C-O-D-E-R-E-D

Archive for May, 2010

Another of my friends who is a home enthusiast, Luna Herr, lives in a Spanish U-shaped adobe house atop an inland California foothill. Red tile roof, Terra-cot ta courtyard, and semiarid foliage create an exotic aura. But to the rear, adjacent to the pen pasturing Sigmund the Goat, Luna has created a blossoming utopia. A fenced rose garden, replete with meandering brick pathway, unusual bird feeders and houses, and a labyrinth of colorful flowers, accentuates the contrast in landscape. Her philosophy is based on an old English proverb: “Tickle it with a hoe, and it will laugh into a harvest.”
Jane and Luna are part of a flourishing trend of home owners indulging their personal whimsies by using them to create a private outdoor paradise.

What makes one house or another appeal to us? The architecture? The details? The location? “I finally came to the conclusion that it is always about the landscaping,” my friend Jane Green told me. That summer I never saw Jane without garden gloves and straw hat, working the soil around her cottage that sits on its now-pampered lot across from the local park. What resulted was a whimsical mixture of wild country and styled English garden. Botanical surprises are tucked into the landscape, including all sorts of teapots topping every post in the picket fence—the sort of stuff that turns home into wow!

I have to admit, my landscape is not well defined but definitely what experts call “low-envy” I wish I could have tall stalks of hollyhocks frolicking alongside fences, aroma-rich sweet peas, and stately sunflowers nodding in the breeze. Instead, a scraggly juniper tree bears tiny pale blue berries in the fall. Miniature fir trees sit primly in Terra-cot ta-turned-white pots. The trees are disheveled odd shapes. My backyard blueprint does not involve innovative ideas or exquisitely detailed plans. Visual accents of the artificial kind are not my cup of tea. I am shaping a context for a personal experience in the wild, adopting Thoreau’s philosophy, for I also believe that “in wildness is the preservation of the world,” or at least the preservation of my particular soul.

Taking this one step further John O’ Donohue, author of Annam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World, says, “The landscape has a huge influence on shaping the rhythm of mind and perception. Celtic spirituality had a recognition of nature as the theater of divine presence … [it was] where divine presence articulated its imagination.”
In landscape, and in shaping the landscape of our homes or our lives, we have opportunity to express ourselves as made in God’s image, to articulate our imagination. There seems to be no limit to the gardens we may create: container gardens, rock gardens, kitchen gardens, children’s fairy gardens, shade gardens, organic gardens, and so on. Whatever we call it, a well-defined landscape can feed the soul as surely as it can add curb appeal—and, my Realtor tells me, 15 percent to the selling price of a home.

Artful attention and arrangement on the grounds of your home, the balcony of your apartment, or the window box outside your rented room can make your space a mini Eden. You may go for the opulent, the exotic, and the tamed, or you may follow a wiser path to paradise. Using plants appropriate for your climate,
you may go low maintenance. But that needn’t mean boring or plain. When you imitate the natural landscape on your grounds, you’re going for the greater aesthetic.
Celts of the fifth century brought their love of nature and their awareness of the sacred into Christianity when they converted, says Bob Abernathy. They were fierce warriors who lived simple lives and valued the hushed, brooding landscape.2

Hang on. Hold out. Endure. What does survive is precious. Beauty is in the discernment of the delicate scents in different kinds of sage or the mute tones of trees where wildlife hides. Lack of moisture in the sky creates clarity just like lack of distractions creates transparency of soul. I think of Moses, prince of Egypt, living forty years in the desert, growing tough and sinewy herding animals from place to place. Might he have wondered if he’d missed his life’s calling because of mistakes made in his youth? We only know that when one day he saw the burning bush and heard the voice of God, he was an old man shaped by the wilderness. God found him where he was and called it holy ground.
Indeed, landscape tells a story.

So, yes, “natural” reigns in my yard; I’ve given myself permission to be free-form and messy. The landscape’s rocky, volcanic soil is an extension of the lava beds just ten miles away. It doesn’t hold moisture well, but the muted desert colors—tan, sage, and mossy brown—have their own kind of glamor for those who have eyes to see. Though I miss the varied elegant greens of a wetter climate, life abounds anyway under crystal-starred nights, the clean rush of myriad rivers, and the red porous earth.
I take landscape tips from my ninety-three-year-old neighbor who has weathered many days here and come up thriving. Marguerite’s yard includes plants with names like “sweep the sky,” which are lush with yellow blossoms in June. Her “tiny rubies” ground cover, when in full bloom, looks like drops of sparkling blood.
Ms. M. has spent years arranging flagstone in straight up and down patterns, like canyon walls, creating a rugged effect that imitates Native American geography on the reservation just east. She has hauled down mountain driftwood, carved by eons of wind and parched white as if by the ocean, from hikes along local glaciers. The enigmatic shape of her landscape accentuates the high-desert, high-flying appeal of her home.