Garden Of Benign Neglect and Lantern at dusk
I don't visualize a garden plan or make a scale drawing.
That's not me. I feel my way there.
I dig and plant then step back. Sometimes, it just feels right! Inching, working, digging my way to a vignette, then another vignette and then a whole bed emerges!
But seeing the whole picture...No, not so much! I get a sense of what it needs, what I want it to be and then work my way there. I almost always know the plants that make sense, even if I put them in and take them out and move them around the garden. That's the only way that feels right. Give me a diagram and I can follow it, but ask me to design a plan...I can't do it! I don't see it.
I garden kinesthetically.
It's that way with the wayback backyard!
Wayback backyard with honeysuckle
I don't 'see' the fully planned and planted garden in my head...but,
Very nearly the same spot without honeysuckle
The organizing principles of Clay and Limestone always serve as a guide: This is a Central Basin garden with nearly neutral soil, which shares many characteristic with cedar glades and adjacent Oak-Red Cedar Forests. Plants need to be able to tolerate shallow soil that is wet in winter and very dry in summer. Cedar glade plants make sense...they were already here and they thrive. Plants must be able to survive under a canopy of oaks, shagbark hickories, red cedars and hackberries. Years of leaf litter has improved the soil back there, but there is still limestone beneath and a thick canopy above!
Having said that...there is a need for a fresh perspective; a vision; someone to keep me from detouring all over the place or circling around the same old same old. Fortunately, I have a garden coach/designer who is visual and generous friends to help me. Could a garden get any luckier? The gardener likes to dig and can follow directions well!
Do you feel your way or see your way to a garden? I really want to know!
Gail
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo
Gail
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo
