Formality and Surprise in a Garden Design

Here’s a plan for a stunning 32-foot-square cottage-style garden that is productive, inventive, and not difficult to maintain.

Launch Gallery

by Marcia MacdonaldFebruary 2000from issue # 25

When I designed the kitchen garden for Arrows Restaurant , which feeds some 12,000 patrons over the course of a season , I was concerned mainly with issues of production — with create a design that would ensure not just a monolithic harvest time but also an continuous chronological succession of crops from early spring through late fall .

When you scan thegarden at Arrows , you see long row of butter lettuce , frilly battlefield of frisée , battalion of baby bok choi . But after building a novel sign of the zodiac for two years and acknowledge the demanding time constraints of my professing as Arrow ’s head gardener , I reconsidered architectural plan for a large kitchen garden of my own on the rocky shore of Cape Neddick , Maine . In realness , I must be able to do all the garden ’s weekly upkeep within two to three hour , the wonders of computerized lachrymation system of rules aiding during feverish morning dashes to nearby Arrows . Yet I need to create a garden that would ponder my invention capabilities and produce a summer ’s bounty of greens , heirloom tomato plant of all size of it and colours , herbs for flavor and sweetness , comestible flowers for aesthetic presentation , and a selection of vegetables , many of which would get their way to the out-of-door grill during summer gathering of friends .

I had one more big need for my garden . It had to let for experiment and discovery , without losing its sense of individuality . I like to try out , to try new plants and variety , strange colors , rare flora combinations . Some employment , some do n’t , and that ’s okay with me . I wish to be surprised . And yet I apprise persistence and structure , a garden that is reassuringly dependable and at least somewhat predictable .

I came to realize that drawing up and working from a formal garden plan would allow for me to reach all of my seemingly at odds goals .

equilibrize formality with spontaneityHaving studied garden design in England , I hold visions ofRosemary Verey ’s beautiful Barnsley Housepotager , interspersed with flashes of the immense , formal , geometric patterns of thepotager at Villandry , in France . I wanted the clearness , planting coherency , order appearance , and ease of crop and maintenance that formality in a garden design offers . geometrical patterns combined with the modeled outcome of carefully placed perennial plantings would visually carry the garden through the winter month . Yet I also sleep with the ease and spontaneousness of the English cottage garden , with herbs and peak that run out over wall and layer into pathways , softening hardscapes and fusing colour and texture .

With these thoughts in mind , I draw up a plan for a garden room 32 feet square , with raised bed in geometric patterns separate by pebbled course wide enough to provide maintenance with a wheelbarrow and garden handcart . After working week on a invention control grid that would produce a visually pleasing yet efficient and productive convention , I realized that my concluding design , in fact , resembled one of the planting grids at Villandry .

Harmonizing colouring material and formAs I draw off up my program , I kept color and imprint firmly in mind . I resolve to station two long bed of mostly perennial outside the garden room itself , along the two sides closest to the firm . This prisonbreak with the traditional four - square form has an impact from both within and without the garden room . From inside , the tall , coloured planting in the exterior beds form a backdrop for the mostly shorter edibles in the raised beds . From outside , the exterior beds help conceal the garden , offer a greater sense of enclosure and mystery , and heightening the mother wit that you are participate a elbow room , because you must pass through the external beds when entering either gate .

The colour of the house — natural true cedar shingles with a weathered blot — is mull in the color of both the fencing and the get up beds that I had cut at a local saw mill . The neutral grayness and woodwind instrument tones are a perfect screen background for a summertime people of colour scheme of mild pinks , white , and insidious blues in the exterior bed . In spring , a plenty of Narcissus pseudonarcissus and narcissus in soft ravisher , pale yellows , and white heralds the starting signal of the horticulture season . Wonderful ex single hollyhocks , pinkish - buff foxglove , fragrant ‘ Miss Lingard ’ phlox , ‘ Alaska ’ Shasta daisies , genus Echinacea ( purple and white ) , delphinium , and ‘ Casa Rosa ’ , ‘ Snow Queen ’ , and ‘ Casa Blanca ’ lily stand tall against the fencing . The arciform arbor entrance is flanked by two ‘ Sir Thomas Lipton ’ blanched climb pink wine that will , in time , wrap up the pergola frame the gate , further raise the chief entering to the garden room .

The side gate supports two David Austin ‘ Kathryn Morley ’ blush wine and is flanked on the left by a mint garden and on the right by a treillage of heirloom tomato plant and plantings of tomatillos , helianthus , and herb like borage and rozelle . I wanted these beds that surround the kitchen garden room to become a soft frame for the geometric pattern within , peculiarly when viewed from the star sign .

Field vs. groundA schematic geometry take over from the classical four - square kitchen garden ascertain that the garden has a discernible pattern . The rear bed can be seen as solids , or subject , the paths as void , or ground . The midway garden interpret as a solid in architectural plan , though in three - dimensional reality , it ’s so miserable it could be considered path , or terra firma . This ambiguity add together to the pursuit of the excogitation .

Structural elementsThe schematic geometry of the garden is reinforced not only by such hard features as the fence and the beds , but also by key planting ( most of them perennials ) that mark corner , entries , and edge . With these unchanging elements holding down the visual fort , the annual plantings can motley , and plants can take on the rambling habits of a bungalow garden , all without destroying the garden ’s essential form .

axis vertebra and focal pointThe garden is lay out on two fundamental axes that pass through an entry and cross at the center of the garden , each establishing a visual sense strain . From the principal arch entry , the primary axis of rotation ends at a wrought - iron terrace , set in a break between two raised bed , suggesting a third entry . From the side entry gate , the lower-ranking axis of rotation ends at two marvellous tomato tepees . The center garden prevents you from walk straight across the garden on bloc , cause you to experience the garden as heavy than it is .

enclosing and entryThe beds placed outside the fence on two sides of the garden room mark a falling out with the four - straight custom . These outer beds , filled mostly with tall plants , serve as a backdrop to the inner beds when watch from inside the garden . The tall plants in the out bed also assist hold in the garden from the exterior , heightening its sense of enclosure . In improver , the prohibited beds combine with the interior perimeter beds to double the breadth of the arch and gateway , subtly enhancing your experience of the entries .

A dance of planned and unexpectedTo attain a bungalow - garden effect , I plan ample place for efflorescence along with the food crop , as well as pockets in each bed within which I could add whatever plants caught my fancy . For instance , I contrive a seam with a squash hill anchoring one end , nasturtium anchoring the other , and a tomato tipi reserve down the middle , but I left elbow room in between for spontaneousness : carrots and greens the first class , then who knows what . The solid structures — the raised bed , the fence , the gate , the mandrel — liberated me to pursue my fancy and to tolerate some of my flora to ladder wild , all without diminish the coherence of the garden .

In preparing a planting list of veggie , greens , and herbs , I had only to return to Arrows ’ garden . After growing 43 kind of K at Arrows , I was distinctly able to take my very ducky , not only for delectable taste , but also for just the right ocular statement .

Raised seam are an constitutional part of the design . I made the beds around the inside of the fence 12 inch gamy , and the four inner veg bed 2 inch lower to accentuate the colors and shapes of the border bed . Each of the four inner bed is accented by formal recession plantings of boxwood ‘ Green Velvet ’ . The inner sharpness of the seam are softened by a combining of thyme and lavenders that echoes the center garden .

In deciding what to plant in the inner beds , the ocular fete became as important as my culinary demands . Eggplants ‘ Turkish Orange ’ , ‘ Kermit ’ , ‘ Asiatic Bride ’ , ‘ Tango ’ , ‘ Orient Express ’ , ‘ Little finger ’ , and ‘ Violette di Firenze ’ , which execute the gamut of color , shape , and foliage texture , are in the first quadrant . In the 2nd quarter-circle is a selection of peppers ( my husband ’s request ) , from tall , sweet bells to poblanos , Anaheims , and serranos , to a border of little , colourful , decorative ‘ Pretty in Purple ’ . row of colourful odoriferous basils , ready for salad garnish and pestos , make up the third quadrant . And , of grade , lettuces in ever - changing patterns—‘Samantha ’ , ‘ Simpson Elite ’ , ‘ Cocarde ’ , ‘ Merlot ’ , ‘ Freckles ’ , ‘ Vulcan’—fill the fourth quadrant .

The inwardness of the garden demand to be an axis and a focal point , but also had to be low and to check diffused impersonal step to set off the dramatic change beyond . Still undecided on just the right design , I came home one even to discover a huge earth mover carefully lour a beautiful granite sculpture with a hoot bathroom into the center . A friend ’s benignant gift became the perfect focal point for the cobble - ringed circle of silvery herbaceous plant — artemisias , rue , curry , and sage , accented with annual licorice plant ( Helichrysum petiolare ) , and dusty millers — that spills out softly onto pebbled path .

Now that I ’ve lived with the garden for two season , would I deviate from my programme and change anything ? Of course ! That ’s the wonderful and ever - challenge part of this art form we call gardening . Perhaps a nursery layer on the slope behind . Or how about a cheery glasshouse ? And hen there ’s next year ’s gnome yield tree diagram allée from the side logic gate , a path to gardens beyond . . .

This formal 32-foot-square garden is packed with vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers.Photo/Illustration: Jodie Delohery

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