Summer is coming and wild is still on the menu with a side of wind-swept and a dollop of scruffy. This is fine and well and good and most importantly, virtuous. But if you’re a gardener who loves a clean line as much as cool drink at the end of the day, is there still a place for you in polite company?

Moreover, can we find a balance between chaos and order in our garden design, and benefit from the exciting tension that results, instead of boxing ourselves (or being boxed) into one aesthetic or the other?

 

native garden

Hmmmmm….

 

Ditto…

I believe that intentional order and serendipitous chaos can exist together and — dare I say — should exist together in good garden design, each element softening the edges of the other’s worst tendencies.  Anne Wareham and I have been debating some elements of this via email, which hopefully we’ll get around to sharing in the next week.

Void against mass. Bold shapes in the midst of frothy undulation. A tightly mown path through an exuberant meadow. Or simply, garden rooms for both.

Playing with a little chaos

My own ornamental garden – made up of both native and non-native plants – satisfies my yearning for both elements — though it would not necessarily win awards for design; and would definitely horrify the HOA clipboard police just as surely as the strident floral nativists.  

The plants touch each other (regardless of passport), the turf is untreated and rife with many species, and volunteer seedlings often battle and best the plants that were carefully chosen. 

They romp and battle each other in beds that live under the threat of encroaching woodland and its aggressive/invasive understory (which is in itself a tension between chaos and order). I weed out sycamores and sassafras along with the box elder and ailanthus and know that I am only here for this tiniest of moments, creating and tending this garden.

I only planted two of the five species in this photo, but enjoy editing all.

There are moments when it all feels out of control, and moments when it gels, but in each space, each bed, I try to showcase one of three energies:

The exciting potential of what will be;

The sustained climax of what is; 

The gentle, attractive decline of what was. 

 

 

When all three come together, it is magic.  And I am helped in this quest by limiting my palette not by passport, but by performance; planting for true, inclusive diversity, and respecting the new connections slowly being forged between flora and fauna in a changing climate.

 

 

But loving a little order

In other parts of my garden, order reigns. My enclosed vegetable garden is made up of raised beds arranged geometrically and precisely in graveled paths.

 

 

A manicured collection of hardy succulent troughs tempts me into fussiness.

 

succulent

And a minimalist platform overlooks all

garden platform

Early days with the new platform

 

But when the majority of the ornamental garden is having an over-enthusiastic moment and overwhelming the senses, I can retreat to a simple chair on a simple platform that overlooks a simple design, and breathe deeply – plunging once again into the fray when my energy matches its abundance.

 

 

The macro-garden that’s created with all of these elements is a duality of opposites that instinctively feels harmonious to me.  Too much of either and I’m instantly bored and turned off. Mono-textural landscapes so common to the native plant movement do not move me any more than tightly pinched gardens ruled by chemical-wielding gardeners in immaculate aprons.

(Although native plant activists seem to be the only gardeners who can proudly shout out their wielding of chemicals and be lauded for it.  Which is bizarre, but amusing.)

Order and chaos. Yin and Yang. The universe is ruled by this tension, why not our gardens? – MW