Recently I tackled the challenge of energizing an established blog. The back story: In 2007, garden author Nan Ondra and I launched Gardening Gone Wild. (Photographer Rob Cardillo introduced us.) Nan and I wrote passionately about natural, free-flowing gardens. We loved writing without publishers and editors hovering. When comments came in from all over the [...]
I’m one of those who believe the basic language of visual design applies to almost any topic or media. The ideas that make a successful garden vignette could also be employed to create a pleasing painting, a tempting textile, a beautiful building, or a fine photograph. There is a design language, and it does boast [...]
Structure, to me, is all important in garden making. Without it, a garden usually looks wimpy, mushy, and kind of inconsequential. There are exceptions, of course, but I’m just saying. Anyhow, I like using manufactured items from time to time, but feel as if the basic bones of a garden should come from its plants. So [...]
Sing it Carly! “Anticipation, anticipation/Is making me late/Is keeping me waiting.” Maybe Carly Simon was a horticulturist, because it strikes me lately that no one knows more about anticipation than a gardener. If you told me there’s any pursuit that is more about delayed gratification, about waiting for green dreams to be realized, about being just plain [...]
Hard to say if there’s any such thing as a foolproof garden design strategy, but the principle of repetition comes pretty darn close. The basic idea is simple: use something more than once. And when I say something, I really mean just about anything. You might use two or more of the same container, two or [...]