Design

The front of our current house presents a very long surface to the road, having been added onto twice by attaching rooms to the side. It faces the most level land to be found on the entire ten acres, the front lawn. And yet, the house does not relate to its surrounding. When we moved [...]

The Secret Garden is a path through the woods along the side creek on our property. (See map at the end of this article.) The creek comes under the road through a culvert and then drops several feet to the creek bed below. I refer to this as the waterfall, which may sound a tad [...]

Gardening experience, for the most part, is accrued bit by bit, as decisions are made to do this chore before the other, plants die and we know why--or we don't--and mental notes are made about what is blooming when. But every so often, the gardener has an epiphany, a light bulb moment. These milestones represent [...]

One year ago today, my family and I moved into our new home. As I mentioned previously, the former owners did a great job renovating the house, but the landscaping was safe and boring. I spent the winter looking out windows and imagining what I'd like to see there. I wondered if there were spring [...]

A couple of years ago, I told you to choose your fall-planted bulb locations now, when the snow is just beginning to melt. Of course, it helps to have snow. We finally got some, and I thought you'd like to know I'm following my own advice. I went around the yard, camera in hand, taking [...]

Herbert Butterfield's essay (The Whig Interpretation of History) was an attack on liberal triumphalism [i.e., the 'Whig interpretation']…Whig history purveyed a concept of progress as the central theme of English history…It has become common among historians to speak of 'whig history' for any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the [...]

I just read an interview with Piet Oudolf in the New York Times about designing a garden for winter. I was glad to see he was asked, "What do you do if you live in an area with much snow?" His answer was less than satisfying. When the snow comes down dry, it doesn’t flatten [...]

The garden rule I broke today is: Don't plant flowers in a straight line. And I did it for a very good reason: I wanted a straight line. I've looked at the scene above for many years, and frequently thought to myself how much better it would be to have that swath of daffodils swing [...]

Maureen and I spent the first weekend of October in Pittsford, a suburb of Rochester, NY. We did the usual things that starry-eyed visitors do, going to a Wegman’s store, where the range and quality of merchandise in a giant super-market made me feel that I was still living in the nineteenth-century, and whose theatrical, [...]