A nationally recognized speaker and author, Sydney actually has no formal horticultural training. "I feel like a fraud," she laughed. As soon as she started speaking, I knew that she was something remarkable and an expert storyteller.
"All of this for me, all of this to play in," Sydney began, speaking about the farmhouse Sydney and her husband shared and occupied for several years. It was in this house where she not only literally watched her garden grow, but played the role of catalyst and change agent.
Gardening for Sydney was a lifetime of answering the question, "Where do you look?" Rather than positioning one rock, one shrub, one pot, Sydney learned over time to link together elements that create a sweep and tell your eye where to go. You tell the eye where to look by creating depth, thinking about the foreground and the background, creating "pauses" and successful combinations of shapes, and studying form and style.
"It's surprising how long it takes to catch on to things," said Sydney, as she reviewed transitional photos of the change in her garden throughout the years. "I'm still catching on." Sydney spoke about thinking through various forms like rounds, mounds, foliage, colors and manipulating space. What is drawing your eye? What makes people wonder, "What's out there?"
Beyond space and design, Sydney used a gardening narrative to tell her life story. "That's what life is, the comings and goings." The shrubs loved and lost, watching a forest grow up in front of her eyes, the many vivid shades of green, her gardening helper and friend that succumbed to cancer, her various pets that were also part of her garden, and the dedication of her lecture to her late husband. (Have to say, I fared pretty well at holding in tears at that point.)
She even expressed such sentiment toward day lilies, which are commonly thought as such as pedestrian flower. "Day lily. To have perfection for a day, it's beautiful for it's time."
As Sydney came to a close, she explained what her garden was really about. "It was always about something else. Life. Us. It was meant to be played in, fooled around in. A place for people to carry on."
Fraud she is not, Sydney's lecture was dynamic, dramatic, witty and unforgettable. I look forward to reading more in her book I picked up, naturally titled, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older. She kindly signed my copy as I told her how delighted I was by her stories and having met her. She replied, "You have about 100 years of gardening ahead of you!"
Well, maybe not 100 years, but Sydney does remind us to pace ourselves. We are not gardening for a season or even just a few years, we will garden our whole lives. And that, I look forward to...
Sydney's 5 Steps Toward an Easier Garden
- Simplify borders by limiting demanding perennials
- Use shrubs for easy-to-grow, season-long interest
- Develop a new attitude toward the lawn (reduce lawn size, and live with longer grass and some weeds)
- Love your shade
- Discover container gardening
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