Windowsill Whimsy, Landscaping for the Senses, Including Humor
It’s both enjoyable and healthy to escape the confines of the sterile residence, our cage, and play in the companionship of plants. When we can learn how to cooperate with nature rather than compete, rather than demand total and absolute control, we can relax and enjoy the experience.
We can make our home a place of retreat and renewal, a source of adventure and discovery, a place to share. When we do that we can have a lot more fun. The windowsill landscape should be fun, and it should be a reflection of your tastes, lifestyle and interests. You can make your great indoors a living, multi-sensory experience.
Our landscape can be multi-level. We can vary the heights at which the plants are viewed by using a variety of containers, plant stands and hanging baskets.
A garden is so much more than the plants living there. The whimsey of unusual containers, statuary, fountains, even the furniture, can be a part of the mood.
Suggestions to make the most of your windowsill garden
1. When using aromatic plants we can space them out so that the scents don’t clash and overwhelm each other.
2. We can use color, both in foliage and flowers, to create images and set moods.
3. We can use containers of aromatic plants as a friendly invitation at the entrance.
4. We can plant for the view from the window and by placing a few plants near by create an invitation to experience the venue.
5. We can make our windowsill landscape truly our own by planting and growing plants that connect us to our past, and help us to cope with the present as we look toward the future.
Why We Enjoy Experiencing the companionship of plants
Gardening is an answer to a host of our instinctive needs. We are a part of the natural world. Before there was the computer, before television, before air conditioning, people lived in the real world and found comfort and joy there. They were a part of the 3-D senso-round experience that far exceeded the myths of reality TV. The garden is our connection with our past, our instincts for survival. In the garden microcosm we find the allegory of Eden, the African veldt, the forest, the jungle, the great plains, the mountains and the lakes of human history. Even when that garden is a single pot on a small windowsill, it is also proof of our faith in tomorrow.
Security can be found in the garden from being with nature yet not being in the wild. We instinctively need to feel comforted by the living world, the connection with the soil, the energy of the earth itself.
Sustenance, the source of food for the body and soul are found in the communion with live plants. The fruit, leaves, roots and fiber of the plants nourishes the body while the beauty, fragrance and life forces nourish the soul. Even on a windowsill, nature is the artist and we are the brush.
Adventure is one of our basic needs. This is why amusement parks and white water rafting are so popular. The need to see and do something different is a part of our human curiosity. In the garden there is always something new to experience or do.
Beauty is such a basic need for us all that we sometimes fail to recognize it as one of our basic drives. The garden provides so rich and so varied an array of the beautiful, from tiny flowers to massive trees. Exploring the windowsill garden with a magnifying glass will open a whole new world to us.
Whimsy is the surprise that a sense of humor can give us. It’s the laughable unexpected, the fanciful, the playful, the poetic injustice of life. Whimsy is the counterpoint to the serious work of being human. Garden whimsy can take the form of an old shoe used as a planter, the statue of a bird watching the birdbath, or single white petunia in a bed of all red ones, or a flower bed inside an old bedframe. The garden doesn’t always come with a laugh track, but you can provide one.
Looking for the Surprise is one of the great pastimes of the gardener. The surprise that lies in wait for us around the bend in the garden path is the whimsy, the punch line, the reason so many gardeners are able to smile at themselves and the world. Because a garden, even a windowsill garden, is filled with life, there will always be something new, changes expected and unexpected, good news and bad. Too much of our time is spent in the garden looking for work when we should be discovering the surprises and experiencing the wonder of it all.
We can make our home a place of retreat and renewal, a source of adventure and discovery, a place to share. When we do that we can have a lot more fun. The windowsill landscape should be fun, and it should be a reflection of your tastes, lifestyle and interests. You can make your great indoors a living, multi-sensory experience.
Our landscape can be multi-level. We can vary the heights at which the plants are viewed by using a variety of containers, plant stands and hanging baskets.
A garden is so much more than the plants living there. The whimsey of unusual containers, statuary, fountains, even the furniture, can be a part of the mood.
Suggestions to make the most of your windowsill garden
1. When using aromatic plants we can space them out so that the scents don’t clash and overwhelm each other.
2. We can use color, both in foliage and flowers, to create images and set moods.
3. We can use containers of aromatic plants as a friendly invitation at the entrance.
4. We can plant for the view from the window and by placing a few plants near by create an invitation to experience the venue.
5. We can make our windowsill landscape truly our own by planting and growing plants that connect us to our past, and help us to cope with the present as we look toward the future.
Why We Enjoy Experiencing the companionship of plants
Gardening is an answer to a host of our instinctive needs. We are a part of the natural world. Before there was the computer, before television, before air conditioning, people lived in the real world and found comfort and joy there. They were a part of the 3-D senso-round experience that far exceeded the myths of reality TV. The garden is our connection with our past, our instincts for survival. In the garden microcosm we find the allegory of Eden, the African veldt, the forest, the jungle, the great plains, the mountains and the lakes of human history. Even when that garden is a single pot on a small windowsill, it is also proof of our faith in tomorrow.
Security can be found in the garden from being with nature yet not being in the wild. We instinctively need to feel comforted by the living world, the connection with the soil, the energy of the earth itself.
Sustenance, the source of food for the body and soul are found in the communion with live plants. The fruit, leaves, roots and fiber of the plants nourishes the body while the beauty, fragrance and life forces nourish the soul. Even on a windowsill, nature is the artist and we are the brush.
Adventure is one of our basic needs. This is why amusement parks and white water rafting are so popular. The need to see and do something different is a part of our human curiosity. In the garden there is always something new to experience or do.
Beauty is such a basic need for us all that we sometimes fail to recognize it as one of our basic drives. The garden provides so rich and so varied an array of the beautiful, from tiny flowers to massive trees. Exploring the windowsill garden with a magnifying glass will open a whole new world to us.
Whimsy is the surprise that a sense of humor can give us. It’s the laughable unexpected, the fanciful, the playful, the poetic injustice of life. Whimsy is the counterpoint to the serious work of being human. Garden whimsy can take the form of an old shoe used as a planter, the statue of a bird watching the birdbath, or single white petunia in a bed of all red ones, or a flower bed inside an old bedframe. The garden doesn’t always come with a laugh track, but you can provide one.
Looking for the Surprise is one of the great pastimes of the gardener. The surprise that lies in wait for us around the bend in the garden path is the whimsy, the punch line, the reason so many gardeners are able to smile at themselves and the world. Because a garden, even a windowsill garden, is filled with life, there will always be something new, changes expected and unexpected, good news and bad. Too much of our time is spent in the garden looking for work when we should be discovering the surprises and experiencing the wonder of it all.