Garden Centre

Monday, January 18, 2010

Gardens in winter: rain, frost, snow and fog!

I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to spend some comfortable hours in the garden. As soon as the snow melted we had heavy rain, and we couldn’t set foot on the lawn for fear of destroying its already fragile root structure. Walking round the paths and looking at everything drooping from its ten day snow-cover was depressing, but at least we could see plants again, even if they were dripping with rain!

And today, my first chance to get out there without it bucketing down, we had fog!

No pictures of my garden I’m afraid because (a) the fog was too thick and (b) the plants look too ragged and sad to show you, but I was pondering, as one does when one can’t work in one’s own green space, how much better designed Japanese and Chinese gardens are than British ones for fog. Perhaps they work with what they get – certainly the Chinese gardens have almost no lawn, strong plant shapes that contrast with each other, like twisted trees and vertical bamboos and lots of hard landscaping, both formal and informal in which gloriously bright tile and wood is used to provide accents. My own garden today is a thousand shades of grey, which made my memories of Beijing even more warm and happy …

Labels: chinese gardens, fog garden, winter garden

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:23 AM

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