LECTURE: The Authentic Garden: Five Principles for Cultivating a Sense of Place.

What makes a garden “authentic”? For American gardeners, this question can be vexing. Because America is a comparatively young nation, it is still developing  it’s own garden style and gardeners have  tended to turn to other national traditions—such as Italy’s, Japan’s, or England’s—for inspiration. The result of this stylistic borrowing has been the creation of gardens that bear little relationship to local landscapes and history, and that have little  connection with our daily lives. Claire Sawyers shows how this tendency can be reversed: how we can create gardens that are both deeply rooted in their surroundings and deeply satisfying to their creators and owners. Drawing on her knowledge of a vast array of American and foreign gardens, she identifies the five principles that help instill a sense of authenticity and to make a garden that is true to a specific time, place, and culture; to capture and reflect an authentic spirit so that the garden, in turn, will nurture the spirit of those who cherish and dwell in it.