When designing a garden, the most fundamental and influential decisions you’ll make are around the shaping, the moulding, and manipulation of space. This isn’t just designer-speak. Whether you like the idea or not, it’s what you’ll be doing, either deliberately or intuitively. Nor does it make any difference whether the garden is large or small.
It’s a huge few days for The Gardenist in the lead up to the launch of Dream Gardens Season 2, and I thought you might like to keep up with what’s going on in case you have the chance to catch any of it. Friday night – tonight! – there’s an extended chat on Gardening
WOW! It’s the only possible response to the last two weeks – our very first Travelling Masterclass, taking in, and teasing apart, the best naturalistic perennial plantings in the UK, The Netherlands and Germany. We gathered together a diverse group of people with one thing in common – a huge appetite to learn as
Talk about serious re-calibration. Through a lot of laughter. We’re one week into our first Travelling Masterclass involving the hungriest group of gardeners I’ve ever travelled with, and we’ve had all our preferences and prejudices undermined and unglued. It’s a total reframing. And a very welcome one. As mostly home gardeners, private gardens have a
I can’t think of a more enjoyable – or effective – way to learn about garden design than to do so on the road, visiting exemplary gardens with a group of like-minded people. That’s why I’ve cooked up this idea of Travelling Masterclasses. They don’t assume you’re a master. They’re created in order to assist
Somehow Flaxmere has escaped my many visits to the South Island of NZ. I’d seen many photos, but nothing prepared me for the epic reality. The vision, the determination, the sheer grit of creator and nurturer Penny Zino are everywhere evident. Take a glance at this short video we shot when we were there earlier
Every now and again, you’ve got to trust your gut. The head said to spend the day at the eye-poppingly blue Lake Bled, in Slovenia, and maybe have a lazy one, just reading. The gut said otherwise. The head said (upon arrival at Kranjska Gora, and not finding the promised walk signage) to turn around
There’s no doubt that Isola Bella, on Lake Maggiore, is totally and utterly over the top. What’s much harder to work out is how it gets away with this. It charms you into suspending discernment. You find yourself loving it precisely for its outrageous extravagance, and yet can’t help but feel like you’ve been taken
No gardener I know is entirely satisfied with their garden. And, curiously, the best gardeners I know are the least satisfied, smug or complacent about their gardens. They’re always pushing for them to be better still. But as owners, we’re often too close to them, and blinded by familiarity, to clearly see what they do
I remember being blown away when James Van Sweden, speaking in Melbourne in 1989 about his huge plantings of perennials in the USA, told us that many of his clients found that their favourite season was winter. They were surprised by this discovery. He was equally surprised. After all, it’s the time when there’s nothing
It’s hard to imagine that it’s even possible that a garden like Trott’s Garden, just outside of Christchurch, NZ, could be created in one lifetime, and by one man. It’s an astonishing achievement by Alan Trott, who has recently handed the garden over to a trust, to ensure its survival. There’s so many ways in
It would be easy to make the mistake of thinking that the bigger the garden, the bigger the design challenge. But the exact opposite is true. The smaller the space, the more discipline is required for a good outcome, and discipline is about as rare as patience in gardeners! The smaller the garden, the less
