Vademecum: Go With Me

When I was visiting New York City earlier this year, I noticed a small book at the MOMA Bookstore called Go With Me: 50 Steps to Landscape Thinking. This book, written by a landscape architect named Thomas Oles, was "designed as a tool for students of landscape architecture and planning, and all those who share their curiosity about landscape." The title, go with me, is the literal translation of vademecum, which is latin for a handbook that is designed to be carried with someone as a reference; in this case, as a  reference for landscapes.

Oles created 50 entries divided into five categories: sensing, reasoning, showing, changing and testing. Each entry was invitation to explore the landscape. During my recent trip to England, I asked the participants to do an exercise each day we visited a garden. At Stourhead, we followed the instruction to "look up" i.e. " to lift your eyes above the horizon. Look into the branches above, then to the sky beyond. Crane your neck, hold it there until you swoon. Plunge upward, add this to your knowing of the place." At Hidcote, an almost maze-like garden, I asked to group to "unpack the map."  to wonder and explore the garden without trying to figure out exactly where they were. In another garden, we were asked to "draw; to leave time for drawing. Wrest it from other tasks if you must. Forget rules and conventions; draw incessantly, furiously, painstakingly. Choose an implement and make it your fifth limb. Let your arm and hand lead your mind." Another day we were asked "to transgress" but my favorite exercise was one we also did at Stourhead, was "breath deep" to "stop, close your eyes and mouth and inhale. Draw in the landscape, pass it over your olfactory receptors. Turn it over there. Exhale, take five steps forward, and do the same thing. Repeat endlessly. Learn once more to think with your nose."

I plan to bring this little book with me when I am visiting gardens, when I am hiking in the White Mountains and when I am doing eye mission work in Haiti. It will encourage me, as it did while I was in England, to take time, to be present, to observe and to explore the landscapes that I have opportunity to visit.

Garden Read: The Full Monty Every Day

The Ivington Diaries by Monty Don

My sister wanted to find the perfect birthday present for me last December; I was reaching a half century milestone and she hoped to make it memorable. At the end of the year, I kept reading about The Ivington Diaries, a new book by Monty Don, the former BBC gardening host and Observer columnist. I had seen his name many times in my garden reading but had never sat down with one of his books so I greedily suggested a gift for myself. My sister promptly ordered the book and we waited...and waited.... and waited. The book was available in England but didn't arrive in the States until July. It turned out to be fortuitous timing because we were going on vacation the first week in August and I needed a good book.

The Ivington Diaries is a compilation of entries from Don's gardening journal from 1994 to 2006. Don and his wife, Sarah, were rather famous costume-jewelry designers in London. Their business collapsed in the late 80's and they began a new life, centering around gardening, at Ivington Court, a medieval farmhouse they bought in Herefordshire, England. The property had no gardens when they began living there in 1991. The book is the personal story of the creation of a garden. He writes that "the context for this is a profound hunger for a sense of place and an urge to make a home." The entries are in date order but they jump from year to year. It has over 50 informal, yet lovely, photographs taken by the author.

The book has about 20 entries per month. Many of the passages are predictable and have plant titles like 24 March 2001 Clematis, 1o June 1995 Roses and 26 June 2004 Eremurus. Others are more interesting: 24 February 2001 Danger, 13 April 2005 Whiff, 10 July 1999 Flux and 11 August 2002 Stasis. There are also funny entries like 14 September Pretentious? Moi? and 20 September 1999 Slugmare. One of the more provocative entries is titled, 3 December 2000 Sex. In that piece Mon maintains that "neither pure femininity nor unalloyed masculinity make good gardens or gardeners. You need a balance of both." Something to ponder the next time you visit a garden you admire.

The Ivington Diaries is a book best read in clips and pieces in many sittings. My first time through, I read the titles that interested me most. I raced through these passages. Then I leisurely read the titles I was less gravitated toward. I was surprised how well I like these entries. Finally, throughout the gardening year, I will reread and savor the passages during the time of year the entry was written. The Ivington Diaries is a book one can read over and over again. It will never fail to satisfy.

Garden Read: Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Essay on Gardening by Henk Gerritsen

I first discovered Henk Gerritsen when I read Dream Plants for the Natural Garden, a book he coauthored with celebrated Dutch plantsman and garden designer, Piet Oudolf. I have been following his work and writing ever since. Henk Gerritsen was also a Dutch garden designer with decidedly wild tastes. He had a dry wit and a love of nature. He started his career as a biology teacher and became interested in gardening after visiting the garden of Mien Ruys in 1976. Ruys was major force in Dutch garden design. She was known for using a simple palette of plants that had structural form combined with a very modernistic bent in design. He said visiting her garden " was a culture shock, a slap in the face. Although the bold combinations of deep blue delphiniums, bright orange Alstroemerias, vivid yellow Ligularias and pink-reddish phloxes hurt my eyes, which were accustomed to the pastel colours of nature, I still found it fascinating to see: this was not a baboon's bum, this was art. I had never realized that something like this was possible with plants. I wanted to do this as well. But then differently." Two years later, he began gardening at Priona Garden, the parental home of his partner, Anton Schlepers.

His first tentative title for the book was Playing Chess with Nature. The idea being that when gardening, humans are playing a game of chess with nature. "They can only settle for a draw instead of being checkmated. Winning is not an option, and cheating is altogether useless: at best, the latter will result in a Pyrrhic victory and ultimately a devastating defeat." The gardener needs needs to come to terms with this fact and work with, not against, nature.

The book is a series of essays that describe Gerritsen's philosophy on gardening and the journey it has taken him on. It is divided into three main sections: Inspiration, Garden Ecology and Building Blocks of a Garden. Every section is filled with beautiful photographs that illustrate each topic superbly.

In the Gardening Ecology section, Gerritsen recommends "gardening like a cow." By that he means "grazing" or pulling the weeds "without attempting to remove the roots from the soil. When plants have to keep putting energy into creating new offshoots, their hearts literally sink into their roots and...the soil is not disturbed. Because if there is anything that encourages the growth of perennial weeds, it's the constant disturbance of soil." Practical advice prescribed with a deadpan delivery. Gerritsen also has some excellent advice garden design and the appropriate placement of exotic plants in a the garden.

Essays on Gardening is a very timely book that I believe will become a garden classic. It is written in an original and often humorous voice and is filled with practical information and stunning photographs. It gives excellent advice on garden design and the appropriate placement of exotic plants with a cutting edge gardening philosophy about plant ecologies. At the end of the introduction, he says "I will no longer be at a loss for words when someone asks me for the umpteenth time to explain what kind of garden I have... now I can refer all inquiries to this book." Henk Gerritsen died in 2008, several months before the book became available in English in the United States. Lucky for us, Essay on Gardening is here to answer our inquiries.