Do Tell

In the article Divide and Conquer, I encouraged you to use the geometry of both the land and the architecture to create a design that complements the site. If you’ve done that, here’s your reward. In this phase of the design process we enter the realm of style, where personality comes to the fore. I’ll use the sharply-pitched roof of an historic home in the West End of Portland, Maine, to show you how those elements are woven into landscape design.  

The house was a stick-built John Calvin Stevens whose most prominent form, streetside, was the strong peak of the porch roof. Even without the extremely Victorian trim colors of violet and teal, this roof line was inescapable, and needed something to act as visual ballast. My first choice would have been to plant something with a complementary O-shape, but on such a small city lot there was no way to install a globe-shaped tree of sufficient weight.  

Vase-shaped it was. After that, it was a matter of finding something mid-story, zone-hardy, with strong color and a tolerance of city life. Spring blossoms would be nice, and perhaps a good Fall color change. Summer was something of an issue, not in terms of blooming but because the clients spent a good part of the season on island. All the plant material had to be somewhat indifferent to care.  

So what was the choice? An Ornamental Plum which, though it has a nondescript flower, has a gorgeous bronze leaf, tinged purple, that stays vivid Spring through Fall. It’s fronted by a row of tree-form PeeGee Hydrangea for that circular balance, and the geometry of the space is echoed in the perennials: lush, round peonies, Miscanthus Gracillimus with its sharply-turned blades, the fat trumpets of day lilies... you get the idea. In a very small area, we have a very rich garden.  

By using the modern versions of heirloom varieties we acknowledged the historic nature of the property, but we kept the space rooted in the here-and-now. Many of the perennials are childhood favorites of the owners, and the color scheme is a reflection of what I suspect is the secret wild side of two people who outwardly seem quite reserved.  

This is where those three self-descriptive words (see the article Three Little Words) come in handy; it’s a way of getting quickly to what really matters. It’s a cipher, a translator for the enigma of personality. In the act of describing themselves, people reveal not only who they are, but what they want in terms of garden design. There are other ways, as well; sometimes it is as simple as asking, Why? What is there about that plant, that tree, that style of garden, that speaks to you? It may be a childhood memory; more often, it’s a question of self-image.  

Let’s go, for a moment, to another site, studded with harsh juniper against the backdrop of a gorgeous wet meadow (see the article Gardening Heresy). Juniper is rugged and strong and imposing, the traits many associate with masculinity. It came as no surprise to find that the person who planted the stuff -- and Mugo pine and Balsam and Blue spruce and Cotoneaster -- was a man. Here’s the question that he never asked: Is it possible to express those qualities in a style that is compatible with the site?  

When I handled the redesign, I did ask and my answer, of course, was yes. There are any number of so-called ‘architectural’ plants, plants that are bold enough to stand alone, impressive enough to anchor a group. They are the ‘alphas’ of the plant world, and for the alphas of the human world -- male and female -- they make a statement. There are also techniques of mass planting for dynamic line, and repeat planting for dramatic effect. Compressing the focus to such a narrow lens was too limited to serve either the property or the owner. The wide angle that comes from asking the question gives us more room to play, and more stuff to play with.  

So far we have three little words and one really great question; let’s add a tell. Yes, just like poker, and every client I’ve ever had and every student I’ve ever taught has revealed at least one. The first example of a tell you’ve read about already: those wild Victorian colors of teal and violet. It’s true that the owners were being historically correct but those colors had to be, they just had to be, an expression of personality as well. You couldn’t enter that house day after day and not love them. That said volumes, to me, about the personalities of the people who would make such a choice.  

The same kind of tell was revealed by one of my first students, so quiet on those rare occasions when she spoke that I had to lean in a bit just to hear her. She didn’t really know what she wanted, she said, and she didn’t really know what she liked, but there would be Oriental poppies somewhere on her property. Classic orange, and lots of them. Period.  

An Oriental poppy is about the sexiest flower going, with a fat seed pod nestled in a blue-black throat at the base of a grand orange bowl. Except at the hand of Georgia O’Keefe flowers don’t get much more erotic so, quiet or not, buttoned-down or not, this woman obviously had a wild streak. Since I am only too happy to encourage wildness, I urged her to develop a design based on that color and that passion. Passion is a strong indicator of true self, and whether that passion is for color or form or scent or anything else, it’s a good guideline for the implementation of your design.  

There are more subtle expressions, too, and they can be tipoffs. Recently I asked a client who was struggling to find her style what the ideal table setting would be for a dinner party. They would dine by candlelight, she said, and the service would be set on a beautiful damask cloth. Plain china with a simple gilt rim; clear crystal goblets; Victorian sterling with mother-of-pearl handles.  

Sounds like a garden to me, and I’ll tell you how it translates. Unlike plain linen, damask has a tone-on-tone pattern woven in thread with a slight sheen; this implies an appreciation of texture and the subtle layering of a quiet garden. The plain china is minimal and unfussy; the gilt edge adds just that bit of elegance, as does the mother-of-pearl in the hilt of the flatware. That tells me she wants plants with good bones and no frills, but varieties perhaps a little out of the ordinary.  

Imagine her crystal, reflected by candlelight in the burnished sheen of vintage sterling, and think rich, dark sensuality. There are dozens of shrubs and perennials in the darkest purples that fill the bill, and reds so deep we call them black. Pair either of those with cream and chartreuse; mate the purple with violet or the midnight red with copper pink and you have a smoldering, sexy, multi-layered landscape. Since we already had the variety of Japanese maple known as ‘bloodgood’ and some fat cream-to-copper hydrangea on the property, my color choice was set and it was just a matter of bringing in the additional pieces that would add depth and texture.  

Whether or not you understand the language of the garden, you already are speaking a language that can be used to mark your path. Parlay your description of self, your passions and your quirks into an authentic, resonant design. The trick is to go inside yourself before you go out into the landscape. 

c. 2006

Divide and Conquer

I shot a piece for the local news on a project I recently finished, trying to tell the show’s viewers -- in two-and-a-half minutes -- how to use the features of their land to direct their landscape designs. I can take a bit longer here, but it’s really quite simple. The design exemplifies the land, the implementation of that design exemplifies the person.  

The reason I chose that particular site to film was that it showed, in graphic detail, what happens when you don’t take your design cues from the land. The property itself is a big, bold hill on which sits a big, bold house, unfortunately fronted by a bitsy little walkway replete with bitsy little curves set in bitsy little bricks and cobbles. The architect followed the land; the builder followed the land; the only person who didn’t follow the land was the landscape designer, and so the design falls flat.  

There are any number of sites like this, and I suspect it’s because the designs for these sites are conceived on paper and not on the land. When your design emanates from the property, you move out of the realm of two-dimensional design and into the world of 3-D; in this world, the entire property becomes a walkable sculpture. This is the first leg of the design triangle.  

Whether hilly or flat, treed or pastoral, city or country, each site has a geometry with which you can play. A hill provides a strong arc, a flat city lot is often graphically rectangular. A stand of spruce evokes a triangle, an old apple tree is a circle. Trees are classified, in fact, by their growth habits: globe-shaped, columnar, vase-shaped, spreading.  

The house, which is leg number two, has a geometry as well, but that geometry varies depending on the side in view. A pitched roof that forms a strong triangle may be the dominant feature on the front, while the rear of the house may be a simple square.  

If you combine the primary shapes from each aspect of the property and each aspect of the house, you have the beginnings of a pattern. To complete the landscape leg of the design triangle you need do only one of two things: conform to the pattern, or move in counterpoint. For example, that prominent roof peak forms the same angle as a vase-shaped tree. If you install that tree, you conform to the pattern; if you install a globe-shaped tree, you complement the pattern.  

Either choice is correct, as long as the choice is an equivalent visual weight. A tree-form Pee-Gee Hydrangea, for example, could be the perfect complement to a sharply peaked roof if that roof sits atop a cottage. If that roof sits atop a two- or three-story house, however, such a little tree will be overwhelmed and the effect lost. If the property size realistically does not permit a more substantial globe-shaped tree, then a tall vase-shaped tree becomes the logical choice to balance such a large structure. 

No worries, though, if your heart was set on round. There are vase-shaped magnolias with fat, round flowers to choose from, and round stands of lilac with with elegant, floral cones. The decision to compare or contrast can be made at all levels, and each decision helps define the next choice.  

I have a client who insists that secretly I think of his property as my client, and that he just pays the bills. He says it as a joke but the truth is, he’s not wrong. My commitment is to the land first, because most of what I do is permanent. The house will change hands time and again, but generations from now the trees will be there, the granite will be there, the peonies will be there. If I design for the land, that design will do more than just transcend owners; it will allow whoever lives there the freedom to change styles without altering the essential elements of the design. Property-centered design forms the skeleton; you can flesh it out as you like without starting from scratch and without losing the beauty of mature growth. This particular property is lucky to have an owner who is a good steward of the land and dedicated, despite his teasing, to preserving it.  

Years ago I redesigned a sunny, southwestern slope overlooking an expansive wet meadow, taking it from a thicket of juniper to waves of lavender, day lily and ornamental grasses. The lavender is in there to discourage the deer, who hate the scent, from eating the day lilies, which they love. The grasses are there because they have shallow root systems -- just the thing for soil retention on a slope -- and are happiest in full sun. The lilies are Hyperion, because the owner loves yellow, and the lavender is Hidcote, because purple is the color opposite of yellow and Hidcote is the best of the purples.  

The truth, though, is that this space could have been filled with anything that met the design criteria of the space and the needs of the site. It could have been reed grass and blue oat grass and miscanthus; it could have been a stream of lavender; it could have been common orange day lily and Russian sage. Anything with a billowy, breezy habit would have done.  

The design criteria dictated only the form, which was meant to balance, to mimic the form of the meadow just beyond. The other two legs of the triangle were fixed: the house was there, the meadow was there, and the land rolled gracefully from one into the other. There was nothing else to do, in keeping with those elements, but to fill the slope with materials that fit the texture and the temperament of the land.  

The former owner committed design treason when he installed juniper -- stiff, sharp, severe -- on a site that was soft, round and inviting. He did it because he liked juniper, apparently of every genus and every variety; he did it because it suited his style.  

The problem was that his style didn’t suit the form of the land. It might have suited the architecture of the house, had the house been built on a parcel surrounded by something more structural than meadow. On a site with a mountain view or even a view of the city, the architecture would have taken on a harder edge, and the rugged nature of the juniper would have been right at home.  

The gentle roll of this site, combined with the ephemeral feel of the meadow, made the introduction of such harsh plant material visually disturbing. Visual dissonance leads to emotional dissonance, that feeling just beneath the skin that something isn’t quite right.  

This is not the same as using color contrasts or geometric opposites to do fun things with the visual palate; it is a type of dissonance akin to watching a delightful romantic comedy where, in the last scene, everybody dies. I grant you, there are some movies in which that actually could be amusing, but for the most part it would just leave your brain screaming What?  

Remember the qualities that drew you to the site in the first place. Remember that form follows function. What is the function of landscape design? To complement the site. How do we do that? We complete the design triangle by establishing the shape of things to come.  

c.2006

A Truth, Inconvenient

I adore two men, neither of whom I’ve had the fortune to meet. Fellow gardener Henry Mitchell, of course, because he cares as much about language as he does about gardening, and James Howard Kunstler, because no one writes about the misuse of land with a sharper tongue, nor has a sharper eye.  

I say this, I suppose, as a way to gird my loins against what I suspect will be the wholesale rejection of an article I just submitted. I met the editor’s deadline, but I don’t think I met her expectation. I realize that writers are neurotic on principle, and I realize that a day or two of silence doesn’t necessarily mean that she hates it, but I am wrapping myself in two of the toughest guys I know, just in case.  

The problem is me, naturally; I said yes to an assignment that I should have passed. It was the first thing this magazine ever offered me, and I lept at the chance before I saw the site they wanted me to review. I’m having this wild flashback to the time a bunch of neighborhood kids and I snuck onto the site of a new house being built. We were up on the foundation when one of the guys spied a car coming around the corner. Everyone else had the brains to take the short drop to the inside, but I jumped out, landing on some construction debris and shredding the ligaments in my right ankle.  

I think this is going to be that; I think I have torn the connective tissue between this lovely little mag and me. This time it’s not because I was doing something wrong, though, unless you consider offering a highly opinionated opinion wrong. Honest to God, I tried to keep my mouth shut and write some pleasant little piece extolling the virtues of this thing that everybody else seems to love. I just couldn’t do it, and I swear that neither Henry nor Jim could have done it, either.  

The site is dead boring; there’s no other way to say it. Well, that’s not exactly true, I suppose, because I spent seven hundred words saying everything but “this site is painfully, unrelentingly dull.” Well, that’s not exactly true, either; I spent four months and seven hundred words. I kept going back to the installation praying that I would see something, anything, even remotely interesting, praying that I’d find some way around the truth, praying that I’d have an aneurysm before the deadline. None of that happened, and though I wanted to say that the site might have bored me to tears if it hadn’t been so banal that it sucked out the energy needed to cry, I didn’t. Not one of those seven hundred words is that truthful.  

I know that it’s just a demonstration garden, and I know that it’s demonstrating for a good cause, but these people were given two-and-a-half acres of land to play with. Two-and-a-half acres! I’ll grant that it butts up against a major thoroughfare, which isn’t the greatest backdrop, but it fronts the bay, which ain’t too shabby. And did I mention the two-and-a-half acres? Can you imagine the fun they could have had with the design? Can you imagine the fun we could have had if they’d had fun?  

We’re on the Maine coast; how about a compass rose? How about a series of waves, or fat, geometric forms? I wouldn’t have cared if they’d made one huge P for Portland -- in fact, I’d probably have been pretty amused -- but to do something as pedestrian as you’d see at the mall is unforgivable.  

But I didn’t say that in the article, either. I didn’t quote Jekyll’s “wearisome monotony of variety” to describe the planting of this and this and this example of pest-free whatever, and I stifled any expression of glee in recounting the substantial loss of plants the garden had suffered. I did urge them to take advantage of the loss and replant with a freer, more robust hand, but that wasn’t enough to make me happy about the article. I suspect it won’t make the editor happy, either, but for reasons opposite mine.  

So here’s the second seven hundred words, and the likely end of my free-lance career with Port City Life. At least I’m not bored.

A Garden of Golden Proportion

What if I told you that the success of your garden had less to do with plants than with proportion? Or that a simple ratio, used by the Hindus and the Moors and brought to Europe by a thirteenth-century Italian, could solve almost all your design issues? You’d probably think that I’d abandoned my Master Gardener roots, or worse, but it’s true.  

 

I designed a garden years ago that seemed to make people unusually happy. I watched as they marveled over this or that feature, this or that plant, and I began to wonder why the space was so magnetic. The need to figure out what I had done led me to research the relationship between design and human behavior, and that lead me to Fibonacci and his ratio. It is the proportion used by da Vinci to compose paintings and by the architect Le Corbusier to configure buildings.  

The ratio creates a geometric figure known as a ‘golden rectangle,’ which occurs when the short side is .618 times the long side. Even in modern society, that relationship is everywhere: an index card, a credit card, common rug sizes, you name it. For any number of reasons, humans gravitate to that proportion. Perhaps because we recognize the ratio even in our own bodies: our torsos are typically about one-third the overall body measurement, leaving the bulk of us squarely in Fibonacci territory. Looking at the human face straight on, our eyes are usually set a third of the way from hairline to jaw, and I’ve read (though I have yet to ask for volunteers) that if you put a frame around the average human head, that frame would be of golden proportion. Lo and behold, the perimeter of my garden marks a near-perfect golden rectangle.  

That ratio also makes an appearance in the Fibonacci sequence, a rather famous series of numbers that goes like so: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. The next number in the sequence is 13, which is both the sum of the two numbers that come before it and the product of the ratio. If I multiply the number 8 by the ratio’s inverse, 1.618, I get the number 13. As an artist I can tell you that there is a certain ‘dynamic tension’ in an odd number of items that doesn’t exist with an even number, but it never occurred to me that using a proportionate number of ‘odds’ to ‘evens’ could give the entire space that same kind of energy.  

It’s fascinating to find math, a left-brained function, and art, which is decidedly right, in complete agreement. Had I applied myself more diligently to math in school, my studies would have told me to fill the garden with plant materials in that proportion; fortunately, my artist’s sensibility told me the same thing. When I checked the planting chart for the garden, I found that I had grouped the shrubs and perennials according to the Fibonacci sequence of 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8, a combination that gave the garden balance.  

The ratio also applies to plant height: a six-foot dwarf tree looks perfectly balanced against shrubs that max out at about four feet; those four-foot shrubs look fabulous paired with perennials of two-and-a-half feet. Even if you’re new to gardening those numbers will have a familiar ring; they seem to be some of Nature’s favorite heights. The proportion looks right to our collective eye because we see it all around us.  

The only plants in my ‘golden rectangle’ held over from the original landscaping are two Boule de Neige rhododendrons, anchoring the space left and right. I pruned them into tree form by elevating their canopies, eliminating the bottom two-thirds of the branches. It’s a style that instantly gives leggy, overgrown rhodies a real presence, and it also frees the area beneath the canopy for planting complementary material. I capped the height at six feet and confined the flowering to the upper third of the shrub. That balance between visually open and visually full -- what an artist knows as positive and negative space -- also repeats the torso-to-body proportion, which gives the rhodies a subtle human quality.  

I built the garden further by installing eight Nikko Blue hydrangea, and not just because I wanted those luscious, round heads as a summer echo of the spring-flowering rhododendron. Here in Maine, even though we’re a Zone 5 along the southern coast, Nikkos suffer a good deal of die-back; ironically, that makes them ideal for the interior of this garden. Every year they confine themselves to their four-by-four-foot allotment, giving them the perfect proportion against the elevated rhodies. The majority of the perennials that complete this garden are about two-and-a-half-feet tall, the golden companion to the shrub height.  

The walkway wrapping the three exposed sides of this garden repeats the proportion, as well. The thirty-inch-squares of bluestone are arranged in a pattern that uses a strand (2, 3, 5) of the Fibonacci sequence, a fact that leaves me alternately pleased and dismayed. Pleased that at last I know the reason the design works so well, dismayed that the reason seems to have little to do with artistic brilliance.  

So for all you left-brainers out there who think you couldn’t design a garden for love nor money, think again; here’s a method of creation that’s right up your alley. For the right-brainers, here’s a way to channel your instincts and fine-tune your ideas. As for me, I think this year I’ll play around with proportionate color, and see if I can control the saturation ratio. Hmmm… looks like I’ll have to add thirteenth-century mathematics to my list of favorite Italian things! 

c.2007