9. Time - Memory and Dream

This principle of time is meant to give the garden some sense of being connected to other place and other gardens. Author Charles DeLint is a Canadian writer who has over fifty books, Memory and Dream being one of the early ones about his fictional town of Newford, modeled on Ottawa, Canada. The genre is the recently coined "magic realism". He takes the current stories and mixes in Native American mythic creatures along with Celtic creatures he sees as immigrating to the New World the same way people did. In this way, all of his plots blend the old and the new, creating a mythology which is North American. In the garden, the same could be said for elements that combine the old formal European styles of planting and native plants. Interesting that most of these native plants were reintroduced to American gardeners when European landscapers started importing wild grasses and the like. It still seems hard to find these natives at the typical nursery but I have found some cranberry viburnum at the local sale by a conservation club. Still hunting for more. (Photo from the wilds of West Virginia)