We’ve been sending out a lot of garden renovation dumpster rentals lately, and one of my favorite trends I’m seeing is windowsill gardening. It’s such a clever way to save water and make the most of a small space! Your pelargoniums sound lovely, and it’s easy to see how they’d become a delightful (and slightly addictive) focus. Thanks for sharing!
this is a fantastic piece. As both a garden designer and a home gardener, I really connect to the point you are making here. We are always designing, with or without drink in hand. Brava.
I tell people that if the site is well bounded, and the owners are happy with their plant choices and use of the garden, they don't need me. If the site is hideous, awkward, steeply sloped, needs serious engineering to hold back the effects of weight and gravity, or they have no idea where to start, or they are in conflict as to the way forward, I can help. People seem less able to find their own solutions in their gardens these days, not willing nor able to roll their sleeves up to build one.
My parents and grandparents all had traditional yet beautiful and effective gardens, and thought nothing of building walls, pergolas, ramps, and terraces, planting trees and hedges., every fine weekend. I think it is partly a northern or wealth thing...I had no idea people hired handymen, to do the things like hanging pictures and weeding gardens, until I moved down south in the 80's.
I suspect it is also a sign of media overwhelm and professionals in all spheres of life building their brand. They clog up the information stream in order to tout for business. I dread reading yet more Top 10 Tips and Jobs For The Month articles. I just started gardening in teenage years as my family did...observing, digging holes, planting things brown end down and later chopping bits off them...and now I see quite a few people paralysed with the fear of Getting It Wrong.
Does this explain why people seem to follow fashions more assiduously these days? Every new interior a drear of grey...every garden must be wafty with grasses, unfashionable plants consigned to the chipper instead of given new purpose in new places. I itch to grow pampas grass babies in niches on cliffs - no one will let me yet.
Heaven forbid you plant a double red rose the bees can't get at to pollinate, in case you are reported to the eco police. Single and David Austin roses are the only ones to grow...it would surely be social death to grow a border of Peace roses. Actually it would be social death to grow Harry Wheatcroft roses now...but why do we get in such a stew about it?
Aspirational Living was called Keeping Up With The Jones's by my grandma and that was not seen as a good thing. I don't recall amateur gardeners giving much of a stuff about trends before the hanging basket was invented in the early 70's. We gardened, and on sunny days, dragged the deck chairs out of the shed - no patio for us. Then we went back indoors for tea - no barbecues back then, just bonfires and burnt potatoes in foil and we didn't write articles about it..
Please garden with panache, generosity of scale and without giving a stuff about fashion, responding only to your needs and to your garden's possibilities. Plant without professional garden designers telling you what to plant, except me, of course. A solitary Harry Wheatcroft rose is socially suspect...plant a thousand of the stripy beasts with other madly orange and yellow perennial flowers, and a base note of deepest crimson...umm...something... with a contrast clash of neon pink and you would become famous, even if you don't make it into Gardens Illustrated. Add verbena bonariensis to the mix and you just might.
First, I am a garden designer in the US, specifically the PNW. I have designed some expensive gardens, but also experienced the constraint of a limited budget. Right now, I am designing my own small garden after moving from a larger property. My budget is very limited, so I look at everything I have to see if there is a way to reuse, recycle, or renew it. I often do this with client projects, too. It’s a good way to practice sustainability. So I value the inout of my clients as a team member of any design. They will be there long after the contractor (if there is one) and I have left. I want them to succeed, so I help them with editing tools they can use moving forward. Not everyone has a practiced eye in designing a garden of their own. People fear what they do not understand. I hope to eliminate or at least reduce that fear. If you are already fearless, then more power to you!
Thanks Vanessa, and I hope you appreciate that those of us who can't afford professional assistance have to learn the way we learn to garden and learn about plants. Books and garden visiting were mostly mine. And, I guess, that, like garden designers themselves, some of us manage better than others.
We’ve been sending out a lot of garden renovation dumpster rentals lately, and one of my favorite trends I’m seeing is windowsill gardening. It’s such a clever way to save water and make the most of a small space! Your pelargoniums sound lovely, and it’s easy to see how they’d become a delightful (and slightly addictive) focus. Thanks for sharing!
this is a fantastic piece. As both a garden designer and a home gardener, I really connect to the point you are making here. We are always designing, with or without drink in hand. Brava.
I love this!
Thank you for offering this perspective. The wisdom could apply to professionals in other fields as well‼️ Think about it…
I knew after the fact, thank you very kindly sorry.
No problem !
Oh, a man after my own heart ! Thank you, just beautiful, so thoughtful.
Thanks. But I'm really not a man!
I tell people that if the site is well bounded, and the owners are happy with their plant choices and use of the garden, they don't need me. If the site is hideous, awkward, steeply sloped, needs serious engineering to hold back the effects of weight and gravity, or they have no idea where to start, or they are in conflict as to the way forward, I can help. People seem less able to find their own solutions in their gardens these days, not willing nor able to roll their sleeves up to build one.
My parents and grandparents all had traditional yet beautiful and effective gardens, and thought nothing of building walls, pergolas, ramps, and terraces, planting trees and hedges., every fine weekend. I think it is partly a northern or wealth thing...I had no idea people hired handymen, to do the things like hanging pictures and weeding gardens, until I moved down south in the 80's.
I suspect it is also a sign of media overwhelm and professionals in all spheres of life building their brand. They clog up the information stream in order to tout for business. I dread reading yet more Top 10 Tips and Jobs For The Month articles. I just started gardening in teenage years as my family did...observing, digging holes, planting things brown end down and later chopping bits off them...and now I see quite a few people paralysed with the fear of Getting It Wrong.
Does this explain why people seem to follow fashions more assiduously these days? Every new interior a drear of grey...every garden must be wafty with grasses, unfashionable plants consigned to the chipper instead of given new purpose in new places. I itch to grow pampas grass babies in niches on cliffs - no one will let me yet.
Heaven forbid you plant a double red rose the bees can't get at to pollinate, in case you are reported to the eco police. Single and David Austin roses are the only ones to grow...it would surely be social death to grow a border of Peace roses. Actually it would be social death to grow Harry Wheatcroft roses now...but why do we get in such a stew about it?
Aspirational Living was called Keeping Up With The Jones's by my grandma and that was not seen as a good thing. I don't recall amateur gardeners giving much of a stuff about trends before the hanging basket was invented in the early 70's. We gardened, and on sunny days, dragged the deck chairs out of the shed - no patio for us. Then we went back indoors for tea - no barbecues back then, just bonfires and burnt potatoes in foil and we didn't write articles about it..
Please garden with panache, generosity of scale and without giving a stuff about fashion, responding only to your needs and to your garden's possibilities. Plant without professional garden designers telling you what to plant, except me, of course. A solitary Harry Wheatcroft rose is socially suspect...plant a thousand of the stripy beasts with other madly orange and yellow perennial flowers, and a base note of deepest crimson...umm...something... with a contrast clash of neon pink and you would become famous, even if you don't make it into Gardens Illustrated. Add verbena bonariensis to the mix and you just might.
Brilliant!
I think I am getting more Bad Tempered.....
First, I am a garden designer in the US, specifically the PNW. I have designed some expensive gardens, but also experienced the constraint of a limited budget. Right now, I am designing my own small garden after moving from a larger property. My budget is very limited, so I look at everything I have to see if there is a way to reuse, recycle, or renew it. I often do this with client projects, too. It’s a good way to practice sustainability. So I value the inout of my clients as a team member of any design. They will be there long after the contractor (if there is one) and I have left. I want them to succeed, so I help them with editing tools they can use moving forward. Not everyone has a practiced eye in designing a garden of their own. People fear what they do not understand. I hope to eliminate or at least reduce that fear. If you are already fearless, then more power to you!
Thanks Vanessa, and I hope you appreciate that those of us who can't afford professional assistance have to learn the way we learn to garden and learn about plants. Books and garden visiting were mostly mine. And, I guess, that, like garden designers themselves, some of us manage better than others.