Keith Davitt is well known as a garden designer and writer. His articles have appeared in Period Homes, Traditional Building, Fine Gardening, American Gardener, and many other magazines. He has designed and installed dozens of gardens in the New York City area, many of which are treated in this book. He is also the author of Small Spaces: Beautiful Gardens (Rockport) and Beyond the Lawn (Rockport). He lives in Cambridge, New York.
You may also be interested in the author's own Web site, www.GardenViews.com.
Interview with
Keith Davitt
Timber Press: In your 20 years of designing and building gardens, what have you found are the elements that tend to make a prospective garden site — a small garden with water feature project — particularly difficult or challenging to work with?
Keith: I suppose the most disapointing condition is where there are a lot of really unsightly elements on the site that can't be moved or that encroach upon the site from nearby. Generally though, site conditions such as a slope or other natural features can nearly always be turned into an asset.
TP: While your book is certainly an excellent resource for the home gardener wishing to enhance a small garden by including a water feature, how does one decide whether to proceed as a do-it-yourselfer or turn the project over to a professional garden designer?
K: Simply according to complexity. Many, probably most water feature types can be built by the home owner. If you intend to use large boulders or want to build a raised fountain of a complex design and you are not familiar with masonry, you are better off working with a professional. That does not mean you must turn the entire project over to someone, however. If your question refers only to design, first spend some time yourself working on designs. If you find something that really makes you happy, go with it. If you feel only so so about your design, consult with a professional.
TP: What comments can you offer about the impact of climate or weather conditions, and local availability and suitability of building and plant materials for a small water garden? In other words, how would your advice to a gardener in Portland, Oregon differ from the advice you would give someone living in Tucson, Arizona?
K: Not greatly. (Actually, there are far greater differences between upstate New York and Tuscon than Portland and Tucson.) It happens that I have clients in Tucson, and I designed them a water garden that we intend to begin building shortly. The primary considerations have to do with freezing temperatures, but just as there are natural water features in all parts of the world, there can be man made water features everywhere too. The colder the temperatures, the deeper the feature needs to be if there are to be fish (so they can over-winter under the ice). Construction in freezing areas needs to be more durable, and the footing needs to be below frost for a masonry construction. In colder temperatures you have fewer choices of plants or you must purchase new water plants every year, treating them as annuals.
TP: Do you have any tips to offer regarding equipment, tools or methods that you have found especially effective for negotiating materials in cramped or awkward garden sites?
K: That depends upon the materials. We moved several fifteen-hundred pound stones through a 32-inch-wide hallway from the front to the back of a brownstone using boards rolling on short pieces of pipe. It took some time, but it was successful. For that same site I designed and had built a machine which comes apart into; base, vertical beam, horizontal beam and counterweight table. Two people can move it through a building with narrow passageways and it can lift and place within about a 160 degree arc, two thousand pounds or more.
Generally, devise or find equipment that can reduce the work or make the work possible. There are many such devices. For smaller but still heavy stones, a hand truck with inflated (not solid) tires is handy or a tree ball carrier with inflated tires which can move quite large stone. A 'come-along' which is a hand held hoist is also useful in cramped sites. For common brick and masonry products, a few good laborers.
TP: If you have a choice between two "small garden with water feature" projects, one involving the correction of a bad site and the other, starting off with a completely bare site, which would you prefer, and why?
K: I was, at first, tempted to say the bare site but honestly, either. A bad site is just a good site in hiding, and a bare site is a garden waiting to be discovered.
