I have a very dear friend whom I have known since my early twenties.  We have shared a very on and an extended off,  and then intensely on again relationship- over a good many years.  She is an artist, and a very fine one at that.  No one would argue that point, but her.  We are arguing that point right now, as she is unsatisfied with her paintings.  I am squarely positioned to be a resonating gong-I reject the entire idea of being a sounding board.  Sounding boards tend to absorb and muffle trouble.  I would want to amplify everything she says to me.  Sometimes it is hard to hear something until it gets really loud.  I hope I reflect her notes loud enough that she relocates her muse.

I understand something about her issue.  I have days I cannot design.  I have projects that I stare at until I am blue in the face, and nothing comes.  I know when I am tired or blocked-I have this instinct to repeat myself. Or the even more dangerous-the instinct to repeat someone else.  I have places in my own garden that embarass me-that makes me angry.  There are those times when frustration and pressure threatens to dictate a result I will not be able to stand behind with pride. Creativity cannot be summoned.  I find I need to hover over it, and give it space.  Pressure from within and without nudges my muse.  This is as much as I can tell you about my process.  My friend is much different than I.  Her muse responds to a music she makes. I would not be able to hear it, or see it,  but for her.  I cannot really help her; I can only be her friend. This is a courtship involving two, and 2 alone.      

What makes my friend such a fine artist is how she views her work dispassionately, critically.  Her critical, emotionally charged eye is too much better than 20-20.  I am very sure she will be able to figure out how to reconfigure that critical eye of hers into a brush loaded with paint poised over a piece of paper.  Any emotionally charged thought transformed into a physical expression-that’s what I would call creativity.  These things get expressed straight from the heart. 

How does any of the aforementioned relate to a gardener, and their garden?  Every gardener has their own special set of circumstances.  Their own particular likes and dislikes.  Their own particular point of view.  Their own particular muse.  No gardener has any need to do over what someone else has already done.  No gardener needs to repeat what they have seen, read, or visited.  Modern communications makes it possible to see thousands of images of other people’s gardens.  Other people’s work.  Other people’s ideas.  One of the most satisfying parts of owning a garden is the secure knowledge that it belongs to you.  This has to do with an authenticity, an integrity of place.  One of the toughest part of designing for others is to take the time to know enough about the client that their point of view comes first.  The toughest part of designing for yourself is understanding that the voices of others represent those others-not you.  Turn on your own channel, and see what’s playing.  Everyone has days when all that appears on the screen is static, but sooner or later something is bound to click.  I have had friends tell me that the experience of walking a labyrinth is the equivalent of turning on one’s own channel.  When I am unsure about what move to make, I walk the garden over and over again, until everything extraneous drops away, and I can hear or see what I need to do, or what direction I need to go.  Of course one’s taste changes, and gardens revolve around that change.  Are you laboring under the misconception that you lack taste, or creativity?  It comes standard issue, unless you bury it somewhere, or turn the volume off.    

As for my friend, I do not worry.  She feels a need for change, but has no idea what form that change will take.  She is not satisfied with what she has already done-good for her.  I am happy for her angst. Bravo. She wants her own work, better than she thought she could have it.  This alone puts her ahead of where she is now.

Somewhere last week I read that there may be a particle that moves faster than the speed of light.  Be assured that I did not read this in some well regarded physics journal-this was in the news.  I am not a scientist-I am a gardener, an afficianado of the natural world.  I do not have a PhD in biology, chemistry, physics, horticulture, geology, medicine, nutrition, medicine, anthropology, soil science, marine biology, architecture, entomology, design, astronomy, engineering-you get the idea.  I am a person who designs and plants, and am delighted with that process. But back to the speed of light.   I learned enough in high school and college physics to understand that a whole body of knowledge revolving around Einstein’s theory of relativity has resulted in a theory of the universe that I accept as the truth.  I not only believe that nothing else travels faster than the speed of light, I think it is the truth.

What happens when new information throws what I believe to be the truth out like so much trash?  I make every effort to never approach that moment.  By this I mean I treat most everything I hear or read as either a statement of the moment, or an opinion.  There are very few absolute truths, or absolutely right ways to do things. I believe in a lot of things.  That does not necessarily make them true.       

  I do have lots of opinions.  What plants I like the best.  What soil composition I think is the best.  How best I think deciduous shrubs and roses should be pruned.  How container plants should be planted, watered, staked and groomed.  I have opinions about what is beautiful and striking.  I have opinions about level ground, private spaces, driveway design, trees of note, hard surfaces, property ownership, screening.  All of my writings are about my opinion-not in any way about the truth.  Determining the facts takes a lot of time, effort and thought.  You can take 100 facts relevant to any topic-do they all mesh into one coherent statement one could take as the truth?  Not usually.  After all the facts are in, there still may be no truth to be had.  My Mom was a scientist.  For all her love of science, and the scientific process, she believed that a scientific understanding the nature of life could never be achieved.  That the only truth one could count on is that that life is a miracle.   

Moving towards the truth takes more time than my lifetime will be long.  If that researcher who found a particle that moves faster than the speed of light is correct, then what I have believed to be true about the universe for some 60 odd years means is just plain wrong.  This is not an unusual predicament-new information comes to light all the time.  Some issues circumvent any discussion of the truth;  gardeners have lots of ideas about what works best.  A lot of methods work.  Every gardening situation is specific to a place, an environment, and a gardener.  By this I mean that every gardener should trust their own experience.  Looking for a new take on your old issue-read; study up.  My essays are about what works and doesn’t work-for me.  How other people choose to garden is their own privilege, and business.  I have a good friend and client who planted an extensive vegetable garden under an ancient oak.  Did I try to dissuade him of this?  No.  I wouldn’t have planted a vegetable garden there.  But that said, I am not privy to the truth about vegetable gardening-all I have is my opinion.  What need would there be for me to insist that he think like me?  Not incidentally, it was amazing how much food came out of that garden.  This is but one low key example of how things happen in nature in spite of what I believe to be true. The truth of the matter is up to someone else.   

 The truth of the matter is more about what might be observed in nature, and more rarely about what people say.    If you are interested in a better life for you and your garden, read extensively, and garden even more.  Consider there may be a particle that moves faster than the speed of light whenever you think you have gardening down pat.  What truly moves faster than the speed of light-your ability to put your own good sense to use.    What moves faster than the speed of life?  Nothing.

Someone once said that the definition of an expert is someone from out of town.  I prefer local, if that works.  I have several clients with conservatories that were made in England, and shipped over.  Crews came with those structures, to install them.  They were truly beautifully made; the installations superb.  But as with a furnace, a dishwasher, a car or a table saw, every beautifully made expensive thing sooner or later needs adjustment, service, or maintenance.  Having a serviceman come from England is impractical for lots of reasons.  I have dealt with Tanglewood Conservatories in Maryland.  They build beautiful glass houses; a consult on a problem is entirely within reach.  But given the choice, a conservatory built by a company within 50 miles of me would be ideal.  Should there be no one, I will consult an expert from out of town.  

I have been the expert from out of town.  I have done cut flowers and decor for parties, weddings, and events.  I have landscaped in parts of the country other than my own.  Working out of town is a challenge.  For cut flowers, my supplier will fly material to me.  This usually works fine.  Except for the Casa Blanca lilies.  They take days to open.  I drove them to West Virginia with me, 5 days ahead of the event. 20 buckets of lilies in my Suburban was more perfume than I ever want to experience again. The day I realized that 2500 roses had been flown to Charleston, South Carolina instead of Charleston, West Virginia, was one of the most hair raising days of my entire career.  I owe it all to a trucker that I promised the freight charge plus 500.00 that I got my flowers trucked to me in time for the party.  Why so many roses?  We were recreating the Stork Club from the 1940’s.  Once I have my flowers, I may need supplies.  When I am out of town, I do not know where the closest hardware store might be, or a place to get sandwiches for lunch.  Nowadays, computers have made that sort of trouble easy to solve. Invariably party and event venues are staffed with people who would vastly prefer a local person who knows the ropes.  They have a point.  I am a time consuming nuisance, not knowing where the loading dock is, or the restroom, or the kitchen. 

I have designed and trucked landscape materials to a number of cities and states other than my own for installation.  I have designed projects in other states that I did not install-but only those states in which my horticulture would stand. That said, I do no landscape work out of my zone, or a zone similar to mine. I have turned down work in California, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Florida.  I may be an expert, but I have no expertise whatsoever about plants in those areas. The first thing anyone has a right to expect from an expert is expertise.   In California, I would be a design expert- sans expertise.   

This past week I got an SOS from a client in Toronto.  He had engaged an expert pool company to design and install a pool in his backyard. So far, so good.  I am not sure how it happened that the pool company came to design the landscape to go with.  I understand the big idea.  Dealing with one person over a pool, a terrace, the landscape, the irrigation and lighting sounds great.  The fact of the matter is that a person expert in designing and building pools may not be a good choice for a landscape designer.  As Rob put it, if you need to have heart surgery, you need a team.  An internist, a nursing staff, a heart surgeon, an anesthesiologist-and who knows who else.  For sure you do not want your anesthesiologist performing your heart surgery.

Landscape in no way mirrors the life and death situation of a serious surgery.  But my client’s pool contractor did what he knew best; he paved the entire back yard save for 4  2′ wide strips around the perimeter.  All that paving will be blazing hot and glaringly uncomfortable, come next summer.  The paved yard has all the charm of a parking lot.  He specified at least 15 different species for the few square feet left for plants.  I spent the weekend redesigning the landscape, much of which involves sawcutting concrete.  The landscape design as it was drawn would have been impossible to like, and impossible to maintain. 

This expert in pool design and installation has no expertise in landscape design that I can see.  He did not have the good sense to say no to my client.  It will not be easy for him to remove some of what he just paid to have installed-but better to deal with it right now, than deal with the consequences next year.   Almost every field is so complicated and requires so much knowledge-very few people are expert in multiple fields.  I do not design sprinkler systems, or lighting.  I defer to Gillette pools when I design how a hot tub will look.  I am not an expert in drain fields.  I cannot cook, sew, play the clarinet, or hang wallpaper.   If you should ask for any of this from me, chances are excellent that I will recommend someone local with expertise.

Needing to start over is one of my least favorite states of being.  I would do just about anything to avoid it.  It is a tough go to face down a chunk of  time, a lot of effort and materials that got paid for- invested in a plan that comes to no good.  A discouraging turn of events doesn’t indicate a need to start over.  I have had plants take a turn for the worse, that I managed to turn around. Plenty of times I have been faced with a poorly placed tree that I managed to make work with a new bed that made the placement of that tree seem intentional.  Replacing plants that die is not starting over.  Plants die all the time, for any number of reasons, many of which are beyond my control.  Replacing plants dead plants is part of a good maintenance program.  Spots that need a new start usually have to do with a poor choice of plant material, or poor placement.  The 7 years I spent trying to get a large patch of Helleborus Argutifolius to thrive is a testament to my dread of starting over.  The blackened stems and leaves, the distorted flower buds that very first spring was all the proof I needed that my climate is just too cold for this plant.  It took another 6 springs just like the first one before I finally tore them all out, and started over.  What was I thinking, living with that bad choice so many years?  I did not want to start over. 

I am not the only gardener with this problem.  I have a neighbor with a hedge of burning bush planted between the garage wall, and the walk to the back door.  I would say the space might be 3 feet wide.  They were probably 18″ tall when they they were planted.  They want to be 8′ tall and 8′ wide now.  This is their natural mature size.   She spends hours in the spring hacking them back to bare branches, and more hours all summer long further heading them back.  She’s got to know she should tear them out, and start over.  They are so large, it would take four men and a front end loader to properly dig and move them.  I would chop them down, save the branches for my winter pots, and dig out the stumps-and start over.  How the euonymus are pruned to fit the space has produced a look less than pretty.  The interior of each plant is sticks; the layer of leaves on the top and sides is very thin.  There are no leaves at the bottom.  They look terrible, not through any fault of their own.  A hedge of burning bush with plenty of room to grow wide and tall is robustly branchy in the winter, and fiery red in the fall.  Big growing shrubs need a lot of space to grow into what they do best.  What’s wrong here is a gardener who does not want to start over.

 I had a meeting with a client yesterday.  She tells me it is very difficult for her to pitch any plant.  Gardeners are devoted to keeping plants alive, right?  If you grow daylilies or bearded iris, you divide when the clumps are no longer producing well.  Some gardeners leave the divisions they cannot replant at the curb, with a please help yourself sign.  This is a good way to distribute the plants you have no room for.  I have a friend whose driveway is packed every summer with perennials, shrubs and trees in pots.  She and her husband are devoted plant collectors.  She has a large property; when the summer weather cools off, she plants.  When the perennials outgrow their space, she divides, or transplants.  Half the fun of a garden is moving things around, doing better by the plants. This is not starting over-this is fine tuning. 

This scheme does not work so well with large growing suckering shrubs.  It can be a monumental task to dig one with a sufficient rootball that it could survive the transplant process.  Moving it to a new location is another issue all together.  Setting it at the proper height for planting is yet another job.  My crews move plants all the time.  Watching the incredible effort and care that this takes, I think three times before I plant one in the ground.  Moving an established shrub is a major undertaking-both for you, and the plant.  I would suggest that the planning part of planting is a step you don’t want to skip. Have I ever skipped the planning part?  Sure, plenty of times.  Have I made mistakes?   Many more than you have, I promise.  From all the experience I have had with failure, I can assure you that once you overcome the “gravity” of your situation, a better garden is within your grasp.