Like It Rough? Rustic Touches for Modern Gardens

One of the most overlooked design elements in modern gardens is the rustic touch. Sleek lined furniture, fine crew-cut turf, solid hedges….if everything is planned and primped, then it’s all boring. Dunaway Gardens has the coolest water feature — gentle streams channeled down a hillside. Sometimes, in formal octagon shaped gardens. Sometimes coursing through carved channels. But at the end of the garden, just when you had enough of being amazed by the ways the gardener fiddled with the water, it all spills over onto a giant rock face. A huge bald spot of granite with rivulets, algae, leaves piling up and a dangerous intriguing view to the wild river below.

Every garden needs a little rustic touch. It makes the finer points seem that much more fine. Here are some photos of gardens I’ve designed with rustic touches. Leather and Lace.

And, it’s an acknowledgment that gardens and we are manipulations of nature, fiddling with, hoping to control but headed toward the wild chaos below.

the alluring contrast between sleek and rough