Hi Dirt, what I share with you is those vast landscapes that tall mountains provide. Although the farm is nestled in a valley close to a very large glacial lake, where the town of Bariloche was established about 100 years ago on its southern central shore. The farm is 95% agricultural land although some parts have very shallow soils. That is where I plan and am developing my rock garden. When I first boulght the property with my father's aid almost thirty years ago, I never imagined the possibilities this place had. Of course I was at first focused on making out a living on the arable part. Now that enterprise ( organic vegetable growing) is handed over to my godson and I can endulge in the different gardening projects. Before acquiring this property, I worked for the Argentine National Parks Administration. This region is mostly protected under a million hectare contiguous conglomerate of national parks and reserves. So protected wilderness is everywhere. I'm slowly moving from conventional gardening to that of more naturalistic type. Far from being easy it is quite the opposite. Once man sets its foot into a given environment it fumbles with it and distorts it ( at the least). When I bought my place it was a non-stop Rosa eglanteria briar, product of free roaming cattle that love rose hips and spread the seedlings everywhere with their cow pads. So during these decades what started as making our place friendly, green and livable is now slowly moving towards a more environmental/landscape restoration . Thus this includes three ecosystem types that occurr naturally here: woodlands, rocky outcrop alpine meadows, and lowland praries/steppes. That is my present challenge: a rock/alpine garden, a woodland garden and a prarie garden. I still keep my more traditional garden types next to the farmhouse where I live.
My deceased wife was a professional painter from whom I learned a lot about art. Composition,form, texture ,contrast, color, rythm, balance, light, shade etc. We had the project of developing the same method as applied to gardening. Although she´s no longer here, I view these project as a tribute to our shared common interests.Finally what I managed to recognize is that ultimate goal of harmony and beauty only becomes viable if one understands the spirit of the place as imbricate levels of beauty that start from the general landscape and gradually downsized into the different gardens and even to the specific plants placed consciously in a particular spot. That is also the case with rocks, stones large or small. What nature did by strewing boulders around somehow didn't occurr haphazardly but instead were moved about by glaciars, volcanoes, rivers or wind. These natural geological forces do not play in just anyway. Watching how they are placed in nature is what allows us to copy them into our articificial natural looking rock gardens.
I sense the controversy issue dissapears when we look at the broad picture of what gardening means to us now ( this present year). Rock gardens are perhaps not more than a century old ( compared to rose gardens at Malmaison). The whole concept of pleasure gardens developed as a consequence of post industrial world wide extensive social well being also with a need of recovering a much more direct involvement with the land and now with preservation of biodiversity and mitigation of world man made climate change. I think us gardeners have a growing role to play in all of this as well.
