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Story by Ruth Chapman & Helen Williams,
Dan Hinkley, celebrated horticulturalist and one of the great plant hunters of this age gave a public lecture in Dunedin in April, 2010, entitled "Plants for Gardens: Dan Hinkley's Friends and Foes".
Dan Hinkley is a celebrated plant explorer, outstanding horticulturalist, gardener and designer, lecturer and author and he delivered an impact-filled address to a packed lecture theatre. This was a gardener's talk, laced with examples of plants from around the world, and with his philosophy of gardening.
Dan Hinkley was well known for his wonderful nursery Heronswood near Seattle in the Pacific North West, and he has now created a wonderful garden nearby called Windcliff. Both gardens - one sheltered and shady and the other exposed and windy - were featured in Dan's slides in a colourful presentation of the three design features that were the focus of his lecture.
Punctuation, Exclamation, Accentuation
The first of these was punctuation where height, repetition and or texture is used to interrupt the border. Plants such as Rheum, Darmera peltata (striking but hard to control) and Astilboides, with their large leaves were contrasted with more uniform or smaller plants. (In the smaller garden one could achieve a similar effect with Bergenia or Myosotidium hortensia (Chatham island Forget-me-not.)) | |
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Myosotidium Hortensia |
Cortaderia Richardii |
Pseudopanax Crassifolius' | |
Exclamation was defined as "command of the upper atmosphere of the garden" and, among Dan Hinkley's several comments on the great garden impact of many New Zealand plants, were some exclamation stars: Pseudopanax crassifolius (lancewood), Phormium, Cortaderia (toetoe), and Chionochloa.
Accentuation - cohesion by repetition - uses texture, colour and plant repetition. So, having a large drift of a plant and then an echo of that same plant has more impact than having just the drift itself. The accentuation need not be repetition of the same thing - one slide showed a large pot under a rose of similar colour. In another example repetition of red painted poles with graduated spaces drew the eye to a distant point. |
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