To help find the answers, I reviewed three gardens I created for clients during the last 10 years. To meet her vision, we first enclosed her site using simple cedar fencing that we softened with layers of plantings, from taller cedars and cryptomeria, to shorter mountain laurels, rhododendron, and hollies, to low-growing junipers, azaleas, and spireas that edged the shoreline of the little river we created. This recirculating stream includes a small waterfall, rocky watercourse, and pool. Mosses cover the ground, except where steppingstones offer the visitor a journey throughout the diminutive site, across bridges to a water basin, past a Japanese lantern, to a wooden chaise lounge, and up a narrow terrace and steps that marry garden to house. Magnolias, cherries, and dogwoods bloom throughout the spring, iris and hosta flower during the summer, and Japanese maples turn brilliant hues in the fall.
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.