That Book and the Path Backward Towards
We always struggled with the idea of a website. Somehow we never resolved either what we wanted to post, nor in fact, how we wanted to be seen.

Whenever I was close to creating a site, there always seemed too much clutter and glossed, smooth flow of clever images, or beautiful work but very little about the dirt and muck of process.

So What Changed?
It was the publication of that book. Garden Voices by Anne Latreille (pub. Bloomings Books, Melbourne 2013).

Anne had proposed my being included in a book about ‘old-gardeners’ (my take on how I saw the book) 10 years ago; but warning bells should have sounded when she mentioned that quite a few of the ‘voices’ were either dead… or quite old. Then in late 2013, I was in Melbourne on the Latreille lawns at a small ‘soft-launch’ of the book. To be handed a copy, my first look, opened with some shock, to see who was included in the collection of 23 voices, along with another choir of eight – but no lesser Garden Voices (and by no means – the back choir group).

It was close to one of the biggest surprises of my life, especially as one of our gardens sat on the book’s front cover. The largest surprise was being included in the company of some of my best garden heroes and heroines, past and present.

The period immediately after the book launch was personally quite challenging – but the good counsel of time-worn friend, Milton Moon, whose simple phrase – Jinen, a Pure Land Buddhist phrase loosely translated as a “thing that happens of itself – beyond intention or calculation”, helped the dust to settle and see life list back to a seemingly more normal pattern.

More thoughts about the website story came from the book experience, looking at those paths backwards.

These led back further to the travels of Matsuo Basho (Japanese poet 1644–1694) whose small tome The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Penguin Classic) had been one of my constant companions over 41 years of garden design and making.

It became clear what the website could be, a way of introducing a series of possibilities to any clients interested in exploring a design process.

The first possibility is to meet over a cuppa, to see if the synergy feels right, to develop a productive relationship.

The second possibility, to establish whether there is a mutual open-mindedness in exploring the brief and its possibilities between us and a client. A way of working together in a respectful and friendly way.

We love the challenge of pushing the boundaries, exploring new possibilities, adapting responsive and collaborative team process (including the client) to the problem solving and creative response to the brief.

   For more about the book, visit Anne Latreille’s site