About designing a garden for an interior designer and an architect.
A few years ago, I was invited to design a small front garden for the home of an interior designer and an architect. They brought to the table an aesthetic opinion on the garden space and language to communicate it (their drawings were immensely helpful). I brought plants and some knowledge of their change over time.
Designing gardens, like music, movies, magic and endless others, is a time art. Time arts are designed in a time frame; Things can be arranged in order of happening, which allows for endless effects.
Some of the effects were planned. As garden design turned into garden care for the new front garden as well as the established back garden, I got to see them happen. The front garden’s short bergenia and sweet woodruff, tucked in the inner, home side of the garden, bloomed in spring, followed in mid-summer by the tall roadside periphery of Echinacea, Black Eyed Susans and Daylilies. The four Daylily varieties were timed to bloom on the outskirts first, then symmetrically converge on the center. It was fun to plan and fun to see.
But other effects were unpredicted. They’re what keeps me coming back to gardens season after season, year after year. Last week I did a spring cleanup at this garden. It had been hot for a few days, high teens, even twenties. NOTL is always a few degrees ahead of Grimsby, so the yellow crocuses were already deep in bloom. We had planted them last fall to extend the back garden’s bloom time.
This back garden lines the private back road, and continues as a narrow strip on the other side of their driveway. Miscanthus and Karl Foerster are the background, Black Eyed Susans and Japanese Bloodgrass are the foreground, and the crocuses are sprinkled along the front edge.
The garden wears its dry grasses over the winter, for mass, texture, structure and that lovely tan colour. This early spring, for the first time, the grasses cast their long slim shadows on little yellow crocus petals. When the occasional strong gust of wind blew through, they moved like brushstrokes on a canvas, like tiny elusive eclipses. The awakening garden, wispy and bright. A first touch of spring on the thawing ground.
Every year, cutting down the dead grass stems left behind a carpet of large round tan polkadots on aged brown mulch. Not that it wasn’t a nice early spring garden. I’m a fan of tan with brown, and its rough texture is grounding. But bringing in crocuses has changed it. Rough to soft, dull to bright, dead to alive, winter to spring. This year, that little pop of yellow is something different.
So what’s the takeaway here… A little bit goes a long way? Plan ahead and notice what happens? Take away what you like. Mine is that I enjoy designing with designers. We may specialize in different fields, but we share, if not a common language, common dialects. We, on some level, understand each other. And that allows us to make yellow crocuses bloom on a winter carpet.
Happy Spring, gardeners!
Thanks for reading.
Mélanie