Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Home Garden Design Workshop

Spring arrived three days ago - on the calendar, at least. That may be a tease to garden buffs itching to do more than thumb through plant catalogs.

That's why the first hands-on gardening workshops of the new season are so appealing. One of them, offered at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's Elm Bank Education Center in Wellesley, will create transition between garden daydreaming and realistic planning for the growing season ahead.

Garden designers Mary Dewart and Maria von Brincken will try to inspire gardeners in a "Connecting with Nature: Creating Gardens of Meaning and Beauty Intensive Home Garden Design Workshop." The two- day workshop, offered April 4 and 12, incorporates exercises on the Elm Bank property and in the classroom there, too.

"To be a good designer, you have to have everything from the big picture to the smallest petal or blade of grass in mind," Dewart said. "We plan to introduce people to several ways to get in touch with the big picture."

Von Brincken said the workshops would begin with opening exercises designed to "free up the imagination." Weather permitting, participants might go out into the landscape and discover the elements - from the shade cast by trees to hardscape under their feet - that grab each gardener's attention.

Dewart said the group will also learn to observe archetypal aspects of the landscape and discover which ones appeal to each gardener. For instance, some people might feel drawn to semi- enclosed places that represent safe harbors. This might be achieved in the garden by installing a terrace surrounded by perennials. Others might respond more to garden areas that serve, in a broad sense, as promontories. Examples of promontory spaces include an overlook and a plot that juts into a larger garden area. Still, other green thumbs might point to the cave as an appealing archetype. A garden outgrowth of this might be a pergola surrounded on three sides by shrubs.

After discovering the kind of spaces that make them comfortable and the archetypes that they respond to, workshop participants can return to the classroom and make simple constructions, using cardboard, of overall garden forms. They will then move to two- dimensional drawings.

Using color wheels and other materials, Dewart and von Brincken will help participants create garden designs that please the eye and engage the other senses, too. Even if the home landscapes at their command are sited around a house and driveway instead of the rich landscape of Elm Bank, the goal is for gardeners to learn a process that they can apply to creating meaningful garden designs.

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