This week’s episode features James Golden, talking about the naturalistic garden he’s built around his home in New Jersey. James’s garden has been created intuitively over time and sits perfectly within the landscape, in fact is a landscape in its own right. Sometimes baffling, sometimes threatening and without utilitarian purpose, the garden is nonetheless life-affirming, vital and dramatically beautiful in different ways from one moment to the next.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Harlequins

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What we cover

About the garden at Federal Twist

Would the garden be as successful from a horticultural and aesthetic standpoint if James had plotted the garden on paper, particularly the planting?

Visitors often seem to get lost in the space and can’t find a route through it - so who did James design the garden for, himself or was it always meant to be shared with visitors? 

James’s stone circle, which serves no purpose other than an aesthetic one

James on being a fearless and philosophical gardener

How long is long enough to make a garden?

How do you create a garden which varies so dramatically from one season to the next?

What inspired the garden

About James Golden 

“James Golden’s garden design has been featured in national and international magazines, in The New York Times, and in several books on garden design. He has been the recipient of national awards and is widely known in the gardening world through his garden blog View from Federal Twist (www.federaltwist.com). James’ Federal Twist garden regularly appears on tours of the Garden Conservancy, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Hardy Plant Society, and on numerous private tours. Recently retired, he has started a garden design practice.” https://federaltwistdesign.org/about

Links

The View from Federal Twist: A New Way of Thinking About Gardens, Nature and Ourselves by James Golden - Filbert Press, 2021 

The View From Federal Twist 

Federal Twist on Instagram