ARTICLE PREVIEW
from Fine Gardening March/April 2006 (#108)
Inspired Gardens
The winners of our design challenge made the best use of curves, garden journeys, and vertical elements
by Julie Moir Messervy

Who can resist a contest? The editors of Fine Gardening magazine teamed up with Inspired Design columnist and co-author of Outside the Not So Big House Julie Moir Messervy to challenge readers to submit examples of one of three landscape-design principles at work in their gardens: the use of voluptuous curves, the use of vertical elements, or the creation of a garden journey. In this article, which is illustrated with inspiring before-and-after photographs, Messervy explains how the contest's top vote-getter, Jan Meissner, won with her use of pleasing curves in her Ohio garden along the edge of a golf course. First runner-up Michelle Derviss of the San Francisco Bay Area created a magical garden journey filled with sensory experiences, while the second runner-up, Eugene Gaillard Johnson, relied on tall focal points to enliven his South Carolina landscape. Meissner's prize was to attend a landscape design course taught by Messervy in Saxtons River, Vermont.

Photos, left to right: courtesy of Jan Meissner, courtesy of Michelle Derviss, courtesy of Eugene Gaillard Johnson

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From Fine Gardening #108, pp. 48-51
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