Creating a Spirit of Place in the Home Landscape
"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." – Frank Lloyd Wright
The essence of being outdoors and in nature has bewitched me since childhood. When my family went to Las Vegas when I was a late adolescent, they went gambling and I rented a car and drove into the desert. The land remained untouched by man and compared to the silently-busy Eastern deciduous forests I was used to, was alien and awe-inspiring in its apparent emptiness. The expansiveness of the vistas and the sculpture of the land dominated my sense of place. Any impact by man was made that much starker for the juxtaposition with the desert.
Despite my desire to find places that have been untouched, it is often the hand of man that gives a place a focus, for it provides something comforting and in scale with the way we live in the world. The best example of man and landscape coming together in Connecticut are the dry-stone walls. Virtually wherever you go on back roads you’ll see miles of stone walls. They provide a long, winding, wordless record of the region stretching back to the 1600’s, but built mostly between 1775 and 1825.
Finally, gardens play their part, allowing us to access nature and, to a degree, feel part of it. This is the driving force and the inspiration for my work as a landscape designer.
Once there was a bustling forest with a living, moist, humusy soil, a vegetative ground layer, a shrub layer and finally a tree canopy. Then came the bulldozers and they razed a living natural environment. They replaced it with wall-to-wall foreign grass species on compacted soil and almost exclusively foreign shrubs and small tree species around the landscape. The property repels songbirds, and is empty of butterflies, hummingbirds, and dragon flies. Either consciously or unconsciously, the homeowner feels the disconnect between his landscape and the great Eastern deciduous forest that surrounds us. While the forest becomes a riot of fall colors the homeowner’s landscape remains a constant green lawn and a home surrounded by constant green evergreen shrubs.
This property can be revitalized and planted to bring back a spirit of place. It will take several years, but it will become larger, more dramatic, and gratifying in each succeeding year. Wildlife will return and cycles of nature will be right outside the front door. The spirit of place can be created. Central Park in NYC was not an act of preservation. The entire landscape was designed on paper and then recreated in situ. The hills, meadows and water features were all created by Olmstead and Vaux and hundreds of thousands of perennials, shrubs and trees were brought in from elsewhere and planted.
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To aid in green corridors homeowners can plant native hedges, for they are home to a host of plants and animals that improve our environment considerably by weaving wildlife corridors into the landscape. Native vegetation has been removed during development but there is no reason why they shouldn't be included in a domestic setting. Stock plants are cheap if you buy them bare root in bundles of 10. Consider red and black chokeberry, summersweet Clethra, fothergilla, witch-hazel, spicebush, chokecherry, sumac, black elderberry, blueberry, viburnums among many other choices. The additions will provide a range of flowers and berries to attract the birds and add seasonal interest. Cut the young whips back by half to help promote dense branching from the base.
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The leaves have mostly fallen from the trees. Let the leaves do the work in your garden that they do in a healthy forest. Leaf mould is a valuable commodity and a great addition to compost or mulch for cool woodland plants.
Many perennial plants can be cut back in the fall, rather than waiting for the spring. However, some gardeners like to leave certain plants standing, for winter interest and to feed wildlife. Next week we’ll review the species whose flower heads attract songbirds and also provide an aesthetic spirit of place in the winter. I’ll cover dozens of perennials, which can be cut and which can be left standing. What are your favorite plants to leave standing until spring? (From "Jan X" last year: "I leave all my cone flowers for the birds. Just this morning I was watching from my kitchen window as six Gold Finches eat seeds from my purple cone flowers. Also, the birds love the the fruit from my viburnums and my Beauty Berry Bush. My Winter Berry Holly is also of great winter interest, with no leaves and lots of red berries for the birds.")
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Sponsored by the Wilton Garden Club, don’t miss their fall Flower Show "A Feast for the Eyes: A Taste of Georgetown"to beheldat the historic Gilbert & Bennett School. Enjoy seeing 64 spectacular floral designs; 100's of horticultural specimens; demonstrations and lectures - from bow-making to Native Trees in the Connecticut landscape (my presentation);educational exhibits; and boutique. And, attendees will receive discount coupons for use at Georgetown restaurants.Nov. 12, 1-4; Nov. 13 & 14, 10-4.$15 advance purchase ticket at Earth Garden and Open House; $20 at the door. www.wiltongardenclub.org.
