Gardener, isn't it time to really see the light?
Exploring the sensory journey in Innisfree Gardens in Millbrook, New York has opened our eyes to just how powerful the power of light can be. And it's not just about growing crops or choosing places where there is sun or shade.
The creators of Innisfree know that lighting, when carefully considered, is one of the most exciting design tools that can create dynamic contrasts and define navigational cues.
Innisfree Light guides you through the garden again and again, from bright open spaces to dark and narrow ones. It also moves emotionally.
To highlight this, Innisfree hosts special events several times a year, not only during the day, but also under exceptional lighting. One day in the coming weeks, it will open at 4am for a pre-dawn meteor shower. And during the autumn equinox in September, a lunar landscape opens up in the park.
The 185-acre landscape opened to the public in May 1960 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. This is a spectacular ice cream bowl. At the center is a 100-acre lake that captures and reflects the sun and moon like a giant mirror.
As we move through the landscape through forested slopes, rocky outcrops and grasslands, we benefit from several important gardens heavily influenced by the Asian landscape. We remember that every garden is a path of discovery.
Using light and other source materials, the creators of Innisfree create scenes that draw the viewer into the landscape, but many of the cues seem elusive. And each is read differently depending on the day and season. This is the light at work.
English style garden not suitable
When Walter and Marion Beck established their property in the country around 1930, it covered about 950 hectares. Near the house they were building, Mrs. Beck, an avid gardener, and Mr. Beck, an artist and the son of a professional gardener, started gardening in the English style, employing over 20 full-time employees.
But it doesn't work. Kate Carey, who has been the Innisfree landscape ranger for ten years and runs monthly tours, said: "They decided it was wrong because they have all the privileges that make this landscape so beautiful."
According to him, Beck had the idea inspired by the 8th-century Chinese poet and artist Wang Wei's discovery of a painted scroll depicting a garden at the same site. He begins to carve similar gardens into the landscape, but they read like meaningless individual works of art traveling on rails.
Bex began working with landscape architect Lester Collins in 1988. In 1938, different images began to merge into one.
Mr. Collins added his ingredients. But the well-known beds or borders are not a garden. In Innisfree it's probably just a lucky stone (or three). For example, three actors, a turtle, an owl and a dragon, draw the attention of visitors to the lake from a point called "Point".
Elsewhere, sunlight reflects through misty clouds from a pillared fountain set up by Mr. Collins on a cliff, while a 60-foot jet of water spurts through a white pine tree.
Because of its era of romanticism, it is known as modernism in the history of Japanese and Chinese gardens. And her way of thinking about design "carefully considers how our senses work," Ms Kerin said.
“Today you saw the whole game of the bow in this bowl. Therefore, ambient light changes dramatically during the day. “This garden is unlike any other garden and it must seem strange to the gardener, but they fit together and I think light plays a big part in that.”
Choose your own path to pilgrimage
Preserving the garden was a lifelong concern for Mr Collins, who worked at Innisfree for 55 years until his death in 1993. A year later, his book Innisfree: An American Garden was published.
After Becks' death in the 1950s, he founded a foundation to turn parks into public spaces. And when the budget and staff were cut, he made it too big.
The estate's gardens take up about a quarter of the 2.25-mile lake, but Mr Collins "wrapped the garden around the lake," Ms Kerin said. He brought this to our attention so that the way the lake appears and disappears when you see the whole landscape makes up a big part of the experience.
At the beginning of the tour, we saw the whole lake from above. So when we started, Mr. Collins “created something that looked like a pilgrimage,” Ms. Kerin said.
But there is no road through the park.
You just walk around the lake. Or your route might be a little more circuitous. M. Kerin is quoting what Mr. Collins says in his book: "A walk through a winding park, seemingly aimless."
Depending on the quality of light at a given time or year, you may be interested in different places.
“People are walking all over the place and part of it is planned that way,” he says. “Things are constantly changing, and that's how Collins does it. You can choose a different path each time; Here is the invitation.
Palette of true weight plants
In developing Innisfree, Mr. Collins emphasized another lesson: the importance of carefully evaluating whether a proposed feature is worth the initial cost and effort, as well as the required maintenance.
While there are remnants of previous incarnations of the park, including tens of thousands of daffodils planted by the Becks family prior to 1959, no attempt has ever been made to establish a botanical garden or botanical museum.
In most of the crops he grows or promotes, Mr. Collins favors the tried and tested.
“How do I get Mantra to argue and protect the public interest?” said Ms. Kerin. "I wanted good plants, low maintenance plants, and they were free."
Wild blueberries, ferns and lychees grow. (A visiting moss specialist recently reduced the number of species to 80.) Natives such as watershed (Aquilegia canadensis), Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum), and butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) cater to their needs.
Marshmallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) and pitcher (Saracenia purpurea) grow in many moorland gardens. Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is a popular early season food. Water lilies (Nelumbo) are planted on the shore of the lake, which shine and sway in summer. Japanese primrose, unnamed yellow foxglove, and mullein (Verbascum thapsus) do well indoors.
Mr. Collins achieves some of his best effects by subtracting and adjusting treetops to reflect how the sun hits the ground at key points. As you walk through the garden, pay attention to the shadows it casts: dense, tall oaks and cloud-like rays of light that look like stains from a painter's brush.
And then he added more invitations in places big and small. Rows of sugar maples (Acer saccharum Monumentale) glow in the autumn sun next to a small farmhouse.
A cluster of Calleri pears (Pyrus caleriana Whitehouse) has bubble-shaped heads, the tops of which are neatly trimmed to mimic the waves of the earth below, known as dumpling hills, and the embankment outside. They captivate the light and our attention.
“She is happy that she has a high level of service,” said Ms. Crane. "Trees unite all forms of the earth and are the fullness of this space" (Also, since trees do not produce seeds, pruning eliminates the possibility of infection.)
Whichever direction you travel through the countryside, you can't miss the magnificent Yarimizu in a shallow stream and perhaps one of the most interesting views.
M. Crane describes Innisfree as a cinema, a space in which a garden story about our bodies in motion is experienced.
"Two steps can really change the look of something, and it's by design," he says. "It's part of the path that Lester Collins paved to get you involved, and he got a little lost."
Are we accepting the invitation?
Margaret Rock is the creator of the website and podcast A Way to Garden , as well as the book of the same name.
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