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A Gardener's Notebook: The latest incarnation of my column detailing the trails and tribulations of my garden. Join the list and ask your own questions about gardening Subscribe

The great gardens of the past have often been built around some form of over-arching concept. Whether this is the telling of some classical tale or merely reflecting Man’s desire to impose order on a disordered world. With our increasingly global society and waning knowledge of classic literature there has been a move away from allegory towards whatever concept strikes the gardener’s fancy. This has opened up gardener’s to an entirely new world of design. Whether you consciously design your garden or view it more as on-going, random, process investigating other’s gardening concepts can give you ideas for your own garden.

Books

The impetus for this week’s column came when I happened across The Minimalist Garden by Christopher Bradley-Hole while visiting the Getty Center. The Getty has one of the newest conceptual gardens and the museum bookstore seems to stock a good supply of current gardening books among the art references and artist biographies.

While I am certainly not a big proponent of minimalism in either art or gardening it is refreshing to see gardens that are on the cutting edge of landscape design. The book is beautifully illustrated with photographs, overhead and elevation drawings. Some of the gardens are quite dramatic in their simplicity, with Far East sensibilities predominating, especially in the use of bamboo.

There are also great examples of what can be done with small, even tiny, spaces including rooftops. Just as I might look through home design magazines when looking for ideas for remodeling projects, books such as this can really help to jump-start your thinking, even if the gardens themselves are not that appealing to you.

The most interesting feature of having a gardening concept is that your visitors need not identify the concept in order to appreciate it. The simple existence of the concept in your thought and planning is enough to make an easily definable mark on your visitors. In fact, I fell that trying to explain your concept beyond a few simple words can actually damage their appreciation. It takes a grand garden indeed to stand up to a 10 page treatise on its concept.

In an entirely different direction is another book, Scarecrows: Making harvest figures and other yard folks by Felder Rushing. Also beautifully illustrated, shows a wide variety of traditional and modern versions of the humble scarecrow. While they can still function as ways to dissuade birds from eating your fruit crops, today they are more frequently used as decoration.

Scarecrows includes diagrams showing how to construct the included examples as well as how to design your own scarecrows. Especially interesting are a series of "wrapped" scarecrows which take on an extremely sculptural and life-like quality. If you are looking for a country touch to add to your garden, a scarecrow might be just the place to start.

Whether your gardening concept includes a glass gazing ball, gigantic boulders or scarecrows I wish you luck on all your gardening endeavors. The best feature in anyone’s garden is always that which pleases the gardener most.

Keep digging! -- Douglas