It was a coming together of people, plants, and pond life in our reimagined log cabin universe. It was an all-outdoor declaration of love and an occasion for my long-time girlfriend Troy and I to seal the deal with a ring.
It was our Big Day in the Country. And we’d been planning a pond-side wedding (and I’d been weeding the plantings) for months.
Our perennial challenge is how to design plant-driven garden landscapes to express a wilder beauty while fulfilling ecological imperatives to spark biodiversity and feed the soul.
We want to dream big and be practical all at the same time.
To this end, I’ve captured and pulled together some of the more glowing threads from the hyperactive global conversation on how to plan, realize, and sustain designed landscapes in the public and private realm.
The Pacific West Coast is where I first found my voice.
It was decades ago that my 19-year old bohemian self flew out alone from Toronto on a one-way ticket to California, armed only with guitar, duffel bag, and a hardcover edition of James Joyce’s Ulysees.
I returned to the West Coast recently to talk about new directions in naturalistic planting design at the invitation of the Bellevue Botanical Garden in Seattle.
The invitation came with an irresistible carrot.
After nearly 40 years of welcoming the world through its gates, the private garden of Piet and Anja Oudolf at Hummelo will close to the public for good at the end of this month.
For all lovers of this most quintessential garden that galvanized an entire movement in naturalistic planting design, the news cuts deep.
Word of its closing has spread like wildfire-weed amongst garden folk and it’s inspired a kind of spontaneous pilgrimage of people visiting Kwekerij Oudolf one last time.
I had plans to write a post to unveil my new two-year old garden. It was going to be whimsical, poetic yet measured, with a splash of horticultural detail to bring life to the inner story.
Well, scrap all that.
Instead, I woke this morning and walked down to the pond to find that my garden had been transported to another dimension.
Suspended in a halo of fog, the plants beckoned forth in perfect stillness, and I stood there, spellbound.
