A client broached the topic.  “I am afraid I have tunnel vision about my landscape, and I even don’t know it”.  She made me laugh. That is an oxymoron if I ever heard one; I told her.   If the words were coming out, the idea had already taken hold.  It says a lot about a certain kind of good design process that she would even consider the pitfalls of  tunnel vision.  It is worth worrying about-no question.  Ranking right up there with sheets that have been on the bed one too many days,  every gardener needs to think about what it would be, how it could  be better, to make a change or two.  Do new. Prune up, remove, take a new direction-get fresh.  Think about what it would mean not to have something. I have an old, big, and not good looking maple on my driveway. What is left of a crown that has been greatly thinned by scald and maple decline, does not screen any untoward view.  What would it be like to cut that thing down, and put a sculpture on the trunk that has been left really high?  As I view the tree from my Romeo and Juliet balcony, a tall trunk and sculpture might be striking. Pleasing.  Better than what I look at now.

 Am I a victim of my own tunnel vision?  The tree was fairly mature the day I moved in 15 years ago, albeit in better condition than it is now.  If its always been there, does that prove it should always be there? Getting fresh can be plenty scary, especially when it involves taking down a tree.  But sometimes a tree is just one of God’s biggest weeds. Just because something is big, doesn’t make it precious. I would never take down a healthy  tree on a whim; I would rather design around it, or showcase it.  It is a case of tunnel vision, though, when you can’t see that some trees are just weeds.

Tunnel vision is as common as a dandelion in a lawn.  Don’t worry if you have them every so often. Start to worry when your one dandelion is starting to colonize.  I have a neighbor who has thrown his Christmas tree in his back yard for the past two years.  Now he has 3 little dead magnolias he put in, and didn’t water; they are still in the ground.  And later, plastic pots on their sides have the skeletons of  dead plants in them.  A decaying rowboat makes another statement.  He somehow got the idea his back yard was a place for refuse; now it has become a refuse dump.   Never mind him; my Princeton Gold maples are screening that mess from my view.  But if you come to some day,  and find you have tunnel vision colonies, get the best professional help you can find. 

I am the first to admit that I am my own worst enemy in my yard.  I have a thing about history in a garden.  I have two old Palabin lilacs on standard that I inherited; their heads must be 8 feet in diameter.  I have always barked underneath them-why?  Because that has been their history.  I know there are plenty of times I would give anything for a good designer to shake me.  Even when I do get it, from Buck, or a friend, I still can be stubborn about holding on to what has always been for dear life.  The process of change is not really that charming. 

I lived in my house for 6 years doing nothing except watering, and barking the beds I inherited.  It finally occurred to me that no matter how busy I was, if I were going to get a garden made in what lifetime I had left, I had better get moving. The best thing about sponsoring a garden tour to benefit the Greening of Detroit was raising 12,000.00 for them.  The second best thing was hearing people tell me they were inspired to ditch the blinders, and take on a project that had been been staring at them for a good while.  As I like to be encouraged too, this felt good.

In my dreams, I would throw off the constraints of my history, I would entertain new ideas;  I would embrace the unknown. I would research.  I would stop fussing, and look at things from a different angle, or in different light.  I would learn, digest, and make plans.  I would fume, and come up to grade like a firecracker that just got its fuse lit.  

Every day I ask my clients to give up the ideas they have had about their landscapes for a new and fresh idea.  Old landscapes may need some chopping, some rearranging.  and some re-orienting, I tell them. There are those places that only a bulldozer can rescue.  Or places that need more lawn, or a thorough cleanup.  I am familiar with their shock.   My clients put up with plenty from me; I know  first hand that feeling of dread and distaste that comes along with knowing there needs to be some changes made.  But in truth, a little change can be like a new sparkplug for your gardening engine.

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Every year I try my best to wrap up my spring season by the 4th of July, so I can enjoy my holiday. This sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it?  I came close enough this year to feel like I could spend a little time at home.  This sounds reasonable as well, doesn’t it?   But there I was, prowling my garden, making mental notes of all the things that need to be done, and wincing about all the things that are not  right. This critique part borders on nuts and I rarely make any decisions under this kind of duress.   It’s a miracle I have a garden at all.  Too big a block of time at home can spell trouble on what should be a relaxing day. 

 For me to have six uninterrupted hours of time in my garden over two days is the equivalent of no small amount of rocket fuel igniting under my obsession with gardening.  As I am expounding to Buck about how one section of taxus densiformis needs to be flat on one side, and concave on the other, he interrupts with a withering and sardonic look and announces he is going in to read a little before he takes a nap.  So all afternoon I am out there fretting, sweating and scheming like I have ten minutes to live.   Trying to decide if I prune one lower leaf off a single Princeton Gold maple, will the overall effect of the mass of them be better.  No kidding.  That’s what I was doing.  I finally got worn out with all this milling around,  laid down in the grass, and laughed my fool head off.  I design for clients with equanimity all the time; when I go home, I get so out of hand.

The British would have you believe there is a World Series of Gardening.  Thank God I don’t live there, or I would apply for a spot at Chelsea every year. I might need medication, were my proposal turned down.  The Chelsea Garden Show is a vetted extravaganza every year at the end of May. Gardeners all over this country talk about it.   Designs are approved, and built. A huge effort is made by lots of people.  The Queen attends;  gold and silver and whatever medals are passed out, and the place is mobbed for the duration of the show.  I say “show”, as they are not really gardens.  They are not even reasonable facsimiles of a garden, as they don’t exist long enough for nature to administer her exams.  The show is however great garden theatre;  people seem to enjoy it thoroughly-especially the competition part.

When I am of sane mind, I know there is no World Series except in baseball.  There did come a day when I realized the world did not revolve around me, and that there would be no list in horticulture heaven listing the top ten gardens of all time,  which would hopefully have one of my gardens near the top of the list. Some time later I realized I would never make a garden which would be perfect in every regard.   (Incidentally, I had no plan for what I would do with myself after that garden was finished. Nor did I understand there is no such thing in a garden as “finished”)  I did finally figure out that aesthetic evolution is not a bus ride from A to B.  Great work could be found everywhere and anywhere, and nothing is better than good company.  Shocking.  In other words, I finally grew up.

It takes next to nothing for me to get out of hand when a garden hangs in the balance, but I do have some grace as an adult.  I am truly garden-obsessed, but thankfully not persistently self-obsessed.  There may be those who think otherwise, but they have not seen me rolling in the grass in my garden, laughing at the funniest self I have ever seen.

Good design is about a whole host of things-but money isn’t one of them.  Martha Stewart has built an empire teaching how to take an idea, strip away all the Chanel materials that the cool given idea is all dressed up in, and explain the idea for what it is.   Once there is understanding of a concept,  it can be rebuilt with a different kind of dress-a recycled dress, a dress from JCPenny, or a dress from a thrift shop. Or from materials in the back of your garage;  wonder of wonders, a homemade dress.  I greatly admire her for this-it is no mean accomplishment. She teaches-this is my idea of an extremely important job.  She has made a life making good design accessible to lots of people in all kinds of neighborhoods, states, regions,  and countries.  She is able to take an idea, and break it down such that it makes sense to a very broad range of people.  This is a rare gift. 

Any gardener can understand the fancy dress idea.   We have all seen landscapes installed in our neighborhoods in airless, gooey, and certainly not improved clay soil- topdressed with some good looking black earth that makes everything look like it is planted in the most fabulously plant friendly soil on the planet.  We’ve all seen new plants dropped into pots for a special event the day before.  We’ve also seen the urban property with an allee of trees as if it were a 80 acre estate expecting a visit from Louis the Fourteenth.  Topdressing is a concept every gardener understands-for good, or for ill.

A case in point;  for years Rob would build his bamboo stake/galvanized wire tomato cages for clients.  He would position the 4 bamboo stakes outward from the rootball of the tomato, and wrap from stake to adjoining stake hoops of galvanized wire from the Depot.  His hoops had no kinks.  The hoop-swoops were wide at the top, and tight at the bottom-perfect for that indeterminate tomato growing taller, and wider at the top,  by the day.  At some point, he was despairing of the long lineup of his hand-fashioned hoops for which he had requests.  So we designed an acid washed steel tomato cage-in a perfectly widening sequence 0f hoops, and had them built.  They cost two hundred and umpteen dollars-but anyone can come in, buy one, and load it in their trunk.  For the person who does not have the idea to spend the umpteen dollars for our formal version of his hand worked tomato cage, I apologize that we are not a teacher the caliber of Martha Stewart. But we can try to teach how to create the bamboo stake-wire cage-just ask.

Understand that I had my own Martha Stewart moment-like countless other people.  I built a croquembouche exactly to her specifications-but my attempt to create the ultra thin sugar hair that was due to go over that tower of  profiteroles like a cloud, only coated my entire kitchen-top to bottom- with a congealed sugar mess.  I thought for two days afterwards I would just have to move-then I cleaned for another two days.  The lesson here-don’t be deterred by an unsuccessful first attempt.  Make another.

A garden I truly admire has a formal, and short grass  path to a very handsome and overscaled gate.  This path is edged on each side with a very long, very thin rectangle of steel edger strip, infilled with fine gravel.  It is a detail which is incredibly beautiful.  It marks the path so elegantly. This detail says, this way to the rose garden-welcome.   But that steel rectangle some 9 feet long by 6 inches wide-who knows what that dress cost- could be reproduced with a single length of 4″ by 6″ pressure treated lumber, set on its wide edge.  This would be a dress of a different sort, but you would still catch your breath, seeing it.   Another gardener would interpret these long spare path edges with hens and chicks contained with aluminum edger.  Yet another gardener would dig a dirt ditch 6 inches wide, and call it a day. 

If you need design help, figure out who can teach you.