses

Garden Design Trends 2012

Cleve West's winning design for Chelsea Flower Show

Each New Year, the internet is abuzz with it the inevitable horde of prophets and trend-watchers, confidently predicting the themes of the year. Of course, there is absolutely no accountability for these supposed experts because once the buzz of the New Year fades, the predictions are forgotten. I may be one of the few people on the planet who actually loves New Year prognostications. Finding meta-themes from the sea of quotidian activities appeals to my philosophic bent; for me, it is a puzzle game: I love the thrill of finding a pattern among scattered pieces.

So it is with great delight that I present to you my attempt at New Year trend-spotting. This year, my trends focus on trends in garden design (it’s best to stick to what I know, right?). For the last few weeks, I have spent time contemplating great gardens designed in the last year. What was it about these spaces that captured the zeitgeist? What about them moved me? What aspects of them will likely be replicated?

1. The New Romanticism: Garden design in 2012 will mark a return to romanticism. For the last decade, the focus on sustainable gardens has brought a decidedly rationalistic overlay to garden design. After all, the focus on sustainable techniques such as stormwater, native species, and xeriscaping has emphasized scientific and ecological processes. In addition, modernism has been a big theme in garden design over the last decade, bringing with it a focus on functionalistic design. While I expect sustainable and modernistic designs to continue, new gardens will be less cerebral and more emotional and spiritual bent. Expect to see a revival of all sorts of old, classical garden styles such as cottage gardening, French and Italian formal gardens, and even medieval gardens updated with a modern twist. Romanticism is all about nostalgia, escape, and the rich world of the imagination, ideas that are powerfully effective during times of transition. Expect to see gardens that explore fantasy, whimsy, and spontaneity within a framework of familiar garden forms.

Cleve West’s winning design for The Daily Telegraph Garden at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show is a perfect example of neo-romanticism. His sunken garden used terra-cotta columns that evoked Roman ruins. His plantings were both modern and old-world as he relied on a palette of self-seeding plants that emphasize change. The rich overlay of classical ruins in this strongly contemporary garden hinted at a world beyond, a lost history that provides a moment of escape and fantasy that make the garden delightful.

Left, design by Wirtz International; Center, Piet Oudolf's wave hedges; Right, Tom Stuart-Smith 

Wolfgang Oehme: 1930-2011

Wolfgang Oehme, one of the most influential and brilliant plantsman of the last century, passed away today. 

Wolfgang, along with his business partner James van Sweden, created the New American Garden, a strikingly original alternative to the traditional suburban yard. 

Wolfgang was a personal mentor to me and many, many others.  What was even more impressive than his brilliant and evocative plantings was his generosity of spirit and joy in the landscape.  I plan to write a fuller remembrance of Wolfgang soon.  If you knew Wolfgang and want to post a message for him, his official website is collecting those messages.