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.

How to Create A Smart Landscape in a World of Dumb Landscaping

Pure GENIUS.  At first sight, below.
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That's it?
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That's it.


Pic, above, here.
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Trees & gravel grit.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Of course, siting, type of tree/s, pruning, factor into this genius.  Notice, no cobblestone edging at base of trees?  Significant, and major skill, making that choice.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Not zero maintenance, yet little.
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Pic, above, here.
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Benches, chairs, tables.
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And HEDGING.  Adapting this garden, above, to your home?  Site a hedge, above, at the road.  Hiding cars, road, neighbors homes; gaining privacy to your home, without hiding or blocking your home.
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Grand pollinator habitat.  Butterflies adore gravel/grit after rains.  Song birds adore the habitat of trees for nesting, hidden from predators, and open zones for insect gathering.
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Another TRINITY; Trees, Hedging, Grit.
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Trees, Hedging, Grit, is a complete garden design.
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Where to site the trees, hedges, placing benches, chairs, dining table/s?  Oh my, that life pleasure.  More, the spreading of grit, planting of trees/hedges, each, quite uncomplicated.
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Choose for heights easy to maintain with trees/shrubs, and drought, insect, deer...proof.
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My mission statement for & from the garden is to look out my windows, any day/any time of day, and think, Oh WOW.
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Beauty & Awe.
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Seeking transcendence.
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"I catch the inconceivable breath of the garden at dawn."  Boris Pasternak.  How many years of dawns is this true in your life?  Assuredly, this style garden provides, 'inconceivable breath'.
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"It is false to say that frontiers do not exist.  They do exist, temporarily.  But at the same time there exists a force of creativity and truth uniting us all, in humility and in pride at the same time."  Albert Camus.
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"All true happiness, as all that is truly beautiful, can only result from order."  Benjamin Franklin.
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"...yet, as Camus so stunningly reminds us, order itself, when worshiped too blindly and rigidly, can consume our fragile chance of happiness."  Maria Popova
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Too much slope?  Trees, Groundcovers, Hedges.
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Grit not happening?  Make it Tara Turf.
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"Nobody can discover the world for anybody else."  Wendell Berry.
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Gardening is conversation.  Gardening is prayer.  Gardening is thanks.

More Than You Want to Know About Starting Your Garden Design

What type Garden Design survives, centuries, in gardens?
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Easy trinity, with limitless permutations; Wild Wood, Meadow, Stone Focal Point.
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Meadow, Urn, Hedge, below.  Classical trivium of Garden Design.  A structure for adding more layers, if desired.
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Used at the front end of Garden Design it is a manner of thought toward your personal lifestyle, preferably, one you've chosen to make you a better person, at a minimum, a happier person.  Within the larger context of stewardship toward Nature. 
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Your choice. 
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"Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and freedom."  Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor.


Pic, above, here.
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Once I discovered what type of gardens survive for centuries, after studying historic gardens across Europe, it became obvious how to start a garden.  Start a garden with how it will end.  'It matters how we arrive at our ideas.'
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The classical trivium turned thought & writing into logic, grammar, rhetoric.  This isn't too small, for garden design, you can add more later.  With the classical trivium you are 'imparted the 7 liberal arts of classical antiquity.'
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Pic, above, here.
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Going beyond the classical trivium, above.  Easy to see, removing flowers, the garden becomes its end state quickly, meadow, hedge/wildwood, stone focal point.  (Labeling the garden in design terms, above, canopy, understory, walls, floors, focal point.)
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It's important to have the language for a garden, to create one.  It's important to have the history for a garden, to create one.  It's important to have the logic for a garden, to create one.  You realize this isn't about your garden.  It's choices about your life.  God almighty first created a garden.  We all ate that apple.  No choice in the matter, I want back in the garden.
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Having the vocabulary to design a garden lets your mind "...collect and analyze information and to draw conclusions based on that information; it demands self-discipline and instills virtue (the ability to do what is right despite one's baser inclinations); it produces.........think, understand, solve problems and follow through on a wide range of interests.  It requires a student to examine moral and ethical issues.  A classical education is multi-cultural in the best sense of the word.  Because it takes history as its organizing principle, students learn the place of their lives, families, and communities in the broad landscape of human existence and achievement.  It imparts skills and passion for thinking and learning that allow a person to teach herself for the rest of her life.  Classical education is systematic and rigorous; it has purpose, goals, and a method to reach those goals."  Noval Classical, from here. 
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This is more than you wanted, but have included it, aside from living it, because it is how George Washington gardened, and garden designed.  More than agricultural, more than elegance, he gardened to show his political, educational, and religious beliefs.  Born into a slave holding family, what was the impetus George Washington had, to free all his slaves? 
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Slaves in America are part of historic garden study.  In Europe, for too many eras they had subsistence workers.  Ignorant, I had to ask a head-gardener what that meant, "They worked for food.  No pay, no housing, no clothing given.  At the end of the day they return into the woods."  Serfs were another layer of garden labor, not technically slaves, they worked for the manor house, were given a plot of land for their own to work, and could take those earnings, yet were not free to move about, they had to be granted permission to leave a manor's employ, which was not a given. 
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End of serfdom coincided with the bubonic plague.  So many were killed, there were few left to work the fields.  Finally, after the plague, workers were paid for their labor.  And, allowed freedom to move about.
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Historic gardens, which truly flourished after the plague, ca. 1400,  took another turn after WWI, so many were killed the grand estates did not have enough laborers to keep their properties up to prior WWI standards.  This is when 'my' trinity of historic gardens appeared.  WWII was the macro end of agrarian gardens, and beginning of industrialized landscapes we have today. 
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Industrialized landscaping parallels, unfortunately, global factory farming of livestock.  Won't go further into that realm here beyond noting George Washington's gardening choices, and life choices. 
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In the garden, beyond making design choices based upon a trivium, choosing to engage the brain in addition to body, spirit & community, there is the garden itself, with some life forces equal to ours.  At times, appearing sentient, perhaps behaving with sentience.     
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Does the neo-sentience of a garden affect our thought processes when in our garden, or woodland, or fields & streams?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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How do you like History, thru my Garden prism? 
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From the Mount Vernon website, below.

In his will, written several months before his death in December 1799, George Washington left directions for the emancipation of all the slaves that he owned, after the death of Martha Washington.

Washington's slave census in this 1799 will and testament

Washington was not the only Virginian to make provisions to free his slaves during this period. In 1782, toward the end of the American Revolution, the Virginia legislature made it legal for slave holders to manumit their slaves, without a special action of the governor and council.

Of the 317 slaves at Mount Vernon in 1799, 123 individuals were owned by George Washington and were stipulated in Washington's will to be freed upon his wife's death. However, these conditions did not apply to all slaves at Mount Vernon. When Martha Washington's first husband Daniel Parke Custis died without a will, she received a life interest in one-third of his estate, including his slaves. The other two-thirds of the estate went to their children.

Neither George nor Martha Washington could free these dower slaves by law. Upon her death the slaves would revert to the Custis estate and be divided among her grandchildren. By 1799, 153 slaves at Mount Vernon were part of this dower property. Forty more slaves were rented from a neighbor, while another man, Peter Hardiman, was rented from the widow of Martha Washington's son. All these people would eventually return to their owners.

 In accordance with state law, George Washington stipulated in his will that elderly slaves or those who were too sick to work were to be supported throughout their lives by his estate. Children without parents, or those whose families were unable to see to their education were to be bound out to masters and mistresses who would teach them reading, writing, and a useful trade, until they were ultimately freed at the age of twenty-five. Washington’s will stated that he took these charges to his executors very seriously: "And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly enjoin it upon my Executors...to see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay, after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged and infirm."

In December 1800, Martha Washington signed a deed of manumission for her deceased husband's slaves, a transaction that is recorded in the abstracts of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Court Records. They would finally become free on January 1, 1801.    

"I Want to Have a Relationship With You"

The physical of a garden is obvious.  House, meadow, hedge, porch with table/chair/vase, color, form, texture, flow, breeze, sound, temperature, scent,
implied actions. 
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This garden, below, becomes interestingly intentional if there's a cluster mansion just the other side of the hedge.  Indicative of clear choices made with a firm hand.  And life.
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Odd, the alchemy of hedge & meadow creating expansive space, physically & mentally.
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Pic, above, here.
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Nature takes the physical of a garden, metaphysical.  Psychologists proclaim a: 'Fertile Solitude = Basic Unit of a Full & Contented Life.'
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About solitude in Nature, "...one's inner voices become audible (and) in consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives."  Wendell Berry.
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Porch & garden, above, give layers of fertile solitude & the sound of our own inner voice, merely from a photograph.  This garden, above, is totally designed, though looks not designed in the least.  "Intelligence + Diligence + Wisdom  vs.  Letting It Be."  No one needs to be a garden expert to know what a letting-it-be attitude does to a landscape.
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"We die.  That may be the meaning of life.  But we do language.  That may be the measure of our lives."  Toni Morrison.  Gardens were a language long before man arrived.
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Deciding to have a Garden is 2nd order positive thinking.  "A real advantage is conferred on people who can do things that are 1st-order negative, 2nd-order positive.  Especially if these 1st order negatives are very visible costs with no immediate benefit in the short term and a non-linear benefit at some future time."  Shane Parrish. 
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A previous client moved from their home/garden 2 years ago.  Recently, near that home, I did the stupid thing, a drive-by.  Foot went to brake, and I just stared.  Their garden, on the edge of out-of-control, had bushes screaming, "Come, prune us, you'll have a nice couple of hours, and that problem you're most worried about, it will be solved when the pruning is done, your house will be framed in love again, and your attitude lifted, nurtured."  More precisely, I kept thinking, Don't you see, don't you hear? Your Garden is shouting in joy to you, "I want to have a relationship with you."
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Seriously, I saw their garden communicating with them, heard the exact words, "I want to have a relationship with you." 
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"...clinging to what you already know and do well is the path to an unlived life."  Parker Palmer.  Gardens are 2nd-order positive thinking.  How odd to finally 'hear' a quote from a Garden, "I want to have a relationship with you.", yet it was someone else's garden, speaking to them, not me.  I got the metaphor. 
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You may not hear the Garden speaking to you, 'I want to have a relationship with you'.  Be assured, it is. 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

A Pair of Landscapes: Exactly Alike Yet Opposites

Within constraints of sacred vs. profane the world takes away so much of our life, why give it more?  Merely targeting industrialized residential landscapes ca. 1945 to present, in USA. 
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This pair of landscapes, below, are opposites in style, yet both have style centuries older than industrialized landscapes.  What style is that?  Agrarian/pastoral.  More, both landscapes focus on the house and its inhabitants/guests, as proscenium and star.  A sweet pairing, life is the focus, not life maintaining the landscape. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Top pic appears modern, bottom pic appears historic.  More, their style, appropriated to other sites, becomes new again, unique.
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Ambition and aspiration are both of great value.  Yet how they are mixed, and their changing percentages given across our life, even a day, show in our material lives.  Ambition and aspiration should be in the landscape, with aspiration weighted heaviest, they've made the best landscapes for centuries across continents and cultures. 
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Industrialized landscapes stop at mere ambition.  Agrarian/pastoral landscapes, even with a bit of industrialization tossed in, have ambition, but their aspirations are greater. 
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What does this mean?  'Ambition is what we want to achieve and aspiration is who we want to become.' 
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Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Seeing agrarian/pastoral landscapes as a child, there were a few, compared to thousands of industrialized, I saw generosity of spirit, welcoming arms, a rich conversation, fun, intelligence, secrets, home, love.


Pic, above, here.
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Hedges, trees, & a meadow/gravel terrace is the trinity for agrarian/pastoral, and the new modern industrialized landscape.  Be like Iris, know how you can get away with anything.       

 
Pic, above, here.
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Grief, when it comes, I take into the garden.  At least I know what the garden will do.  A new grief?  Never know what it will do.
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Pic, above, here.
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Your landscape should tell me who you are from the curb.  If I see a photo of your patio, it must be so fabulous I have to go inside your home, and wander the garden.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Gardens have always been places of light and love, to me, from earliest childhood, and respite from the darkness & hate that comes in measure to all.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Perhaps it was not being able to have children, I never had to give her, above, up.  Ever.  No worries if you've never gardened this passionately, there is no age limit to start. 
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Get dirty?  When I garden there are bruises, blood, time ceases yet expands, hunger doesn't exist, epiphanies arrive, grief has a place to harbor for awhile, forgiveness is given but feels like a bestowal.....
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Sighting A Hedge for Screening

Hiding a view, the closer your plantings the faster the hiding.
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Neighbor's house, below, is quite close already, the design/placement of planting close, an automatic.
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If the neighbor's house were 100' away, still site the evergreen hedge where it is.  Not near the property line.  Especially if you want to have early morning coffee on the terrace, in your gown.


Pic, above, here.
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The closer the hedge, the faster the screening.
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Put that in your memory bank.
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You may not need it, but a friend might.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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Placing large evergreens for screening recently, 'husband' wanted them in a certain spot, near the property line.  I mentioned a spot closer to his home, providing much faster privacy for his screened/roofed porch. Which was his focus.  He paused long, "That's where my wife said to put them."  Sweet moment, she loved it when I told her.