Winter 2014-2015: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Winter here is less an absence than a season in its own right, all structure, stone, and long blue shadows on the snow.
Most of our work this season happens indoors at the drawing table, planning the gardens we will build once the ground opens. The cold months are the busiest at the drawing board, even if it does not look that way from the road.
The birds keep the place alive in winter, working the seed heads we left standing and sheltering in the spruce, which is reason enough to leave the fall cleanup undone.
Out in the garden, the evergreens carry the whole composition now, and a heavy wet snowfall is the one thing worth bundling up for, to brush the weight off upright branches before it splits them.
Aside from the weather, here is what was on our minds in the garden this season. A path does more than get you from here to there. It sets the speed at which you move through a garden, and a good designer uses that on purpose. In Japanese gardens, stepping stones are spaced to slow you down, even to make you pause and look up at a chosen view. Tighter, even paving says walk briskly. Irregular stones with gaps say slow down, watch your step, notice where you are.
Watch for the heavy, wet storms that snap branches, keep paths safe, and otherwise let the snow lie on the beds where it does the most good.
The land around us is the best teacher there is, and the gardens we like best borrow from the hillsides more than from any catalog.
Everything in this valley runs on the same short calendar, and the gardens that thrive are the ones designed around it rather than against it.
Our soil is mostly alkaline clay, the air is thin and dry, and the sun is strong, so the plants that last are the ones that have made peace with all three.
We take on only a handful of gardens each year, which is the only way to give a place like this the attention it asks for.
More than anything, a garden up here rewards patience: it takes a season or two longer to settle than people expect, then looks like it was always there.
We design, build, and maintain our own gardens, so we live with the results for years and learn from them.
We will see you next season.