Serenity in the Garden

Lamb's Ear  One of my assignments to my graduate students in the landscape design program at Columbia University was to take a  paragraph  from the book, ' The Hidden Dimension' by Edward T. Hall and share a personal experience related to the topic of the selected excerpt. 'The Hidden Dimension' is a time honored classic on the role of spatial understanding in  culture . The following is an essay that the talented designer,  Yuliya Bellinger, wrote. I think it is so lovely and wanted to share it with you. Simple is beautiful.   TEXTURE in the Garden By Yuliya Bellinger “Texture, about which I have said very little, is appraised and appreciated almost entirely by touch, even when it is visually presented. With few exceptions …it is the memory of tactile experiences that enable us to appreciate texture. So far, only a few designers have paid much attention to the importance of texture and its use in architecture is largely haphazar...

"Many gardeners will agree that hand-weeding is not the terrible drudgery that it is often made out to be. Some people find in it a kind of soothing monotony.  It leaves their minds free to develop the plot for their next novel or to perfect the brilliant repartee with which they should have encountered a relative's latest example of unreasonableness.”  ―  Christopher Lloyd ,  The Well-Tempered Garden

Love the earth and sun and the animals. Despise riches, give alms to every one that asks.  Stand up for the stupid and crazy. Devote your income and labor to  others... Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

This is tip #134 from my brand new book, Gardentopia - so happy to share with you. 134. “MELLOW YELLOW” SPIREA Spirea is considered a common shrub, but ‘Mellow Yellow’ spirea (Spiraea  thunbergii ‘Ogon’) challenges that assumption. It is an early blooming,  deciduous shrub that grows 3 to 5 feet tall and wide.  Small, white  blossoms appear in profusion in March through April before the leaves  emerge, but it is the willowy, twiggy branches and leaves that make it  notable. The wispy, fine- textured foliage starts out yellow, softens  to a yellow- green in summer, and turns a lovely combination of reds,  oranges, and yellows in the fall, making it a late- season star as well. Gardentopia - Design Basics for Creating beautiful Outdoor Spaces Hardy to −30° F, it is easily pruned after flowering in spring. ‘Mellow Yellow’ spirea is a versatile, low-maintenance shrub that brightens up any plant bed. It likes sun, a...

Spring has sprung! I am happy to announce the publication of my new book Gardentopia- Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces . Publishers Weekly just released its wonderful review which I am sharing with you. I took the liberty of adding a few photos from my book: Readers with even the slightest interest in beautifying an outdoor space-large or small-should find something of value in this expansive guide from landscape designer Johnsen (The Spirit of Stone: 101 Practical & Creative Stonescaping Ideas for Your Garden).  She emphasizes the importance of deciding upon a goal for a garden and visualizing its final appearance before beginning work on it, declaring that the sum of any such project is greater than its parts. Johnsen takes care to dissect these parts, revealing creative possibilities (accompanied by practical guidance) for each nook and cranny.  For example, to recover the lost art of "garden strolling," the desi...

Thomas Church - Donnell Residence, Sonoma, CA 1948 Thomas Church was one of the most influential American landscape architects of the twentieth century. His ideas on the 'modern' landscape revolutionized home landscaping and changed the look of the suburban backyard.  Born in Boston in 1902, he attended college in California and came under the spell of its climate and outdoor lifestyle.  Church received his landscape architecture degree from Berkeley in 1923 and his Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard in 1926. Tommy Church - Plan for Donnell Church urged people to see residential property as a single living space with the house and garden directly connected.  This was a dramatic notion for its day.   His greatest influence was through his books and numerous articles. His popular book on home landscapes, 'Gardens are for People ,' was published in 1955.    Church advocated four basic landscape design principles: •...

Do you garden in a dry area?  I love this teaching approach by Olivier Filippi. 1: Salvia chamaedryoides 2: Rhodanthemum hosmariense 3: Artemisia abrotanum 'Silver' 4: Phlomis 'The South' 5:  Senecio vira-vira 6: Salvia fruticosa 7: Salvia leucophylla 8: Artemisia lanata This photo and information is from a French website that I cannot translate into English. It is by the authority on dry gardens, Olivier Filippi, and is very good. Check it out:    http://www.jardin-sec.com/ Also he wrote a great book called 'Planting Design for Dry Gardens'.  Nigel Dunnett says,  "In  Planting Design for Dry Gardens  Olivier Filippi has charted a future for garden and planting Design. Combining authoritative practical advice with deep ecological insight, Olivier shows how learning from nature can give us the best of all worlds: beautiful and sustainable gardens with a unique sense of place. I challen...

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend…. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned.  woodland walk - photo by Laura McKillop   I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much. Mary Oliver

rocks and blue fescue - Johnsen Landscapes My upcoming book, The Spirit of Stone (published by St Lynn's Press) will be out in February, 2017 .  It looks at many ways you can use natural stone in the garden from artful accents and stone walks to sustainable dry creeks and rock gardens. One of the topics I address is the art of setting stones in a rock garden. I once lived in Japan (I worked in a landscape architecture office in Osaka) and so I feel a special connection to Japanese rock gardens.   In my work with placing rocks (often with large machines) I always listen to what the stone says. Sometimes, after a tough time placing a rock , I say that the stone does not want to be there and remove it.   I used to think that this conversation with a rock was my unique approach. But I was wrong.  I also said that the first rock to be set determined the rest of the rocks in the garden and so this was the most important. Again, this was an old rul...

C.L.Fornari photo of flower ice cubes in a serene garden in Cape Cod C.L. Fornari, aka The Garden Lady, has a wonderful garden radio show that  airs every Saturday on the Cape Cod station WRKO from 12-2 p.m. You can hear it as a podcast online. Her show covers many gardening and landscaping topics and she discusses her favorite plants and answers listeners' gardening questions.  C.L. is also the author of the inspiring book,  The Cocktail Hour Garden: Creating Evening Landscapes for Relaxation and Entertaining The Cocktail Hour Garden shows how to enjoy that special evening hour in the garden I was especially thrilled a week ago to be interviewed by C.L. about my book, Heaven is a Garden.   She asked some great questions about what is music for the eye in a garden and how to make your garden in tune with the four directions. C.L. is an insightful interviewer and I wanted to  share our short and fun chat with you! Click  below to hear ...

As you may know, I love Garden Design magazine. It is gorgeous, each issue is 148 pages thick and packed with fascinating gardening info and landscaping ideas and, best of all, it  has no ads!   It is published quarterly, one issue per season. How can they make it work? Well, it is a subscriber-supported magazine. Jim Peterson is the publisher and Thad Orr is the editor. I think they have made it the best garden magazine out there.... Would you like an issue? I am giving out the current issue to 3 lucky winners...see below for my random drawing.  And I am thrilled to say that Garden Design chose to feature my ideas on Creating a Relaxing Retreat in their current issue which features Serene Spaces. I am honored and so happy that it is being shared by such a prestigious and elevated magazine! The 6 page article, 'Serenity and the Sweet Spot', offers my tips for creating relaxing outdoor spaces that I have refined over the years. I look to ancient ...

Garden Design Magazine interviewed me for tips for blending ancient and modern ways to create gardens that simply make you feel good.   They also had the fabulous illustrator from Spain, David Despau, illustrate photos of some of my landscapes.  I am honored.  It is in the summer issue of Garden Design: It is such a great magazine.  You can use this link to subscribe to garden Design and get your first issue free www/ gardendesign.com/ janjohnsen You can also order just this one issue here https://subscribe. gardendesign.com/store/#

On March 25, 1893, a gala dinner was held in honor of Daniel Burnham in Chicago. But when Burnham took the stage, he chose to honor someone else instead:  “Each of you knows the name and genius of him who stands first in the heart and confidence of American artists, the creator of your own parks and many other city parks...  —Frederick Law Olmsted.” Then he added:  “An artist, he paints with lakes and wooded slopes; with lawns and banks and forest-covered hills; with mountain sides and ocean views.  He should stand where I do tonight, not for the deeds of later years alone, but for what his brain has wrought and his pen has taught for half a century.”  A collective roar went up among those assembled. paraphrased from:   “ Genius of Place: The Life Of Frederick Law Olmsted”   by  Justin Martin