Read This: Spirit of Place
The Garden Conservancy preserves significant American gardens and shares all manner of interesting gardens with the public via its beloved Open Days program, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year despite the Covid-cancellation of all tours. I’m a big fan of their work, particularly because their outreach goes beyond the catered-to garden corridors of the coasts and into Texas and other states. So when I heard that the Conservancy’s former director of preservation, Bill Noble, had written a book about his own garden in Norwich, Vermont, I was intrigued.
I picked up Noble’s book Spirit of Place: The Making of a New England Garden (Timber Press, 2020) this summer, the Coronavirus Summer during which we Americans are largely housebound and investing financially and spiritually in our own gardens as refuges from disease, depressing news cycles, and boredom. Noble, a self-taught gardener, garden designer, and preserver of historic landscapes, introduces his book as a “story of the pleasures and challenges, both aesthetic and practical, of creating a garden that feels genuinely rooted to its place.”
It’s a serious book, not in the sense of proclaiming design rules — Do this, Don’t do that — but rather in terms of the author thinking deeply through the process of making his almost 30-year-old garden. It’s about considering the history of the property, about rooting a garden to a particular place in the world, and about creating garden spaces that evoke an emotional response. In many ways, it’s a rather blog-like book in terms of the author’s deep focus on year-to-year design decisions and plant choices.
For my fellow Texas gardeners, and gardeners anywhere outside of New England, you may ask, “What relevance does a book about a Vermont garden have for me?” Well, sure, the plants won’t be ones we can grow. (Forget that Himalayan poppy, y’all.) That’s not the point. It’s a story of intention, time, and connection to a particular plot of earth. And that’s what all gardening is about.
Noble took almost all of the photos in the book himself, and they are lovely. His garden is stunning, and well documented through the seasons. While my attention wandered a bit during the details of the many plants Noble is growing in his 4b hardiness-zone garden, I found myself caught up again by his lyrical descriptions of the land itself, the wildlife he shares it with, and the experiences he’s trying to create.
Noble is a plant collector always on the lookout for the next “choice” plant, but he’s also a designer who relies on foliage contrasts and carefully considered spatial layout for powerful effect. He’s an experimenter with an artist’s sensibility. All that is reason enough to get inside his head while admiring the images of the garden he’s made.
Disclosure: Timber Press sent me a copy of Spirit of Place for review. I reviewed it at my own discretion and without any compensation. This post, as with everything at Digging, is my own personal opinion.
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Digging Deeper
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All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Pam, I love these last three blog posts, but are you going to finish the road trip?
Haha, yes! I felt like my road trip was hogging all the bandwidth here, so I took a little break from it. But I’ll resume very soon with Joshua Tree and Saguaro National Parks. Thanks for letting me know you’ve enjoyed the virtual tours!
Oh, I think everyone has enjoyed getting out of the house and on the road. I have forwarded these to family and a friend and all I’ve gotten was positive feedback. As pretty as it is, we just didn’t want to be left in California. Ha! Thanks, again.
Aw, thanks for sharing my blog posts with your family and friends, Pamela. There’s no better compliment than that! I just posted about a new local nursery in Austin, but I promise, Joshua Tree is cued up next. 🙂
Hi Pam! How serendipitous this post is! I’ve been soaking in your delightful Blog these last few weeks, thoroughly enjoying both learning and being inspired, as to what-where-whynot, to try in my own new deer-dictated landscape/garden adventure.
Along with the current project of installing some pretty significant “bones”, (new house on previously ‘raw’ land), I had been earnestly reflecting upon what I ultimately wanted our garden to ‘say’…it’s “character”. (Besides ‘deer-chewed’, that is!)
I am trying to ensure I take a ‘long-term’ view of an ever-changing and ephemeral process, and if your Blog has taught me anything-it is to ‘expect the unexpected’–(bye-bye Stocktank Pond?) and celebrate it!
But I needed a definitive ‘sight-line’ or ‘directive’, to cement the nebulous (and often overly ambitious-I am sure) ideas and ideals swirling in my Blog-saturated brain!
Well, you’ve Done It Again-and provided a lead-and inspiration…”The Spirit of a Place”, YES! I had already begun with a more ‘formal’ layout, wherein the local habit of meandering rock-bound gravel pathways between large oak motts/trees is reckoned into a more “parterre-like” symmetical infrastructure, BUT–being inspired by so many fantastic area gardens you’ve shown us-I think a heavy dose of ‘vernacular’ is in order-and any similarity to formal European gardens will end there, letting the ‘Divine nonchalance’ of the intrepid Natives, and quaintly-chaotic hardscape materials work their glory! .
(We are in Wonderful Wimberley-just South of you).
I love that you chose to show a picture of ‘our’ ubiquitous Feather-Reed Grass and Fall Asters, a beautiful combination–germane in even in a lush New England garden–a sure clue that the Spirit of *our* Place-terrific Texas!-will be at the vanguard of water-wise gardens everywhere in the coming years–thanks in part to wonderful Bloggers (and Authors!) like you!
Thanks for all you do, Pam–realize it or not, you are helping to inspire and define a new garden-out here somewhere in the Hill Country, second only to the dauntless deer! ;o)
Dove
Dove, thank you for your lovely comment! It’s inspiring to hear about your new garden project and how you’re thinking through the design to create your very own Spirit of Place. Gardens are worthy of such thought and consideration, and I am sure yours will be a reflection of you and of beautiful Wimberley. Garden on!