Our winter white landscape makes it all too easy to impose impossible garden dreams on this seemingly empty canvas. But this is not the blank slate it appears as now.
This landscape was in a 20 year relationship with prior caretakers. Under their nurturing, it became a beautiful lawn-covered park and deer refuge, overlooking stunning mountain views.
Equipped with a pool/cabana, covered porches, and a shed, much of the layout is already set in stone (and concrete).
It’s lovely just as it is. But this is someone else’s vision of beauty. And I can’t wait to apply a very different design sensibility to this underpainting.
Reformed Permaculturist
Garden design is a form of fortune telling. Because plants take so long to mature, we can’t plan for who we are today. We have to ask ourselves “who do I want to be” and “how do I want to live/engage in this space in the years to come?” Then we have to imagine our answers, knowing that choices we make today will also influence who we become later.
Currently, I consider myself reformed Permaculturist. I embrace systems theory because it would be madness not to. I ascribe to the ideals of people care, earth care, fair share. Yet I am not a purist and this is not my religion.
I also shamelessly indulge my aesthetic sensibilities that sit at the intersection of French Mediterranean, English Cottage, Italian Renaissance, and Arcadian style.
I consider whimsy and curation of color as critical as getting guilds right and obtaining a yield.
And I think it’s an entirely rational decision to sacrifice principle for peonies and practical for playful because I need more than a feast for my stomach. The garden is fuel for creativity, food for thought, and salve for the soul.
As much as I love wild nature, in a home garden, I am deeply drawn to the cultivated, romantic, ornate, and ordered. But is this who I want to be in the future? Will I still want to spend half my Saturday mornings studying and trying capture the play of morning light on a single flower to better see the peppering of pollen, the crenulations on the petals, and the tiny nectar drunken insects blissfully asleep after breakfast?
Yes, I think I will.
But I also want to delve more deeply into the intellectual, categorical, and historical study that goes along with it. I want to be part of the the passionate and relentless pursuit that led plantspeople to seek and evolve plants so beautiful we can’t take our eyes off them, so fragrant we want to bath in them, and so divinely delicious we’ll wait years for a first harvest. And I want to pursue design and planting perfection even though I know they are mythical destinations.
And that’s why our snow white landscape has led me to deeper thinking on John Locke’s and the idea of Tabula Rasa. Seeing this landscape as a sheet of white paper, upon which I can design my future garden and future self, makes it much easier to imagine how this garden will help me fill in the white pages in my brain, that are ready and waiting for me to fill them fresh content from my life.
John Locke’s ideas also deeply influenced some of the best early American gardeners including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison (three of whom gardened in Virginia too). They all spent significant mental and physical energy devoted to imagining their landscape canvases and shaping them in ways that would influence the their human development, the experiences had by family and guests, and the course of garden history.
Of course, John Locke’s most famous contribution was his philosophical influence on the framework and language that underpins our American democracy. But Locke (like so many great philosophers) was also deeply passionate about plants. He had an extensive seed collection and exchange network. He hobnobbed with renowned botanists and kept a herbarium which he meticulously catalogued and preserved. And actively cultivated these interests to grow in others.
With more of my life behind me than ahead of me, I want to keep John Locke’s idea that “the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness” ( Essay Concerning Human Understanding) as my target. Challenging work that forces me to learn/adapt/keep up with technology, gardening, reading, writing, cooking, decorating, languages, world exploration, and cultivating appreciation will continue to be my key pathways toward that ideal.
Similar to the way Monet planned and planted his garden to inspire his paintings, I want to create a garden that inspires philosophical inquiry, the study of history, and technologically forward thinking. (Of course, it will offer opportunity to paint, provide inviting places for conversation on important (and sometimes frivolous) topics, and do a fair bit of meal enhancing.) And I specifically want to use this garden to shape myself into the person I want to become.
Nature and nurture hold hands. We can’t become our best selves in environments which don’t support human mental and physical health. But we also can’t have those environments if we don’t cultivate the intelligence to create, maintain, and enjoy them. The intersection of these influences and how they scaffold each other is the line of inquiry I am centering this new garden adventure around.
Beyond the Backyard
On the broader world stage, it also feels more important than ever to keep John Locke’s contributions top of mind. When we remember that our civil contract and American ideal is that government exists for the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness (our inherent human rights) — and that we all have potential to become unchained from our conditions of birth as long as civil society supports free access to opportunities to educate ourselves — it becomes easier to hold our ground and grow ourselves in ways that will overcome any temporary tyranny trying to trump these ideals.
We have never been perfect in our implementation of these ideals. Abuses of power and breaking faith with the the population is a repetitive theme throughout history. Yet, if we holdfast to noble targets, and re-set our sights upon them regularly, we still move in the direction of something true and worthy.
Tabula Rasa
Observation, sensation, and reflection are the primary architects of our thoughts, beliefs, and ultimately our destinies. What we study now, what we contemplate, what we do with our days — that input influences what kind of artists we become while creating our human realities.
It may be harsh winter now, but spring is around the corner. And I am readying myself to become a new kind of gardener. Even when activity is hampered, preparation doesn’t have to wait.
The first delivery of garden materials arrived just before the storm. And today, the snow has cleared, the soil is warm enough, and I am ready to start laying the groundwork for the new design.
Below are some before photos of the areas I will be focusing on first.
I am using ChatGpt to help catalogue my plants, plan timing, fine tune organization. It’s also pretty good at converting photos to line drawings to help you see the bones of your landscape (or try on colors for your new chicken coop.)
There will be much more to capture and catalogue here on Simplestead as the garden takes shape. But now, now it is time to act by establishing beds, readying planting areas, and getting the framework ahead of the arrival of live plants and baby chicks!
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