For David L. Culp, the walk is a daily practice, not for its exercise value, but in pursuit of insight. The familiar route he has taken most days, over some 30 growing seasons, is around his two-acre garden in Downingtown, Pa., along the paths he created.
He walks the sloping site in search of ideas for possible refinements, bringing to life the opposite of what he calls a “big-bang garden,” the kind with just one riotous spring or summer moment.
Fall walks are especially precious, said Mr. Culp, a longtime garden designer, instructor and author. Try to catch the garden before its visual cues degrade, leaving us vulnerable to the tough combination of winter’s deprivation and that pile of tempting catalogs arriving at our low point.
monthly webinars sponsored by Garden Design magazine. (The next will be held on Nov. 11.)
Mr. Culp believes that the best design decisions result from responding to what the garden tells us, not from inventing some new feature to impose upon it or from impulse-buying.
A Way to Garden, and a book of the same name.
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