Keyword: Garden design

First off, this book is a feast for the eyes. Big glossy photographs of Marron’s garden are combined with charming gouaches from the Copenhagen collective studio All the Way to Paris, plus an array of painting reproductions ranging from Beatrix Potter to Cy Twombly. The visual experience is rich.

Marron, with a background of success in business and journalism, assigned herself the task of learning to garden in eighteen months. She and her husband had bought a house in Connecticut, but she needed to put down literal as well as figurative roots to feel she belonged to this land. This book is an account of that journey.

An impressive amount of gardening research preceded and intertwined with the development of the garden itself. Marron includes memories of gardens in children’s books like “The Secret Garden” and the visit to the Luxembourg Garden in “Madeline.” As she read classic gardening books, she learned there are many kinds of gardeners, and they all have strong opinions, often differing with each other. From Alexander Pope’s idea of a “spirit of the place” she learned that she wanted her garden to echo its own surroundings. And after reading about famed gardens and recalling those she had visited, she realized she had to build something smaller and simpler than any of them.

In her learning process, Marron watched carefully to see how even cut flowers changed over a few days. She put aside her conviction that she did not have a green thumb and sought out hands-on mentors, who taught her what to do and that persistence and hard work can lead to gardening success for anyone. With a landscape architect she developed a plan and turned a 48 x 54-foot space into a walled garden.

One notable discovery from her research was that gardeners make mistakes, learn to accept them, and start over.  She describes several of those she made, seeing them as part of the learning process.

In the section on “Building My Garden” Marron describes working to create a garden that fit her goal of relative simplicity and comfort in its surroundings. She struggled with fencing, replacing one design that turned out to look like “a corral fence from the Wild West” with a more pleasing one. She developed a layout with rectangular beds and wide paths. She spent many hours choosing flowers and vegetables and then deciding where to plant them. She considered color and scent, even choosing to paint cold frames “a happy yellow” and the door frames of the garage bay “bright grass green,” the same green Monet used for his own door and window frames.

In the middle of the project Marron’s husband died. Grieving, she came to learn how digging in the dirt can help heal pain. She describes five kinds of gardeners: “scene setters, plantspeople, colorists, collectors, and dirt gardeners” (p. 78). Dirt gardening was her choice. As she returned to dig in the garden after her loss, she felt connected to soil and roots.

At the back of the book Marron includes a list of “Literary Mentors in the Garden,” with a paragraph about each. A page of “Recommended Reading and Viewing” and a very thorough bibliography provide further research opportunities for those who aspire to the title of “gardener.” For herself, Marron still considers herself an “urban dweller,” but she attests to the power of her gardening project to make a major difference in her life.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy for The Leaflet, Volume 9, Issue 12 (December 2022).

Why did the Miller Library add a new book about a private garden in Vermont? Partly because the author and garden creator, Bill Noble, has several connections to the Pacific Northwest. However, I primarily recommend this book as an engaging memoir.

Spirit of Place: The Making of a New England Garden is Noble’s almost 30-year story of the property he and his partner, James Tatum, own in the Connecticut River Valley. This was not a new garden; the previous owners had formed its design for 60 years.

The challenge that the author faced was retaining the garden’s historical character while shaping his own vision. “Much of what gardening is about is the feeling of being connected to a place, fostering a sense of belonging, and becoming familiar with the natural rhythms and cycles of a particular piece of the earth.”

Many famous gardens and their designers in North America and Europe influenced the author, including the artists of the nearby Cornish Art Colony. However, his long-time role as director of preservation for the Garden Conservancy had the biggest impact. This included his work with the Chase Garden in Orting, Washington.

He credits Ione Chase with helping him to understand the value of designing a garden to incorporate its view: Mount Rainier in her case, the foothills of the White Mountains of New Hampshire in his garden. She also taught him the value of using familiar or common plants “to created refined garden beauty.”

Plants in Noble’s garden include a blue willow (Salix irrorata) he discovered in the Witt Winter Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum, and Berberis × ottawensis ‘Royal Cloak’ found at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. Three plants of the latter came home in his carry-on luggage and are now “part of the garden’s backbone.” Heronswood and Forestfarm (Williams, Oregon) Nurseries were important sources for other plants.

Vermont has long and cold (USDA zone 4b) winters with snow often lasting well into April. While Seattle is much milder, this is the perfect book to read for inspiration while staying out of the grey and gloom of our winter!

Published in The Leaflet, December 2020, Vol. 7, Issue 12.

Marietta and Ernie O’Byrne are very clear about their gardening goals. They are not interested in low-maintenance gardening “with orderly shrubs, surrounded by chipped mulch, and plants that don’t touch,” but neither do they care for plant thugs that dominate their neighbors. To achieve these ends, much maintenance is required and they relish this work. “A Tapestry Garden: The Art of Weaving Plants and Place” captures these ideals as they have been expressed in their two acres of gardens on a farm in Eugene.

The O’Byrnes are famous for their hellebores, so I wasn’t surprised to read about their woodland gardens with profiles of shade loving favorites, including trilliums, arisaemas, and podophyllum. But I didn’t know they had large swaths of sun, too. These includes a riotous summer perennial border (a “full-flowered buxomness of leaning, mingling, sprawling growth”) and a chaparral garden, that recreates the look of the southwest, albeit with plants that can survive a Pacific Northwest wet winter and spring.

In reading this latter chapter, I was reminded of the books by Beth Chatto, especially “The Gravel Garden” (2000), one of my favorite all-time gardening books. The O’Byrnes are not afraid to experiment. The writing (primarily in Marietta’s voice) recounts all the successes and failures in a matter-of-fact way and quietly expounds their right place, right plant philosophy throughout their several garden settings and microclimates.

Both Marietta and Ernie grew up loving nature. Both had college degrees in biology and worked together in their own landscape management company for much of their careers, but when it came to their own garden, they made plenty of horticultural mistakes, especially in the early years. While this at first seems like a book for the gardening elite, I encourage beginners to give it a read. You will be amused by the authors’ misfortunes and encouraged to shrug off your own failures and try again.

As they spent more and more time in their own garden, the authors eventually curtailed some of the maintenance business to start their own nursery. This latter continues today as a wholesale business exclusively selling hellebores. A chapter highlights the beauties they have developed, especially the Winter Jewels series, with stunning photographs. This book also includes a very helpful chapter on their maintenance practices, and maps of the garden inside both covers, in case you get lost during the written tour.

The O’Byrnes even sleep in their garden, enjoying the night fragrances of their summer, sunny perennials and the hummingbirds and other pollinators that are on wing at first light. Their plant palette is very broad, including many natives but also challenging-to-grow plants from around the world. Many of these are grown from seed – often there is no other way to obtain these plants. They have decided, “harmonious chaos is possible in a garden, with denizens from multitudes of countries of origin. Would that we humans could be as comradely as is the diverse plant world here represented.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.