Tanya Hockley and I are standing in my front yard, and she doesn't like what's here. "What I see is wasted potential," she says. "There's no plan." The back doesn't get off any better: the borders are too skinny, she points out, the shrubby thing we've been nurturing is apparently a plum-tree seedling destined to suffer leaf rot, and the concrete pavers leading from the back door to the alley just plain suck.
She's right, and I'm grateful for the feedback. Hockley is a garden designer with 20 years' self-employment, and she's come to demonstrate what it is, exactly, that clients ask of her and her team of gardeners and landscapers. The tour takes a couple of hours, and during that time she identifies a number of mysterious plants, tries to puzzle out what the original landscapers could have been thinking, and commiserates over how much previous tenants have let the outside go.
Although we've only been in the house for a few months, we've been busy, and generally she approves of our triage. In particular, Hockley is glad to hear how compulsively I've rooted out all the invasive and seemingly immortal morning glory. I've already filled two hefty bags with the weed, but should be prepared to do the whole scorched-earth approach again in the spring, she says; even a trace of root left in the earth can regenerate. (In other yards, she's installed metal flashing--the angled sheet metal that protects roof joints--beneath the topsoil. It's cheap, cuttable with tin snips, and impermeable. In one memorable case, she buried two parallel strips, 40 centimetres apart, along the fence between a yard and the neighbour's. Hockley is a big believer in hardware stores and lateral thinking.)
All the weeds have been of some use, however, she says. They protect the ground, like mulch, and are excellent for moving nutrients through the soil. Hockley's background in biology and botany shows here as she explains the science. Is there more I should be doing to boost the dirt's growing power? This leads to a whole discussion of winterizing. She tells me to hold off pruning (I'm not really sure what's staying and what's going), but advocates thinning the leaves off the lawn. (They can go, bit by bit, into the compost between now and spring.) A quick trip through the mower will help what's left break down faster as mulch. As City of Vancouver print ads have been reminding us all autumn, there's no reason to rake and bag clippings and leaves.
The main activity for winter, though, is reading and planning. Hockley recommends the design books of John Brookes, so I pick up Garden Masterclass (Dorling Kindersley, $59.95), the only one of his at my local shop. It's expensive, but compared to the $300 I dropped in one frenzied hour at Southlands Nursery (hey, there was a 30-percent-off sale), it's okay. Brookes writes clear, intelligent prose about the underlying principles of gardens, putting modern preferences into historical context. Although there's an emphasis on grand estates, he takes pains to draw connections to small and suburban plots.
"There has to be a framework when you are evolving a design," he writes. "I take it from the proportions of the house which the garden surrounds. If you don't, the scale of elements in the garden may look at odds with the scale of the house, or bits of it." Hockley agrees, pointing out that there's no visual relationship between the dominant element of my house's front façade--the double doors--and the shapes and sizes of the various elements that make up the yard. She likens the ideal garden design to that of medieval cathedrals, where every architectural form was in ratio. If the doors are two metres wide, the beds should be the same; their pinched 20 centimetres contribute to the sense of anxiety that comes from spending time in the yard.
Hockley encourages me to plan for three dimensions. "Think of it as a theme park," and there Brookes also agrees. "If your site is flat, try to create extra visual interest by introducing a change of level. Just a single step running across a garden can make a huge difference." He demonstrates the drastic improvement planning can make with varied renderings of yard space around the same house façade; graph paper and a good eraser--or, if you're up for it, a digital camera and PhotoShop--have their place over the winter planning months.
Another project for the fallow season is field trips. Visit VanDusen Botanical Garden, Hockley advises, or, better yet, UBC Botanical Garden, where plants are given room and freedom to grow to their full size. Unless I want to be clipping every few weeks, I should experience them in their natural state. Study labels, sketch, take photos--it all adds to the arsenal of information for spring, when nursery stocks replenish and the soil is ready for planting. (For nurseries, she encourages clients to drive. "The further east you go up the valley, the cheaper the plants are.") By then, I will have measured the whole garden, decided on focal points, sketched alterations, made scale-model plans, and chosen families of plants I like. I'll have seen the way the light falls, chosen favourite corners to lavish care on, got to know the neighbours (she believes in tying gardens together--"borrowed landscape"--to double your visual bang), worked fresh soil in, reckoned our budget, and bought a wheelbarrow. Just in time to harvest that next crop of morning glory.
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