The Cone of Vision

The cone of vision is a concept I learned about in an illustration class.  Understanding it helps the artist create realistic scenes because it captures approximately what your eye can see without moving your head.  (Imagine drawing  a fifteen degree line from your eye to both the right and left of your eye - that is about what your cone of vision will be.) You can use it to design gardens that are unified and pleasing.

If you have a garden that is open to the street and not obscured by trees, buildings, and hills,and if the garden is first seen from far away, the cone of vision is large.  That is, more can be seen even though the angle does not change. A garden seen from far away should have a unified theme, feeling, or color scheme.  This garden will probably also be seen at an intermediate and close distance.  Use variety in color, foliage, and bloom time to make the garden interesting from these distances as well.

People who plan municipal gardens along streets use the cone of vision to design gardens that will make a big impact when people drive by in cars.  Most people are going to get a very quick view of the garden, and usually from specific angles.  A garden might first be viewed as a curve is rounded - perhaps shrubs will be placed so as not to be parallel to the street - but at an angle to it - giving the best view. The municipal gardener does not need to invest in a big assortment of plants - just the opposite.  Too much variety will confuse the viewer's eye and create an unpleasant experience.

Small gardens, such as those found in urban townhomes have a limited cone of vision.  Here, variety is important.  Too much of the same plant is boring and depressing.  Different  foliage types, plant shapes (tall, rounded, pendulous,,,), foliage color, and bloom time should be used.  Just make sure that you help the eye move through and around the garden.

A third type is where the garden is seen  up-close and  intermediate distances.  I have included pictures  from one of my borders to help illustrate how I have used cone of vision.

The first picture shows part of the garden as you approach it.  A rhododendron obscures the rest of the border.

 
This view includes some pretty irises - but you have to keep moving to see more.  This area is a tease. It should encourage people to look for more garden.

This next picture shows what you see as you proceed around the bend.

There is more to see, and it is quite pleasing.

As you continue to walk, you can look at one section of the garden from fairly close.

This part of the border has a pleasant color scheme and good foliage variety.  Notice the dwarf Alberta spruce to the left of the picture. It is an important design element, as can be seen in the next and final photo.

That same Alberta spruce can be seen in the distance now.  It helps break up the border into "rooms".  The first "room", all the way to the left, will soon have lots of hot colors - bright oranges, yellows, and yellow oranges.  The second "room", the one that you see in the above two photos, has a calmer, pastel palate.  The third "room", created by the placement of another Alberta spruce, is one with shade loving plants.  All three "rooms" have a different feel.  It would have looked funny to have "hot" colors next to pastels next to muted shade lovers.  Separating the areas with shrubs lets you look at the entire border and find it satisfying, rather than jarring.

Next time, how to use color to create balance in a border.

Notan Revisited

I recently saw Matisse's painting The Green Pumpkin at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island.  I cannot show a picture of the painting; you can google it and see a picture (don't just google "green pumpkin", though.)  The painting is designed with definite bands of color that extend from one edge horizontally to the opposing edge.  Then there is the green pumpkin, close to the middle of the painting, flanked by blocks of the same green.  (Although there is no continuous band of green, the eye interprets the green objects as being in a green band.)  I realized that Matisse had used Notan in the design of this painting even though he did not use extremes of darks and lights.  By using Notan, he helped the viewer discover what was important in the painting, and keep the viewer's eye moving throughout the painting, and not flying off of it.

Color can be used the same way in a garden design as Matisse used it in The Green Pumpkin.   Plants are placed to help keep the viewer's eye moving throughout.

In the bed that I photographed from a roof deck, I have used plants with reddish-purplish foliage placed in the front left armeria maritima rubrifolia (red leafed sea thrift), middle center lysimachia ('firecracker' loosestrife), back right heuchera 'molly bush' (coral bells), and another heuchera to the front right.  My goal is to help people look at this garden so that their eye does not get stuck on one area, and does not wander off to some area outside the garden.  The red foliage plants help lead the eye around and through the garden.  All of the plants are seen because I have helped people make sense of the space.

Next time, I will write about cone of vision.

Generosity in the garden

My Uncle Norm died this past February.  In his 92 years  he learned a lot about generosity, and taught even more.  This trait was always on display in gardens.

There are hundreds of pictures he took of his nieces, nephews, great-nieces and nephews, friends, patients, neighbors, and an occasional stranger, in front of some gorgeous flower or garden.  Being one of the younger children ina family of eight, I was not photographed often.  There wasn't the time or energy.  It wasn't a big deal.  But it was a big deal when there you were, your young face smiling, photographed in front of some gorgeous delphinium.  

Uncle Norm used to show a series of photos that told a lot about him.  The first set of pictures were of his friends from the Cleveland Museum of Art, or the Print Club of Cleveland, in one of his gardens.  The second set was of a woman who was the daughter of one of his longtime patients.  The third and final set was shown to questions of "who are they?"  Uncle Norm replied, with modulated delight "Oh, they were at the Taco Bell across the street and they were admiring my garden."

As I got older, it became a joke that Uncle Norm was really taking pictures of his flowers and wanted people in them for novelty.  Now that I am older, I think that he really loved people, and he loved plants, and he wanted to see them together.

Whenever someone I love comes to visit, I like to take their picture in front of whatever is flowering in my yard.  I try to take pictures of people I don't love, too, just so my small act of generosity will make me a better person.

Next time - more Notan 

Notan

Notan is a Japanese design concept that deals with lights and darks in a composition.  A good balance of these leads to a pleasing composition.  The trick is how to achieve it.

I learned about Notan last year when I started creating pen and ink illustrations for a webcomic/graphic novel that I am working on.  It occurred to me that I could use the concept in my garden.

Areas of lights and darks should be almost equal.  Also, lights should flow into other lights, and darks should flow into other darks.  Think of a stream with boulders in it.  The water flows around the boulders.  Both boulders and water make a patttern of light and dark.

Notan can help make a garden design work well, especially in the early spring, when a lot of perennials have not popped ujp through the soil yet.  I am lazy in the fall.  I intned to plant spring flowering bulbs, but something more important - like watching a football game or going apple picking - always comes up.  My gardens always have bare patches in the spring.  These will disappear in a few weeks, because the perennials will emerge.  Still, I want the garden to look good 12 months of the year.

This corner bed has a big bare patch in the spring, because one of my favorite plants, the brilliant orange asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed) doesn't pop through the soil until late April. 

This diagram is a bird-s eye view of the bed.    It suggests a possible solution (there are many, depending on my energy level).  I can make the plants that flank the wedge-shaped empty spot line up more severely so that it is very obvious that the empty, or dark area, is indeed a wedge shape.

I took this picture today - mid-May, to show how the garden is growing.  One of the asclepias tuberosa plants needs to be moved to the left so that the three plants line up into a triangle shape.  (There is some risk involved, as asclepias tuberosa do not like to be moved.)    I can then add a few annuals, perhaps heliotrope (deep purple flowers, perfect for a sunny spot), on either side of the most forward asclepias tuberosa.

Next post I will write about generosity in the garden.

Back in Business

Winter is finally over, and the Honest Gardener is back in business!

Before I work in my garden, I put on my gardening shoes - which have been sitting in the garage for 6 months.  Before I stick my feet into my shoes, I check for critters, especially spiders and/or their eggs.  I have encountered them in shoes in the past.

Once my shoes are on, and I have my gloves on, I get to work.  Today, I am going to discuss my long border that runs along Oakland St.  There is a corner bed that is dominated by a cut leaf maple tree.  I would not plant a maple tree in a flower bed again, because the roots are shallow.  Planting anything around the tree is really difficult (there are a few plants that have thrived around this tree - that will have to wait for a future post.)

In this particular bed I have two ornamental grasses.  I wanted to move one of them, because although  they are attractive, they take up a lot of valuable real estate.  After a few minutes of digging at one of the grasses, I gave up.  My original plan was to plant three Veronica (speedwell) where the grass had been.  When that didn't work out, I went to Plan B.

In the front of this bed I have three geum plants (not sure of the variety).  Geum has very pretty bright red-orange flowers, perfect for a sunny spot.  The problem is that after they have bloomed, they are less than blah.  I don't like "blah" in the front of my garden.

 The geum are in the front - the veronica are in pots to the left.  I moved the geum towards the back, in between and just in front of the ornamental grasses.  Once the geum are done blooming, the grasses should have grown quite a bit and will obscure the geum plants.  I planted the veronica where the geum were.  According to the label, they get up to 15" high - a little high for the front of a bed - I will see how I like it as the season progresses.

The next area I worked on was a section of border that is located in a sunny section.  It is flanked on one side by a dwarf alberta spruce (at the rate it is growing, it could end up at 30 feet), and an ornamental grass that gets really big.  I made a lot of changes to this section last summer.  I moved the lady's mantle to the back.  I moved some cranesbill geranium to the middle-right of the section.  The lady's mantle was moved because it is an early bloomer - it has striking chartreuse flowers.  After flowering, it is quite messy, and tends to spread.  I moved the pink cranesbill geranium to this section because the area had too much white in it.  The cranesbill geranium is gorgeous while it blooms, and it will bloom a second time if you shear it back after its first bloom.  It does tend to get messy, so, for me, it will not go in the front of the border.

I had some pink veronica (sorry, I forget the genus), which I moved to the center of the section.  It had been off to the right, near the gigantic ornamental grass.  The grass completely covered up the veronica, so it had to be moved.

In the back  I have three white phlox (again, I forget the genus).  The problem with phlox is that they get mildew right around when it is time for them to bloom.  Every year I cut off several of the stalks to promote air circulation, but I still get mildew.  I love the flowers, though.  My solution was to put three yarrow Achillea 'Moonshine' in front of them.  Yarrow is a fairly reliable plant with nice color (it comes in pinks and different shades of yellow - 'moonrise' is a bright , but not sulphurous yellow.)  It looks fine after it has bloomed, and the flowers dry nicely.

This section of the border has clear, but not overly birght, colors.  All of the colors have the same feel - lending the section a pleasing unity.  

Everything has been planted.  I am a stickler for maintaining my design - which is a straight row of plants in the front of the border, and groups of plants placed in alternating equilateral (roughly) triangles - apex up, then apex down, in the middle and back of the border.

When I had moved the pink veronica a few weeks ago, I had arranged the plants in a triangle; today, I put them in a straight line.

This picture shows how this section looks today.  I will chronicle how well it does this summer. 

Next post I will write about the concept of Notan - the arrangement of lights and darks in a design.

Green Beans

My husband specializes in growing fruits (peaches, plums, raspberries), and vegetables (green beans, cucumbers and eggplant this year).  We probably will not get any eggplant, but we had a bumper crop of beans and cukes.  I was disappointed a few weeks ago with the beans; we seemed to be at the end of their too short season.

The beans that I was picking were thick and barely edible.  I also noticed white beans in the pod.  Dummy, this is where beans that  vegetarians like me live on come from! 

 I threw a bunch of them into the crock pot with some dried white beans, soaked them and cooked them.  My daughter made a delicious soup with the white beans, vegetable stock, sweet potatoes, sauteed onions, and plum tomatoes.  Some day, perhaps next summer, I would like to make a soup with just the white beans from my garden and compare how they taste with the dried beans.  In this picture, I show a mature bean, opened up to reveal the white beans, and a young green bean, with no white beans yet.  They must grow quickly - for the green beans become inedible in just a few days.

Gardening is like child-rearing

Last night I gave some friends a garden tour.  As I walked, I  become uncomfortable with the state of things.  My garden is a mess!  Granted, it has been hot and humid (sweat was pouring off of my sunglasses as I worked outside yesterday), and I have been working full time, cutting out a lot of time for weeding.  Even the spots that I have been able to keep up look so so at best.

This picture shows a garden full of flaws - the asters in the center front need to be moved forward; the phlox is too dominant; the dianthus in front of the phlox are not blooming; the lavender just looks sad. 

If you can see beyond the flaws, there is tons of potential.  The lavender will grow and its silver-purple foliage will balance nicely with the blue-silver foliage of the festuca on the left.  The veronica on the right will most likely have a longer bloom time in its second year of residency, balancing the phlox.  Taller annuals can be placed in the middle back of the border, giving the border more color.

Raising kids can be like tending to a garden.  You can have a super-neat garden with lots of impatiens and hosta.  There is nothing wrong with that scheme; it can be quite soothing.

You can also think about kids the same way.  Like they were formed from a cookie press.  Once they are out, can walk and talk, you know who they are.  This one is gregarious; this one is serious; this one is an athlete.  The problem for me with this approach is that it ignores the big element of children growing, changing, evolving.  Somebody can be a klutz when they are young, and go on to become a decent tennis player when they are older.  They can work hard and conquer math.  The list goes on and on.

I do not despair when  I see the picture above.  I say to myself  "this doesn't look to good - it will look better next year."  That, for me, is the fun of gardening and the challenge and joy of  raising children to become happy, healthy, responsible adults.