Noise & Smell of Expensive Neighborhoods

 

Decades ago, designing landscapes, I noticed expensive neighborhoods are noisy & lack many natural fragrances.

Noise of remodeling with hammers, air-compressors & maintenance mowers/blowers is ubiquitous where the money is.  Mono-culture lawns too.
.
Designing a landscape near Agnes Scott College, at a charming historic middle-class bungalow, I revelled in the fragrance.  It was Tara Turf.  No deed restrictions demanding Bermuda or Zoysia.  Their lawns are fescue, moss, clover, ajuga, violets, & etc.  Smelling deeply of nourishment to my DNA.
.
On the few occasions I can get to my Conservatory for a nap I know it won't be interrupted with mower or construction noise.  Ironic pleasure, yes?
.
"I absolutely hate the sound of machines in the garden.  Mowers, Rotovators, hedge cutters are all a kind of torture.  I want peace.
     But there are some sounds that I do love to hear.  By late July the young buzzards mew and noisily complain in the fields by the river as their parents leave them to learn how to hunt.  A quiet garden allows the year to be measured by these sounds."  Sarah Don
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
pic via Cote de Texas.  Who knew noise in the landscape would be a bittersweet topic.  Much of the noise has gone away in this economy.  A few years ago a client lived next door to new construction.  It was a large home entirely sheathed in stone.  It took a full year to chip the stone. 
.
Many neighborhoods now put limitations on mow/blow & construction days/times. 
.
The worst 'noise' day ever designing a landscape I had to hear a client's neighbor berate, bully, cuss, & threaten his young son for over 2 hours.  I wonder how that little boy turned out, he must be past college now.
.
More irony?  My business makes the noise in neighborhoods.  Hammers, saws, Caterpillar.......