Design Elements- Garden Benches

To sit in a garden you have created is one of the greatest pleasures of all. From your seat you can contemplate your work in peace, feel the warmth of the sun, observe the play of light on the plants, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. From the seat, too, you notice what is wrong and make plans for action. --Sir Roy Strong, from A Small Garden Designer's Handbook

I couldn't agree more with Sir Roy.  However, based on my own observations, I would simply add that, when gardeners are seated in their own gardens, they usually spend a great deal more time noticing what is wrong with things than enjoying the play of light on the plants.  We are an obsessive lot.  Nevertheless, incorporating a garden bench into your garden might at least provide a comfortable spot for visitors to sit and feel the warmth of the sun, and perhaps more fully appreciate the fruits of your own obsessive labors. Besides, garden benches can do more for a garden than simply provide a place to sit:

Field and Forest

photo by Andrea Geesaman

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.

                              Robert Frost

Conservation biologists in eastern North America have a huge job on their hands trying to manage two opposing trends in native wildlife.  On the one hand, the populations of animals indigenous to our forests are on the increase while those of the grasslands are rapidly disappearing.  It is an ironic twist of fate for these grassland species since, for at least several centuries, they have had the upper hand.

Rachel's Garden- Scarecrow

For more art from Rachel's Garden, click here.

To see what this is all about, click here.

Sleepless In New Hampshire

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.  ~Vincent Van Gogh

On a recent visit to the farm, Susan Hunter didn't let nightfall keep her from enjoying the meadows and the gardens as she used her trusty Nikon to capture these wonderful time-exposure images.

Weeds

Man-Eating Plant, by Daniel Ljunggren

I am constantly amazed by what constitutes a "weed" in gardening parlance.  Not long ago we had a couple of visitors to the garden and when they came around a corner and saw an enormous pokeweed ( Phytolacca americana) that I have growing right behind a Japanese Maple, it was all they could do to hide the look of shock and horror on their faces.

Friends and Frogs: Build It and They Will Come

Some of the most enjoyable garden projects are those that involve collaboration with friends.  Certainly, the construction of our little frog pool this spring and summer was that kind of project.  Had it not been for the help of many friends and gardening colleagues, who not only offered their advice but also their encouragement, their muscle, and even some of their plants, this project wouldn't have succeeded.

Fallingwater

In the very first sentence of the introduction to his book, Your House, Your Garden, designer Gordon Hayward says..."Your house is the center of your garden."  And, if your definition of a garden extends to the beauty of the surrounding natural world, as it rightfully should, then perhaps no house in America epitomizes this statement more than Frank Lloyd Wright's, Fallingwater.

Hedge Layering

photo by Piet Oudolf from Oudolf and Kingsbury: Designing with Plants

"I think of hedges as enclosures, and it is with hedges that you may best articulate the bony structure, and skeleton as it were, of a garden."
                                         Russell Page from The Education of A Gardener.

It's The Tall Season

It's the tall season in the garden.  A chance for us to lift our eyes; to redirect our attention from all those front-of-the-border plants to those giants that have been gathering energy all summer long and now tower over the garden.

Hornworm Nightmares

Being the "pest-imist" that I am, I'm always convinced that my garden is under attack from one insect pest or another.  I have therefore become pretty good at spotting many of these little evildoers, although usually not until they've destroyed most of what they set out to destroy while still having enough time left over for sex, thus guaranteeing that there will be another ten million of them for me to worry about next season.  That's why the other day, while walking through the garden, I stopped dead in my tracks when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted what looked like one of those big, thick, green disgusting tomato hornworms (Manduca quinquemaculata) on one of my potted ornamental plants.  You see, it's tomato season and I've been having tomato hornworm nightmares every night so I thought maybe this was not so completely far-fetched.  Perhaps they've developed a taste for things other than tomatoes?  After all, their cousins (the equally disgusting Manduca sexta) eat tobacco plants even though I'm sure they know it's bad for their health. So, I immediately jumped to the only conclusion that an anxiety-ridden, sleep-deprived gardener could make, which was that the entire garden is now under attack from thousands of hornworms that will probably destroy everything from the asters to the arborvitaes.