Landscape Design, Tips and Terms

Derek Fell's Book An Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure

Apr 10, 2007
Georgene A. Bramlage

The core of Derek Fell's book "Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure" is an information bank of garden landscape photos, but the introduction is its foundation.

Overview

Derek Fell, internationally known garden writer and photographer, has assembled over 800 of his garden landscape photographs as the core of An Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure: Ideas and Inspiration for Your Garden. The foundation, however, is Fell's introduction. Without reading it, the encyclopedic portion of the book becomes merely a collection of appealing garden photographs.

Fell acknowledges here in the introduction that his sources and the rationale for what he chooses as useful ideas are personal and biased. To clarify what gardens are important to Fell, readers need only investigate his publications about French Impressionist Painters.

The introduction contains eight divisions and descriptive subdivisions that may also serve readers as introductory landscape vocabulary text and ideas. Plenty of enlightening and useful garden landscape photographs illustrate these ideas. Here are the sections and resulting subsections:

Gardens of Inspiration

Claude Monet at Giverny
Paul Cezanne at Aix-en-Provence
Auguste Renoir at Cagnes sur Mer near Nice
Cedaridge Farm in Bucks County, PA (Fell's own garden)
Unnamed Public Gardens in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia
Unnamed Private Gardens Around the World

Informal versus Formal Design

Informal: No fixed plan in planting; plants are placed wherever there is room

Country Cottage Gardens in Normandy and England
Work of William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll

Formal: A sense of order derived from art over nature; an architecturally designed garden based on regular geometric principles

Italian Renaissance characterized by Villa Lante and Villa d' Este
French represented by Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles
United States embodied by Hearst Castle (CA)
Chinese Gardens
Japanese Gardens

Softscape versus Hardscape

Fell informs readers that "…the more hardscape used for a garden, the less labor-intensive it is likely to be."

Softscape is the preferred term for plants
Hardscape is applied to structural elements; produce the strongest sense of design
Advantages of hardscape versus softscape

Seasonal Considerations

Fell advises readers about ways gardens may vary.

Season to season
Wet versus dry months
Hardscape during stark months

A Definition of Terms

This section distinguishes among different professional categories of garden help.

Landscape Architect
Landscape (Garden) Designer
Landscape Contractor

Early Inspiration

Here is a concise and clear account of landscape garden history .

from the Persian Gardens of antiquity to
the design of Colonial Williamsburg and the beginnings of the American Revolution.

Expressing One's Individuality

Fell takes on the challenging question "How does one express individuality in a garden?" by providing the reader with a series of important goal-defining queries.

Fell summarizes the best and boldest of 20th-century landscape garden designers - the "trendsetters." Some of these names are familiar to the reader while other names might, in light of Fell's book, open entirely new garden worlds.

He lists five early 20th-century designers, now deceased:

Gertrude Jekyll (1843 – 1932) in collaboration with Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869 – 1944)
Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) and her husband Harold Nicolson (1886 – 1968)
Thomas Church (1902-78)
Russell Page(1906-1985)
Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994)

Fell provides readers with two examples of modern and highly individualistic gardens:

Derek Jarman's Garden, Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, Kent on the British coast
Ian Hamilton Findlay's Garden, Little Sparta, in the Pentland Hills of southern Scotland

More Information here at Suite101 about garden travel photographs and landscape photographs:

Design and Structure: A Photographic Encyclopedia by Derek Fell.

Residential Landscaping Photos: How to make use of landscape design and landscape idea photos as landscape design tools.

Landscaping Photographs Online: Internet sites offering landscape pictures vary significantly.

International Garden Photographs: April 2007, Landscaping Link of the Month. Away.com offers an archive of travel photographs that includes galleries devoted to international garden landscapes.

The Gardener's Gift of Travel: Part I – This is a virtual field trip through selected gardens of North America. Design characteristics pertinent to each garden are discussed.

The Gardener's Gift of Travel: Part II - The second part of a virtual field trip through selected gardens of North America. Design characteristics, most notably informalism and naturalism, are discussed.