Garden Design

Introduction

When I was about six or seven years old, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris made an album together called Trio. I remember that album very well, and in particular, one song always appealed to me. The song “Wildflower” was written by Dolly about the desires she had as a young woman to go out and see the world, and how she couldn’t stay in her small town forever. In the chorus of the song, she sings about wildflowers not caring where they grow and I took the song quite literally. I remember wondering if wildflowers really did not actually care where they grew.

As I got older and learned more about gardening, I began to develop a fascination with native plants. Seeing indigenous species in the wild became a big thrill for me. I was fortunate enough to have teachers and a librarian who encouraged my desire to learn (thank you, Mrs. Jones!). In grade seven I came across the book Wildflowers Across the Prairies by F.R. Vance, J.R. Jowsey and J.S. McLean. This book became my most used reference and to this day it is probably one of the most worn out books on my shelf, all but falling apart from such frequent use.

I spent countless hours investigating the wild spaces of my youth. Some of my earliest memories are of walking with my grandma in the pasture in early spring, looking for the first prairie crocuses. I remember the intense thrill of finding western red lilies, my provincial flower, growing on the grounds of our small town elementary school; I remember the first time I found smooth camas and recognized them from my wildflower book. Every time I find a plant growing in the wild that I haven’t seen before, I am thrilled and faintly astonished to see it in real life.

To have a plant from a textbook or reference manual suddenly before you as a living thing is a hard thing to explain. It’s a bit like recognizing a movie star when one day, they sit down beside you in a restaurant. No amount of fine photography or detailed botanical descriptions mentally prepares you for that moment when your mind asks, “Is that an orchid over there?” followed by recognition. I remember reading recently that in the 1950s, the average Canadian child could recognize over 25 different kinds of wildflower. In 2012, the average Canadian child did not recognize any of their local flora but knew over 50 different corporate brand logos. How the world has changed, and not for the better.

When I became an adult and started to do professional landscape design, I soon realized that if I wanted a plant to succeed, I had to place it where it wanted to be and not where I wanted it to be! Inspiration for landscape designs comes to me often through wild places. I am tremendously grateful to live in a place where I can go out and find untouched land where wildflowers still flourish. I grew up in Saskatchewan and quickly learned that Grasslands National Park was a magical place. As an adult, I often work in Waterton Lakes National Park, though there are certainly other wild places that have also endured close scrutiny and detailed notes when I visit them. I am constantly assessing what plants are doing in the wild. Where does this plant grow? What does this plant grow with? What would be good companions for this plant?

Some of my very best landscape designs have been directly copied from things I saw in nature. The first time I found a cactus in the wild I was flabbergasted. Cactus grew somewhere other than Arizona or Texas!?! Cactus could handle winter!?! Some time later, I made a detailed investigation of what prickly pear cactus grows with and where it grows, and I copied that in a landscape plan. It turned out flawlessly. I learned that if I could simulate in a garden the same conditions that a plant chooses in the wild, I could make it grow. I could make it flower and flourish and succeed! This was encouraging to me. As much as I love using garden plants that are not native where I live (such as dahlias and tulips), I have also developed a deep fondness for plants that come from the same place I come from.

I learned very quickly that many of the things I found growing in the woods or on the mountain side were not available from my local garden centres and greenhouses. In the beginning, I couldn’t figure out why. Surely a beautiful plant that flourishes in our climate should be readily available for sale! There are certainly reasons why they are not so readily available, and we will discuss the special needs of our native plants in more detail as we get deeper into the book.

Introduction

Landscape design explores the use of trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals to create pleasing and functional outdoor spaces. Design techniques are the result of good use of suitable plant material for the site, one’s own design experience, climate, and personal taste.

That sounds like one of the dusty old horticultural textbooks that sits on my bookshelf. It also sounds tremendously boring if you ask me, but the truth is that landscape design is anything but boring. There is an added dimension of risk and gamble if you live on the Canadian prairie, as I do.

It’s all very well and good to know what a peony requires to be happy, or the best way to grow roses, or that carnations make good cut flowers. Facts about plants and flowers can be learned by anyone who has the time and interest, but what do you put that rose next to is often the better question. No plant exists in a vacuum, and yet most of our prairie gardens are random and hodge-podge collections of either plants that happened to be on sale or plants we happen to like, and the resulting gardens are usually colourful but haphazard and incoherent.

In this book, we are going to start by examining some of the practical considerations you’ll have to think about to design your garden, and from there we’ll move on to inspiration, expectations, and risks. Are you excited yet?

I’ll teach you about the bones of the garden and creating a sense of permanence, we’ll look at ways to analyze your space (and thus use it wisely), and of course, we’ll also have to explore topics such as soil and sun, shade and weather, and all those pesky matters like death and disease and critters that will eat your plants and critters that will hopefully eat, well, the other critters.

By about the middle of the book we’ll be looking at trends and fashions in gardening; there will be much ado about trees and shrubs, and I’ll even take you through grass and groundcovers. Rocks, focal points, ponds . . . it’s all in here! Colour, texture, bark, and berries rounds out the back of the book, followed by some (hopefully very helpful) worksheets that can help you along the way.

A garden is always a journey—ever changing, ever evolving, and never “finished.” Ask any gardener about their yard and they will say, “You should have been here last week when the lilies were in full bloom” or “Come next week when the lilacs are in flower.” Real gardeners are never satisfied. There is always a hunger and a thirst for bigger and better things. I want to help you realize your vision for your garden, and my hope is that with this book, I’ll be able to do just that.