Creating Garden Drawings from Photographs and Life

Old engravings or prints of garden plans, and as in this photo, people enjoying a formal garden are appealing to me. Searches in vintage shops, print shops, and used bookstores didn’t result in my amassing a large selection of garden plan drawings.

One of my books, The English Formal Garden had a few images, but most were realistic, three- dimensional depictions and ground level photographs of gardens.

Photo from ayanahouse.com.

Photo from frenchstyleauthority.com.

Photo credit www.christies.com.

I was able to find aerial views of formal gardens online. These reminded me of the terrain and planted fields when viewed from the window of an airplane. Planted fields in the countryside are commonly compared to fabric quilts.

Being a lover of gardens and gardening, I have made it a point to visit gardens everywhere we travel; the Villa Borghese in Rome, the Boboli in Florence, Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Mount Vernon between Washington, D.C. and Alexandra, Virginia, the Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, and those at Monticello to name a few.

While visiting the gardens I made hundreds of photographs of plants, flowers, sculptures, and containers, but of course, none were aerial photos. These photos and the narrative and sketches in my journals bring the places to life again. Specific moments come to mind such as sitting in a Windsor chair in a tiny garden house with multi-paned windows on each side looking out at the kitchen gardens of Monticello. A more humorous memory is getting my foot caught inside my wide legged silk pants and rolling into the entrance of the Boboli Gardens in Florence. People were so kind to me. It wasn’t painful, only painfully embarrassing.

A further online search for images of specific places gleaned the following.

Photo credit Rudy J. Favretti: The Cultural Landscape Foundation www.tclf.org.

This overhead photo of the kitchen gardens and the map of the Monticello area will be a good starting point for my own garden drawings of places meaningful to me.

Photo credit Heroes Heroines, and History: Mount Vernon Gardens www.hhistory.com.

These drawings of the gardens of Mount Vernon are especially helpful as they depict the place and demonstrate a way to draw gardens.

When we were building our home in the Texas Hill Country, we had to provide a landscape plan to our homeowner’s association. The Texas A&M website for our county was extremely helpful as it provided information about trees, shrubs, and groundcovers both native and non-native including their drought tolerance, deer resistance, and ability to attract bees, birds, and butterflies. It was possible to choose the number of inches of annual rainfall and then create a palette of plants using this listing. The Texas A&M website was my starting point, followed by an in-depth online search for additional facts and images of the plants. This searching led to my creating these two sample plans with plants color coded and labeled with their common and scientific name.

With all this in my head let’s look at the process of making some garden images using the fountain pen and chestnut brown ink.

First, to repurpose four mats, painting them in the same Tobacco (Sherwin Williams) color.

Drawing the image.

Using archival mounting tape, fasten the image to the mat board.

Cut a piece of thin cardboard backing; you can purchase this at an art supply store. Using more archival mounting tape, tape the cardboard in place. Some people use metal push tacks.

Lay the frame face down on brown kraft paper. It’s helpful to use weights to keep the paper from rolling while you are working on it.

Using archival glue put a thin line of adhesive around the edge of the wooden frame.

Flip the frame over onto the brown kraft paper so it is face up. Then, using an Xacto knife, cut around the edge and lift up the frame. The back will be encased in brown paper.

Screw the picture hanging clips and wire onto the back of the frame.

Here are the four completed drawings in the repurposed mats and frames.

Monticello Kitchen Garden.

Italian Fields.

Garden in the Hill Country: Level 5 and 6

Mount Vernon Garden Plan.

This was a learning process and something to be continued. It might be interesting to use conte pencil or colored pencil to add some color to garden drawings…maybe do further studies of our own gardens as in the Hill Country: Level 5 and 6. Happy sketching!