Gardens of Atmosphere and Imagination

I have realised there are two types of gardeners… those with dirt under their fingernails and those with their heads in the clouds.

I confess to being firmly in the latter camp.

GARDEN WITH JOY

And so, when I read the words of one of my favourite authors, I so completely agree:

“You can buy plants in a nursery, but not atmosphere.”
— Jean Giono, The Man Who Planted Trees

It is atmosphere that I have always written about and dreamed of. Perhaps that is why I photograph clouds so often. It is pure atmosphere, up there in the skies above.

Atmosphere in a garden is something akin to character in a person. If I visit a garden and am completely overwhelmed by its feeling, I will remember that place forever. Just as someone with a warm, generous heart leaves a lasting impression long after they have gone.

It is something I alluded to in my January meanderings, and something very close to my heart.

Gertrude Jekyll once said, “A collection of plants a garden does not make.” And yet, for a plantsman or woman, those plants do make a garden. Just not my type of garden.

On Mystery and the Gardens That Draw Us In

“Let the light dance and the shadows sing,” wrote the late landscape designer Viesturs Cieliens.

GARDEN WITH JOY

And Freya Latona, writing in The Planthunter, speaks of something I feel deeply:

…the secret ingredient to any successful garden, whatever its size, function, climate and layout, may be the rather elusive concept of mystery. The gardens that draw us in, that encourage us to wander and explore rather than simply observe, all share this quality. Whether through careful design or the gentle hand of time, they create a sense of enigma. They ask a question of the viewer — what lies just beyond — and invite us to step forward and discover.

So, when visitors come to your unmown garden, simply tell them to use their imagination and go and explore.

And when you do get the lawnmower going, have some fun. Make patterns in the longer grass, as Sally Johannsohn has done in her beautiful garden overlooking Hobart in Tasmania — a place never to be forgotten, where a sense of play and joy is ever present.

Trisha x

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