What Historical European Landscapes Can Teach Us About Our Own Landscape

Freshman year of college, aged 17 & having skipped my senior year of high school, I found myself in a cavernous classroom, with hundreds of souls listening to our puppet master gushing ad nauseam into the ether about macro/micro economics.  Except, for me, it was worse.  Little puppet master, obviously, held the secret to vast knowledge, yet his vocabulary was pure gibberish entering my brain.  Looking around, everyone else seemed to get-it.  Stress was building, my 1st college coarse, and knew the game was over.  Finally, I asked my closest amphitheater attendee, "What is a margarine, sounding like, 'marrghareen'?"  An hour spent locked on that word, nothing.  Smiling, she said, "Margin."  Decades later, it still amuses to think in terms of macro/micro.  A personal inner life joke.  How nice it would be to sit for an hour this afternoon listening to Little Puppet Master again, explaining the world's current banking & etc.
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Years after the macro/micro pairing, I locked onto another, sacred/profane.  Most recent pairing to make waves, amusement vs. stewardship.  (If you've ever locked onto a pairing of words.....please leave them in comments, I would really like to know !)      
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Moving on, into the macro about USA landscaping.  Lawn, foundation plantings, mulch, annuals, maintenance contract, fertilizing, insecticides, fungicides, irrigation, pre-emergents.



Pic, above, Pinterest.

With my starter home I immediately gardened as my father had, mowing, and, chemicals, faithfully, monthly, to kill bugs.  I'm not a rebel.  Within a year, I had stopped the 'method', I was trying to get pregnant.  Thinking to stop chemicals until the babies came.  The babies never came, infertility.  However, within 6 weeks of not using chemicals, to kill insects, I noticed I had fewer insects than when I was spraying to kill them.  Macro to micro.  I never used chemicals again, 3+ decades and counting.



Pic, above, Pinterest.

Within 5 years of zero chemicals, I had zero turf remaining.  Almost 3 decades without grass.  Recently moved to a ca. 1900 American farmhouse, there is no lawn, only meadow or woodland or gravel.  Studying the best historic gardens across Europe, it only took seeing 1 to know there is a template for landscapes, in the macro, trees/shrubs/groundcovers/stone focal point/low meadow cut at 2-3 heights/zero irrigation/no chemicals.
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It took designing/installing historic European style landscapes, for decades, to learn they are not merely about no lawn/no chemicals etc.  The agenda is much greater, pollinator habitat, and balancing the sacred/profane, into stewardship of Earth, community, self.  Amusing, I had accepted micro as macro for so long.
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Surprisingly came across a concise micro/macro about American agriculture in an article in The Guardian,  about Edward Luttwak, " Military strategist, classical scholar, cattle rancher – and an adviser to presidents, prime ministers, and the Dalai Lama. Just who is Edward Luttwak? And why do very powerful people pay vast sums for his advice? "
“Most people live such pointless lives,” said Luttwak as we walked toward his gate. “Not desperate lives – they have cable television – but pointless. For politicians, it’s not pointless, but it always ends in disappointment and bitterness. But meaningful? Their lives are not as meaningful as the Mennonites. The Mennonites are free in the Hegelian sense – they are self-consciously free. And they have unintentionally revealed the ongoing fraud of American agriculture. They don’t destroy the land, they don’t drug animals to death – they make vast profits using 18th-century technology. Personally, I cannot live that life, but I want it to flourish. I relate with Ulysses because I demand an interesting life. I demand it.”
Full article, The Machiavelli of Maryland, here.
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Bunny Williams home, above.  Her garden resonates, it's the historic template, yet more.  Obvious she has demanded that her life be interesting.  Her book, An Affair With a House, is one of the few I tell my clients to purchase.  If you learn best via photos, her book is for you.  It's about interior/exterior, vanishing threshold.
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Bottom line?  What kind of landscape do you want around your home?  The landscape of your heart, that makes you smile, or one fitting in with the neighborhood?  Choose in the macro.  Then follow the micro templates of your choice.
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How do you choose in the macro?  Pinterest.  Create a board of pics for landscapes you love.  Don't stop the board until you have at least 100 pics.  There will be a thread amongst the pics, and your landscape will be that thread.  Promise.  Macro, create your Pinterest board, micro, deduce the thread from your Pinterest board.  More than putting in a landscape you'll be creating an interesting life.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T