When we tuck a shrub or a tree into a spot that we know is too small for the mature size, we intend for all the world to move it in a few years when it’s bigger, but those years roll by in a heartbeat. It still looks okay where it is, so we leave it for a couple more. The next time we look, it’s too big to move without heavy equipment, and so there it stays. We hack away at offending branches and learn to ignore the confused tangle where it conflicts with some other shrub or tree and the dead spots where it’s given up trying to grow altogether.

Real stewardship of our land requires that we plant only those things we can truly provide for in terms of space, and over time. The joy of watching the plant flourish is every bit as satisfying as the immediate gratification of an impulsive buy at the nursery - and longer lived. When I visit properties I designed a decade ago and see in reality landscapes that existed only in my head, I am almost ridiculously happy. Fat, sturdy tree trunks that support big, healthy branches, shrubs that have doubled, perennials that have quadrupled in size - now that’s fun. It’s long-range fun, I grant you, but fun nonetheless.

I wonder what I will see when I look a decade from now, and what others will observe in the decades after that. I wonder how they will feel as they watch the light float through the leaves of a tree I planted, or smell a magnolia, or fill a bowl with peonies. Landscapes are spaces we leave for the times that follow.