Shifting reality…in a garden

Serenity gardens are places where you can stop and shift your reality….

Sounds a little odd, yes? But an outdoor retreat can help us to become more grounded and relaxed which aids in changing our perceptions. Additionally, a serene outdoor space helps us to see that our thoughts and feelings directly affect the world around us. As the writer, Anais Nin said, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

This is what serenity gardens are all about: changing the outer scenery in order that we might change the inner scenery which, in turn, changes our perception of the outer scenery… No wonder we are always rearranging the living room furniture!

I love the idea of ‘shifting reality’. It is a little like changing the radio dial or channels on the TV, only here it is about altering attitudes or perspective. I will never forget, while doing a short stint teaching Sunday School to 4 year olds, one little boy, tired of the lesson, said to me, “change the channel…”

Here are a few ways to shift your reality – or change the channel - in a beautiful outdoor space…

1. Pay Attention to the exquisite happenings in the garden and your nascent ‘vivid awareness,’ as Alan Watts called it, will help you savor the natural world around you.

2. Appreciate the garden’s delights and you bring more good things your way. Being grateful for your incredible setting, no matter how small, ‘magnetizes’ more light into your life.

3. Energize Yourself by breathing in the atmosphere of nature. The oxygen rich air will, no doubt, elevate your energy. Breathing techniques like visualizing breathing in love and expelling negativity will always uplift…

4. Reverse Negative Thoughts – Serenity gardens can help negate destructive self-talk. Learn to dialogue with the universe in a garden and insist silently on reversing each negative thought that enters your mind…this positivity may seem alien to a mind that dines on negativity and judgment but affirming good things consistently in a peaceful setting will absolutely remove harsh and vicious influences.

5. Feel Interconnected with everything and everyone. Beautiful, serene gardens can certainly promote this overall feeling of connection and make you more aware of the unity of the universe.

6. Visualize What You Desire to experience in your life – understand deep down that thoughts actually create reality and dreams do come true.

7. Let Go and release your dreams! Do not dwell on them - they can then be pure energy waves that go out to manifest the outcome….

8. Think with Your Heart and remember that when you choose to replace feelings of stress, fear, or anger with the breath of love the more your reality will shift. Love, as we have been told, is all we need….a serenity garden is love in another form.

These ideas were inspired by Cynthia Sue Larson’s excellent on line article, “Top 10 Ways to Shift Reality”

A Moon Gate in New England

   

Two evenings ago, driving along a road in open farm country, I watched as the January full moon rose over a snowy landscape....the large white disc shining brightly in a liquid gray sky was spectacular! I now understand why animals howl at the moon - it must be a sympathetic show of appreciation and awe...

The grandeur of the full moon made me reflect on moon gates, the traditional Chinese circular entryways that lead into contained gardens and cities. The rounded opening alludes to the full moon and the Chinese adage that says, 'Flowers are more beautiful when the moon is full.'

Stepping through a round portal is symbolic of so many things. Like our entrance into this world, an enveloping enclosure calls to us to see what is on the other side. This sort of entry speaks to us of mystery and delight - no soaring Calatrava-like bridge or ornamented portico -  a moon gate beckons quietly, saying 'all is well, come see for yourself..."

photo by Jan Johnsen

One of the most lovely moon gates that I have had the pleasure to step through is the gate in the Chinese garden at Naumkeag in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Naumkeag is a shingle-style 'country house' estate designed by noted architect Stanford White in 1885. As all Gilded Age homes, it is filled with finery and art, but, to me,  it is the gardens that make this public attraction memorable.

Sitting on 8 acres of landscaped grounds surrounded by 40 acres of woodland, meadow, and pasture, the property was originally designed by Nathan Barrett then expanded by noted landscape designer, Fletcher Steele (what a great name!) between 1926 and 1956.  The moon gate is part of Steele's Chinese Garden (1936-1956) and was added as the last piece of the puzzle in 1956. 

The most wonderful aspect of this particular moon gate is the masonry. The wall, of which it is a part, is built from dark red brick and gray fieldstone. The gate itself is brick topped with lovely brickwork and a wooden roof. The masonry is quite different from traditional Chinese moon gates which are often fashioned from smooth stucco or finished stone.  Here, the large round gate fits in with the native plants of this region perfectly and does not look ersatz or slightly out of place as so many Chinese gardens appear to be in my part of the world.

Btw, it is said that a moon gate brings good luck to all who pass through it so, with that, a summer visit to the Berkshire Mountains and the stunning Naumkeag may be just what you require!

This photo taken from the naumkeag official website

Gardeners Supply Company - more than gardening.....

In the late 1970's and early 80's I worked for the now defunct Garden Way, Inc. in northern Vermont. I was hired to develop their greenhouse supplies catalog and write their solar greenhouse gardening manual ( I had a lot of experience in this). We were ahead of our time, I think, and full of idealistic fervor about  the power of gardening to make the world a better place.

I was susequently hired to develop plans (using my landscape architecture education) for their demonstration center promoting the Garden Way lifestyle. The 7 1/2 acre site was to have a composting demo, organic vegetable display gardens, chickens, turkeys and rabbits, canning info, solar panels, wood stoves - the whole works!  It also contained a new solar powered office building for the Garden Way corporation, makers of theTroybilt rototiller and the GardenWay Cart.

Alas, it all came crashing down in 1982 when the company had a 'coup' and the dreamers were thrown out by the business people.....the only one left standing was me. I had the unsavory task of dismantling the planned center and selling it off to a discount outlet shopping mall developer...you can shop at this mall in South Burlington, Vt. but I think I'll skip that trip.

Out of the ashes always rises the Phoenix: a young fellow named, Will Raap - he was one of the dreamers - decided to start his own unique version of the Garden Way approach and established a small company known as 'Gardener's Supply Company'.  He, and a few of the other Garden Way refugees, built this extraordinary company on the strength of their mission:

Gardener's Supply is in business to spread the joys and rewards of gardening, because gardening nourishes the body,elevates the spirit, builds community and makes the world a better place."

—Mission statement, 1984


It is a fabulous source of all things horticultural and more....they have a 3 acre display garden and free seminars in their store in Burlington, Vt.  Almost even more important, Will Raap has gone on to be an ecological activist supporting amazing causes around the world. These projects are all described in their website. 
 
And what did I do after Garden Way collapsed? I went on to get a graduate degree in planning. Only one person cautioned me against it,  saying "I got a graduate degree in planning - don't do it"...who was that? Will Raap......well, maybe he was right but Will is planning - just on a larger and a more glorious scale!

The Best Garden Gates for a Great 'Entry Experience'

Writing about portals allows me to wax philosophical.

Portal = entryway = moving into a new space = change of venue = a new outlook...

In other words, a portal announces that you are about to have a new experience which may change your perspective on things.... Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, an entry experience is the transition from known to unknown.

And like that long rabbit hole, if you elongate or expand the portal area it makes the transition even more tantalizing. How to do that, you ask?  The best answer is through pictures....

The gate above was in a property that I redesigned...The clients loved this old garden gate so we renovated it with new hinges, roofing and paint.  I installed a bluestone threshold beneath and extended it out into the peony garden. The gateway leads down into the new pool area and therefore I salvaged the existing brick steps as well. 

This is a portal supreme. Overhead roof makes a grand statement. The white color stands out against a green world. And the steps extend the entry experience - the transition time - and allows you to survey the pool area below as you enter.

(BTW, the steps also announce your arrival. Like Scarlett O'Hara descending the steps to a waiting retinue, a visitor's entry can be viewed by all lounging by the pool...not exactly the same effect for sure but the impact of entering from an elevated point is the same....)

If are interested, that is Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki' or Japanese Dappled Willow on both sides of the brick steps. It is a great plant for pool areas as its striking white-green foliage moves in the breeze and brightens up any sunny area. Cut it down to a foot or two above the ground in late fall and watch it grow back through the summer!

Too much of a good thing can spoil a scene and so it is with grand portals...Here is the second entry into the same pool area (a contained space should always have at least 2 access/egress points, if physically possible..), it is a simple white gate that leads to a set of steps ascending into the pool zone.  This is not meant to be an elaborate entry, rather it is a quiet spot, off to the side.

I placed two pots of purple annuals on top of the wall...These protrude above the fence and add a bit of color to entry.

This portal is more of a suggestion rather than a command.....



above gate, wall and garden designed by Johnsen Landscapes & Pools ( click on link)

More on Portals in Landscape Design

The word 'portal' is not often associated with gardens - people normally think of portals as an outer space term ( i.e. entering a worm hole) or an internet word referring to an entry point to other websites.

In landscape design, I define a portal as an entrance or gate that is imposing or accented in some way.  Thus an opening to a wooded path is not necessarily a portal but rather an access point....

Here this lovely grassed path on the grounds of the wonderful Ashintully Gardens in Tyringham, Massachusetts (click on link) has no specified portal, although I love the two stone round finials on either side of the path entrance....

Garden makers are becoming more cognizant of portals and how they can contribute to the overall experience in a garden - the current popularity of  wooden arched arbors and gates in my part of the globe is testament to this fact.

But, as in all design, it is about context and the presence of an arched entryway does not a garden make! Be mindful of where you place your gateway and make sure the threshold beneath, in front and behind, supports a vertical element. I am talking here about proportion and scale. Therefore, if your arched gate is 8 feet high, make sure that the area extending 4 feet in front of the arbor and 4 feet behind the arbor is part of the entry experience. It can be more than 4 feet but make sure it is at least half the height of the arch.

In the arbor above, I designed the bluestone steps and cheek walls to extend out as far as the gates. This creates a welcoming doorway and is in proportion to the height of the arbor! The Goldflame Honeysuckle climbing up on arbor's lattice side also helps....

Of course portals do not have to be so grand. Here just a few gate posts signify an entry. This is a photo of the gate to the house and garden  where my favorite garden writer lived. I don't know whether May Sarton designed this fence and gate - but nonetheless, it is a lovely example of a quiet but effective garden portal.

above garden with stone wall, steps and white arbor by Johnsen Landscapes & Pools (click link)

'Portals' for a Serenity Garden

Conspicuous portals or entryways signify the transition from one space to another. In the case of a garden designed for calm and reflection,  a portal is a nonverbal cue to visitors that they are entering a separate and special world.

Portals can take many shapes and be constructed of many materials - the possibilities are limitless. Arches, gates, pergolas,walls, plantings, and even fake crossed elephant tusks ( as I saw in Kenya) make a beautiful statement in the landscape.

Ceremonial portals have been used in the West and Asia for centuries. In Japan, the compounds of Shinto shrines are entered by passing beneath a 'torii ', a wooden overhead structure, often painted vermilion red.  Torii mark the transition from the normal world to the sacred.

The Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto features many torii, creating a mesmerising effect. Torii in a garden can also be fashioned from logs, stone or stainless steel.

One of the better known ceremonial portals in the United States is the striking arch in Washington Square Park in New York. Inspired by Roman triumphal arches, this structure was originally erected in 1889 in wood to celebrate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration. Due to popular acclaim it was rebuilt in marble in 1891. It is now an important New York City landmark.

In gardens, portals can frame a particular view. In this photo of a landscape that I designed, an overhead arbor makes an attractive frame for a lush and green scene.  It was the last element to be built and its decorative details add just the right touch.

More on garden portals in my next entry!

Landscape designed by Jan Johnsen, Johnsen Landscapes & Pools

Jewel Tones in a Poolscape

The saturated hues called jewel tones fit a poolscape beautifully – a swimming pool in full sun in mid-summer is the perfect setting for these powerful colors.

You can include them in your plantings or in pool furniture, in pots and planter colors or in your pool tile...

Here is the infinity pool tile at the Jade Mountain spa in St Lucia (I have been to St Lucia but unfortunately I was there before this lovely place was constructed) …the colorful pool tiles sparkle brilliantly under the clear water.

I have also incorporated multi hued  tile in swimming pools …I use a blue blend of glass tile as a perimeter tile under the coping and atop the automatic pool cover ledge. The result is beautiful - as long as the installer knows how to install glass tile perfectly.

Jewel toned glass tile is one way to add sizzle to a rectangular swimming pool and can establish the color palette for all other decorative touches for the poolscape….

Swimming Pool and gardens designed by Johnsen Landscapes & Pools

More on Jewel Tones.....

I love the term 'jewel tones' -

Sounds like it refers to crystalline music: "the singer's jewel tones soared through the atmosphere..."

In fashion, jewel tones are as popular as ever.  They never go out of style..they are the clear, pure colors that people with a 'winter' skin coloring should wear ...some folks just look fab in purple, magenta and royal blue. This photo of some fashion stars courtesy of Team Sugar.

Of course, a garden dressed in jewel tones sparkles like no other. When planting out one of my landscapes I contrast deeply saturated hues with foliage plants. For example, this photo illustrates Impatiens 'Blue Bayou' mixed with the broad, green leaves of hosta and the whitish cast of Japanese Painted Fern. I find that intermixing plants such as this is better suited for a serenity garden than a 'monoculture' planting of impatiens or hosta.

 I also love the clear colors of deciduous azaleas, specifically the Northern Lights hybrids.  Here is 'Apricot Surprise' - a Northern Lights hybrid. Plants are 4 feet tall with doubled flowers of a distinct apricot-peach tone.

This planting is in a wooded area and is set against a leafy green backdrop. This makes all the difference when you want a color to pop out!  It's not so much the color as the effectiveness of the background.

Garden Architecture for the 21st Century

...So you want a little shed in your serenity garden... a place where you can retreat to.. a small enclosure to get away from it all, have tea or simply work....

but you can't afford an elaborate structure nor will your town zoning look favorably on a structure with a large footprint...

and furthermore, you want something that will conform to your vision of a curvilinear landscape filled with healing ovals, labyrinthine circles and sinuous walkways...

Well here is one intriguing answer ..The Archipod. (click link)

Archipod's (pronounced ‘ark-ee-pod’) goal was to create a small garden office, a building specifically designed to be situated within a landscape and be efficient, ergonomic, and unusual. Well, in my mind, they certainly succeeded!

Here is a paragraph from their website:
"The ‘Pod’ is constructed predominantly from timber, the world’s most replenishable construction material, and is insulated to a standard exceeding that of current Building Regulations. The structure is prefabricated in sections that are sized to allow all the parts to be carried through a house, so it doesn’t matter where you live, we will be able to get the ‘Pod’ into your back garden."

Sounds very compelling, yes?

In my humble opinion, this is the future of architecture for the 21st century...no more iconic, grand architects imposing their vision upon a space (think Chandigarh, Brasilia) ... Rather, we will see local answers that fit within the context of the space and there will be more explorations of natural shapes and forms.

So with that in mind, give this company a look...they are the 'way-showers' for the rest of us.

Jewel Tones in the Landscape

I just advised my students at Columbia to use 'jewel tones' when coloring their landscape plan.....I realized after class that they may not know what that term means...then I thought that  perhaps others might be interested in my explanation as well - thus this blog entry...

Jewel tones are rich colors with a high level of saturation which makes them bold and distinctive. Their richness resembles the color of gemstones, including but not limited to, emerald green, amethyst purple, ruby red, topaz yellow, sapphire blue, tourmaline green, and turquoise blue.   Many jewel tone colors can be seen in the great Western masters' paintings and have religious significance - these colors excite us with their richness and vibrancy.

In gardens, jewel tones create a very lush look, especially when paired with other similarly saturated colors. For example, complimentary jewel tones like amethyst purple and topaz yellow are amazingly vibrant together but make sure that both are equally rich in color or one will overwhelm the other....

Jewel tones are bright and elegant....but they must be used in moderation or their impact will be become an overbearing colorful cacophony rather than a scintillating song....

Thomas Church and his Gardens for People

As part of my advice to look to other garden designers for inspiration, especially in the depths of winter as it is here in the Northeast U.S, I would like to pay homage to Thomas Church (1902 - 1978), one of the most influential American landscape architects of the twentieth century.

Church's ideas on the 'modern' landscape revolutionized residential landscape design and forever changed the look of the suburban back yard.

Born in Boston, Church came under the spell of California's climate and outdoor lifestyle when he attended U.C. Berkeley. He received his landscape architecture degree from there in 1923 and his Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard in 1926.  Although Thomas Church spent most of his time designing private residential gardens, his larger projects include Stanford University, General Motors headquarters, the University of California at Berkeley and U.C. Santa Cruz.

Church advocated viewing residential property as a single living space with the house and garden directly connected. This was an outgrowth of his love of outdoor living and was a dramatic notion for its day. Back then, most homeowners simply dressed up their yards with foundation and boundary plantings - the idea that the suburban backyard could be an extension of the house and used as an outdoor room was fairly revolutionary.

Church's greatest influence came from his 1955 book on residential landscapes, 'Gardens are for People.' His four design principles for a residential property are:

• Unity - Consider the house and garden as a whole
• Function - All areas should have a function including the service (trash can, storage) area, the family use area and the entry area
• Simplicity - a simple layout is more beautiful and effective than a fussy one
• Scale - Each part of the garden should relate to the others in a proper proportion, reflecting its heiarachy.

Thomas Church preferred a landscape that was flexible in its use of space and eschewed compartments and axial symmetry. For example, rather than imposing straight walks, his circulation patterns followed the natural movement of people through an area. His most well known garden, the Dewey Donnell Garden, featured curving, asymmetrical shapes flowing from one area to the next.

Above all, Thomas Church advised designing gardens in collaboration with the land. His words, "Gentle be the hand it lays upon the land," is a timeless and wise admonition....especially for those interested in designing serene outdoor spaces.....

If you want to know more, you might like the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation! Click on this link.

Garden of Cosmic Speculation

Now who wouldn't be interested in a garden with a name such as this?!!  ..The ‘Garden of Cosmic Speculation’ in Dumfries, Scotland is a study in green. Here, Charles Jencks and his late wife, Maggie Keswick, created on the grounds of her mother’s 30 acre estate what some call, ‘the first true garden of the 21st century’.

Jencks, an architectural writer and garden designer, wanted to celebrate the fundamental magic of nature via landscape design, using the garden as a microcosm of a greater world. “What is a garden if not a miniaturization, and celebration, of the place we are in, the universe?” asked Jencks.

The couple built a magnificent landscape that features sweeping earth works and meandering waterways. The spiral shape is prominent in the gardens. It can seen in the tall, cone shaped grassed mound that  rises several stories above - and reflected beautifully in - a body of curving, still water.

Jencks’ fascination with quantum science is evident in this verdant setting...Some say the spiraling paths of the mound can be viewed as a template of the DNA molecule or the spirals of Nature ... Today, the conical green mound with a spiraling path is Jencks’ trademark of sorts and he incorporates them in various parks around the world....

Look to the Scotland's National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh for another Jencks landscape. Here, the grounds were similarly constructed to create 'Landform Ueda', described as a "stepped, serpentine-shaped mound complemented by crescent-shaped pools of water. A combination of artwork, garden and social space, the landform was inspired by chaos theory and shapes found in nature. "

Cosmic, indeed.

Pantone Color for 2010: Turquoise

Ok, color authority Pantone has selected turquoise (Pantone 15-5519 TCX) as the color of 2010.....

So how many plants are turquoise?  Hmmm.... gotta think on that....the turquoise color is extremely rare in the plant world.

If you live in Florida you can plant Crossandra seen above...or up north try Caryopteris Petit Bleu (not a true match for turquoise)...or some of the blue ornamental grasses would be good  - is Blue Oat Grass a turquoise?

Of course you can always do what one of my dear clients does and add a punch of color with outdoor pillows!  A lot less maintenance for sure.

Or use brightly colored ceramic pots or paint a bench turquoise as they do in the Bahai religion's revered 'Ridvan garden' in Israel.

Ridvan is indeed a serenity garden of the first order and is where the Bahai religion's founder received many insights....perhaps it was the turquoise....?

garden shown above by Johnsen Landscapes & Pools (clink link)

Pixar - Coloring Our Senses

No doubt you have seen at least one Pixar film in the twelve years it has been in existence. Pixar, a made-up Spanish verb meaning "to make pixels" or "to make pictures", is a famously creative animation studio that has become the 'new Disney' by consistently producing films that delight both children and adults.

The vivid color of their animated films has slyly opened the public's eyes to the amazing possibilities that color offers in creating moods, conveying feelings and exciting our senses. Each film's color palette is strikingly different. Who can forget the blue underwater world of 'Finding Nemo', the green world of 'A Bug's Life' or the more subtle colors of 'Ratatouille'...

Why on earth would I be talking about this in a serenity garden blog?  Because the color combinations of each Pixar film can teach us a lot about using color and color combinations in the landscape!

It may seem silly to look at 'cartoons' as an educating tool but as Walt Disney said, "I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained. "
image from Pixar

Jellicoe's Wise Words

A garden maker of any sort must look to landscape designers of the past and their design philosophies. Each garden that I have created has been built upon the ideas and influences that I have absorbed over a lifetime.

Creative ideas don't just come out of thin air - they are an amalgam of what we have learned and used in the past. By looking at other cultures' tradtions and their approach to the natural elements you can enhance your garden immeasurably. The English garden designers such as Russell Page, Arabella Lennox Boyd, and Gertrude Jekyll stand side by side with their design counterparts in the United States, Japan, France and India in my world. I borrow from all unabashedly and thank them all for their inspiration, guidance and insight.

By focussing attention on gardens and their positive affect on our wellbeing, I hope to use this blog to promote an added appreciation for the greatest of domestic arts, landscape design. As Geoffrey Jellicoe, the author of, 'The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present Day,' once noted, "The world is moving into a phase when landscape design may well be recognized as the most comprehensive of the arts."

photo - pool and landscape by Johnsen Landscapes & Pools- all rights reserved

Green-Only Gardens - Serenity Squared

The Roman goddess of love and beauty, Venus, clothed herself in green. Associated with peace, harmony and renewal, green is the 'master color' of Nature, exhibiting more shades in a garden than any other color. This is why a green-only garden can appear to have so many hues...

Green in a garden speaks to us on a visceral level. The message it sends is one of ultimate calm. It is no accident that the Hindus say the light energy of green governs the Heart chakra of our body. They believe that imagining green or surrounding ourselves with green will allow more love, emotional balance and empathy to enter our life. Gardeners, no doubt, benefit from this association -  as Russell Page, the English landscape designer, sagely noted, “Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart.”

Physiologically, green calms the nervous system and slows the production of stress hormones. Thus it alleviates anxiety and balances the entire body. In feng shui green is the color of fresh energy and new beginnings and is recommended for use in the East and Southeast areas of a space.

Shown are photos from two of my green-only gardens.

The Restful Call of Green

Green in all its shades and tones is the tranquil color of Nature. It wraps us in a multi hued cloak in a garden, twining lime green together with moss green, spring green, fern green and deep pine green to create a feeling so luxurious that we can forget all our cares. This is the siren call of a serenity garden at its best and it begins with the natural world’s ever changing show of green.

If you love gardens you probably love green...While some gardens seek to stimulate the senses, a predominantly green garden promotes relaxation and quiet contemplation.

The best model is the classic Japanese garden which uses striking plant textures and forms rather than myriad colors to create an oasis of green peacefulness. In such a serene landscape, pine, holly, azalea, ferns and junipers display the passing of each season in verdant contrasts. In summer, lush foliage play against deep shadows; in winter, variegated greens, evergreen boughs and the tracery of bare branches offer an austere and still setting.
(garden & recirculating waterfall...Jan Johnsen)

Avatar in the Garden

AVATAR - cliche? overlong? Disney meets Transformers? Yes to all BUT....
Here is what I like in the film:

• the enchanting world of amazing, light filled plants - energized light as Einstein described it.
• the flying scenes (as we all do during sleep)
• the metaphor of going to sleep and waking up - into a new consciousness ...an allegory for the global  need to transform to be ready for what is on the horizon .

Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman wrote about this in the latest issue of Cygnus Review, “We are now between ‘two worlds,’ the caterpillar world where our future is limited by our creepy-crawley past, and the butterfly world where humanity can soar to reach its highest potential..... "

Serenity Gardens can help us attune to the new themes of love, nature and brotherhood...

(garden & gate...Jan Johnsen)