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Sunlight-Catching-On-Plants

Gardens are feeling spaces and they are best created through feeling.

Landscape design is a difficult process to describe (in my opinion). It is for me the ability to focus on a felt sense of the site and the felt sense of the people I imagine for, while I create and draw.

Landscape-Design-Lines-Intertwine-in-a-Way-That-Is-Difficult-To-Describe-Leading-Us-Out-And-Expanding-Loosely-In-One-Direction-And-Also-Surrounding-Us-Creating-A-Sense-Of-Being-Inside
Lines Intertwine In A Way That Is Difficult To Describe Leading Us Out And Expanding Loosely In One Direction And Also Surrounding Us An Creating A Sense Of Being Inside

It’s a joy to do what I do, to create something that is so abstract and ephemeral even esoteric, having vague meaning only to me or to you (universal). I have understood from the difficulties I had as a child being dyslexic, growing up in a 1980’s world of learning through reading and then discovering afterwards in my 20’s, such belonging that I could do something that was created from a felt sense and then seeing and feeling from the spaces I created, that planting could feel ‘right’. Having experienced that sense of isolation and being different as a child, suddenly understanding that creating something didn’t need to be linear as so many things do, was like coming home. At that time I didn’t fully understand what I was doing when I designed or why, I just did it, and at first you wrestle a lot with your ideas, because you want it to be good, but you know from your training it’s not about good or bad, but still you want it be ‘successful’, and you ask what does that mean? …My conclusion was I want it to feel ‘right’. There was the word ‘feel’. I have meditated for 20 years and as I meditated more and more and did my own self work, I became more attuned to feelings. I became more comfortable talking about my intuitive sense.  I have always felt a great sense of responsibility for my work, probably to an exaggerated level that at times is not healthy for me, but is very good for creating places, because it keeps me up at night thinking, how do I think (or ‘feel’) we should do that? Do I feel I really captured what I wanted to with this planting idea I had? How can I design that so it lasts for 50 years? This internal pressure knowing how much gardens that are created to be essentially permanent cost, led me to need to be sure about my ideas. I found solace and confidence in my intuitive sense or my ‘felt’ sense about design. To compare that was not a confidence I could have from designing with my brain cognitively and that process is not compatible with my creative process. I do not design by copying, a cognitive design process is more one where we compare ideas, we look at trends, we make a broad list of things we want in the space. Of course I like it when a client say I like this and shows me something, because that attunes me to what they like. However my ideas do not come that way, they come from spending time with the clients and in the space, my ideas pop into my mind when I sketch with a pencil and think about the brief and the client and the space, it’s jumbled place in my head, a melting pot. Out of that comes clarity and creative ideas. Images come into my mind of places that have a feeling to them, I imagine moving around in that space, if those places work with the whole property and the concept and it all feels ‘right’ as whole, then I bring them together and then I iron out the details in real scale. There can be a lot of reworking in design to make one thing that feels like it works fit and feel consistent with something else in another part of the space, that also works. Sometimes design is more holistic and appears at once and sometimes, you connect ideas together.

Seeing Through Something
Seeing through something…Being places that are open and also closed.
Soft-Tenticles-Surround-A-Doorway-and-Welcome-Us

A doorway is surrounded by tentacles reaching up almost welcoming you.

Doug Holloway Photo

Doug Holloway is a landscape architect, and writer. He lives in Oxfordshire with this Wife and Daughter. In his spare time he enjoys, film, food, walking in nature & surfing. In recent years, having met his Wife, who is of Turkish origin, he has also enjoyed Turkish culture, including food, noticeable in his expanded waistline, swimming in the silky Mediterranean of Bodrum, and exploring the wild, arid landscapes of the region… when it is not too hot.