Adrienne Stalek, interning with Maggie Lidz this summer, shares a quote and beautiful meadow photographs:
Visiting the Winterthur bookstore recently I picked up the classic by William Robinson, The Wild Garden, Expansion of the 5th ed. 1895, published in 2009. The next day I found some of Robinson’s advice beautifully illustrated on my walk to the museum. The following is a quote from The Wild Garden.
Mowing the grass once a fortnight in pleasure grounds, as now practised, is a costly mistake. We want shaven carpets of grass here and there, but what nonsense it is to shave it as often as foolish men shave their faces! There are indeed places where they boast of mowing forty acres! Who would not rather see the waving grasses with countless flowers than a close surface without a blossom?
Think of the labor wasted in this ridiculous work of cutting the heads off flowers and grass. Let much of the grass grow till fit to cut for hay, and we may enjoy in it a world of lovely flowers that will blossom and perfect their growth before hay time; some who have carried out the idea of this book have waving lawns of feathery grass where they used to shave the grass every ten days; a cloud of flowers where a daisy was not let peep.
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There’s plenty of both cut and uncut here at Winterthur.
Thanks for noticing Adrienne.