Random Thursday: Fantasy Gardens
Mar. 31st, 2016 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjToday's Random Thursday topic comes courtesy of Sacchi Green, who offered up the request "Fantasy Gardens", leaving the interpretation fairly open-ended.
Garden #1
When I was a little kid, I loved going through seed catalogs, and nursery advertisements, and designing complex gardens with meandering paths and water features, and all sorts of things that our yard in San Diego would never have supported. Nor would my ambitions have been supported by my parents, who were fairly aware of the gap between my imagination and my execution. But there were lots of things designed on graph paper in those days.
Garden #2
I had a Grand Plan for my back yard in Oakland. It's laid out in an Excel spreadsheet--not on graph paper--showing the goals and the accomplished parts in various color schemes. There were brick pathways and beds of various types and trees positioned to match the layout that would eventually surround them. I think I had about a third of my design finished when I sold the place. Never wait to plant your garden.
Garden #3
The house that Margerit Sovitre inherited in Chalanz had a fabulous garden. She noticed once that it seemed designed to be viewed from private spaces, rather than being laid out as a public show. The two wings of the house encircled an inner courtyard with a fountain that would be in riotous bloom around Floodtide, when it was time for Rotenek residents to seek their summer estates. From that courtyard, one wandered along the pergola to a progression of spaces growing gradually more informal and natural (all in a carefully planned manner) that fell away down toward the river. It was a perfect layout for summer parties, where one wanted spaces to wander off alone or in pairs from the crowd of guests one's host had assembled. After the first two summers, Margerit never visited more more than a few weeks at a time, for by then her summers belonged to Saveze.
Garden #4
Tipersel House sits on the Vezenaf--the most prestigious address in Rotenek. The mansions--though they are mansions only in status and not in size--that back up along the north bank of the Rotein were once owned by the merchant-based elite of the city. Now the private wharves are merely the farthest feature of the narrow gardens that spill down the slope toward the river. The gardeners of the Vezenaf plan with an eye toward Floodtide, with valuable plants kept in mobile containers that can be removed to higher ground, and plantings designed to finish their show before the months when the river might begin to rise. It rarely rises as high as the footings of the house. The gardens aren't large--nothing in these properties can be expansive--and there's no space for natural vistas or hidden corners. But there is usually a space, down near the river, where marble benches (easy to clean after a flood!) offer access to cool river breezes should one have the misfortune to need to spend the summer in town. And a wise gardener will make sure that such a corner can be coaxed into summer flowers, at need.
Garden #5
I have a vision for my Concord Back Garden. It's laid out ambitiously on graph paper, though I haven't entirely followed through in calculating coordinates for every plant to add to the inventory spreadsheet. Block by block I've been roughing it out--setting up beds that claim the space for order and usefulness. What will someday be a small orchard is dropping roots. Other spaces are gradually being reclaimed from crabgrass and weeds of unknown identity. There's a fountain, and a formal enclosure. A space to gather summer guests, though no self-consciously wild pathways for them to stray on. It'll take some time, but one should never wait to plant one's garden.
Garden #1
When I was a little kid, I loved going through seed catalogs, and nursery advertisements, and designing complex gardens with meandering paths and water features, and all sorts of things that our yard in San Diego would never have supported. Nor would my ambitions have been supported by my parents, who were fairly aware of the gap between my imagination and my execution. But there were lots of things designed on graph paper in those days.
Garden #2
I had a Grand Plan for my back yard in Oakland. It's laid out in an Excel spreadsheet--not on graph paper--showing the goals and the accomplished parts in various color schemes. There were brick pathways and beds of various types and trees positioned to match the layout that would eventually surround them. I think I had about a third of my design finished when I sold the place. Never wait to plant your garden.
Garden #3
The house that Margerit Sovitre inherited in Chalanz had a fabulous garden. She noticed once that it seemed designed to be viewed from private spaces, rather than being laid out as a public show. The two wings of the house encircled an inner courtyard with a fountain that would be in riotous bloom around Floodtide, when it was time for Rotenek residents to seek their summer estates. From that courtyard, one wandered along the pergola to a progression of spaces growing gradually more informal and natural (all in a carefully planned manner) that fell away down toward the river. It was a perfect layout for summer parties, where one wanted spaces to wander off alone or in pairs from the crowd of guests one's host had assembled. After the first two summers, Margerit never visited more more than a few weeks at a time, for by then her summers belonged to Saveze.
Garden #4
Tipersel House sits on the Vezenaf--the most prestigious address in Rotenek. The mansions--though they are mansions only in status and not in size--that back up along the north bank of the Rotein were once owned by the merchant-based elite of the city. Now the private wharves are merely the farthest feature of the narrow gardens that spill down the slope toward the river. The gardeners of the Vezenaf plan with an eye toward Floodtide, with valuable plants kept in mobile containers that can be removed to higher ground, and plantings designed to finish their show before the months when the river might begin to rise. It rarely rises as high as the footings of the house. The gardens aren't large--nothing in these properties can be expansive--and there's no space for natural vistas or hidden corners. But there is usually a space, down near the river, where marble benches (easy to clean after a flood!) offer access to cool river breezes should one have the misfortune to need to spend the summer in town. And a wise gardener will make sure that such a corner can be coaxed into summer flowers, at need.
Garden #5
I have a vision for my Concord Back Garden. It's laid out ambitiously on graph paper, though I haven't entirely followed through in calculating coordinates for every plant to add to the inventory spreadsheet. Block by block I've been roughing it out--setting up beds that claim the space for order and usefulness. What will someday be a small orchard is dropping roots. Other spaces are gradually being reclaimed from crabgrass and weeds of unknown identity. There's a fountain, and a formal enclosure. A space to gather summer guests, though no self-consciously wild pathways for them to stray on. It'll take some time, but one should never wait to plant one's garden.
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Date: 2016-04-01 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-01 06:02 pm (UTC)