Garden Notes
What a north-facing garden is good for
Cool light is even light. There is a whole palette that only works in it, and most of it is wasted on a sunny wall.
A north-facing garden arrives described as a problem. It is worth resisting that, because the light in one is the light every painter has wanted: steady, cool and unchanging from morning to evening.
What thrives in it is a specific and rather beautiful list — ferns, hellebores, the whole shade-woodland palette that scorches to nothing on a south wall. A garden that leans into that reads as deliberate. One that fights it reads as a garden that failed.
