A landscape is a picture that makes its own frame. Roofed by the sky, rimmed by trees, and floored with the solid earth.
Every part of a garden composes itself into a picture that changes from hour to hour as the sun moves, from day to day as the seasons succeed one another, and from place to place as you walk within it.
Painters on canvas work with color and form in two dimensions, while sculptors add the third dimension, working in the round;
Of all artists, only the builder of gardens works in four dimensions, making time—the swing from hour to hour, season to season—a part of every composition.
A Garden’s Every Composition
The foundation, like the painter’s canvas mounted on its stretcher, must always be there: the earth’s soil, stone, and water.
Like the painter’s penciled sketch, the design sets the arrangement of elements: openness, vistas, paths, structures, and plants.
The materials, like paints, differ in color, texture, and method of application:
- Grass in its varied textures of green
- Flowers in whole spectrums of color and form
- Walls and fences for the sharpness of outline and suggestion of shelter
The space, like a sculptor’s carving in a mass of stone, leads you out, around, and back again, each return bringing consciousness of new delight.
The Tree Branch And Flagstone Path
The tree branch, decked of a winter’s morning with snow, will drip that same evening with icicles and bend, a few weeks later, under a mass of bloom.
The flagstone path, warm in the noonday sun, is cool to the foot in evening dew. Winter’s open woods in summer close you round with secret walls of green.
As swiftly as a cloud crosses the sun, the picture changes but remains a picture still.
44659 by James Fanning