We are having a good winter this year with lots of snow protecting our plants and two gentle thaws already, one in November and another in early December, replenishing the aquifers .

2014 promises to be another good year. I am preparing a new garden talk for the Franklin Garden Club Garden Lecture series, in early spring. This year my talk will be on The New Perennial Landscape Movement.  I will be talking about the gardens of the father of this movement, Piet Oudolf, including, the Highline and Battery Park, in NYC, as well as the Lurie Garden in the Millennial Park, in Chicago. The ideas for this kind of gardening, go back 140 years, and my talk will examine some of the key figures who contributed to this exciting international garden movement.

My garden at Totem Farm is laid out more in an Arts and Crafts style, with an emphasis on garden rooms, and the use of local handcrafted dry stone walls, paths, terrace and staircases. There is a lot of structure to my garden including enclosed hedged rooms, plenty of evergreens for winter interest, as well as ornamental shrubs and trees. However, as I read about the Perennial Landscape way of doing things, I can’t help but be brought under its influence. These plantings are beautiful AND make so much ecological sense for the future of gardening. I plan to share on this blog, how I am going to edit my garden in the near future, to incorporate these exciting garden concepts.

If you are interested in having me speak to your garden club please email me at DS@donstathamdesign.com

Plan to make this area more natural looking by changing the path

Drawing over photo of new curving stone path and bringing the plantings out for a more intimate experience

Best, Don