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Okay. I’ve written the first three chapters. Now I am re-writing them; honing them so that the thoughts and words flow effortlessly. Well that’s the idea anyway. I hope you find as much inspiration reading it as I have found in writing it.

The wisdom of the heart is here, just now, at any moment. It has always been here, and it is never too late to find it. The wholeness and freedom we seek is our own true nature, who we really are. Whenever we start a spiritual practice, read a spiritual book, or contemplate what it means to live well, we have begun the inevitable process of opening to this truth, the truth of life itself.               Jack Kornfield

I am a lifelong garden designer and a promoter of the Arts and Crafts movement. My first home was a bungalow. Everywhere I live I make a garden. The garden I built around my first bungalow gave me solace as I faced a terminal illness. While a patient, I spent a great deal of time in that garden. The garden helped me recover. That’s what a good garden can do. It can become a place for regeneration and renewal, not only when we are sick, but every day. 

Since that time I have designed a great number of gardens, many of them gardens around bungalows. My garden designs have many influences, but all of them conform—in one way or another—to principles of design that evolved from the Arts and Crafts movement, an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910. When followed, these principles add strength to a design. They transform a space into much more than simply a garden. They help create places to entertain, to spend time with family, and to live life in relationship with the natural world. It is here, in the rhythms of the natural world, where we find the connection to our true nature. 

My purpose in writing this book is twofold. First, I will explore the ideology behind the Arts and Crafts garden. Second, I intend demystify the garden design process and how it specifically relates to the bungalow, the quintessential Arts and Crafts home. The ideology of the movement directly addresses the distraction from life that we can feel as a result of our busy lives. It questions what is meaningful in life and compels us to participate in life. Together we’ll learn how to slow ourselves down, to take time to create and to enjoy life. I’ll show you how you can employ the principles of Arts and Crafts garden design to craft your back yard into a place that’s a perfect fit for your life. 

We’ll explore all of the steps in developing a garden design. We’ll investigate hands-on tools that you can use to turn your backyard into an outdoor living space. I will demonstrate that you already know more about elements of design (line, form, color and texture) than you think. Then I will show you how to apply what you already know to garden design. You’ll learn practical insights that will help you to organize space. You will create planting masses that screen and provide year-round visual interest, and select plants that are the right fit for the place. 

The bungalow’s history is deeply intertwined with that of the Arts and Crafts movement. The bungalow is one of many forms of decorative arts that the movement birthed. The founders of this movement advocated for better lives for people and the preservation of the crafts which were being lost to machine production. The decorative arts were seen as the means by which a meaningful life could be lived; participation in crafting a product, as William Morris said, “exercises the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body”. People like Morris advocated for work that had a connection to life and to nature, and thereby, to a rich inner life. As John Ruskin poetically expressed, “It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.” They called this rich inner life “the spirit of life”.

On the other hand, critics of the movement claim that it never attained the ideal of improving peoples’ lives. They argue that the products of the movement—its decorative arts—were too expensive for the average person and that only the wealthy could experience the rich life its founders promoted. 

The movement may not have attained its ideal in England in the late 1800’s, however when the movement carried the bungalow to America in the early 1900’s, the accessibility to the spirit of life increased dramatically. The bungalow was an affordable home to build. Its open floor plan, with family and public areas centralized at the front of the house, and private rooms at the back or upstairs, made efficient use of space. Standardized plans and home kits for bungalows (and other craftsmen style homes) promoted by Stickley, Sears Roebuck, and The Bungalow magazine allowed people to build their own houses. This helped offset the rising cost of home construction. The accessibility and affordability of the bungalow put home ownership within reach of more Americans, and with home ownership came pride, security, and a connection to the land. 

Concurrently, the introduction of the streetcar in many cities made home ownership in suburban neighborhoods possible for the middle- and working-class. Streetcar lines helped form the initial transportation system, allowing cities to extend outward between 1890 and 1920, and thus providing the template for what we now call the “bungalow suburb.” These new suburbs were often marketed as semi-rural villages with houses that blended into horticulturally rich, naturalistic landscapes. With the efficiency of the bungalow and the rise of the subdivision, the bungalow became a home for the “common man”. In this way, the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement began to take root in America.

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~ by beaudrydesign on August 2, 2011.