What I am doing at the moment -------

I have started a project which will involve a veg patch, wild garden, orchard, pond and wetland.

The photo below shows the plot before a spade has been lifted.

The 2012 Well Dressing

Its May day so it is time to dress those wells. This year I did Dingle Spring for the third year running. The theme was 'Celebration' however I opted not to go in the competition.

After some tidying up and raking out some of the stones in the bottom of the spring to show off more of the water, I planted some marigolds around the spring and made a basket out of turf suspended on hexapod (if there is such a word).

On the saturday I decided to spend some time at the spring. So I took a book and seat and had a lovely time meeting walkers and talking about the hills, wells and the water.

What I am thinking about at the moment -------

Applying Spacial Awareness to design

Putting it in to practice

Following on from my interest in the influence an artistic background has on garden design I have been consciously noticing how this aids me in putting together garden designs. Sometimes this is not done on paper or indeed in any formal way but just by being in the landscape is similar to being in the landscape of your mind when painting, in particular abstract painting.

There is a place in ones imagination which can be accessed in much the same way I imagine that the scuptures at Nazca in the Andian dessert were visioned. There has been a lot of conjecture on how these came to be there and I am only explaining how I would do it given such a desire to put a mark on the landscape. Using the skills that I use to get the essence of the landscape in my head while I am deciding what to put where and for what reason may be similar.

The image to right and immediatley below it are two aspects of a garden which is yet to be constructed. (More details can be found here). While surveying it for potential ideas I was walking the land to get a feel for the landscape it was in and to advise on the levels that the garden should take. I noticed that the house was at least 8 feet from the highest spot in the garden and the corner furthest away from the house was around 4 feet higher than the ground level of the house. I watched myself as I visioned the way in which the levels of the garden would interact with eachother.

Without thinking I had started to apply the same techniques that I apply to abstract painting to the lanscape in front of me. First I stand and look without apparently seeing anything. I am just putting the landscape into my head so that I can see it and be able to maniputate it. Secondly I am able to make fundamental decisions based on the lie of the land. In this way it is the landscape that is used as a stimulus for the design and then all changes are referenced back to it having taken into account all the subsequent changes and modifications or revisions. This process also takes into account the clients wishes as they are treated as another physical part of the landscape and not singularly abstract thoughts and conversations. Everytime an element is changed, added or taken away the new arrangement is referenced back to the landscape.

I found that I could see the landscape from above by extrapolating it into another plane much in the same way that a 3D program would do it, however abstract notions such as a clients wish for somewhere to sit and watch the world go by could be taken into consideration in the concept rather than in the design stage.

My view at the moment is that the 'referencing back to the landscape' is the same referencing that I do when I am painting. In figurative painting it is a reference to the form in front of me and in abstract painting it is to a recusive look at everything, in other words it references back to itself all the time.

I find that because I have done this 'looking' for a long time a presume that everyone does the same thing. On talking to several people I find this is not the case.