DemosNews: A Contrarian in the Garden
A Contrarian in the Garden
By: Herb Poole

Some years ago, I attended a professional landscape symposium at which an acclaimed designer presented his solution to a wild Maine island site. His client had built a spare modern house in Japanese style where granite rocks and spruce abut the sea. He proudly described bringing in a crew with high pressure water hoses to scour away every bit of growth, moss and debris, then meticulously inserting thousands of imported Japanese moss sprigs into the crevices. This, in Maine, where resonant ochre lichens light up Eliot Porter’s classic color photographs, and every moist stump displays a natural arrangement of rich, vari-textured mosses worthy of a Japanese master! Similarly, Aldous Huxley, in an early book about India, famously described a garden in the western desert where a local raja, desperate for a bone fide English garden, wrapped his imported yews in greatcoats at severe times of year.

These recollections crossed my mind recently as I joined an elite group to view outstanding gardens along and off shore the Maine coast. Maine’s deep subtle spell, especially on its islands, comes of meadows studded with violets and iris and lupine and Queen Anne’s lace and tiny fringed orchids, of water or tidal views that reveal themselves at the turn of a path, of humid night air drenched with the scent of house-high lilac, great mounds of rugosa roses, old lilies, lavender, and peonies. Old whaling captains’ houses on the mainland—white clapboard, black shingles, a Sandwich glass arc over the door and vertical panes (“lights”) at either side—each have a tumble of white hydrangea balls by the door at this time of year, day lilies, hosta, and climbing rose. A old row of tree form hydrangea paniculata dignifies the cemetery of genteel Hallowell, not the requisite weeping beech ubiquitous elsewhere.

In this context, some of the manicured, very formal gardens featured on the tour looked ridiculous. Pay your money, a willing crew, and anyone can recreate a taste of Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst. But a visitor doesn’t remember it a minute later. Mind you, I don’t propose being hide bound to the past. Flocks, delphinium, lilies, clematis sweetened our mothers’ gardens; new ones like white gaura light up a spot. Everyone has favorite plants. But the handling must be light and fitting, and mindful of the special tone of the locale. Like good wine, gardens, even a few clumps of Canadian columbine clinging to a sheer north face cliff or a cluster of pink mallow against grey cedar shingles, must retain a sense of terroire!

© 2024 Herb Poole of DemosNews

August 7, 2007 at 5:45pm
DemosRating: 4.67
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Genre: Home (Flora & Garden)
Type: Creative
Tags: formal, gardens, moss, lupine

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