The traditional-garden zealot Michael Weishan has a method and a motto for landscape design: Optima Antiquorum Pro Novibus – the best of the old for the new. The key to successful gardens is not in copying grand European models, he says, but looking at our own humble New World origins, where the interplay of need and resource once upon a time combined to create a unique style called the American garden.
We were pretty good at it for a couple of hundred years, but around World War II, Americans lost their knack, became blinded by gnomes and pink flamingos, and started their own unique style of bad gardening. We must go back in time, Michael Weishan says, and hoe this row. Stop planting in a vacuum. Start planting for others. And garden by a few simple principles: Unity. Order. Balance. Beauty. Productivity
Guests:
Michael Weishan, author of The New Traditional Garden, talks about reviving the garden’s glorious past.