Jinny Blom - ‘The Thoughtful Gardener’ - An intelligent approach to garden design
Jinny Blom's 'The Thoughtful Gardener - An intelligent approach to garden design' is certainly a contender for my garden design book of 2017. This will come as no surprise as I happily confess to being a fan of Jinny's work.
A landscape and garden designer for nearly twenty years, Blom has worked the world over, although not always in the limelight. Notably, her work is often for very private clients and it's easy to see why she might be the perfect designer for such people. Her design work is sensitive to people and place, and her gardens reveal themselves to us gently - this is perhaps what appeals to me most about her work.
A good garden is often experienced as a discovery - a mystery unfolding before us, welcoming us into a space. When we arrive, it feels familiar even if we haven't been there before. For me this is the apogee of garden design and place making - when we get it right, as Blom does, it just feels natural, timeless, and present.
While the book is not a practical 'how-to-guide' for garden and landscape design, it does deal with what is, in a sense, an even more important area... that of getting your thinking in order.
The book gives a very honest and open account of Blom's own approach and process that would normally be inaccessible but is generously shared here, and can inform our own practice of place making.
The book is divided into six sections: Seeing; Understanding; Structuring; Harmonizing; Rooting; Liberating. Each section building on the previous and is also broken down into elements that make up Blom's way of working. While it's possible to just dip in an open on a page (n.b. testing this method reveals you nearly always open on a photo - the book is full of great images), I personally found the way to get the most out of it is to set some time aside to go through the while thing in one sitting, it's rich and immersive - and approaching it this way is very rewarding.
Materially, the book is well produced - the design and layout is good and the photographs are excellent, often full pages, beautifully lit (naturally the subject matter helps), but what is most noticeable is how immersive they all are - it's rare to feel so much from even the best garden photography and in many cases you really get a sense of the mood and what it is like to be in surrounded by these incredible spaces.
///KGC
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To learn more about Jinny Blom and her design studio, visit http://www.jinnyblom.com
'The Thoughtful Gardener - An intelligent approach to garden design' is available via Amazon and in all good bookshops.
