Does your garden suffer from the blahs? You know, that late season feeling when everything looks past its best before date and a walk around the garden drags you down? That’s how my garden has been looking recently, and that’s how I’ve been feeling. But I may have found a remedy. To prepare for a…
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…
Strictly speaking, the answer is — no. Both are living sculptures, but they are made in different ways. Mosaiculture is also a contemporary form of plant display, while topiary has a long and distinguished history, dating back to Roman times. So, what are the differences? The most obvious one is that topiary uses a single plant to create…
Water features are an important element in many gardens. Understandably so. Water can reflect the sky, enlarging the space to infinity; it can reflect surrounding buildings or trees, adding stimulating contrasts. It is an ideal environment for certain decorative plants. It cools the air and its movement over rocks or cascades adds a refreshing note.…
In England, the idea of enlarging the view beyond a garden wall — whether the wall is real or metaphoric — dates back to the 18th century. The furniture and landscape designer William Kent is said to be the first to recognize that land outside a garden’s designed space could appear to be part of…
I’m in England for the next few weeks, visiting a friend before setting out on a tour of English gardens. On the weekend I spent a glorious afternoon walking through a landscape designed and constructed in the 18th century by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. Brown created an estimated 170 landscapes in England, many of which remain.…