Planning a harmonious and naturalistic home and garden
I once heard this said about architecture and I believe the same is true for a garden: buildings and landscapes are inherently connected to the place in which they're built.
How our space is contextual
You don’t always have to hark back to an idea about what something should look like from the past or what you see in images. This is an opportunity to respond to the actual fabric of the geography and vernacular of where you live. A conversation, naturally, erupts from the context itself ensuring harmonic resonance with place and people.
When you become comfortable in a place, you have something truly your own, because it couldn’t be anywhere else. The very relationship makes it unique and profoundly valuable. A year from now, things will be different, your garden will be different, you will be different.
Every season reveals a transformation. One which is radically different from the previous month, even the previous year. It's these subtle seasonal shifts combined with the countless variables which give life color and dynamism. As your senses sharpen, you'll find that the naturalist in you emerges, fierce with curiosity amidst metamorphosis.
During the height of winter I get excited. Like the seeds which have laid silent over the last several months, I sense a shift. It’s slight. Nevertheless there is a notable variant in temperature and light. The nights are still frigid, yet it's happening.
It’s an incredibly moody time, the seasonal in betweens. I will wait till April or May to begin planting in the ground. Otherwise, the plants struggle or die from frost. I've done it so many times that I know to wait, patiently.
This art of tuning into the seasons is like learning a new language. Different from what you might expect. It's a language of observation, adaptation, and sense. A kinship is established with the wind and water, weather and light, scent and animal migrations, and the behavior of dawn and dusk. Once learned, you can apply it to gardening anywhere.
The pattern language
This approach of discovery and conversation with the landscape are the foundational principles I teach. Over the years, I’ve realized it’s this larger narrative which contains the knowledge. Naturalistic planting (and living) is an integrative, empirical, experiential opportunity to begin gardening by ultimately reconnecting with your surroundings.
Gardening has always been a passion of mine, perhaps because it checks all the boxes. It’s a physical practice that fills the soul. It’s a mental practice which offers solace as well as food. It’s ephemeral yet with effects that last in other ways. It’s a grounding anchor when everything else seems wildly unstable.
Planting, watering, harvesting, and being outside, ensures a continuity of pleasure, peace, and delight. But what it provides more than anything is trust. Trust in life and in myself with a calm neutrality – the ability to have faith that things sprout, grow, and evolve and that things die, struggle, and adapt.