Click here for past issues of the Globe Magazine, dating back to June 22, 1997

Letters to the Magazine editor:
Mail can be sent to Letters to the Editor, The Boston Globe, P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378. The email address is [email protected] or use our form.

A little bit of Eden

Small gardens give the gardener time to smell the roses.

THIS PAST DECEMBER, I moved to a smaller house. Oh, I had loved our old home with its big kitchen and party room, its views to distant Boston, its half-acre of land enclosed on three sides by hemlock trees. But with one child off to college and another soon to go, it seemed more than we needed. This new, more modest house was on a smaller lot, closer to town, and as spring rolled around, my thoughts turned to my new yard.

It was offering me a new beginning.

In my old garden, I always started, but never seemed to finish, ambitious projects. These involved creating terraces and retaining walls, moving a driveway, building a pond, and, of course, adding plantings. Without maintenance help, I was constantly demoralized by my inability to keep up with all the weeding, the edging, the mulching, the watering, the pruning. It was never done, and I could never make it look the way I wanted.

Ironically, my own clients had smaller gardens (and more maintenance help), so the landscapes I designed for them always looked wonderful. Now, this new little backyard will give me the opportunity to make my garden match my images. Its size will allow me to concentrate my efforts and better maintain whatever I create. I love the long deck that steps down from the house onto an oval of grass, and the appealing little wooded area at the back of the property. I can't wait to get my hands dirty planting old favorites in this new, for me, soil.

I made one major design intervention just after we moved and installed eight 6-foot freestanding columns from my former terrace so that they form a ring around the yard. Already, the space looks more like a garden - my garden - and now there's a clear demarcation between woods and lawn. I've drawn out various planting bed possibilities, and will probably create a scalloped edge around each column so I can plant perennials and climbing vines at the base. But before I do anything else, I'll create a more private setting by planting evergreen trees against the fence and filling in the wooded area behind the house with some ornamental shade-loving trees.

After 20 years of designing gardens, I know that a modest garden can accomplish a number of things: It can restrict and define outdoor space to a manageable size, both in terms of construction and maintenance. Its scale and proximity also make it possible to easily integrate the house into the garden scheme. A small garden also means fewer scarce resources such as water, topsoils, and the energy to maintain and light the property will be used.

Most important, however, an intimate garden allows both the space and the time for contemplation, for reverie, for sensory awareness. Kept small, a garden offers a respite from the workaday world without adding undue responsibilities. In a small garden, each detail becomes important. Every blooming plant, water feature, or special object enhances the sense of coherence and unity. Hence, the more enjoyment the gardener can reap for her investment of time, labor, and resources.

Moreover, even the smallest landscape can offer pride of ownership not only to its inhabitants but to its neighbors. The world delights in a garden. When modest, it offers visual and psychological relief by showing new, doable ideas to visitors and passersby.

Those lofty ideals stated, here I sit, like many new homeowners, wondering how to make my yard into a garden. To begin the process, I need to ask myself the same questions I ask my clients: What do I want the garden to do for me, and what do I want to do in the garden? What do I want it to feel like? Then, I need to determine which principles of design will help me realize my goals, while making the garden work as a whole. To this, I need to add the plant choices that will engage and delight my senses, yet be reasonable to maintain.

To help find the answers, I reviewed three gardens I created for clients during the last 10 years. The first is a Japanese-style garden I designed with Shiro Nakane of Kyoto, Japan, in a 1,500-square-foot Brookline backyard. The owner knew just what she wanted: a little rivulet that meandered through a deep forest - all in a place that was barren of trees. To meet her vision, we first enclosed her site using simple cedar fencing that we softened with layers of plantings, from taller cedars and cryptomeria, to shorter mountain laurels, rhododendron, and hollies, to low-growing junipers, azaleas, and spireas that edged the shoreline of the little river we created. This recirculating stream includes a small waterfall, rocky watercourse, and pool. Mosses cover the ground, except where steppingstones offer the visitor a journey throughout the diminutive site, across bridges to a water basin, past a Japanese lantern, to a wooden chaise lounge, and up a narrow terrace and steps that marry garden to house. Magnolias, cherries, and dogwoods bloom throughout the spring, iris and hosta flower during the summer, and Japanese maples turn brilliant hues in the fall. Winter is lovely, because the garden has good form that blankets beautifully in the snow.

The second, even smaller, garden is a brightly hued perennial garden in a wooded suburb of Boston. There, I wanted to push the property out into the sun to allow the owner to have flowers all around her. I also wanted to create a garden room for conversation, entertaining, and dining, and to provide a special amenity, in this case a garden swing where one could look out and over the conservation land below.

In both these gardens, it was important to define what the owners wanted, and then find the means to best attain their goals. Most people begin a garden without such a clear sense of purpose and design strategy. Having a mission statement like the ones we defined for these clients will, in the end, save you time, energy, and money and, when your backyard landscape is complete, give you a tremendous sense of satisfaction.

The third garden illustrates another point: Sometimes, the answer to the design problem lies on-site, right in front of your eyes. In this small terrace garden, handsome ledges had been covered by overgrown juniper bushes. All that needed to be done was remove them, uncover the attractive natural rock forms beneath, and bring in small-scale plantings to give the effect of a mountainscape in miniature. For this, I used mosses, Japanese junipers, small-leafed azaleas, heathers, and spireas. An old pond and fountain were reworked so that they became focal features. A cavorting cherub statuette took on new importance once plantings were pulled away from his plump and playful form. Often, little needs to be done to create a satisfying result. Always start by examining the special features already on the property, then find simple ways to enhance them.

My garden master, Kinsaku Nakane of Kyoto, always told me that the scale of the property doesn't matter: The rules of design are the same for a tiny site or an immense tract of land. As long as the problem is clearly conceived and understood, its best and most elegant solution will always involve the same design principles. All great designers, whether of architecture, cities, or toys, adhere - consciously or unconsciously - to these precepts. They are best expressed as paradoxes: immense intimacy; continuous change; dynamic balance; enclosed openings. Other ideas suggest ways to manipulate form: layering, using diagonals, or taking advantage of the landscape beyond the garden walls. These ideas will also come in handy as tools for the imagination as you design your own garden space. So much fun is in store for you!

Creating any garden - big or small - is, in the end, all about joy. The joy that comes with the fulfillment of longings for nature, for beauty, for self-expression, and for the simple act of growing, both within oneself and on one's land. Designing and planting a modest garden, even if just a corner of your property, is a wonderful way to begin.