The Romantic Gardener

“I draw with plants, soil and rocks.” – John Schoustra, owner of Greenwood Daylily Gardens and the Rancho de las Flores wedding garden.
All gardeners are passionate artists who work in different styles. There are realists and surrealists. Minimalists and naturalists. Myself, I am a romantic. Defiantly so.
A literal description of this vignette and how it came to be is that it is a small stand of two toned freesias planted beneath the tree ‘Tabebuia Rosea’. For several seasons, when the little flowers should have been at their loveliest, the weight of the blossoms on fragile stalks toppled their blooming faces in to the dirt. Rather than tie these stems to sticks, the variegated geranium, ‘Pelargonium Crispum’ was planted to provide more natural looking support. But it is so much more vivid in how it is framed by imagination.
I imagine bunnies hopping by at Easter time see the freesia as a necklace decorated with amethyst cabochons. The starched and tightly ruffled chartreuse leaves edged in cream and white are the lavish lace collar on which the necklace is displayed. Both are fastened at the base of the tree. Its slender trunk rises up as a long neck. The canopy, as though it is the regal profile of Mother Nature herself, holds high her pink tourmaline encrusted crown.
So splendidly adorned, the tree holds court out over the valley, beholder and beholden. She sniffs the perfume of the ruffle beneath her blooming crown and she names the geranium “French Lace”.