The Art of Gardening

By Ron Dieter, Sunnyfield Greenhouse & Gardens

   Unless you live in an apartment or condo, you probably have to care for the landscape that embraces your abode. If you’re like me, you probably enjoy selecting trees, shrubs and flowers and setting them out around the place, arranging them to suit your fancy. But I’ll bet you never considered the fact that what you are really doing is creating art.

   Just as the painter uses color, texture and form to create a pleasing picture, you, as a gardener, follow the same principles, consciously or not, to create a landscape pleasing to the viewer. With careful attention to these artistic elements, the gardener creates a living picture. I suppose it’s only natural that many beautiful gardens are the works of painters. Claude Monet’s Giverny comes to mind.

   Hugh Johnson, in his book, Principles of Gardening, writes about gardening as art. He proposes that it is much easier to create art with paint and canvas than with living plants. Artists using palettes and paints do not contend with bugs, wind, heat, drought, and winter-kill. What’s more, paint and canvas are static. Once painted, a picture does not change. The paints do not move around on the canvas or disappear and re-appear. They don’t change colors and the picture is mostly unaffected by the room in which it hangs. When the artist completes his picture, his work is done.

   Not so for you, the gardener. To create a beautiful garden picture you need not only artistic talents, but considerable horticultural skills as well. You must in effect control nature to create and maintain your garden art. Plants overgrow their allotted space. Flowers fade. Seasons change. Slugs appear to make lace of broadcloth leaves. We won’t even mention weeds, insects, diseases, and weather.

   Not long ago I had the opportunity to visit some of the famous gardens around London, England. These are the gardens featured in our favorite magazines and books--Sissinghurst, Great Dixter, Hidcote Manor, and Barnsley House, to name a few. They are perfect examples of garden art, even more stunning in the flesh, or should I say, in the leaf, than they are in pictures.

   But my visit there gave me a much greater appreciation for the gardens of the Midwest. Mother Nature is kind to the English gardener. She does not persecute him with severe heat and humidity, for example. While I was there the locals were complaining about the heat (the temperature was approaching eighty degrees). Sixties and seventies are the summer norm for these gardens. Most public buildings don’t have air conditioning and the windows have no screens. Rain showers are frequent and there is not much wind, just a gentle breeze now and then. The words "continuous spring" accurately describe the weather in southeast England. If you can’t grow beautiful plants in this environment, you might as well throw in the trowel.

   To create a beautiful garden here in the Midwest requires not only an artistic bent, but also considerable determination and gardening skill. Besides the ravages of winter, the Midwest gardener must contend with the intense summer heat and humidity. Garden plants such as Alcemilla, which look fresh and vibrant in English gardens most of the summer, look pretty ragged and stressed here by the end of June.

   So the next time you’re surveying your beautiful garden, pat yourself on the back. A lovely Midwest garden is a real accomplishment. And when you go to work in the your garden, maybe you’ll need more than boots and a straw hat to look the part. I think a smock and beret would be appropriate too. After all, you’re creating art!