What We Hide, What We Reveal

As a photographer, I know that I can control the ‘depth of field’ of a photo by adjusting the size opening of the shutter (F-stop). In everyday terms, I can make the camera near-sighted, almost near-sighted or I can give the camera perfect vision where everything will be in focus. But even in the most perfectly focused photograph, detail will be lost when the grain of the film can’t keep up with the impression made by the light coming through the lens. If you get close enough to a photo, let’s say with a microscope, all you see are fuzzy strands of photographic paper.

In landscape design we can control how much of the garden is visible in one ‘take’. Do we lay out the beds so that the pattern and color can be taken in with one glance? Do we conceal elements of the garden behind a screen of lace-like foliage that puts the farther garden into fuzzy focus? Do we build walls or fences that entirely conceal parts of the garden creating an album-like effect, a page-turner?

These choices are the ways that you determine the speed at which your garden can be absorbed and appreciated.

I Digress

A two week visit to Italy will temporarily interrupt the previous writings so that I can share inspiration as it happens.


I have always  been awoken by gardens that aren't gardens, just way that people adorn their lives with flora.

In Ravello, Italy terrace gardens are the rule and every available space serves double purpose. A trellis that will shade in summer covers a walkway and also bears fruit.

More on Metaphor

The arrangement of plants and objects in the landscape can be metaphoric. A metaphor: that is when something IS the representation of the intended meaning, such as “that tree is my grandfather”.  If that tree was “like” my grandfather, we’d have a simile; enough of English 101.

Deciding to use an object as a metaphor relieves the landscape designer of finding a literal representation. Literal representations, such as garden gnomes, fairies, angels, or Venus’, attach the viewer too securely to one meaning.

Rocks, shrubs, trees (dead or alive) that suggest mythic forms create a stronger and broader effect on the viewer.  A shadowed doorway into a dark woodland cannot avoid suggesting a journey into the subconscious.  This is clearly a different effect than the loud direct message sent by the entrance to the carnival fun-house.

Metaphor

The Symbolic Power of Objects

We instinctively know that when we see a single standing stone, it marks something (or so we believe).  Two posts create a gateway, three a family, four a room, five a counsel and many, well many are likely to be grouped in subgroups of one, two, three, and four.

If we contemplate the one stone, we sense authority and before long a paternal or maternal impression of the stone creeps into our heads.  The two stones or posts appear to be guarding an entrance and we approach knowing that we may have to ask permission to pass.  Three (let’s say of varying sizes) gets us identifying father, mother, and child.  And four, depending on their placement will present an organized entity whether they enclose a space or provoke you to ask (as you would a panel of judges, sages, or grandparents), “what do you want?”

We do not need to work hard to perceive the symbolic nature of objects; their meaning will jump out at us if we let it.

Cultivating Visual Instincts

We are born with certain visual instincts: The desire to have our backs protected, the awe that a limitless vista inspires.

Other visual instincts we must cultivate. This means that the seeds of that knowledge are part of us but that we don’t regularly pay attention to them.

Composition is one of those instincts. As we wander around the visual world certain compositions of objects catch our attention. We may stop for a moment or say, ‘how pretty’. Over time we may have done this ten thousand times. But, when we come to a situation for which we need to compose a pleasing arrangement, we get stuck.

If we cultivate those instincts, each time we come upon a beautiful composition, whether it is an arrangement of flowers, a landscape, or someone’s living room furniture, we might take some time to analyze why it works.

Truly, this will not diminish our enjoyment. We may even find that we are seeing pleasing compositions in unlikely places: peeling wallpaper, a dilapidated building, a pile of laundry.

This knowledge, brought to the usable surface will serve us when we design spaces in our landscape.

The Influence of Backgrounds

I often begin a landscape plan by standing back from the site and letting the surroundings tell me the setting in which the ideas will live.

Fire place and ledge island by North Star Stoneworks

I can do this even before I meet the prospective clients. This is the sort of ‘homework’ that enables me to later comment on the neighboring environment and its effect on what we are planning.

Painters often begin a painting by working on the background. This may be a practical approach as it is easier to paint a building, portrait or tree over a background than to paint the background around them. It also serves to tune the foreground objects to the color and texture of the background.

In landscape design it is doubly important because we can’t go in and move a mountain or building after the fact.

Chapel Fountain at Franklin Memorial Hospital by David Neufeld

Sculptors too must be aware of the surroundings their work will be placed in. A niche in a building is very different than a town square.

In some instances, the background becomes the heart of the plan and the materials and plantings are placed to enclose the landscape.  Fences, walls, and tall planting obscure whatever was formerly the background. Thus we create a new world within.

Positive and Negative Space

Perceiving an object requires that we distinguish it from its surroundings. The joke about a blank piece of paper being ‘a polar bear in a snowstorm’, applies to our perception.

Painters and sculptors refer to positive and negative space. Positive space is the object we are able to perceive. Negative space is the background that allows us to see that object. In landscapes, the tree is the positive and the sky is the negative.

'06 Bridgton Academy project by North Star Stoneworks

Applying this to landscape design, we may choose to remove masses of confused greenery in order to accentuate a specimen tree. We may also take advantage of a mass of greenery by planting or building a contrasting form in front of it. We might ‘cut’ a hole in the greenery to form a dark shadow. Each of these changes creates the negative space needed to bring the desired focus to the design.