OK, I'm going to take a crack at this myself, excuse me for responding to my own post.

I see that the circle grabs the eye and makes me say WOW, but the (almost) straight walk beside it is more important than I suspected at first glance. It provides a ... sense of direction? A sense of travel and/or destination? If I put my hand over the straight path and look at the round one, I tend to think "Eh ... going around in circles." There's also a gate that I didn't notice till I'd looked at the picture about four times, but it's there in the background telling me there's another place to go.

There seems to be a "thrust" to the scene, towards that gate -- the direction of the board path is also present in the straight part of the brick path, the long side of the bricks are oriented in the same direction as the straight path where they meet (the path and the circle wouldn't mesh nearly as well if the bricks were arranged in a sunburst sort of pattern, raying out from the center bed, would they?

Even the very linear form of that weeping tree in the center of the circle is important because it echoes the line of the straight path.

Somehow that little curving path off to the side is important, too, but I'm not sure how.

If I were to try to build this in my garden, I would probably have focused entirely on the circular brick path, and plopped it down in the center of an area with the paths stemming from it to and from wherever I'd want to get from that spot. And I would have lost what makes the design so engaging because I would have isolated that one part of it, when it's its relationship with the other path and the destination that makes it special. (It reminds me of an eddying pool in a fast stream, where the fish might rest). It would have become much more static.

Have I got it? What did I miss?

Kristin

I've kind of gone through the same thing -- looking at gardens I love and trying to figure out what they have in common and why they just seem to speak to me when others (including portions of my own!) don't. A couple of things I've noticed, and which apply to the garden in the photo you posted, are 1) there's a nice balance between informal, irregular plantings and clean, simple lines in the paths, and 2) the garden has a good balance of things in and out of bloom. I've noticed that, though I used to love those big, blowsy English borders where everything is blooming at the same time, I now see them as the visual equivalent of being in a shopping mall the day before Christmas. So busy and noisy! Now, I appreciate a garden that artfully blends blooming, non-blooming and out-of-bloom plants.

I personally think it is way to busy and don't care for it. Rookwood you hit it on the head with the shopping mall theory in my opinion. If you are so overwhelmed by everything going on how in the world do you just relax...i think a garden is about relaxing and stress reduction. I don't see any place i could just sit and relax there.

That is one photo in a magazine spread featuring the garden, and only a small part of the overall garden. I recall that the total design included terraces for sitting as well.

Kristin

In any case, respectfully, I think you missed the point -- it wasn't to evaluate the picture as if it were the proposed plan for a garden, but to figure out what it is that makes this specific image "work".

I would love it if some of the more experienced folks, as well, would share their opinions of how it could work better.

Kristin

I truly hope you don't quite understand how rude and totally disrespectful you just sounded! respectfully really does'nt lighten the rest of what you said. First off if my comment was way off base so what...there will be 14 other posts or posters that may or may not suit your needs...IGNORE MINE!!! This forum is here for us to have fun, learn, and enjoy each other. you want to know what makes that specific image work...it dont, at least not for me...i am sorry if that differs with your opinion, did'nt realize it was a direct hit to you was not meant to be. Your posts sounds very snooty and brass, as if the person posting it would not even care to get their hands dirty to work in a garden...i am sure that is not you as a person, however you sure made it sound that way...respectfully ymaddox.

The Wow factor here is based upon two things that are not commonly found coexisting in a garden. High contrast and unity are those two things. Someone above liked the combination of bloom and non bloom. There is actually very little bloom in there. It is foliage color that dominates this composition. More importantly, the colors are very carefully put next to contrasting colors to emphasise those differences in color throughout the planting. It is combined with a lot of different forms which further accentuates contrast.

That would be a total mess with out the rocks and walks.Did you notice the rocks in the planting beds? There are lots of them and they have a deliberate purpose of unifying this planting. The walkways add further unity through tying in a consistency and adding a shape that dominates the space - prepositional unity (in, next to, around, over , by ... the circle).

I don't get pulled through by the wood walk or going around in circles from this. The circle rests everything and ties it down. It is a calming garden despite its diversity in color. Divergence balanced with convergence to the point that it rests.

The wow is because it is a frozen explosion.

Laag, I love that! A frozen explosion. No, I missed the rocks until you mentioned them. I did notice the huge foliage variety and how it teeters on the brink of being chaotic, but I didn't make the leap to how the rocks and paths specifically are what keeps it from pitching right over.

I notice now (particularly with your description of a frozen explosion) how those plants with the strappy, spiky leaves look like bursts of foliage and how the circular bed contains them.

So, if you don't mind, what do you think would be the effect on this area of toning down the plantings? Not to all green, but to a selection less wild/bursting/divergent. I ask because I admire this garden tremendously but I'm also trying to relate it to my own taste in plantings, which is not quite this vividly contrasting.

Kristin

To me it's the lines/paths. They lead you to the circle, around the circle, to the gate. The eye can take a nice rest at the circle, but the paths keep leading the eye to "go places". Many gardens have paths that don't go anywhere, or are poorly connected to the site, very static. I like the "frozen explosion" idea, there is "movement" from these strong lines.

I am not sure it is possible to analyse the wow factor as it seems to me to be an instant emotional response. Like when you unexpectedly come across a breathtaking scene of a sun setting over a lake and then an inspection you find a highway nearby that drowns the scene in noise. I don't get an emotional response from the photo but I can see that it is the profusion of plants that laag calls a frozen explosion that would do it for some. I wonder if the patterns mentioned would be as striking when standing or sitting in the garden as they are from this elevated position? When I first looked at the picture I thought it was a show garden what with so many different plants and hardscaping materials, I guess what I am saying is that once the initial wow has faded you would tire of this garden very quickly.

For me, why this garden works begins with the sense of order that springs from scale and proportion.

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In the graphic above I have taken out some of the perspective to get more to a plan view. The shading denotes the garden to be made up of a total of seven elements. Viewed as a % of the whole the hardscape takes up close to a quarter of the area. But if one considers being at any point in the garden, then the scope of what lies within your interest probably extends not more than about 20 feet. From that point the hardscape will be about a third of the area surrounded by 2 to 4 of the other elements. The flat of the walk and the uneven areas of plantings accentuates the space for people and that for plants. Here I find balance and simplicity.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the picture was "public garden". It took me a minute to figure out why; I think it's because of the multitude of different plants, their various colors & textures...kind of like a party where everyone's talking quietly at the same time. All those paths coming and going are part of it, too.

The dark vine in the upper right quadrant keeps drawing my eye. It feels restful by contrast...like the quiet guy in the corner. And the orange frame thing on the wall is vital imo. Block it out and the whole thing is a little too organic.

I wouldn't call this a "wow!" garden because there doesn't seem to be any single component that jumps out at you and screams for attention. It's complex and I'd call it successful because the various elements--paths, plantings, boulders, etc--all seem necessary in achieving the result.

I agree with you pls8xx, that the composition is just about perfect. I don't think I'd get tired of this garden; it's one that probably would keep offering new aspects of itself.

Something about the paths leading out of the bottom of the photo is strange. Why would there be two of them going in the same direction? Or is there a change in elevation that isn't apparent from the photo?

Thanks, Kristen, for posting this.

To me the wow is just because the garden is "done". There doesn't seem to be a single thing left to do.

I think I'd be uncomfortable sitting in it however--there is no cozy place to rest (the stone bench would do for about one minute).

Is this meant to be viewed from above?

Wow - as in "Wow, that a lot of stuff crammed into a small space".

I was also drawn to the orange "thingy" on the wall. For some reason that object makes me think of Japanese garden as the theme. (Yes - I know it's not). The multiple paving materials and wild plant forms are held together by this orange thing. Take it away and it's like the critical peice in Jenga... it all falls apart.

This is so interesting.

So, for instance, my initial reaction -- "I GOTTA have a circle path like that in my garden!" was probably misguided in at least two ways: both that the circle wouldn't be as magical without its straight companion, and also that if I were to try and cram the round path into a space not big enough to allow for the same proportions around it, it would lose its appeal.

I think a change in elevation would explain both the two paths going in one direction, and the vantage point from above. I notic several people asking if the garden was meant to be viewed from above (something I would never have thought of) and maybe it was. I seem to recall that there was another photo in the same spread of a circular brick-paved area that was definitely a couple steps below a terrace or something. It's a way to take advantage of step-down areas that I never would have thought of on my own.

This is exactly the kind o stuff I was hoping to read. I love this forum.

Kristin

I got from your initial post that you didn't really like this garden ("this image actually causes a knot in my gut"). Just because something has been 'designed' doesn't make it a good design. I just don't see this garden as good design. Because it looks like 'variety' overload, it does look like a walking specimen garden in a public place as someone mentioned, which really doesn't make for a good photograph. Where is this garden?

I feel there is way too much going on and I really don't understand the 'design.' To me, gardens are supposed to be both relaxing and beautiful places to be. I don't find this one to be either. I notice this on many of the tv shows, that they are making amusement parks and including too many features and often in a too-small area. There also seems to be a trend to do too many features and activities in the front yard also, which is generally a more formal entrance/welcoming area.

Here in the NE a lot of banks and gas-stations use colored foliage scheme; red, yellow, and green foliage but in less busy masses.

I got from your initial post that you didn't really like this garden ("this image actually causes a knot in my gut").

Whoops! No, I liked it a lot. I meant that visceral response you get when you see something that really reaches out and grabs you. It can be positive or negative, but in my case it was positive.

The garden was featured in Better Homes & Gardens October 2004 issue. I found it through the link from the Renegade Gardener.

Kristin

Here is a link that might be useful: BHG photo spread

I like some of the other shots of his property, like the courtyard. It looks like he mixes things well and creatively. That particular area, I just don't know where to look. Just as the article says, 'endless points of interest' and 'diversity.'

It only has to be beautiful to you :) What is it that draws you to the garden?

Let me explain "frozen explosion". What I meant was that you have something that initially seems to go against everything that we are taught is good design. You have what should be chaos, but when you look at it, it is not chaotic.

Each plant is surrounded by anything other than what you might consider to be a "companion plant". Each one of these plants pushes away from the ones around it which is the explosion. But, There is no explosion. It is well held together and very, very, still - or frozen. The fact is that your eye is not drawn to a focal point in the planting. Whatever is strong in one element (form, color, texture, ...) is counteracted somewhere else to balance it out.

I think we are trained to look for focal points as students of planting compositions, so this one frustrates some of us. I don't think that I'm necessarilly wrong in thinking that the search for a focal point has some people fixated on the paths or "the orange thing" because they can not find them elsewhere. Don't worry about a focal point and enjoy the garden.

This is not a Japanese Garden, but it uses the same tools that some do for the same reason. Japanese gardens often have a few things that we all recognise and get hung up on which we then project to be what makes them work. I believe that if you look for the same things that are done in this garden in some Japanese gardens, you'll find them there when you never noticed them before. This garden is a lot more "in your face" with some of it.

Who noticed the rocks? Do those really cool Japanese gardens have rocks in them? Are you sure? Is it the stone lantern or the bamboo pissing stick that gives a Japanese garden that peaceful feeling? I think it is the highly contrasting form, color, and texture combined with some very strong, yet subtle, unifying elements which makes that peace. Look for it. I think you'll be surprised how often it is there.

Girlndocs, look at a few Japanese gardens this way. Then you tell me if it can be successfull with not so much flash. Pay very close attention to what is placed next to what. Look to see if there is a significant difference between them to make them pop from one another - even green on green. Then look for some consistant element that holds the whole thing together. It is not religion or genetics that make a Japanese garden - it is reasoning blended with some human sensitivity, not just the sensitivity (sorry Mojave). It can be learned, but not if you don't see what it is.

Anyone have a good (and real) Japanese garden picture that can be posted?

I don't quite understand what you mean Andrew. Are you comparing this garden with an archetypicaly "peaceful" Japanese garden in that it has a consistent element (the rocks) but the difference is that this one is more flashy which gives it the WOW factor?

The photographer has a filter over the lense which leans the scene toward feeling peaceful.

I wonder how peaceful it is in reality.

Is it the stone lantern or the bamboo pissing stick that gives a Japanese garden that peaceful feeling? I think it is the highly contrasting form, color, and texture combined with some very strong, yet subtle, unifying elements which makes that peace. Look for it. I think you'll be surprised how often it is there.

This is funny, because I read it and I thought well ... yeah. It's just those things that I do pick out in my unpracticed way (texture, contrast, balance). I guess not everyone sees that way? I will be practicing "looking" from now on.

The photographer has a filter over the lense which leans the scene toward feeling peaceful.

I wonder how peaceful it is in reality.

Ooh. So do I, now. I wonder whether in person, it's the garden equivalent of a loud Hawaiian shirt. I also wonder what it's like to experience it at ground level, actually in among the plants. (These are great examples of the kinds of things I wouldn't have thought of on my own, examining this photo, and I really value them.)

It seems that this is one of the loudest parts of the property, going by the photos. My taste runs towards the more restful, as well, but circles grab me.

Kristin

I don't find this garden that special - nice, but not WOW. The organization of the walkways, both in direction and material just don't seem to fit.

What seems to be a tall weeping type of evergreen in the center of the circle seems to be a very nice tree.

When ever I see a garden that makes me go WOW, I find that it includes some unusual element. This could be something unexpected, or just something very well done. For example, a very special piece of art, or a large blue vase where you least expect it. It can be excellent planting, but it is usually excellent hardscape. I now feel that without really good hardscape, you can't get that WOW factor.

That is not to say that excellent hardscape or an unusual element automatically creates WOW, it just means that without it, it usually does not happen - for me.

Here are a few pics of a Japanese garden you can compare and contrast. I'll let someone else decide if it is 'real' or not.

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When ever I see a garden that makes me go WOW, I find that it includes some unusual element. This could be something unexpected, or just something very well done. For example, a very special piece of art, or a large blue vase where you least expect it. It can be excellent planting, but it is usually excellent hardscape.

Madtripper, by all means, please post some pics of gardens that trip your WOW switch. I was really gratified to have all this food for thought on the photo I chose -- confirming my suspicion that behind the WOW factor of the circle path, there was all kinds of much more subtle and important stuff making it work. I would be fascinated to discuss the same thing about other WOW factors.

Catkim, thanks for the photos. It's a funny thing because I went to the Japanese Garden in the Washington Park Arboretum (Seattle) today and took a lot of pictures, but I thought I'd start a separate thread for those because there are quite a few and quite a few thoughts I had about them, not limited to WOW factor.

Where is "your" Japanese garden, by the way?

Kristin

Ink, I don't think this garden has more Wow than a good japanese garden necessarilly. I think it is much bolder in its delivery of some of the same goods. Those goods are what I view to be the wow in a japanese garden (in a much less subtle way). That is the fight between unity and divergence until a balance is built that makes it calm.

If you think about it, calm or peace is more noticable when viewing things that we expect to be the opposite. Usually, we describe someone as calm when they are in situations where we expect them not to be. You don't look at someone in a coma and say "Jim sure is calm today". But you might say Jim sure is calm when some punk runs a stop sign, smashes into his car, flips him the bid, and takes off while Jim calls 911 and explains the situation to the police in a matter of fact way. That is what I think is the great mystery in japanese gardens that is overlooked. They give off such a powerful sense of peace because they are calm in the heat of battle. Calm without that battle is not powerful if you think about it. A lawn should be more peaceful than a japanese garden, but it lacks the battle and so becomes less impressive.

Many of us look at the planting above and think it has to be chaos and it has to be too busy because you just can't mix that much stuff.

Look at Alan Bloom's gardens with heath, heather, and dwarf conifers. It is the same battle between unity and divergence that puts the funk into that. Don't underestimate the importance of the lawn and the heather that freezes chaos into calmness in his work. That is a wow and a half. It is the same set principles - contrast, hidden balance, lack of a supreme focal point, and strong unity from unexpected sources that tend to go unnoticed.

For me, much of the wow factor has to do with the juxtaposition of plantings and hardscape. The longer I do this, the more enamoured I am of good hardscape. If the hardscape is well done, it becomes a solid, unifying factor that lends structure to even chaotic plantings. Anchors the plantings in a way. One of my favorite wows is when plantings billow and spill over the edge of a hardscape path. The plantings soften and blend the edge but the hardscape ensures that there is an edge- and my eye seems to need the order that the solid edge provides.

Going along with that idea, the reason so many gardens lack WOW is because hardscape is expensive to install so people (including me at times) try to get around it, do it cheaply or just go without. As a result, the garden is missing that sense of permanence and order.

Whether it's hardscape, a pergola or some other constructed permanent element (and usually a combination of those things), I think that built elements separate the boys from the men in design. A garden made up only of plants without these man-made elements for balance will rarely, to my eye, be able to achieve significant wow.

What wows me is that the owner of this garden WAS very frugal--materials were found or constructed with items on hand rather than bought.

Even the terraces were constructed because he had to put the dirt dug out from a new basement door "Somewhere".

Given that context, double wow! This is a very creative gardener.

But if the home were for sale, this garden would turn me off--in a major way. Why is that?

So are we talking about a tension brought about by asymetric balance, balance being not equilibrium but "the fight between unity and divergence" giving the impression that there is a lot more going on than first meets the eye? The problem I have had with WOW is what happens next, you know like when you are instinctively drawn to something colourful only to discover that it has no substance.

The tension is from things that we usually see as clashing. This garden in the original photo, in my opinion, has a lot of tension caused by the plants. The forms clash and the colors clash with what we tend to understand as acceptable. It is what the current jargon calls "outside the box".

But, whether it floats your boat or not, there is a successful composition here. Someone was very much in tune with how to mitigate the negative effects of these clashes until they were overcome. The result is that this garden gets away with stuff that most gardens can't.

Catkim took the time to post some pictures of a japanese garden. See the way one plant pops off of the next. In one case a bright green groundcover with a dark green spikey foliage, a red weeping maple with a rich green broadleaf evergreen behind it. There are rocks in each of these. Balancing is done with understanding a balance of power of form and color and material.

Spacing things apart to get that balance is very important. The little short lantern (first pic)to the right of the tall japanese maple would not balance that little scene out properly if it was moved closer with all else being the same. But it could be moved closer if you changed something else to offset it. In other words, everything works if you counter act on the negative effect. I'm not talking cosmic mumo jumbo stuff, just plain looking at it and seeing the imbalance and mitigating it. I'd say it is there to allow the japanese maple to occupy that space rather than the other way around.

This thread has been very "out of the box" in many ways. It has forced me to see the limitations of my perceptions. It also has challenged or identified my pre-concieved notions of the adequacy of a landscape only if it meets the rules or has pre-requisite elements. I for one was looking for a strong focal point (i.e. the "orange thingy"), because it must have one. Do I like the design/composition... yes I do. Am I enthralled enough to say WOW... No, because it has not my set of rules.

Both look cluttered to me, so there is no wow! The most bothersome part of the top one is the two different paths, especially one going around in a circle and destroying a sense of "flowing" through the area. Circles are drawn around things to eliminate movement, make them a focus or target. If both paths and the center planting were replaced by a lawn that passed through the same space the design would be much more gracious, the experience of visiting the spot much more relaxing. Walking around that narrow circular path I would feel like I was in a turnstyle, would have to watch where I was going instead of look at the plants.