An architect in the garden. The idea might conjure images of an abstract landscape with a severely limited plant palette, replete with hardscape.Although I am an architect, this was not my gardening path. Instead, I wanted to create a landscape where the plants themselves reigned supreme—not the hard edges of geometrical cleverness, with the plants playing a subservient role. The Architectural Designer Me continually duels with the Plant Collector Me, neither one ever winning. A balance of the two is rarely achieved in my observations of gardens, but this was my goal: a balance between the insatiable collector and the incurable designer. I am also aware of the painful—if accurate—quoteby Mirabel Osler in her delightful book A Gentle Plea for Chaos: "There is an antiseptic tidiness that characterizes a well-controlled gardener. And I'd go further and say that usually the gardener is male. Men seem more obsessed with order than women."Without doubt I am guilty as charged, but that quote haunts me and keeps me from overstressing' architectural order, allowing the garden to be the romantic oasis any garden should be.
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