This week, master gardener Sue King took the reins and led the class through an informative slide show on garden design. While viewing gorgeous photos of her home gardens and other properties, we learned about companion planting, hardscaping, xeriscaping and winter interest. I can only hope to have her vision some day, though I suspect more of it has to do with inherent talent than education.
Later, the class was divided into groups of 8 for a collaborative landscape design project. Each group was given a large property rendering that included a house and garage, and was challenged to design hardscaping and greenscaping within 30 minutes.
Each group selected one of its members to record the results of brainstorming onto a "wish list." In our group, this was my job. Another member was to draw elements onto the design, and a 3rd was to present the final product before the class.
For some reason, our group was all but completely deadlocked, unable to agree on even the most basic elements, such as where to place the driveway. Not that we argued -- we didn't. Instead, I think a lot of the problem was the result of no one wanting to step on anyone else's suggestions. Finally, after twenty minutes had lapsed and we hadn't even begun looking at the backyard, I took the bull by the horns and suggested a simple democratic vote.
"Who wants the driveway to curve past the front door?"
"Who wants the driveway to double as a basketball court?"
"Who wants a rectangular driveway straight to the street?"
By a quick show of hands, the latter option was elected. At that point, an announcement was made to begin tracing over preliminary penciled designs with permanent marker. This wasn't good.
In the end, ours was the most barren of designs. I can't help but wonder how some other groups were able to create such elaborate landscapes with an influx of opinions from eight virtual strangers. It's one thing to collaborate with people you know well (and even then, it can be difficult,) but when you're working with people you barely know, in my group at least, it was virtually impossible.
