I was wrong. Mercifully, wonderfully, wrong, and I can tell you the moment I knew I was a goner as surely as I could tell you the moment I fell for this lover or that, what he looked like and what he smelled like and the very first things we said. I knew it the moment I heard myself trying to explain to a friend why the Fibonacci ratio works for land design, and why people universally seem to gravitate toward the golden proportion. I knew he thought I was nuts, and I knew I didn’t care; I was in gardener heaven. In the nerd section, to be sure, but heaven nonetheless, the heaven of passionate immersion.

I used to read cookbooks the way other people read novels, cover to cover and usually in bed, curled up with M.F.K. Fisher or my prize possession, a 1927 copy of Fannie Farmer, reading about the science of cooking. By my bed now is the 1956 copy of Landscaping for Western Living I found at a Salvation Army a few weeks ago, and I became so enamored of a book called Designing for Human Behavior I’d checked out of the library that I hunted down a copy for my own. It’s not for the faint-of-heart, by the way; the bulk of it is dull as ditch water. There are parts, though, there are parts, and in my quest to understand why we respond to our environment the way we do, I’ll settle for parts.

It doesn’t talk about landscape architecture, really, just about architecture proper, but the thing that makes me craziest about my profession is that we don’t treat spatial design outdoors the way architects treat spatial design indoors. We don’t take into account the forms we see, in the land and the existing structures, when we design the gardens or choose the materials.

We talk about sunlight, the quantity of it or the quality of it, but we don’t talk about ambient light, and how that will make the space feel as people walk through it. How it will change throughout the day. What it will look like as the sun, slowly, slips behind the moon. How the cool of the evening will be washed into the granite steps, and how the morning dew will pool in the dips and turns of the stone, the quartz fault lines shimmering just below.

We talk about curve, but we don’t talk about curvaceous, about luscious and full and round. About the shocking sensuality of an Oriental poppy, the lush roundness of it or the perfect circle of jet buried at its core. We don’t talk about double peonies, with row upon row upon row of curved petals in pink so pale it’s nearly white or so deep it’s like blackberry sorbet. We don’t talk about stacking those curves, the one upon the other, across the lawn or down the hillside like clouds, like waves, like ripples in a pond or bubbles blown by a giggling five-year-old.

We don’t talk about arc in counterpoint to line, a full-on arc, from edge to edge with a radius, with a depth of curve that reflects the height of the building it’s designed to match. We talk about globe and sphere, but only in tree shape and never in shadow, equally round, equally grand, a shadow that kisses but never covers the far edge of the walkway as it turns toward the door. We don’t talk about what it means to reach but never quite touch, or about what it means that the shadow line hits that mark only once a day, and only for a matter of minutes. About what it means to stand quietly there and watch it happen, and then watch it shift, and then go about your day. About what it means that this occurs only at a particular time of year, or about what it means to watch that shadow line recede as the season wanes and the sun drops low.

We talk about perspective, but only in the literal sense of proportion and never in the figurative point-of-view. We don’t talk about the fun of configuring a garden that changes someone’s mindset, or state of mind or state of being. We don’t talk about the power of the garden to alter who we are. About the power to lift us out of ourselves, to ease sadness, to instill calm, to transfix with beauty, fleeting.

We talk about walkways that turn, ever so slightly and for no apparent reason, but we don’t talk about constructing a walkway that turns the walker’s head. About the difference between an S-curve, that doesn’t cause you to look in another direction, and an actual 90º turn that does. About the power of the turn, and what it means to reposition someone physically, to build into the design an opportunity for pause. That pause leads to reflection, and reflection to serenity, and serenity to the very essence of the garden.

I talk about all of it. I talk about it here, in my classes and to my clients. I probably talk about it in my sleep, but that’s another story. Welcome, fellow gardeners, to the love affair that never ends. I wish you passionate gardening.
c.2007

Expecting my father to change was as crazy as expecting my mother to change, but that pales in comparison to the kind of crazy you have to be to expect nature to change. If you build a house in the woods, it doesn’t matter how many trees you remove, you have a house in the woods. You do not have, and you will not have, sunny meadows full of flowers, because nature will work overtime to fill that space with the things that were there before you. All you have to do to see the advantage that Nature has over you is to take a look at a pine cone and count the seeds, then take a look at the number of pine cones on a tree. Think you and your little pruning saw are any match? Think again.

While you’re thinking, take a look at the little propellers the surround a maple seed. They’re designed to carry that seed far enough away from the parent tree that the sapling will get all the sun and nutrient it needs to survive, and oak trees are so clever they get squirrels to do the work for them. As clever as we are, and with all the tools at our disposal, we are simply outgunned. Nature has a bigger arsenal, and all the time in the world.

It’s easier to find the right environment — for a plant or a person — than to continually manipulate a wrong environment in an attempt to get it to behave according to your desire. My favorite example of this happened a few years ago and involves a couple of peegee hydrangea, an extraordinary oceanside property, and people with way too much money.

The hydrangea had been planted in partial shade, which is okay everywhere except waterfront property. On waterfront property things planted in the shade never completely dry out, and things that don’t dry out are the ideal breeding ground for mold. When I saw these poor little trees I realized that fully half of the branches — the half that were in the deepest shade — had blossoms that were absolutely black with mildew. The other half — the ones that received a bit more sun — were lovely. The damp ocean breeze enveloped the entire tree, of course, but the sunnier side was able to dry out before the mildew could take hold.

Now most of us would say, Oh, I get it, I need to plant something else there, and put the peegees in anoher spot. That was exactly my advice. Did the owners take my advice? No. They hired a guy with a tree spade — a nifty, but very expensive bit of machinery — to dig up the trees and turn them around. Yes, you heard correctly; they rotated the hydrangea 180º and stuck them right back in the ground. That, by the way, is the too much money part.

Nature doesn’t care how much money — or time, or energy — you throw at something; she’s going to do what she’s going to do. Our best hope as gardeners is to read a site correctly, and to plant accordingly. Our best hope as humans is to do the same. If you’re happiest in full sun surrounded by lots of open space, or if you want to grow the things that are, plant yourself in that environment. If you want to be cozy, or cool and quiet, wrap yourself in a cocoon of trees and grow woodland things. Attempting to change the nature of Nature is a project even Sisyphus would reject.

Recently I asked a student who was having trouble with a particular section of her design whether she liked the tree she was trying to design around. She said yes, but actually shook her head no as she was saying it! I see this a lot; it seems that if we think we are supposed to like something, we tell ourselves we like it despite our gut reactions. You can put all the plant material you want around something you hate, but there’s no way to disguise it. If you don’t like that particular thing, you don’t like it, period, and for purposes of design it really doesn’t matter why. It only matters that you say, I don’t want that, because the internal no cannot be overcome.

The ‘don’t want’ list is the easy part; the ‘want’ list is much more ephemeral. Items on this list are composed of memory and dream, of past and future, and they are often oddly conflated. I wear a ring that reminds me of my grandmother despite the fact that it looks absolutely nothing like the ring she wore. They’re both aquamarines, and that’s about it. Mine is pale, simple, set in white gold; hers was the darkest aqua I’ve ever seen wrapped in an elaborate, yellow gold setting. So why are they the same in my head? It took a few years to figure it out, but it goes back to the tin of peppermint candies she kept on her kitchen table, in which was a mix of the ordinary red-striped ones that I didn’t much like and some others that I really, really did. Whenever I visited I’d dig through the tin to find them, and they were always there, thin, oblong, in clear cellophane wrappers. Can you guess their color?

So I wear an aquamarine that looks like a Crystal Mint, and want is satisfied. I don’t just have Grandma’s ring I have Grandma, and Grandma’s kitchen, and the memory of cinnamon toast and soft-boiled eggs in pretty, porcelain egg cups. You couldn’t have just cereal for breakfast in Grandma’s house; you’d be dead by lunch without an egg. I have a fair recollection of the perfume she wore, with hints of lily-of-the-valley, and a vivid sense of the lilacs to the left of the kitchen door. I suspect it’s my desire to be close to her that drives my gardening; I can nurture and tend the same way I was nurtured and tended.

I can also be productive, which is terribly important to me as a Yankee, and my product is beautiful, which is terribly important to me as an artist. What do I want? To feel connected. No great surprise that I emphasize whole-property design. I want everything on the property to have a cohesive, visual connection, so that everyone who enters the property has that same emotional experience.

So how do you go about the task of defining want in terms of the landscape? If, like me, you’re living in an area that appeals to you geographically, all you need do is identify the qualities of the colors and shapes and scents in the things that surround you every day. When I moved back to Maine years ago, I realized how very much I’d missed the salt in the air; you can smell it even a mile inland. I missed the birch, how they gleam in the moonlight, how they bend, laden with snow, how they rise in Spring when the weight of Winter is passed. I missed the pine — the graceful white and the rugged, gnarled pitch — but I also missed the rugosa and the bayberry, and the beach grass along the dunes.

Quick, then, like a Rorschach, what do your instincts tell you that means in terms of landscaping for me? How does that inkblot of ephemeral want translate to a statement of practical, plantable want, a want that I can take to the nursery and say, Give me these, please. Here’s my analysis: I want graceful materials that are also rugged and resilient, and I want materials with strong, clean scents that perfume the air and linger in my head, on my clothes, on my skin. Why does the scent need to cling? Perhaps it’s as simple as being wrapped in something I love, perhaps it’s an inability to let go, perhaps it’s like wearing a lover’s shirt or sleeping on his side of the bed when he’s gone. I don’t know why; I just know that’s what I want.

Oh, and I want things that rustle when the wind comes up, or shifts as it did just now. I’m writing this out on the deck at a friend’s house, about half a mile from shore, and the wind has turned. It’s coming off the water now, picking up salted energy. If I walk down I know the waves will be up, and I’ll hear another sound I adore, and I’ll see the crest, and I’ll watch the water pour over the sand and pull away, pour over and pull away, pour over and pull away.

Those rhythms, which are such an integral part of both my internal and external landscapes, have a design quality to them. I can use the same motion that I see in the curve of the wave, the line of the shore, the angle of the rock against which the water beats. They have a design quantity, too, in the number of steps I take to move from this point to that, in the number of things I move past, left and right, as I go along. There is a quantity of color, and a quantifiable effect of color, and of scent, and of sound.

The garden of desire is built first from language. What do you want?

Tolerates shade: in other words, if everything else in its universe is perfect, this plant will put up with the injustice of insufficient sunlight. Last time I checked, attempting to keep everything in the universe perfect will make you crazy and, if you’re like me, the load of things that already make you crazy would stop an elephant, so leave this plant alone. Find one that likes the environment you are providing.

Vigorous once established: in other words, in three or four years, if all goes well, the plant will begin to take off. Until then it requires as much tending as if it were brand new, and a little bit of luck besides. This is why new wisteria vines, for example, look so pathetic and the old ones are show-stoppers. If you’re not going to live in the house long enough to make that kind of commitment, or if you need something that’s going to be dazzling in short order, put the pot down and move along. Nurseries also use that phrase ‘once established’ in conjunction with ‘drought-tolerant,’ so read carefully. Decide before you buy if you’re willing and able to lug five or ten gallons of water to it every couple of days in the middle of next summer’s heat wave. Why do I say lug water? Because inevitably we put those trees far away from house and hose. Why do we put them far away? Because the tag says they’re drought tolerant. And so it goes…

Tree form: in other words, not an actual tree, but a shrub or vine that has been trained into the shape of a tree. Don’t get me wrong, I love them and use them — the classics like hydrangea and wisteria, along with tree-form rhodies and viburnum — principally because they add dimension to the garden and present their blossoms at eye level. The drawback is their tendency to revert to form — wisteria will begin sprouting new vines from the root almost immediately — and to maintain the tree shape for any of these, you need to continually remove any growth that occurs below the level at which you want the branching to happen. They require a bit more work, and they often need bracing to maintain their upright habit, but if you’ve ever drooled over an eighty-year-old wisteria ‘tree’ you understand the draw, as well as the drawback. With a little extra care, you and your tree-form should be very happy together.

N.B. Want to hear this as you wander through the nursery? Download the podcast and take me with you!

Let me start by saying that, while deadheading is a form of pruning, I’m not talking here about removing tree limbs, or thinning out an overgrown quince or rejuvenating an old lilac. Deadheading refers just to the removal of spent flowers from a plant, an ornamental shrub or tree. I’ll tackle the grittier aspects of pruning in another format, but I will say here that if any of your shrubs or trees suffers from one or more of the three D’s, you should tackle it immediately. What are the three D’s? Dead, diseased or damaged. If you’re not comfortable enough with your own skill level to handle the problem, ask for help. If you even suspect the plant’s in trouble, don’t wait.

That said, let me give you the same answer I gave Andrea about deadheading her hydrangea. She’s got three varieties, but this applies to all the so-called mophead hydrangeas like Nikko and Endless Summer and Annabelle: for a summer-flowering shrub, it really doesn’t matter. If it’s early in the season and a blossom has gone by, by all means remove it. Later in the season, and throughout the Fall, some people like to leave them on and watch them caramelize, and some don’t. With the PeeGees and the Tardivas and the Limelights, the whole point is to watch them turn that fabulous copper color, so don’t whack those before you enjoy the show, but for the others, it’s really your choice.

With the spring-flowering shrubs, it’s a little more complicated, but far from complex. My preferred technique is to cut the blossoms while they’re in bloom, and to use them the same way I use all the other cut flowers. I do that because the first word of flowering shrub is ‘flower,’ and it seems to me like damn fool nonsense, as my father would have said, not to enjoy them. The other reason is that I’m going to have to dead-head the thing eventually, anyway, and it’s more enjoyable to me to gather sheaves of flowers than to dead-head a shrub. I grant you, I often get into the zone where dead-heading becomes a meditation of sorts, but for the most part, I’d rather gather.

The chief reason to dead-head Spring-flowering shrubs is not cosmetic, it’s to ensure that the plant puts all of its energy into setting itself up for the next year. Removing the spent bloom tells the plant “Okay, show’s over; move on.” You can do this by hand or with shears, depending on the plant. For example, I take my shears to lilac, but use thumb and forefinger on the rhodies. This takes a bit of practice because the old flower is nestled between the new shoots and you may wind up taking more than you intend, but you’ve got a couple of hundred chances to get it right, so keep at it.

There is one codicil to this: dead-heading should never be done to any plant that sets fruit or berries, because those lovely little fertilized clusters will become the things you want either to eat or to admire. There’s also a half-codicil, I suppose, in that any shrub that sets inconsequential blooms — red osier dogwood comes to mind — will have inconsequential spent blooms, and since removing them won’t make next year’s blossoms of any greater significance, don’t bother. You, too, should move on, and spend your energy where it will do the most good.

There are lots of perennials I do let go to seed, just for fun, and although I remove the spent flowers of Siberian iris, I think the seed pods have a certain drama that carries the plant through the remainder of the season. This year I’m allowing the seed pods of some yellow Bearded iris to ripen, but since the seeds of a hybrid plant often revert to the parent stock, I’m not at all certain what they will produce. If it’s anything fabulous, I’ll let you know. For the most part, though, when the show’s over, I lop off their heads, and for certain plants, whack them back entirely. If it’s early enough in the season, they may do an encore. It’s seldom as vibrant as the first, but it’s something, although I have to say that the chives I whacked at the end of June because they went by so fast, have come back with great speed and in full.

So there’s the skinny: gather ye rosebuds — and lilac and laurel — while ye may, and if you have forgotten to gather, gather up your gloves and your pruning shears and have at it. It’s good for your plants and good therapy, to boot. Trust me on this; the next time you’re upset, spend half an hour or so in the garden snipping off every dead little head you can find. You’ll be amazed how much better you feel!