Legends of the Wall

When I was in graduate school, I explored the option of writing a thesis. The subject I was interested in was loosely based on the idea of enclosure and more specifically, the landscape features which often enclose a garden: walls and fences. Because I was unable to concentrate such a vast and complicated subject, I did not write the thesis, but I did become quite knowledgeable on the historical context of walls in the landscape.

                

For instance, did you know that the ‘Great Wall of China’ was not always the revered manmade marvel it is today? In fact, for many years the wall was seen as a defensive disgrace or a last resort tactic to keep the invading Mongols from gaining more ground. If it weren’t for some Western wahoos wandering upon the wall, and their ideals of historical perseveration, the ‘great’ wall might be nothing but rubble today. Can you imagine what that pile of rubble would look like from outer space? I guess not much different than the wall itself. Hmmm.

A satellite image of the 'Great Wall of China'

Also, the first historical walled garden, which I’m aware of, is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Although there is no physical evidence of this famed structure, artists, poets and musicians have been rendering its illustrious tale for thousands of years. My favorite rendition is a love story. It is said that the King during these ancient times planted a ‘pensile paradise’ because his wife was homesick for the mountainous landscape of her youth. I, of course, imagine this lovely lady wandering through her fabulous fake forest, picking fruit from trees which resemble something almost forgotten. A tear rolls down her cheek as she bites into its fleshy and fragrant skin. Oh, what a fantastic fairy tale.

Artistic rendering of the 'Hanging Gardens of Babylon'

 I can also educate you on the walled gardens popular in medieval Europe. It is often argued that these ‘secret’ like gardens represent the battle between man and nature during that time. The controlled, man-made environment within the walls is a safe haven, while what lies outside the walls is the unknowable wildness of nature. It is interesting to imagine a wall which represents the line between what was considered good and evil. It also kind of makes me want to read “The Secret Garden” again, so that I can dissect what the wall in that book really symbolized.

Medieval walled garden

Similarly, the picturesque gardens designed by followers of romantic writers like Thoreau and Emerson and their reverence of nature, contain walls whose purpose is to contain livestock without obstructing the view of the landscape. I’m not joking when I tell you that these walls, called ha-has, are very similar to the retaining walls many of us know today. The only difference is that the ha-ha, usually had a ditch on one side, rather than level ground. So, this wall represents quite the opposite of the wall of the medieval garden. Is it wrong that I giggle a little when I think of a wall which puts nature above man?

View of the Chirk Castle ha-ha found in Denbighshire, North Wales.

  

 As you can probably conclude by all this talk of walls, I have been busy with my own wall. I started building a three foot high retaining wall out of recycled concrete chunks, otherwise known as ‘urbanite’, in my back yard. Like many landscape designers and architects, who draw up plans and details as to how to construct a retaining wall, I have never actually built one before. I didn’t draw up plans or use any specifications for this wall either. I just started stacking my concrete chunks, hoping that the final result would somewhat resemble a wall that could hold back the dirt behind it. Although the process was somewhat slow at first, I soon felt like I was a true mason.

I forgot to take a 'before' photo again, but this is another part of the yard where a wall needs to be replaced.

As my wall began to take shape, the theorist in me began to wonder if this wall was more than just a pile of concrete holding back the dirt behind it. Like the Great Wall of China and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, did my wall have a story to tell? Or did it make a statement about my relation to nature as the walled gardens of our past have? As I began to ponder these questions, I instinctively tried to analyze what the word ‘retaining’ actually meant.

To retain, has many definitions. The one which usually accompanies the wall is ‘to hold in place’. But as I stood back stretching my aching arms to admire my emerging retaining wall, I realized that this wall was doing more than just holding dirt in place. It was ‘retaining’ in another sense. I was ‘obtaining possession’ of the land with each heavy slab of urbanite I placed on the wall. This, of course, doesn’t mean that I actually own the land because I am only renting one unit in a six unit apartment complex. But maybe what I am saying is that this land, my ‘shared’ yard, wasn’t really mine to garden until I decided to permanently mark it with the construction of my wall. For some reason, the physical action of placing more than plants on the land, gave me validity to turn this fallow land into my garden.

So I guess you can say that the story of my wall is still being written, but so far, it is not mournful, enchanting or very symbolic. Up to this point, building my wall has been an enlightening experience. I have learned that ‘growing’ a garden is not just about putting plants in the ground, but claiming that ground to belong to you as well.

My wall

Pruning

A week ago, I took a pruning class at a local community demonstration garden. This educational class not only gave me more confidence in pruning, but it also inspired me to get back into gardening after my winter days of waiting. Because of this class, I now have a beautifully trimmed Camellia tree in my backyard and a new insight on how pruning can metaphorically influence me as a landscape designer.

Although the dictionary defines the act of pruning as cutting or lopping ‘superfluous or undesired twigs, branches, or roots from’ a plant, I would advise that there is much more to pruning than just this. As my instructor taught me, pruning is not only the act of trimming unnecessary branches and twigs, but of aesthetically and spiritually ‘shaping’ the plant as well. Although I can go on for days about how all these pruning concepts can be transferable to the landscape, I will try to limit this rant to the basics.

When pruning, a ‘good start’ is to look at the ‘3D’s’ of the tree or shrub you are to trim. These branches include the 1) dead, the 2) damaged and 3) dysfunctional. Because the first two characteristics are pretty self explanatory, I’ll divulge on the latter. What makes a branch dysfunctional is that it is not promoting to the function of the plant. If a branch is crossing over another, it may be deemed dysfunctional because it is taking light, water and space for growth from the other branch. Hence, that branch should be pruned. This sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. When two or more branches are crossing, the pruner has to decide which branch is better fit to serve the function of the plant. Wow. I now understand why I was intimidated for so many years when the topic of pruning came up in the garden. How do you know which branch will serve the plant best? What if you pick the wrong branch? What if you make a mistake? Well, as I quickly learned while pruning my Camellia, mistakes happen and inevitably you will choose the wrong branch to cut. I will not go into how devastated I was when I cut the wrong branch on my Camellia, but I will tell you this: I learned that the flaw I created not only extenuated the adaptability of the shrub, but my own flexibility as well. The Camellia quickly showed me that the hole I created with my trigger happy pruners could be filled by another branch and all I had to do was encourage that branch to fill it.

An 'after' photo of my Camellia (I forgot to take a 'before', but try to imagine a big ball of a bush.)

I hope I haven’t lost you in all this talk of cutting, crossing and Camellias, because I would now like to explain how the concepts of the ‘3Ds’ are transferable to the landscape. Unlike an artist approaching a blank canvas, the landscape architect; designer; gardener never gets to start anew. No matter how empty or unused a landscape may seem, it is part of an evolving, living world that is anything but blank. With this in mind, the architect or designer must look at the landscape and see what may be 1) dead, 2) damaged and 3) dysfunctional.

As with pruning, finding the dead and damaged material of the land is not a difficult task. But how does one decide what is dysfunctional? If you have ‘weeds’, are they serving a purpose, a function in the landscape? Are they taking light, water and space from another ‘branch’ or plant in your garden? If your answer is yes, then maybe the weeds need to go. This is a simple example, like an easy to see branch that needs to be pruned, but like the shrub, not all dysfunctional ‘branches’ in the landscape are so easy to fix.

In my yard, there are many dysfunctional characteristics, but one, not so simple to solve is the overabundance of shrubs and trees crowding the yard. Because there are so many woody plants, the very large yard, seems to be dwarfed by their numbers. So, what am I to do? Should I immediately plan to remove plants that are not promoting to the function of the yard? And how do I deem which plants those are? This is where I think I will take the advice of my pruning instructor and ‘start small’. Instead of going in and looping down random trees, I think I will start by pruning each tree and shrub. By doing this, maybe I can start to see if each plant serves a function in the yard.

Like I learned while pruning my Camellia, I know that as I move forward as a gardener and landscape designer, I will inevitably make mistakes. Although the land is just as adaptable as my pruned shrub, I must remember to look and see what the landscape has to offer before deeming too much unnecessary. Whether this is in my own backyard or a large public park, I must also try to be just as flexible as the land I encounter.