The great garden historian Pierre Grimal said that a garden that is not created season after season by the hands of a man, is destined to disappear.
This is to highlight how the garden is by its very nature ephemeral and fragile, and how it needs our care to be able to develop and thrive.
For architecture, the creation of a building ends when it is built; when the construction site is closed, a period of decline begins for the architectural work over time to which we must oppose. Threrefore, in the case of architecture, maintenance is aimed at preserving the building in the conditions it had at the time of construction.
For the garden, opposite considerations apply: a newly created garden is nothing but a semblance of what it will be at maturity. So at the end of the construction work you are at the beginning of the life of the garden and certainly not at the end of its work of creation.
To ensure that the garden can grow, develop and fully realize our design idea, it needs our care.
It is therefore essential to manage the garden after construction. In principle, the management of the garden must aim to create a fertile, healthy environment, where the plants can grow luxuriantly.
These are interventions that I have already illustrated in other videos, with the various processes to be carried out at different times of the year.
The aspect that I would like to emphasize today is how important the management of the garden is, especially when it is carried out by the clients, by those who live the garden every day.
It is normal to delegate to professionals the execution of the most expensive work, but what really makes the difference is the care over time, it is the daily care that we reserve for our garden, and this can only be done by those who live the garden in everyday life.
We all have little time available, so managing the garden cannot mean spending too many hours taking care of it.
However, it is important to establish contact with the garden, to live inside it, to frequent it.
We must try to understand what the needs of the plants are, if there is any problem in order to intervene promptly.
For example, the newly created garden is a particularly fragile entity: when the plants have reached their maturity the space at their disposal will be all occupied, but the plants just planted will still be small, they will have to root.
At this stage it is essential to protect them from the competition of weeds. So the management of the garden must be done especially at the time of planting, in the first two years after construction.
We must think of the garden as we would think of a living creature: in the first years of life it is certainly more fragile.
It should be followed more carefully and then let it develop independently in the following years.
Taking care of your garden is also essential to love it fully, in fact you can only love what you know, what you have taken care of.
The satisfactions that are obtained in this case are far greater than those that can be had when we have never taken care of the garden, since we have always delegated this operation to others, and we enjoy it only from an aesthetic point of view.
This is certainly important, but even more important is to see the fruit of one’s work in such a way that what we have created is perceived also as the result of the work of our hands.
After realizing the garden project, when all the construction work has been completed, the real life of our garden begins and with it begins our work of care and maintenance that must lead us to see the garden as an integral part of our home, as an element in which to live our daily life
.
