Page 6 - 2019 Sonoma County Gardeners Resource Guide

Supernatural Garden Magic
By David McRory
A supernatural landscape style is not a term you hear every day in
gardening circles. Supernatural often connotes mysticism and other worlds and magic. We use the term supernatural to describe landscape gardening featuring diverse plants from around the world that are climate-appropriate, set into garden spaces with good circulation and gathering areas.
Creating Natural Environments with Diversity
So many gardens are manicured spaces that have little practical use. These designs often break up spaces and make them feel smaller. And they often don’t relate to the
natural landscape of their
surroundings.
Starting in 1981, for more than 20 years, Roger Raiche was Curator of the 15-acre California Native Plant Collection at UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley. Roger transformed the collection, adding several thousand new plants to the collection from his extensive field trips.
These trips exposed Roger to the vast diversity of native plant habitats and settings. The observations in nature helped Roger find combinations of plants that look natural. The collections were be used
by students and faculty to become familiar with plant communities from various parts of the state.
6 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 3/19
SUPERNATURAL cont’d on page 7
Roger coined the name,
Planet Horticulture, to refer to his unique garden at the Maybeck Cottage in North Berkeley. This hillside garden included serpentine trails that created access to all parts of the garden. Many focal points, like fountains and urns, were placed to catch the eye and provide detail in the landscape. Openings along the trails became gathering areas for relaxation, secluded spots for reflection. Larger openings attracted groups.
The garden was a fantasy of plants that Roger collected from the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens and a variety of California nurseries. He was able to gather an incredible diversity of plants that included trees, shrubs, ground covers, grasses, vines and bulbs. Arranging this variety of plants was again a combination of a understanding of the plants and an artistic flair as to how they would look together aesthetically.
Composition: A landscape or garden looks right when the elements,
plants, architecture, space (open vs. closed), circulation, and focal points look balanced and restful. High energy plants, palms, agave, yuccas, cordylines, grasses, and other spikey elements that are ebullient, can all be mixed together as long as they are balanced in the final composition.
Diversity: Highly diverse plantings can also fill spaces. We think diverse plantings offer more color, texture, seasonality and sensual stimulation. We are not alone. Birds, bees, butterflies, all kinds of beneficial insects, and the whole chain of our natural ecosystem are also stimulated and benefit from diversity. Bringing diversity to our gardens is one step we can all take to live in harmony with the natural world.
If you visit natural areas, most will have an incredible diversity of plant types, with layers of understory plants, seasonal bulbs and annuals, small creeping vines, perennials, trees and shrubs, all growing together in a community. That is our biggest inspiration for garden designs, creating a kind of heightened version of nature with new plant communities.