Winter is lovely, because the garden has good form that blankets beautifully in the snow. The second, even smaller, garden is a brightly hued perennial garden in a wooded suburb of Boston. There, I wanted to push the property out into the sun to allow the owner to have flowers all around her. I also wanted to create a garden room for conversation, entertaining, and dining, and to provide a special amenity, in this case a garden swing where one could look out and over the conservation land below. In both these gardens, it was important to define what the owners wanted, and then find the means to best attain their goals.
Most people begin a garden without such a clear sense of purpose and design strategy.
Having a mission statement like the ones we defined for these clients will, in the end, save you time, energy, and money and, when your backyard landscape is complete, give you a tremendous sense of satisfaction. In this small terrace garden, handsome ledges had been covered by overgrown juniper bushes. All that needed to be done was remove them, uncover the attractive natural rock forms beneath, and bring in small-scale plantings to give the effect of a mountainscape in miniature. For this, I used mosses, Japanese junipers, small-leafed azaleas, heathers, and spireas. An old pond and fountain were reworked so that they became focal features.