GARDENING WITH A ‘SENSE OF PLACE’ (Part 2)

Author Lafcadio Hearn, known best for his books about Japan and Japanese legends, highlights the facet of mood in his description of gardens in Japan: “A Japanese garden…is therefore at once a picture and a poem; perhaps more a poem than a picture. For as nature’s scenery…affects us with sensations…so must the true reflection of it in the labor of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul. The grand old landscape gardeners…carried their theory yet further than this…there were expressed both a mood of nature and…the mood of man.”In next week’s finale, I will share some ways Hanselman Landscape realizes the ‘sense of place’ concept in the gardens I design. Hopefully, you see and feel not only the beauty of the garden spaces pictured below but also the “mood” unique to each. Contributed by James HanselmanGardener (& “sense of place” advocate)