What I Want In A Garden Design

I think I’m ready to meet with the garden designer now.

I've thought it all through and now I know what I want in a garden design.

I want a garden that leads you along from one section to another with good transitions, personal touches and lots of plants. I’ve defined these five “wants” as the garden elements of Wanderability, Placeness, Well-Plotted, Gardimacy, and Hortiful.

What else could a gardener want in her garden?

A pond? Oh, maybe. I’m ambivalent about ponds. I’ve seen some I like but I certainly don’t want to dig the hole for one. I also don’t want to worry about leaks in the pond liner. But a small pond might be nice if it was well-plotted and someone else did the digging.

A lawn? Yes! I still want some lawn. Goodness gracious. Where has everyone been? I don’t want to give up mowing the lawn. Plus it adds some wanderabilty to the garden.

A vegetable garden? Of course. In every garden I’ve had, the first thing I did was figure out where the vegetable garden would be, and then I planned out the rest all of the other “placeness” in the garden.

A miniature garden? Yes, and I have one now, full of gardimacy. I assume it will stay where it is, but if a design called for it to be moved, I’d be wiling to sneak out in broad daylight some day and move it while the garden fairies were sleeping.

Perennials, trees, shrubs, containers, annuals? Yes, all of these. I’d like my garden to be hortiful, absolutely. Oddly enough, I don’t seem to have any ornamental grasses in my garden. At least right now I don’t, not since I removed the invasive ribbon (or was it zebra?) grass and that tough as wire Japanese blood grass.

Colors? Yes. But not much red. I should go through the new book The Gardener’s Color Palette by Tom Fischer, photographs by Clive Nichols (Timber Press, $12.95)* and mark the colors I like the best. Hmmm. Maybe I should go through all my gardening books and magazines and mark the pictures of gardens that I like the most? Or not. I'll just explain what I want.

Oh, and how could I forget the five secrets to achieving happiness in your garden? My garden design needs to incorporate all five of those secrets.

I think I’m ready to meet the garden designer now.

*(I received a free copy of this book to review. I haven't had a chance to do that just yet, what with sitting around thinking about garden design and secrets to happiness in the garden and looking out the window wondering when the snow would melt because I really haven't done any gardening since winter set in, about the week of Thanksgiving, and yes, that's been three months ago.)