CONNECTING GARDENS TO LANDSCAPE AN EXTRACT FROM 'SOULSCAPE' by Peter Shaw Photography by Claire Takacs How do you build a garden that belongs where it is planted? You take notice. We often rush with our minds already made up. This way of being works when we need to just get things done, but when we slow down, we foster an unrushed, inquisitive awareness. When we take notice, our mind has time to explore and to fully take in all that there is to be discovered.
In today’s busy world, getting your mind to this point can take discipline and practice and permitting yourself to take your time to work things out is not always our first instinct. Building a garden invites you to slow down. It’s a lifelong practice when you stop and think about it. There is no other way to go about it. When out for a walk I often find myself naturally slowing down. I sometimes go the long way. I linger. I find myself taking longer than normal to get to my destination and not knowing where the time went. As a small boy, I was often told to stop dawdling. Hurry up and let’s get going! I have also repeated these words to my children. Dawdling and meandering seem to have lost their place in our lives.
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Having time at hand to linger will influence how you process a garden’s structure. Allowing time to meander at your own pace will let you discover more. Slowing down will allow you to take notice of the wider landscape that surrounds you. Our default setting is to look from the inside out but in a landscape setting, we should be looking from the outside in. Go out into your neighbourhood and down its streets. Look and take notice. Write down what you see, draw what you like and of course, take photos. Then come back to your own place to see it from the outside in. You often hear garden designers say they look to the borrowed landscape for inspiration. This is a good practice and essentially the same thing. A broader borrowing should go beyond just what you may see from the perspective within your garden. It’s more about finding the spirit of the place and finding the meaning behind the way things are. I encourage you to take inspiration from what can’t physically be seen, to look behind and beyond the obvious. Observing nature can influence the way we build landscapes. Accepting the difficulty of creating a garden in a competitive environment, such as on the coast, allows us to lean into what is already happening naturally. This can be as simple as plant selection by observing
