AN OASIS OF ORDER

My idea of a perfect garden is one that looks beautifully maintained but requires hardly any maintenance. I will do this by using hard landscaping with natural materials with occasional bursts of colour through planting. By building natural stone walls with stones of pink, grey and sandstone I will have some colour year round in the garden. The photo is a small sample of a much grander scheme but it illustrates my point, hopefully, very soon there will be a burst of tulips appearing out of the stone circle. For some reason this shape reminds me of Miro. I am going to have more of them running down the border, and also a similar concrete and stone border on the far side as already exists on the near.

Waiting for the tulips to appear

The current state of the border after clearing of brambles and ivy, the stone border still buried under mud

AN ARTISTS GARDEN

This website was meant to be all about my painting, but the more I think about this garden and how it might be transformed the more I realize that the same creative processes are involved. The building of the first wall has set a standard for me to carry through the rest of the garden. I don’t want my ideas to be compromised or restricted by time or effort or difficulties. I think the transformation is going to be dramatic as this garden has not been touched for many, many years. I see it as if I am almost painting the garden into reality, ( avoiding the ‘blank canvas’ analogy).

After removing tree stumps, brambles and ivy an original wall is discovered at the end of the garden, though hardly visible!

Setting out the stonework for a much bigger wall

THE POSTMAN APPROVES

The postman said my wall was ‘nice’, this makes the whole project worthwhile. It has turned out really well as a first time experiment using randomly shaped stones. What I thought would happen has happened. That is as I progressed with the wall my building style would become more adventurous and you can see this as you view it right to left. Its an interesting process, unlike using bricks, my analogy would be like putting together a jig saw puzzle that has no image on each tile, and no picture to follow. Three more walls planned and a circular stone wall around a tree, inspired by Soutines’ ‘Small town square, Vence’ which features a tree surrounded by a circular bench. I am due a few painting days, starting tomorrow.

A GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

Here is a significant project that is impacting on my painting time. Our ‘new’ garden, 9 times bigger than our previous one and has all the aspects of fading grandeur, Venice like. It was once immaculate but has been neglected for several years. Still very beautiful but in need of a big overhaul. Here is the start of a large landscaping project, Gaudi inspired? it certainly has the aspect of an eccentric artists garden. The first of many walls is emerging, randomly ‘found’ stone in the countryside, its a 30 mile round trip, and I shan’t be revealing the source, especially of the highly prized pink stone which is just sticking out of the soil by the roadside. I would not be surprised if this garden proves to be an inspiration for some painting in the future