![\"A](\"http:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/blog-mag-covers-1.jpg\")
<\/a>A few of my old gardening magazines, chosen at random<\/p><\/div>\n
Reviewing these old issues was more than a walk down memory lane. It revealed some aspects of the printed gardening world that caused me to shake my head in dismay.\u00a0One was the repetition of subject matter. In the U.K., the most popular and repeated topic seemed to\u00a0be snowdrops. In the U.S. and\u00a0Canada, the topic was new plants.<\/p>\n
A search for the new is a North American phenomenon that can be seen in many fields: new tech, new pop stars, new almost anything. Tried and true doesn\u2019t cut the mustard. But what struck me as I reviewed the lists of new hostas, new echinaceas, and new what-evers, was how few of the\u00a0cultivars had\u00a0familiar names. I keep up with the latest — and the fact that most names were unfamiliar\u00a0suggests to me that the latest from, say 2002, didn’t\u00a0prove its merits over the long term.<\/p>\n
Not so for books. In 1996, The Inward Garden: Creating a Place of Beauty and Meaning<\/em> was named Book of the Year by the Garden Writers’ Association. I read the book a year or two later, when I first became seriously interested in landscape and garden design.<\/p>\n The Inward Garden, by Julie Moir Messervy<\/p><\/div>\n Yesterday\u00a0I picked up the book again. And I discovered that, unlike those trendy echinacea\u00a0cultivars, this book has staying power. Unlike many\u00a0garden books, it doesn’t focus on how to’s , or show photos of beautifully unattainable gardens designed by famous garden designers. (I’m not a book snob, I like those kinds of books\u00a0as well. In moderation, at least.)<\/p>\n Messervy’s book springs from a central idea, the notion of archetypes. \u00a0She\u00a0describes seven\u00a0\u00a0archetypal spaces: the sea, the cave, the harbour, the promontory, the island, the mountain and the sky. \u00a0She believes that, starting in childhood, our experiences shape which of these archetypes we most respond to. She then explores how the characteristics of each archetype relate to specific elements of garden design.<\/p>\n When I first read it, this book opened my eyes to unimagined possibilities. It helped me to realize that a garden could be more than a pretty space. More than a refuge from a noisy world. More than a place to entertain, or to impress. A garden could have meaning.<\/p>\n For a beginning gardener, this idea was a revelation. As I read Messervy’s ideas about garden archetypes I rediscovered the magic I felt as a child: I explored the hedges behind my suburban house, I extended my world into the fields at\u00a0my grandparents’ farm. The images I re-captured astonished me with their clarity and their emotional weight, which was at times strong enough to take my breath away.<\/p>\n The poplar tree at my grandparents’ farm in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains was a magnet for a young child — a forbidden destination, out of bounds, and thus doubly attractive.<\/p><\/div>\n Today, I’ve been dipping into The Inward Garden<\/em> once again. Even scanning it quickly, I feel like I’ve come home. The ideas that Messervy presents, both imaginative and practical, are familiar, like\u00a0comfortable slippers that continue to wear well. And more: they have guided my footsteps without my being aware of it.<\/p>\n Most significant of the ideas I gleaned from Messervy is the role of memory. \u00a0My personal\u00a0memories from childhood, the memories from many years of living where I live now, and of children growing up: every garden project has reflected these directly or indirectly. The sound of water from the cottage where we used to live is present again in The Aqueduct. The broken plates at The China Terrace link today to the years when children were young. The magnolias in the Lower Garden, the boxwood at The Egg — even plants\u00a0link today to a memory of\u00a0the past.<\/p>\n The land at Glen Villa also has a memory, and shows it — in the stone walls that used to edge farm fields and in the barbed wire now deeply embedded in a maple tree.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>