Garden Design Conservationist: The Ultimate Guide

At first sight, I understood these European gardens, below.  They spoke.

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The Ultimate Guide to becoming a Garden Design Conservationist is simple and short.

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The template never ceased in many countries.

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With plantings, below, at the curb, car toxins-lights-sounds are mitigated.  You get a bit more privacy, yet can see into the woodland across the road, without seeing cars.  In effect, owning your view, enlarging your garden.  Win/win.

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Lawn, behind the hedging, is a low meadow.  A mix of wildflowers, herbs, grasses, bulbs, what the wind blows in, Tara Turf.  Canopy trees, and understory trees at pockets.

Pic, above, here.

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Going into the garden, above, create your sacred environment within.  This painting, below, ca. 1912.

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Pic, above, here.

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Canopy trees, above, understory trees, tall shrubs, low shrubs, low meadow, seating, a small formation creating maximum pollinator habitat.  Choose to be in balance with your garden, it will gift you balance in your life.

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Pic, above, here.

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A new allee, above, and maximum pollinator habitat.  Add a bench/s, perhaps a narrow harvest table, above.  Perfect Garden Design Conservationist design, above, for a private home or the front of a subdivision.

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Pic, above, here.

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Versailles, above.  Wildwood, path, and formal fountain.  Sacred space, Man & Nature.  This isn't just for Versailles, it's for you.  Use native trees, no worries if you've space for only 2, and a large pot with water and simple jet of water.  Boom.  Versailles sacred space made to your custom needs, yet the flow, transcendence and filling of your spirit, immeasureable.

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Outside my office window, above, yesterday, late afternoon.  Sacred.

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Conservationist ideas in Garden Design are this easy.  Trees, Meadow, Natives.  This trinity doesn't need chemicals or fertilizers.

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Garden & Be Well,  XOT

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“If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.” — Marshall Goldsmith, Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts — Becoming the Person You Want to Be

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Gardening is a rare luxury of choice no matter the bank account.

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 Cal Newport explains in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World:

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

“Deep work” is work you do in a cultivated environment designed for flow. Deep work is purpose-driven. It’s not distracted. It doesn’t happen by accident."

Your garden, whether looking at it from inside your home, or outside within its embrace, shares flow and transcendence, if you choose to imbibe.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor Frankl

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” — Viktor Frankl

.“I’m pretty oblivious to a lot of things intentionally. I don’t want to be influenced that much.” — Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp

“Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.” — Zig Ziglar

Choose for your garden, what you want for it, Earth and your soul.  Staying in the zone, the flow, seeking epiphany and transcendence, they're there for you, in your garden.  More places, but "I'm pretty oblivious to a lot of things intentionally''.

"What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky?"  Pablo Neruda, tr. by William O'Daly.

Multiplied across generations and continents, we have derivative cultures with Nature Blindness for lack of creating healthy Garden Designs for Earth, self, soul, community.

If you're just beginning your Garden, go inside your home, and looking out the windows to site focal points, then go outside,  design and install in this order:

1. Trees

2. Meadow

3. Bushes

4. Focal Points (Pieces so wonderful they will be fought over at your estate sale.)

5. Groundcovers

Use as many natives as possible.  Use your County Extension Service for plant advice, they're providing best information, not trying to sell you anything.


Conservation Garden Design Equation (Use Natives/Neo-Natives or as many as possible):

Trees + Meadow + Bushes + Focal Points + Groundcovers = A Conservationist Garden Design

Conservation Garden Design Equation (Natives):

Trees + Meadow + Bushes + Focal Points + Groundcovers = A Conservation Garden Design

The Best Outdoor Color Trinity: How to Own It !

One exterior color trinity has been used with undiluted success for thousands of years.
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Green - Brown - White
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Green - Brown - White creates an alchemy frothing with each incarnation.  Guaranteed.
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Pic, above, here.
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How to Own It ?
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Choose your Green - Brown - White from its palette already in your home.  Your dishes, furniture fabrics, cloth napkins, art on the wall, wallpaper choices, the clothes in your closet.
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Pic, above, here.
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It gets better.
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You get to choose a main subsidiary color.
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A color to POP.
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Pic, above, here.
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Choosing your Subsidiary Color, look specifically at the art on your walls, throughout the house.  Perhaps a wallpaper.
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Never have I not discovered a Subsidiary Color without it being an accent color, POPPING, from each piece of art.
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Pic, above, here.
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Subsidiary Colors are great for a Front Door.
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Remember, I must know who you are from the curb.
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Pic, above, here.
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It's been a joy through the years helping choose specific Green - Brown- White colors with clients, and great fun choosing the Subsidiary Color.
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When I share with clients their Subsidiary Color, they respond as if to a strong gale, wide eyes, leaned back onto their heals, no words, but plenty of sounds coming out.  Speechless.
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Why?
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Acknowledging THEIR color, probably for the first time.  PERMISSION & BENEDICTION.  Redemption.  Then, smiles, and laughing.
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A slip of color, threading throughout their home, suddenly 'Nothing to Everything'.
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The mask has fallen, their real self appears.  Their 'Extraordinary pretend selves....' would have never braved choosing that Subsidiary Color.  Yet there I stand, telling them what their Subsidiary Color is.  .
This color, their raw power, finally acknowledged.  That color, coming home, seeing it on the front door, or shutters, or garden furniture, bringing the smile to your face, and a feeling in your heart, only Home can bring.  Your Home.
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Pic, above, here.
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Oddly, this ochre, below, has been intuitively chosen by many clients, in their homes.  Poof, Subsidiary Color, outside.

Pic, above, here.
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Would love to choose a Subsidiary Color from this painting, below, if it were in a client's home.
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So much, "Scope for the imagination." Anne of Green Gables.
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Pic, above, here.
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Boom, boom and more boom, with Subsidiary Color, below, this room makes me want several homes, merely to use all the Subsidiary Color choices.
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Pic, above, here.
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Monet was particular about color in his garden, including what color he allowed his gardeners to wear.  Furlow Gatewood, below, is wearing that color, a chambray blue.  Get yourself to the Thrift Store this weekend and buy several properly colored gardening shirts.  You must walk your garden, acceptable to Monet.
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Take the link to Furlow Gatewood, order his book.  Do it.  Today.  (No, no affiliate link.....yet !)
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Pic, above, here.
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Fun Subsidiary Color, below, with Green - Brown - White.
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Pic, above, here.
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'Frida Kahlo's true dialogue was with herself, and the main witness was her art.'
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Tara Dillard's true dialogue is with herself, and the main witness is her Garden.
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Fun, in calm abiding, understanding your own dialogue, and who's partaking with you.  Clarity is there, if you choose to see.
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Why the Color Trinity?  It will "exude an aura of technical virtuosity." Roberta Smith, every time.  Including yours.  Own It.  Why Wait?  Translate your repertory beyond the mundane, go big.
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'Collude to visceral effect.' Roberta Smith.
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When you choose your outdoor Color Trinity, you're choosing "Lucid demarcations".  No worries if anyone understands, your garden does, I do.  So does Providence.
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Your garden must tell me who you are from the street, does it do that?
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Why is this so important?  It's your life.  How you choose to live your life.
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Begin with house & garden as one.  From the soil upward, choose the grace & joy of a systemic topography.
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In the morning drinking your coffee, looking out the windows, seeing your garden, its focal points, Color Trinity, Subsidiary Color, plantings, from across the expanse of the room you're in, and inside your home, its colors and art and textures and comforts; speaking to you and the garden, you're happy with who you are, your home, your garden.  Another day, a seemingly small victory.  But you know different.
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Finally, inside your home, the light of a new day, traveling across galaxies and eons to reach you, the wavelengths of light, turning to particles as they travel through your garden, back into waves going through your windows, onto you and in you, bathing in such a light, it's physically felt.  As Toddy said to Victoria, in Victor/Victoria, "..... a religious experience."
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No worries Green - Brown - White has been done for centuries, each time it performs a "..spontaneous aesthetic..."
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Weather should be good this weekend.  Will do a bit of gardening, and feeling, "Luncheon-on-the-grass-mode." Roberta Smith.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Well aware I've said everything, above, before.  Will continue, but you know that.

Same Garden Design: Different Each Time

"I don't like the idea of happiness --- it is too momentary --- I would say that I was always busy and interested in something --- interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness."  Georgia O'Keefe
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Garden Design technique, below, is the same in each garden.  Whether you adore Natural, Formal, Farm, Modern, Eclectic, Etc. each is accommodated. Centuries of Gardens proving its worth.
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An axis leading to a focal point, scaled to walking, seasons, budget, maintenance, and grace.


Pic, above, here.
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What day will you visit the garden, above/below, what day will you see it shot, above/below?


Pic, above, here.


Pic, above, here.
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Going to this garden, I would rather see it off season, above/below.  Far more to learn about how it is gardened & designed.  Pics are nice; physically being in the space better.
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Pic, above, here.
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Formal allee, above, and the same Garden Design technique, as a Wilderness, below.
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Pic, above, here.
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Another version of the same Garden Design, below.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Garden Design, below, is same Garden Design as, above, and above that....
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Pic, above, here.
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Across centuries, it works.  Here's the joy; your property, your home, your soil, your sun/shade, your heart.  Take joy.  It's grace for your life.  And Earth.

 
Pic, above, here.
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At the front end of my professional Garden Design career, this garden, below, was 'nice', now this garden thrills.  Layers of Nature.  Histories of peoples, continents, eras copying this same Garden Design, below.  Knowing 'the why' of how the Garden Design, below, works adds to its joys.  And, a template protecting Earth from human interference, anthropocene, we're living through.
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Using trees, shrubs, groundcovers for your zone, micro-climate, once established, you won't need irrigation, and certainly no fertilizers or chemicals ever.
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What's in the Garden Design, below, making it so special?  Canopy and understory trees, shrubs, meadow.  Nature's potent pollinator habitat.  Given to all.  Freely.
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Choosing mostly natives, or non-native non-invasives, this Garden Design, below, will live centuries.  Regenerative.  Picking non-natives can starve local flora/fauna.  A loving heads-up to the 'why' of using Natives.  Using Natives was passed to me, with love, and its how I choose to pass it to you.  Not one of us perfect.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Time passes, articles read from other scientific disciplines, removed from the world of Garden Design, about soil.  Years of articles about soil, biomes, fungi, pollution, trees, air, water, carbon, oil, industrialization.
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"Many of us have been wonderstruck at the discovery of mindedness within the Earth and between trees, sensitive, ephoratory, and communicative below our gardens,..... over 5 kilometers deep, 27,000 fathoms down, there exists a rich ecosystem, 2 times the size of all the world's oceans, teaming with micro organisms, hundreds of times the combined weight of all humans....some organisms can live thousands of years.
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1 inch of topsoil equals a thousand years.
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If humility were imagined as a visible thing, it would be soil: quiet, brown, soft, maintaining networks underground and feeding the whole of the living world." Jay Griffiths, Dwelling on Earth.
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Trees communicate myriad bits of information with electricity through the soil.  Thousands of miles not unusual.
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Tesla came to fame, discovering electricity free from the soil.
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The same electricity in the soil, powers our heart & brain.
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“Single trees are extraordinary; trees in number more extraordinary still. To walk in a wood is to find fault with Socrates's declaration that 'Trees and open country cannot teach me anything, whereas men in town do.' Time is kept and curated and in different ways by trees, and so it is experienced in different ways when one is among them. This discretion of trees, and their patience, are both affecting. It is beyond our capacity to comprehend that the American hardwood forest waited seventy million years for people to come and live in it, though the effort of comprehension is itself worthwhile. It is valuable and disturbing to know that grand oak trees can take three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die. Such knowledge, seriously considered, changes the grain of the mind.

"Thought, like memory, inhabits external things as much as the inner regions of the human brain. When the physical correspondents of thought disappear, then thought, or its possibility, is also lost. When woods and trees are destroyed -- incidentally, deliberately -- imagination and memory go with them. 

W.H. Auden knew this. 'A culture,' he wrote warningly in 1953, 'is no better than its woods.' ”

― Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

Across the decades I've had many client homes, Atlanta, GA, bricked with Chicago Brick. seeing an article seemingly about them was too much to pass by, instead, learning about soil, ice ages, politics, racism.
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From that article,  To and From The Common Brick: Slow-Motion Disaster On Chicago's South Side,  

    "Between 1780-1980 USA lost 60 acres of wetlands every hour for the entire 200 year span."
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No stewardship in that sentence, pure politics.  Soil, animals, water, fungi, weather, plants, what else is affected in our loss of wetlands?  What does the loss of wetlands cause to happen to soils underneath what is lost, weather, temperatures.
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Husbandry is in tatters.  Rarely is 'husbandry' used, quaint, outdated as a word, and lifestyle choice.  From Webster's Third New International dictionary: " Husbandry 2a: the judicious use of resources: CONSERVATION, THRIFT (borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry --- Shakespeare.  b: the control or use of resources: MANAGEMENT (problems of soil conservation and husbandry of water resources --- "  Caps are Webster's.
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Pic, above, here.
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This Garden Design, above, is husbandry, if plants chosen are native, or neo-native and friendly to local flora/fauna/soil.  Also stewardship to Nature, yourself,  and property values.  Siting trees properly, you will save money on HVAC bills.
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Stewardship.  Gardening always gains by the newest members from the work world, retiring.  Teaching Master Gardeners for decades, students at the local college, and home owners classes at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, I get to meet pure gardening fiends, pent up from decades of professional life, now retired.  Hoping now for retiring lawyers.  People to help rewrite Home Owner Association rules, myriad layers, including landscaping.  Instead of mow-blow-go landscaping encouraging mono-culture lawns, irrigation, fertilizer, mulch, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, decades of mulch application, and etc.  A turn to Landscape Husbandry, Landscape Stewardship.
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Homeowner Associations, decades old, have a great purpose, over time keeping it great must include a review.  Changes, with the same mission statement, must include husbandry and stewardship.
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"We move from data to information to knowledge to wisdom.  And separating one from the other...knowing the limitations and the danger of exercising one without the others, while respecting each category of intelligence, is generally what serious education is about."  Toni Morrison.
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I was late to the honor of stewardship.  It came with the birthday gift of 8 heirloom chickens, 8 years ago.  Five chickens massacred, the neighbor's dog, don't ask.  Three chickens remain, still teaching lessons.  My chickens notice Covid, their leftovers have been threadbare.
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"The epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out."  Walter Benjamin.
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"Wisdom in the age of information."  Maria Popova.
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Since 2018 when mom comfortably & slowly declined and died, the sense of life blowing apart and coming back together again continues to repeat.  When will that stop?  Was it always true?  Why did I just notice in 2018?
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Having information, about my own life, family, past to present, blew up into merely facts.  The information changed, not the facts.  Some facts obscured, received sunshine.
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Funny that.  My turn to learn this.
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Realized long ago, we all get the same lessons in life, but at different times with different teachers.
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Do I take the lessons?  What do I do with it, if I do?  That makes up our lives.
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Answers are in the garden, gardening, propagating, designing, precious, this beat, given me, a resource.  Things will continue to blow up, come back together, and in the garden, I'll make sense of it, or not, while taking joy in the gardening.  Learning something new.
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This template has been solid in the time of Covid.
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Garden & Be Well, XOT

The Zen of Formal

"...the ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting started all over again --- never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment....Getting started, keeping going, getting started again --- in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm..."
--- Seamus Heaney
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Most common phrase customers say when we meet, "Oh, I don't want anything formal."  Then proceed to describe what they want and show photos.  You know what's coming next.
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Every description, every photo of their dream garden, FORMAL.
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Pic, above, here.
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Classically formal dining room, above.  Graveled rectangle, focal point on axis, canopy/understory bushes/trees, walls, floor, flow, function, contrast, texture, seasons, sound. 
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Easily decorated for mid-century modern, or any style, zone, theme you desire.
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"Small change, small wonders --- these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life." --- Barbara Kingsolver
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Show me your outdoor dining room.  Better, invite your friends to a meal.  Not there yet?  Want to be?  There lies your small change, small wonders. 
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No budget for outdoor furnishings for a bit?   Pair of saw horses with planks, as Martha Washington served myriad guests in their garden at Mount Vernon.  Better, improvise, rescue 'saw horses', and 'planks'.  With this mission, your outdoor dining room will be unique, though the garden design technique has been in use long BCE. 
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What is an outdoor dining room to you, if you don't have one now?  "The opportunity to experience yourself differently..." --- Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
 
Pic, above, here.
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"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.  So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible." --- William Faulkner
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Yes, you can do the impossible.  In the garden of your heart.  Sure it's impossible.  That's why it's there for you to do.  "We go on.  Because it is the hard thing to do.  And we owe ourselves the difficulty." --- Nikki Giovanni
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Touring a beautiful garden, with our British historic gardens expert and guide, after he had described a garden compost area feature we were standing in, a woman said, "That's inconvenient."  Quickly he responded, "Making love is work, but we do it."
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It is the difficulty of creating our garden, bringing its blessing.  Most often your 'difficulty' will be mental.  Seeing.  Seeing rightly, is the work.  And gift.
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Pic, above, here.
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"Clear your mind of 'can't." --- Samuel Johnson.
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Pic, above, here.
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Thrilling.  Beyond thrilling, above.  So little there, yet it's a garden.  Living in a ca. 1938 starter home or 1990 cluster home?  Garden Design, above, is for you too.
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Pic, above, here.
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Trees as total Garden Design, above.  You cannot go wrong choosing this path.  More, choose a tough native pollinator tree.  Choose to pollard, prune them to shape. 
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"And so we turn the page over/To think of starting.  This is all there is." --- John Ashbery
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Pic, above, here.
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How many times has this Garden Design been done across centuries.  This one leaves no gardener or garden or home behind.
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Works every time. 
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In a typical USA subdivision, this is a good Garden Design, above, to copy, and site a hedge of evergreens at the front of your lawn.  Tall enough to hide the road & cars, for sure, maybe tall enough to hide your first story.  Depends on your location, views, noise.
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Pic, above, here.
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The Well Placed Chair, above.  You know you've designed a good garden, when, in season, Nature takes over all your efforts.  Laughing at you.  And you like it. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Use pots that won't break, trees tolerating your zone, and drip irrigation, above.
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Adore how little is in the garden, above.  It's Tara Turf, green ball, hedge, canopy tree, house as backdrop, color theme, textures, flow.  Did you already see all those things, above, and name them to yourself?
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Pic, above, here.
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Hiding the pool.  Especially good, if you must put in a fence, yet have acreage.  Make your pool the surprise in a Faberge Egg.
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"You have neat tight expectations of what life ought to give you, but you won't get it.  That isn't what life does.  Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you.  Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition." --- Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell, Playwright, Jungian analyst.
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Pic, above, here.
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This garden, above, uses the same Formal Garden Design as the top photo: rectangle, focal point, flow, canopy, understory, floor, texture, color, shapes.
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Just because epiphanies arrive doesn't mean changes will arrive effortlessly or soon.
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Choosing to have a garden, the one in your head, is as simple as Dorothy learning how to go home.
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Choose.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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A few  more from Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell.
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"You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.  When you truly possess all you have been and done ... you are fierce with reality."
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"Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion."
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"If we begin with certainties we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient with them, we shall end with certainties." --- Francis Bacon
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You realize this is a complete Garden Design course?  The important parts anyway.
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It's all important.  The Zen of Formal?  Easy to maintain, beautiful in all seasons, pollinators, lowers HVAC, raises property value. 
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5 years, this summer, in our ca. 1900 home.  Began gardening this month, finally.  No clue gardening would not begin for 5 years.  Repairing the pond, drilling a well, renovating sheds, moving sheds, building sheds, creating roads, clearing invasives, and clearing more invasives.  Life, my mom, caretaking, death, then major illnesses with Beloved.
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Starting wasn't something chosen or thought about or anticipated.  Apparently I had been at the bottom of the ocean, and shot up for air about 5am three weeks ago.  Could not breath, live, another day, without starting my garden.
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Quick phone call to Susanne Hudson, sourcing Conservatory parts, windows/French doors, Conservatory seating, somehow buying a honking huge antique library case too,  Honker.   Honk-er.
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Hedges, Conservatories, Tara Turf, Potting Table, Trees, and my library.  Leaving my 30 year garden, missed most, my built-in Library, and Conservatory.  Can't make this stuff up, the soul speaks.
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Did you notice, 'Conservatories', plural?  Life is good.  One of our tiny historic sheds, has a pair of shed roofs, each side, Beloved already built.  Soon, the East Conservatory will be completed, and hopefully, this year, we'll also build the West Conservatory.
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Their views wildly different.  The new potting table was sited at this shed, already I'm potting up and crazy happy.  Thankful of my years as a professional propagator at a nursery with 7 hoop houses, each with a different type of use; forcing, cuttings, plugs, annuals, perennials, herbs.
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Found living without a garden & library......untenable a moment more.  Getting a potting table, 3rd potting table across my adult life, previous 2 were wood.  This potting table, ca. 1940, is custom made, 2 shelves, backsplash, and stainless steel, from a sorority house at University of Georgia. 
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Have never felt so at home here.  Literally.  I'm home.  Garden, Conservatories, Potting Table, Library.  Every bit of air I shot upward for.  Whole again.
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Pic, above, here.