I abhore trends

In fact, if the "masses" have latched onto something, I run as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.  I pride myself on my ignorance of pop culture, and my shunning of all that is "in."  One of my primary goals in life has been to find comfort and satisfaction in my own skin, to move to the beat of my own drum, and to hell with anyone who doesn't like it.

So imagine my shock (and dare I say, horror) when I discovered in reading this year's gardening magazines (some of my favorites being The English Garden and Gardens Illustrated) that my style (not sure I can really call it a style, so much as a preference) of gardening is the "in" thing!  I refer to what the gardening hoity-toitys call "prairie gardening" (use of native plants in a free-flowing, meadow-like style) and "naturalistic gardening" (this is not a new concept, merely recycled; the idea of a natural garden was first developed in England by William Robinson in the late 1800s, spurning the formal Victorian gardens popular at that time).  Don't misunderstand me; I'm delighted that prairie gardening has developed and that natural gardens are making a come-back.  In another 4-5 years, I want my gardens to scream "controlled chaos" (a concept borrowed from Mirabel Osler who wrote A Gentle Plea for Chaos), when folks walk through them.  It is the appearance of rampant wildness and seemingly unplanned disorder that I love about the English country garden.

I read alot about gardening, and have perused many books by some of the English masters -- Rosemary Verey (Barnsley House), Gertrude Jekyll (Munstead Wood), and Christopher Lloyd (Great Dixter) to name a few.  I have taken ideas and learned much from each of them.  But when it comes to pure aesthetics, I return every time to an American gardener, Tasha Tudor.  Children's book author and illustrator by trade - and a wonderfully eccentric person (see this previous post for more info) -- she was also an avid, cold-climate gardener who worked her magic in the challenging mountains of Vermont.  I return time after time to mull over any article or book that mentions her garden, and will Google search "Tasha Tudor garden" just to get my visual fix.  I admit it.  I'm a Tasha Tudor junkie. I even drove to her home outside of Marlborough, Vermont (she passed away in 2008 at the age of 92 - still gardening until the end) with a friend, Lorna, to tour her homestead and gardens last June. Unfortunately, between the estate battle among her children which kept everyone off the property for 2 years, and her heirs' less ambitious and less talented gardening skills, the gardens were a mere ghost of what they once were -- but you could still see the bones and catch glimpses of Tasha's vision.  She reportedly told her son, just months before her death, that if the gardens were left unattended for more than 6 months, they were lost. Sadly, she was right.

But I digress...below are some glimpses of Tasha's gardens, many of these photos taken while Tasha was in her 70s and 80s by photographer, Richard Brown (Tasha Tudor's Garden).  Witness controlled chaos at its finest.