The whole idea of outdoor rooms has been hijacked by commerce to sell more stuff. A grill is no longer enough, it has to be an entire kitchen, etc.

I can definitely see the painting analogy for garden design, as my use of plants tends to be more of a painterly approach in any case, with large drifts of plants in complementary colors to set a mood year round. On the other hand, my conception of gardening is probably more akin to the outdoor room concept, as I would rather be outdoors enjoying the plants and garden than inside the house having to clean up or take care of business. Therefore I see making the outside super inviting as something that comes naturally, and not some marketing gimmick or a reason to recreate the kitchen outdoors. The days are so often inviting all year round here, that you want to be outside, at least a portion of every day, just to see what is newly interesting.

Treating the garden as architecture is more about creating a flow of spaces within the garden that interrelate, yet also stand alone, with different moods and purposes in each space which also provide different exposures for different sorts of plants. As space in California is a lot smaller than typical yards elsewhere in the country, creating visual privacy is very important, and creating vertical screening elements that will screen without getting too big is always a dilemma. I especially like creating different rooms within a garden that capture light at different times of the day, as we are generally on the cool side year round, it almost always feels better to provide some sun and shelter from the wind, which is rather atypical for most mediterranean climate locales.

Gardening for me just naturally takes on a vertical dimension to get maximum use of space; hanging pots on fences and walls, suspending hanging baskets from the tree branches, attaching epiphytes to the branches, all in a way to mimic what I have seen in cloud forest jungles.

I don't think I would know how to create a garden as a novel, my thinking just doesn't go there when I am creating in the garden. My first instincts are to look at the surroundings, and see what I would want to emphasize, hide or play off of. I like to take my cues from the architecture of the house, and really enjoy working on new gardens that also involve redoing the house to open it up to the garden, to bring more light indoors, or extend views outwards and bring the garden inside, if possible. To that end, I am a big fan of large windows, new skylights, bathrooms that feel like you are outdoors, (nothing like a shower with the sun beaming down and a light breeze, and a view over the walls into the surrounding garden).

I am not such a big fan of the whole outdoor kitchen scene with built-in everything, as the local weather here doesn't really encourage hanging out in the garden after dusk, the wind and the typical evening fog off the bay don't encourage languid lounging outdoors after dark. I am sure I would have a different concept of gardening and garden design if I lived somewhere with warm nights, but I have never experienced that while living in California, just while living and working overseas.

I think Tibbs is on the mark again--a great deal of marketing cashes in on getting consumers to over furnish their yards.

Garden rooms in my neck of the woods would often be abandonned rooms. Winter is harsh. For that matter, summer is harsh, too. If we're lucky, there are 3 to 4 months when it is inviting to be outside. The rest of the time it's -10 deg., Or the prairie wind is howling o'er the plain, or it's 90 deg and 90% humidity, or squadrons of mosquitoes are trolling for targets.

Don't get me wrong. I love the movement of the seasons--the spicy earth tones of autumn, the stillness and bite of winter, the exaltation of crocuses in spring, even the excesses of summer, which seem to be measured not just in heat and sweat but in zucchinis.

But outdoor "rooms" make much less sense in places where the natural thermostat is often set to the extremes. You can only ameliorate outdoor heat and humidity to a certain degree. Usually, in July and August it's just far more pleasant to be inside.

Still, I do love to be outside, although I'll admit that not much gets me to go out in the snow. It's just not my thing. I'll usually make an annual pilgrimage across virgin snowfall in the backyard just because it's good for the soul. In the summer excesses it's the plants that draw me out. I like to see? What's going on with them, and because seeing, for me, means touching, I have to come into close proximity. Just sitting outside, in other words, isn't my primary activity. It's more like a walkabout, to use an old Aussie expression. I don't take walks through the house to visit all the rooms, and I guess I don't think of the outside that way either. So I guess I'm looking for ways to enrich the journey around the garden.

That's why I like the story metaphor for garden development. Somewhere I read of a designer that thinks in terms of a novel. Maybe "story" makes more sense? I'm not sure I can pull it off, and what I've done so far in my garden is pretty limited, but I like the idea of stories and meaning.

Last spring, for instance, I came across the work of an outdoor artist who creates "animals" from recycled metal. One of his creatures was a horseshoe crab made from a horseshoe. I wish I'd gottten it. Once upon a time I used to be a fairly skilled horsewoman. Once upon a time I used to live by the ocean. It wasn't a large piece, not big enough for a focal point, more the size to be set in a small outcropping of stones surrounded by carex 'Evergold' and a small blue leaf hosta.

Which probably highlights my problem. I'm o.k. with small vignettes, but the interconnections and "bigger picture" is much harder. It's all well and good to say that I'm going to have a garden that tells stories as you meander through it, but it won't work unless I come up with better privacy screening, ways to distract from or lessen the ugly spots, and find the necessary funds to complete certain rehab projects

Wellspring

I think the word you are looking for is 'narrative', the telling of the story. This narrative is not only in what is there today but what was there yesterday and how you got from one to the other. The beauty of a narrative like this (especially for you ) is that it is not reliant solely on what you see in front of you, like a painting would be. Memory plays a big part so that the splashing of water is not only your little pond and fountain but whatever crashing waterfall your imagination conjures up. Isn't this where the book beats the movie?
Narrative is also what gives a landscape movement as it offers a sensual progression through the space.

This may start off sounding negative - bear with me.... :-)

I find the term garden room(s) as it is frequently used to be trite and not appealing to me. I have no desire to turn part(s) of my garden into some sort of kitchen, dining or living room, for many of the reasons Wellspring mentions (too hot; too cold; too many mosquitoes) We no longer even have a table on the patio, just benches and a coffee table which is sufficient for what limited eating we sometimes do out there. Im not even sure from my reading if the original concept of garden rooms had much to do with the idea of using the garden as living space or even as a way of thinking about how to garden there (i.e. floor, walls ceiling etc.) I think the garden rooms term originally may have been using room in the sense that a room in a house is a distinct space within and part of the larger space of the house. Each room in the house has its own character, look and purpose but its significance and greater purpose is to be a coherent part of the larger space that is the house.

The brain craves stimulation and variety while also seeking order, pattern and meaning. Having areas of the garden with distinct plantings, character and purpose but linked together, both physically through paths as well as linked through some common themes, plantings or whatever, to make a coherent whole makes sense to me. I dont know what the appropriate label for the connected spaces is - you could call them rooms I guess, but that word implies a confined space to me and thats not what my spaces feel like to me. One of the key things I am trying to create in my garden is a tranquil flow of transitions, both within spaces in the garden and between those spaces. Its certainly still a work in process even after 8 years here but you can now start at any point in my garden and follow an easy path that will lead you through both sunny public spaces planned for maximum flower power and quiet, private spaces with various degrees of shade. In addition to the paths, one plant in particular (Persicaria polymorpha) links all my garden spaces because it grows well for me in light conditions varying from all-day sun to the shade under the edge of the white pine canopy. It looks quite different in full sun vs. various degrees of shade but it is attractive (at least I think so!) and retains its distinct personality even as its form changes as the light conditions change. Thats what I aspire to for my garden an overall space that is a distinctly ours, with an interesting variety of sub-spaces with their own individual look. I aim to have those individual spaces flow from one to the other in an orderly fashion to make a coherent whole.

I think all of Wellsprings metaphors can be applied to my garden in some way or other. Im not sure if theres one overall encompassing metaphor for my garden or anyones. Perhaps there doesnt need to be. Perhaps what metaphor is useful depends on the stage of the gardens development and the particular objective under consideration as well as the mindset of the gardener at the time.

"Memory plays a big part so that the splashing of water is not only your little pond and fountain but whatever crashing waterfall your imagination conjures up. Isn't this where the book beats the movie? Narrative is also what gives a landscape movement as it offers a sensual progression through the space."

What you are describing, Tony, is what I'm after, but I'm still trying to grasp how to go about it. Not so much the discrete elements, but the garden as a whole.

I went hunting again for the on-line article that got me wondering about all of this, but when I tried using the page address my internet provider said that I was "forbidden" to go to that page. Weird

I went to finegardening.com, clicked on "design", and then on "design principles". Pretty sure that's where I found the article, which is by Jim Scott and is titled " A Garden Story in Three Parts". Scott's examples aren't entirely convincing, and his creepy steps sound like an accident waiting to happen even without taking lack of eyesight into account. Nevertheless, I'd much rather have a garden with tales to tell than not.

Here's a bit of what Scott has to say:

"Whether a garden should be a painting or a story depends on the gardens purpose. Most front yards, designed to be seen from the street, are, by their nature, pictures. Many backyards, built to be seen from inside the house or to complement a patio, are to be looked at as well, not explored. If a garden goes beyond this and beckons you to actively explore its secrets, its a story. Whether the story is an anecdote or a novel, the gardener, like the author, must use certain devices to ensure interest and excitement as the garden story unfolds."

Scott, who likes mystery novels, talks about his scary stairs:

"In my garden, a twisting path sunk in a narrow, fern-lined ravine overplanted with dense foliage is pretty, but it also creates a sense of foreboding. A momentary hintand only a hintof an unexpected faraway green sward or the smell of unseen roses offers mystery. A steep flight of steps, a pool with small irregular stepping stones equals danger.

"I use these paths as an author would his narrative. They create tension and a desire for the resolution or release of a soothing destination." [A Garden In Three Parts, Jim Scott, from finegardening.com]

And here's the address my computer gave me for the article. Maybe it will work for you guys?
http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/design/articles/garden-story-in-three-parts.as

Anyway, I'm so, so tired. I need to tuck myself in and listen to a good bedtime story.

Wellspring

This thread is like a good story, please continue...

Somewhere in the archives of this forum is a previous thread that contained a story that Patrick (phrago) told about an island he and some buddies used to visit as a kid. I don't remember the details but he described a disused pond with a turtle and the sense of wonder and fear and the thread turned into a discussion about mystery in the garden. Does anyone else remember it?

Tony, I don't remember that thread, so I went lookingTurtle, mystery, island, various combinations, limited to LD, then over to the JG forum, and then searching all of GW. Lots of hits, and lots of distracting old threads full of pith and nostalgia.

At the Japanese Garden forum I did stumble over some of the past debates over symbolism in gardens versus good design. That sentence synopsis doesn't quite express it. Suffice it to say that JGs are often narrative in structure, or at least it seems so to me in my limited experience. The problems come between those who understand themselves to be creating views and perspectives that refer to particular myths and legends and those who have no interest in that part and simply want to create a well-designed garden in a Japanese style. Then the fur flies.

Oh, yeah, and I also kept looking, this time for phrago and patrick3852. There was one particularly great reread through a LD thread titled 'I wanted to shake 'em up a bit' aka the Barry Manilow or paint this tree blue thread.

Meanwhile, back at my ranch, I'm contemplating the decoration of plastic Christmas trees. It's put me in a destructive mood, so I find myself wanting to tear down the metaphors and just do something! It's possible that I already have cabin fever, and winter doesn't really start until when?

Wellspring

I have it here somewhere but having just upgraded to OS X leopard, a process similar to giving birth, I have yet to sift through what remains of my old stuff. Some of those old threads were fun though, weren't they? lots of participation and banter, a question like yours would have had loads of hits back then, oh well. I still can't figure out how you can 'read' this stuff, do you have a gadget that converts the written word into a voice. I nominate Sean Connery for my voice over how about you? Andrew would be done by David Suzuki and Iron Belly by Homer Simpson or Walter Cronkite, I can't decide.......

I have about a dozen voices to choose from, half "male", half "female". I can also control "verbosity"on the system, that is, not on me. On the system, it refers to the level of feedback I want from the keyboard commands. I can also assign different voices (or different pitches of the same voice) to text reading versus keyboard commands. The program is also smart enough to switch languages and even accents. If I go to a Brit page, the voice does its best to speak the Queen's english.

The screen view stays the same, but my JAWS cursor (Job Access Without Sight) isn't tracking the page in quite the same way. JAWS converts the page to a linear format, so that you don't have sidebar buttons or confusing verbage occurring on the same line. It's all sort of top to bottom, if that makes sense.

Sean, eh? I'll leave your choices for Andrew and Dan alone, but here's a couple:

gardengal48/Pam -- Terry Gross. Host of NPR Fresh Air. She knows her stuff, has a great laugh, and can cut to the heart of the matter. Doesn't hurt that she can also put someone like Bill O'Reilly in his place.

miss_rumphius_rules/Susan? -- I may be way off here, but what about Katherine Hepburn at the height of her powers, or possibly Meryl Streep. I'm sorely lacking in my knowledge of newer voices.

As for mehmmm.

And now for a random thought pertaining to the topic. What do you think of the story-telling and landscape work of Disneyworld?

Wellspring

Charlotte, landscape as storytelling is a subject very close to my heart so I come along with you but I had you as Meryl Streep.

Thank you.

But here's the inside story. I sing. I've always fancied myself singing torch songs in a smoke filled bar in a backless black dress.

Wonder how I'd reference that in my garden?

"Landscape as storytelling". I'm still working out how that will help me next spring.

Hail fellow, well met.

I'm reading every word, sorry not to participate but delighted to be here. It's just great. I've often pondered the phenomenon of the dialogues on the forum without the hindrance of faces.

Went hunting again, this time using google. Found an article with a promising title at questia.com, but then the site apologized that it could not display the text. Here's the tantalizing google reference:
Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories ...

"Narrative as form generation," using stories to help decide how to design a landscape, even when the story may not be evident in the final form. ...

Found the same title at Amazon, but for some reason it was in German. At the Amazon page I caught this nice tidbit: "WE live within worlds of stories, and we use stories to shape those worlds ..."

Now why did google give me the German page for an English language text? Anyway, here's more:

Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories
By Matthew Potteiger, Jamie Purinton

Landscape narrative is the art of using the design of a place to tell its story. Examples include places such as the Vietnam Veterans' and FDR memorials in Washington, D.C. This the only book on narrative design, a major new trend in landscape architecture.
1998 ASLA Communication Awards

From the Back Cover
"Narratives . . . intersect with sites, accumulate as layers of history, organize sequences, and inhere in the very materials and processes of the landscape. In various ways, stories 'take place.'"

Narrative offers fascinating ways of knowing and shaping landscapes not typically acknowledged in conventional documentation, mapping, surveys, or even in the formal concerns of designIllustrating specific narrative practices that can be applied across a range of design projects, it bridges the gap between theory and practice by tracing the narratives of specific projects and places, including the restoration of New Jersey's Meadowlands and the road stories of Highway 61 in Mississippi
About the Author
MATTHEW POTTEIGER is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry at the State University of New York at Syracuse.
JAMIE PURINTON teaches design and practices landscape architecture for her own firm in New York City. The authors have published numerous articles in scholarly and professional journals on landscape architecture and design.

Don't know if the book was any good, but it sure shows up in interesting places. Anyone heard of it?

Wellspring

Have a look at the link below, Charlotte.

This got me to thinking what is the story my garden would tell someday? Ideas for individual projects to be placed throughout the garden and how they connect physically, moving from one to another is not a problem, but does it tell a story? Thinking about them individually they are some how disjointed, but on second thought maybe not. Oh my this might be a scary story.

The dual stone snake and intermittant water course, a'la Andy Goldsworthy that is wandering through my mind right now as my next project brought to mind the first story, the story of The Garden of Eden. That is a good place to start.

But then perhaps the garden is more often meant to be the setting for a good story, the lush and sensuous backdrop, a catalyst, not the author.

amili

Could we also celebrate the 'discovery' factor of gardens? Always changing, always a new blossom to admire, the sound of wind rustling fall leaves, the imprint of an owl wing on new fallen snow? Given the choice, story telling would be low on my list of preferences. Plant for change, live the moment, breathe in the earth and yes, Wellspring, sing!

That link doesn't work for me, Tony, and I'm not sure I can explain it. Maybe the image of the pages from the book are on the screen, but the text isn't available to my screen reader.

I keep coming back to Woodyoak's comments about the original three metaphors in this post's title. She wrote, "Perhaps what metaphor is useful depends on the stage of the gardens development and the particular objective under consideration as well as the mindset of the gardener at the time."

Woodyoak, your garden sounds much further along than my own. Which got me thinking about time. There's been a thread here a while back about how to create the look and feel of age in a garden. In other words, artificial aging. The more recent thread about the beautiful ruins of an old stone barn is the real thing. But, some of the design questions still hinge on how you want to tell the story of those stones or what story you choose to tell.

I live on an average street, in an average house, in a town that is so average it came in 2nd in the contest to be the "real" Springfield where the Simpsons live. Glaciers dominated this region for a very long time, and then prairies interspersed with thick bands of forest grew here for tens of thousands of years. For just a couple of handfuls of decades European settlers farmed the surface of this land, while a little later first and second generation immigrants mined it. Most of the homeowners within the city limits are required to purchase insurance for mine subsidence. Not always a comforting thought, as this is the region of the new Madrid fault line, famous for relative inactivity, famous for the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the lower 48 states. That's a story that my father, a geologist, liked to tell to get the hairs on the back of our necks to stand on end. He felt downright cheated when I called him a few years back to tell him I'd experienced a tiny little seismic tremor.

An elderly friend told us that one of the largest mine heads was located about a three minute walk from my house. In a slightly different direction I can walk 3 or 4 minutes to where the last corn fields were sold three years ago. Now McMansions have sprouted up on their tiny lots.

Amili wrote, "But then perhaps the garden is more often meant to be the setting for a good story, the lush and sensuous backdrop, a catalyst, not the author."

Which got me to ask myself, "Why have I been going down this road?" Why try to make a garden tell a story?

"To celebrate," writes Nandina. And that's what I would attempt to do in telling stories. Not the stories of western expansion, industrialization, or the blanding of life in suburbia. The stories I play with in my mind's eye are celebrations. They help me to dream my garden more clearly when, as now, it sleeps beneath an ice storm.

Wellspring

"Could we also celebrate the 'discovery' factor of gardens? Always changing, always a new blossom to admire, the sound of wind rustling fall leaves, the imprint of an owl wing on new fallen snow?" you just told a story there Anne which kind of undermines your objection. You of all people who have told your stories here, I just noticed the 'also' above that kind of undermines my soap box stand, bummer. Seasons greetings to you and Dick.

My book would be an interactive DIY volume. Interactive because so many of you guys have contributed ideas and DIY because I am doing it myself. HOPEFULLY the second volume would be a romantic comedy mystery. Places that remind you of a romantic place, comedy thrown in there with the garden junk I plan to integrate and mystery in not knowing what is next.
I like the outdoor rooms. 3 Years ago I spent some time in Sicily Italy where I rented a cottage on a mountain with a backyard view of Mt Etna. There were not many bugs outside so I sat in my yard often, then peeking over the neighbors fences I found the most wonderful idea I ever saw. They had a simple structure built with just wood like rail road ties with different types of roofs ( I can't remember but I think it was some kind of wire with grapevines growing accross), pavers for the floor and inside was a single bowl sink, and a grill, a table to eat on a small fridge and a tv. I saw many versions of this room and it was so wonderful to me never having seen anything like this before. I made up my mind to copy this idea then I come home and the next year it is all the rage. And to my disappointment the cost of making such a room is just through the roof. I took pictures but you can not really get the feel of it as I was leaning over fences snapping shots. LOL
Anyway maybe my book will be "a journey through budget DIY"!

Not too far to the north of here is Olana, the home of Frederic Church. Church was one of the big noises of 19th century American landscape painting, and when arthritis took away his ability to make landscapes on canvas, he started making landscapes with plants. The estate belongs currently to the state, and after a couple of decades of not doing much, they are beginning to take viewshed restoration seriously. The result is in many ways relatively unusual. The grounds have several miles of old carriage trails, and on most of them there are very defined 'views', which are openings cut in the woods to look out. Between the views, the woods close back in. So the final result is more like an art gallery than a landscape. You walk to one opening, ooh and ahh over the view, then walk to the next one. As much as anything else, it emphasizes how much this is not how landscapes are usually set up.