Photos courtesy of Craig Summers Black
Language is a wonderful thing. "Chisen kaiyushiki" translates as "wet stroll."
The Transplanted Gardener: Where have all the flowers gone?
By Craig Summers Black | 06.02.09
As usual, my timing was impeccable. Which is to say I made the 375-mile-trip to St. Louis’ Missouri Botanical Garden just in time for a garden lull.
The bulbs were pretty much gone, and the perennials had yet to do anything of much consequence. Still, the landscape was rich and deep. So many stunning vistas, so many ideas to rip off wholesale and trundle back to my weedy acreage.
The lessons learned here were twofold:
1) A green garden can be a thing of beauty. Which is why the Chinese and the Japanese gardens were so rewarding.
2) Structure can carry the visual weight during a timeline sans blossoms.
If you have been to Monet’s Giverny and found the garden beds as underwhelming as I did, you still have a jaw-dropping moment when you come to the famous green bridge over the lily pond.
Same thing with MoBot’s four-acre lake and its arching promenade. Here’s how the PR folks there describe the place:
“Rather than the typical garden filled with striking statuary, showy plants and flowers, the Japanese Garden is a monochromatic understatement, in which the viewer is permitted the thrill of personal interpretation and discovery.”
Kind of a lofty manner in which to say: Whoa. Cool.
And because St. Louis is about 250 miles south of my place, MoBot’s rose garden was in full bloom even though only one of my 30 or so bushes is in flower.
I’m not a big fan of ghettoizing roses as they do, but it was heartwarming to see that someone in the Midwest can have Graham Thomas [see second photo at top] thrive in their garden. Winters here have killed Graham three times, and that’s my limit for planting something.
Well, usually.
What else I’m into this week: I’m kind of late to the party on this, but I haven’t really watched TV since maybe the first season of “In Living Color.” (Remember when Jim Carrey was funny?) But the HBO show “Flight of the Conchords” is now on DVD and I’m catching up. Think: “Spinal Tap,” but hipper and funnier, if that’s possible.
Read previous posts by the Transplanted Gardener by clicking here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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2. trudy | 06.02.09
I don’t understand the appeal of Grahams. A rose that doesn’t smell like a rose is a waste.
3. Carolyn Hopper | 06.02.09
I have been to the Japanese garden in Portland, OR, the Japanese Garden in the Bronx, N.Y., the Japanese garden in San Francisco,and studied for a short time the garden of a friend in Connecticut who had the designer of the garden in the Bronx design her garden. This form of what we call “gardening” requires more from the viewer than a casual stroll through it looking for flowers. The gardens are filled with symbolism. Look for textures, the under story and take more than a minute to reflect-on the day, on the subtleties of design. Look beneath the surface as it were.
I don’t believe that we need to treat gardens like a 30 minute sitcom on TV where everything is done for us and all wrapped up in a pat ending. I believe that its OK to ask something of the visitor to a garden.
AS for Giverny - I was not underwhelmed, but enchanted. My sketchbook is filled and my garden reflects some of Monet’s inspiration and love of life.
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1. gfinoaktown | 06.02.09
Monochromatic understatement? Sounds like my garden, although in my case it’s unintentional. Love the Grahams. Mine look like that–from around May 5-25, then nothing, nada, zilch for the rest of the year. WHY??? Maybe it’s a St. Louis thing?