In The Wink Of An Eye
The Age
Saturday September 4, 2004
How we perceive space can radically affect garden design, writes Michael McCoy.
There is some old saying about not making the foot travel on a path along which the eye has already passed. It is worded more elegantly than that, but you get the idea. Once the eye has travelled the distance of a long path, then to walk it is a secondary, perhaps diminished pleasure. Taken quite literally, it might be seen to come from the wiggly path school - the "nature-abhors-a-straight-line" set although the same idea is just as relevant and important in formal garden design. But what's most interesting about the saying is the implication that our eye runs ahead of us, and inhabits space well before our bodies do.The eye is capable of inhabiting spaces our bodies cannot, such as those pictured in sumptuously illustrated garden books. Despite the two-dimensional nature of these images, our eye can jump right in there, dwell and relax.This is a particular consideration in gardens designed for shows such as the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show or the Chelsea Flower Show. In most cases you can't get into these gardens, but the best of them will capture, surround and hold the eye as powerfully as if you could. Whether we consciously imagine ourselves in that uninhabitable garden space, many of the pleasures and benefits of being there are triggered, anyway.You can, for instance, deliberately "suggest" relaxation. When we walk past, or see at a distance, a well-placed garden bench, we don't actually need to sit on it to get many of the relaxing benefits of the bench. Our eye leaps ahead of us triggering many of the responses of actually being there. The appeal is thinking that you could sit there.The garden design consequences of this are many, and in their most simple form could result in a bench being placed in the middle of some low planting, - you would not intend anyone to sit on it but to look at it from a distance. Or the suggestion could be more extreme with the bench placed in a totally inaccessible spot. For instance, from pictures I've seen of a roof-top garden in Paris where plants are running wild over steeply pitched roofs, and cafe chairs are perched precariously on small platforms among the planting. It wouldn't matter whether you could sit on them or not. The suggestion of space is just as powerful either way.Consider trompe l'oeil, which usually involves a mural suggesting a scene that might be wildly imaginative, or an apparent extension of the existing space. Sometimes these are executed so realistically that it takes a while to get a grip on where reality ends and mural begins. Other times they are done poorly or are deliberately stylised so as to not be realistic, and the effect can be just as strong. I've seen several windows painted on old buildings where, despite the unconvincing detail of floral curtains and sleeping cats, I had to run my hands over the flat surface to persuade my brain that the perspective didn't exist - there was no depth to the image.It is as if our eye upstages or overrides our other senses, leaping into the space suggested by false perspective, and that once the brain has detected space, it is reluctant to give up on the idea. There is a similar effect created by mirrors in the garden. Once the brain registers light and space beyond, say, a solid wall, it is difficult to persuade it otherwise. You can also suggest mystery by simple effects of disappearing spaces or paths. Visitors who are enticed to check them out will discover the truth, but the disappointment of a blank path won't entirely negate the intrigue that led to the investigation, just garden deception. This power of suggestion is far bigger than that. How about thinking of an alternative to the lawn in light of water restrictions? If our response to a distant, cool, green "pool" of lawn among dense planting involves complex subconscious suggestions, then any lawn alternative must involve more than just practical considerations: gravel/coloured sand/crushed glass as options just don't cut it. We need to work out how to trigger all those important responses, without all that work, and all that water.
© 2004 The Age
