The Garden As Art

Photos and text by Derek Fell

The Garden As Art

Claude Monet, the great French Impressionist painter, said he was good for two things in life—painting and gardening. He even declared that his garden was his one and only masterpiece, using the earth and sky as his canvas and plants like paint. He planted primarily in color harmonies—yellow and violet; orange and blue; red, pink and silver; and pink, blue and white among many other striking combinations. He also added a distinctive glittering sensation to his garden by planting it liberally with airy white flowers. Many of us make the mistake of planting white in clumps, but that can be garish and punch a hole in the landscape, while salting a garden with white flowers like dames rocket and ox-eye daisies enlivens solid colors like red and blue, making them look brighter.

Hiroshi Makita, a Japanese landscape designer who has worked on many Philadelphia-area gardens, believes that many people have a hard time accepting gardens as art because they are so ephemeral. “Leave a painting in the attic and it will often increase in value with no effort on the part of the owner,” he says, “but neglect a garden and it soon reverts to wilderness.”

Gertrude Jekyll, the Victorian plants-women, declared that owning a collection of plants was not sufficient to create a pretty picture. Like Monet (and a painter herself before poor eyesight ended her career as a watercolorist), she advocated planting to creating pleasing color contrasts, suggesting similar color contrasts to Monet.

Although Van Gogh never owned a garden, he planted a garden when he lived with a family near London during his early years as an art dealer, and before that had enjoyed taking care of his father’s parsonage garden in Holland. His youngest sister became a garden writer and during his period of painting in Provence he developed some notions about color combinations as a result of painting cutting gardens. He even wrote to his sister suggesting color harmonies to plant and named the plants he wanted her to use.

At my own home, Cedaridge Farm I plant in color harmonies found in Impressionist paintings. One of the most successful is a grove of trees and shrubs in a monochromatic ‘pink’ theme, inspired by Van Gogh’s paintings of peach tree orchards in full bloom. In my own planting I have pink redbud trees and pink crabapples under-planting with pink azaleas, peak flowering in early May.

Color is not the only consideration when planting a garden to create a work of art. Foliage color, leaf texture and form from the way branches and trunks etch the sky, are also important considerations. At Cedaridge Farm when I began making some shade gardens in woodland, I encountered a large number of wild fox grapes that coiled their woody vines up into the leaf canopy. I admired these sinuous lines for the contrast they made to nearby straight tree trunks of sugar maples, and instead of removing them I emphasized their twists and curls, pruning away lower side branches. They look especially beautiful when silhouetted against a wintry sunset.

Of course, the Japanese are famous for their artistic garden, planting trees and shrubs to evoke symbolism—mounds of boxwood, for example, resembling cushions of moss; bonsai pines imitating weathered tree shapes sculpted by wind and salt spray. As well as using plants, the Japanese also work their garden art with stone, wood and water. Huge boulders often resemble animals and receive names like dragon rock, turtle rock and toad rock. Bridges have high arches to resemble a rainbow, and water is controlled to create myriad sights and sounds. A favorite way for the Japanese to introduce water to a garden is by a waterfall that forms a stream. These waterfalls can be thunderous using a solid sheet of water descending from a great height, called ‘falling cloth.’ Others use divider stones at top to create slender trickles of water called ‘silver threads.’ Water can rush over shallow rapids, creating a gurgling sound. It can form a deep opaque pool to look mysterious, or pass through a filter to become crystal clear, filled with the flashing colors of koi and goldfish.

Gardens can also be repositories for art, notably sculpture (check out Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey for the best example I have ever seen.) However, in the art world there are disagreements over how sculpture should be displayed in a garden. Some curators advocate plain green backgrounds to minimize distracting elements. Others want sculpture to become part of the garden, so the sculpture and its surroundings become an organic whole. The latter is difficult to achieve, but nowhere have I seen it more successfully displayed than at Burpee’s Fordhook Farm, in Doylestown where president George Ball, has amassed an impressive sculpture collection, some of it displayed with a meadow or wooded hillside as a background, and some of it in a richly colored perennial garden he calls his “Happiness Garden.”

George is a great admirer of the work of sculptor, Steve Tobin, of Quakertown, and was the first to acquire one of Tobin’s signature pieces that resemble tree roots. More recently he has added a minimalistic tree root design that reminds him of paintings by Matisse, such as “The Dancers.” But my favorite is a sculpture that resembles the skeleton of a giant moa, a bird that became extinct in New Zealand at the time of European settlement. Standing ten feet high, the moa had a long neck like an ostrich, and strong thighs, and like an ostrich lost the power of flight. But on closer inspection, the sculpture has the scull of a cow, the spinal column of a human, rib cage of a deer and the legs of a human. It appears to be running but actually it is standing on the shell of a turtle. A few feet away is a tractor wheel symbolizing technology. One interpretation is that the wheel is driving the human race and wildlife forward to more innovation; but another interpretation is more sinister—the human race and wildlife are running from technology, which in the end can destroy them.

Other Tobin pieces displayed around the grounds at Fordhook Farm include a massive assembly of metal tubes salvaged from the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Bethlehem before it closed, the tubes welded together to form a metal sunflower. Another massive piece made from similar steel scrap resembles a pinecone. Ball even worked with Tobin on a pair of metal sculptures titled “Weeds” where the shapes of common weeds are given abstract lines; nearby is an arrangement of metal spikes that evoke plants sprouting through the soil, and yet another suggests germinating seeds.

Ball’s first sculpture acquisition was from a local Japanese sculptor, Daisuki Shintani, who works in metal and glass. Called “Spirit Tree,” it is 10 feet tall, a towering representation of a sunflower-like plant with large glass eyes representing blooms. Today it occupies a corner of Ball’s happiness garden.

Several times during the year, Ball opens Fordhook Farm to the community, offering plants for sale, and an opportunity to view his sculpture collection.

Derek Fell is the author of a series of books about the Impressionists and their gardens, including “The Magic of Monet’s Garden” (Firefly), “Renoir’s Garden” (Frances Lincoln), “Cezanne’s Garden” (Simon & Schuster) and “Van Gogh’s Gardens” (Simon & Schuster). He has won more awards from the Garden Writers Association than any other person.