Floriferus gardens dwindle down…
even stalwarts like roses slow…
the lavender has been shorn..
Fall Japanese anenomes cast their last nod over the nepata…
And then the garden is all about outline and
punctuation points…
Love round shapes in the garden…
Mop top trees and shrubs…balls of myrtle
This is geometry taken to the extreme in a Russell Page garden…
I really like dwarf English boxwood.
Like pearls, they can trim a row, cluster in corners
with their larger boxwood cousins
or criss cross an open stone court like
in this Normandy garden…
Symmetry and shape are the elements that keep place
in the garden until the riot of flowers return…
My garden shot in the spring over the top of the grape arbor…
I like to group boxwood in different sizes, also use
conical shapes like foreground right…
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One of the most respected of garden designers was Russell Page
Flip through his book here to plan a new garden
or dream your way into spring…
Trouvais 
It’s been said that gardeners come to gardens wanting bloom and later come to love foilage. I came gardening wanting hardscape. We have longish and sometimes brutal winters here in Kansas. I wanted the snow to have a beautiful place to land. For 20 years!!!! I have been removing grass and building stone walls, stone patios and paths. I will spend my 60th birthday this week racing down winter to finish a flagstone and mexican pebble courtyard. Thanks for the idea of boxwood inserts. That may come in very handy. Your garden is beyond beautiful, it is spiritual.
Hi Patricia. Thank you so much for your thoughts. Penelope Hobhouse is another great British gardener whose books emphasize foliage. I love plants that scramble across…love wanton, spreading perennials. That said, the boxwood, hardscape, garden forms all restrain the craziness and catch the eye.
Exclamation is the punctuation point most appropriate for this post!!! These clipped boxwoods and trees make me want to shout with joy. Green never looked so good.
How wonderful to discover who it was that created the gardens that surround the Frick. I walk by them almost daily.
On weekends, I spend time peering through the gates into the private garden in the back and watch the seasons change
weekend by weekend. When a storm took out some of my favorite trees I was saddened to know I’d not see them bloom again.
And in early spring, I stop to sketch the magnolia tree in the front. Only recently, I learned that the back garden was new.
(only a couple decades old) I am so thrilled to have learned who it was that created these gardens that give us all so much joy.
(I can only hope that the Frick will consider adding to its lectures — one on Russell Page — and his ever-changing art form.)