Geometry comes in really handy if you’re a gardener. All those neat shapes-circles, squares, rectangles and onwards-make great design motifs in a garden. I’ve got a number of circular areas, and another spot (in front of my shed) where I made a four-square garden (except it’s four rectangles). In any case, the repeated elements bring cohesion to a garden by tying its sometimes disparate bits and pieces together. We’ve all heard about how repetition works well with plants; it’s even more effective with shapes. I saw a New York Times story and video this past weekend that really put my imagination into overdrive on the topic. It profiled the current art/landscape design work of Maya Lin, prodigy designer of the distinctive black, chevron-shaped Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC. She’s now working with wave forms as sculptural elements in the landscape. Above is her latest effort, at the Storm King Art Center in New York (photo by Colleen Chartier for the NYT). Gee. I wondered, is this something that might work as an effective geometric element in garden? Turns out it does.
