The human genesis on the Earth of our day originally ‘arrived’ from a garden in our wonderful JudeoChristian religious teachings; from the jungle in the more accurate scientific vernacular. This we do know from the messages provided by genetics, geology, etc,etc. It is amazing how accurately the first chapters so artistically written in English of the King James Version of the JudeoChristian Bible fit the scientific understandings.
There are many kinds of gardens….vegetable, flower, shrub, beer, and countless spreads called Landscaped Gardens to decorate something or another living or man made….in which vegetation is the primary tool.
The ideal Landscaped Garden is a garden which inspires the visitor, suggesting to the visitor the trials of life beyond its entry will become happily forgotten when visited.
The origin of its most successful plan arises from ones soul….Does anyone these days remember what ‘soul’ means?
Among the ugliest such Gardens, are those ‘designed’, planted, and/or ‘maintained’, by government and its universities, projects designed, planted without soul, without beauty.
“Beauty” in these days of irreligiosity, is programmed to be a religious word, an insulting word in the lands of political correctness. “If something is beautiful, it is suggested, something else is either less beautiful, or perhaps even ugly” which may, will destroy ones building of self esteem or at least, cause bad feelings.
Some Landscaped gardens are just more beautiful than others…and for many reasons….design, maintenance, fragrance, color, mood, harmony, size, textural relationships……all the result of the Landscaped Garden artist’s control of where visitors’ eyes (especially the artist’s) should travel, and when they concentrate with the countless arrangements of plants and their features.
Below is a listing of some words a beginning landscape garden artist-to-be might practice imagining how each might be applied when plotting to create this most popular visual art form of them all.
Color, shape, height, width, depth, privacy, focus, line, texture, pattern, number, weight, repetition, harmony, rhythm, shadow, space, contrast, movement, spread, memory, feel, quietude, lure….and so on…..I list as a few.