The Italian Villa I Tatti sits in the foothills east of Florence in a stony landscape pockmarked by quarries that supplied the pietra serena for Renaissance Florence. Built in the 16th century and renovated in the early 1900s for the American art dealer Bernard Berenson and his wife Mary Pearsall Smith, the villa and garden located…
It’s a commonplace to say that a garden is different each time you see it, but my most recent visit to Villa d’Este at Tivoli confirmed that some truisms really are true: you can’t step in the same water twice. Not that I was stepping in water. I was surrounded by it, however, since water…
Last fall I submitted a proposal to the International Garden Festival at Métis, Quebec as part of a mulit-disciplinary team. The Festival is one of the leading annual garden festivals in the world — a “forum for innovation and experimentation and an exceptional showcase and launching pad for participating designers from a host of disciplines,” to quote…
An earlier version of this post referred to a photo found on line and credited there to the Cultural Landscape Foundation. Thank you to Christine Facer Hoffman for pointing out that the photo said to be of the Garden Cosmic Speculation was actually her own photo, of her own garden at Througham Court. For my review of…
Where do ideas come from? Recently I’ve been working on a talk about using reflecting surfaces in gardens – things like mirrors, water, metal and glass. In the process, I’ve been thinking about gardens in a general way. What is the point of adding a reflecting surface to a garden – a piece of shiny metal,…
Success comes from three things, Pearl Fryar told me the other day — from work, passion and marketing. Fryar has them all. Pearl Fryar knows what he’s good at and cheerfully shares his knowledge with even a casual visitor like me who stopped by unannounced on a Saturday afternoon. I found him working in the garden but he stopped to…
I’m a big fan of ThinkinGardens, the British website edited by Anne Wareham. While the bulk of the posts relate to gardening and gardens in England, posts also cover topics of wider interest. As the website itself says, it’s a website “for people who want more than gardening from gardens.” ThinkinGardens isn’t modest or retiring, and…
Middleton Place is described as America’s oldest landscaped garden. Laid out in 1741 with romantic additions dating from the 19th and 20th century, it is a fascinating example of international style with a southern accent. A bit of history: First settled in the late 17th century, Middleton Place was acquired by Henry Middleton…
Today, when nothing for me but snow and ice is underfoot, I am thinking about garden paths and how they affect the way we move through our gardens. The material used for the path, its width, whether it is straight or curved, whether we can see where it is leading or not — these aspects and more…
Are gardens intellectual endeavours or places to soothe the spirits? If a garden is intended to be a conceptual work of art, does it succeed if it has to be explained? And what responsibility rests on the person viewing the garden to understand the ideas that shaped it? Make the questions personal: should I have…