Imagined scalar “landscapes” superpositioned over an actual landscape.
Shortly before I started my PhD, I became very interested in gardens. To garden designers, plants that go into a new garden are called “materials.”
At the time, I was designing a garden and needed to know the materials that would be used. I studied the names of recommended plants and began to familiarize myself with their unique qualities.
I began to think of the garden as a kind of dynamic painting, where the materials each possess spatial/geometric properties, a growth habit, environmental preferences, and pairing preferences. Gardens also change over time: plants mature and move around. Before I knew what an energy landscape was, I imagined a literal landscape with invisible layers guiding the assembly of these many choices into some agreeable configuration.
Today, I fantasize about a database that would enable the selection of plant materials and a particle-based simulation that would assist in designing successful planting compositions. How do active plant mixtures evolve and equilibrate? Does this agree with what we find in nature? Maybe such a tool could generate some interesting and pleasurable solutions.
Living with a garden for several years now, I also think about the blurriness in planting design, where we can describe where plants are only by probabilities, likely with some memory of where it was, and some ‘idea’ of where it wants to go.
An unruly simulation — a bug — encountered when trying to pack soft, 2D boundaries inside a space that would represent plant groups. This has no importance other than it makes me laugh.
In the meantime, here are some curated pictures of my garden(s) as they have existed since ~2018.
Deschampsia caespitosa 'Goldtau’
Shade garden in late spring: Deschampsia caespitosa 'Goldtau’ with Astilbe and Persicaria.
Iris sibirica 'Caesar's Brother’ with a peony bud in late spring.
Shade garden in spring: Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold’ with Amsonia tabernaemontana, Deschampsia caespitosa 'Goldtau’, and Geranium maculatum.
The front garden in late spring: Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna’, Briza media, Veronica, Perovskia atriplicifolia 'Little Spire', Calamintha nepeta, Eryngium yuccifolium, Baptisia, Coreopsis verticillata 'Zagreb’ (and a man and a Puli).
Echinacea in the “cheerful garden”… it just works.
Summer front garden: Eryngium yuccifolium and Agastache x 'Black Adder’
Fall ‘main’ garden: Amsonia hubrichtii, Aconitum
Front garden In fall frost: some low-growing geraniums that were on the property before I arrived.
Maple tree and mysterious, floating fog in the fall.
Wisteria going nuts in the spring.
Spring shade garden: Amsonia tabernaemontana and Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold’
Front dry sunny garden: lavender and geranium (both here on the property before I arrived, but moved around) with Nassella tenuissima.
Echinacea with Veronicastrum virginicum (and a mugwort weed)
I am fascinated by New Jersey’s aggressive vine culture. In winter, it’s easy enough to pick them out. Here we have a common orgy of invasive Japanese honeysuckle, something that was introduced to me as “snake vine”, and beloved poison ivy.
Invasive yellow irises were removed from the banks of the small pond with a backhoe, forming a mountaain of long plant fibers and wet, clay-laden mud. This struck me as an impressively resilient (and abundant) composite material.
Maple tree and hay field in the wintertime at sunset.
Very tall Eutrochium and some woody perennials, plus a falling-down wooden footbridge that spans the spillway connecting the small pond to the big one — all here before I arrived.
Viburnum looking like white clouds with the hayfield in the background. This cluster of bushes is nicknamed “the UFO” due to its size, shape, and alien-like presence.
Amsonia hubrichtii and Penstemon 'Dark Towers’
Just a cool, frozen pothole
It turns out that gardening is about 80% discouraging growth by weeding and pruning and cutting back, and 20% digging holes. Here I get started in the early spring with dividing irises: first by digging them up, ‘digging’ them apart, and then digging new holes for the divided plants.
Massive snapping turtle on the “new beach” in the spring with new plantings of Iris and Lobelia siphilitica.
Ratibida pinnata (yellow flowers) gets very tall and has this carefree, silly disposition if that’s possible for a plant. Geranium Rozanne (purple flowers) has a broad, lowish, vine-like crawling habit, but is equally attractive and goofy in the garden. It blooms all summer in a striking color that’s best appreciated in person. The small pond is in the background behind the magnolia tree. Also pictured are Amsonia, Hakonechloa macra, Geranium maculatum, Deschampsia caespitosa 'Goldtau’, Allium 'Summer Beauty', Echinacea (just budding), some ancient, unremarkable variety of daylily, a sprig of Perovskia, and Sesleria autumnalis grass.
Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Red Head’, garden phlox, Eryngium yuccifolium, Echinops, and Pycnanthemum muticum in summer.
Hay, poison ivy, and weeds in June.
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Many thanks to Britney O’Donnell, Benjamin Santiago, and Brian Parker and their teams for their expertise and help over the years.
