| "Less is more." Mies Van der Rohe said it, and | | | | Above all, you must resist the temptation to add |
| exemplified what he said with such architectural | | | | decorative elements simply because you happen to |
| masterpieces as the Seagram Building in New York | | | | like them. Cute little frou-frous that don't reinforce |
| City. | | | | the core motif serve only to whittle away a garden's |
| By "less is more" he meant the avoidance of | | | | integrity. |
| gratuitous ornamentation. He believed in strong, | | | | To put it another way, if it doesn't help, it hurts. |
| simple design, with no decorative encumbrances to | | | | Creative restraint is beautifully evident in the gardens |
| detract from the structural purity. His guiding principle | | | | of such masters as Russell Page and Jacques Wirtz. |
| was restraint, the kind of restraint that is critical to | | | | But can be carried to almost ungardenlike extremes |
| success in all the arts, including the art of garden | | | | in some of the new minimalist gardens. |
| design. | | | | In practicing restraint, garden designers can take a |
| Admirable though it may be as a concept, restraint is | | | | cue from the acting profession. Good actors don't |
| not always easy to achieve in practice. You must | | | | overact-they leave something for the viewer's |
| start, of course, with good structure, and add to this | | | | imagination. "Spelling out" is not nearly as effective as |
| structure only those elements which are essential to | | | | triggering the image-making abilities of the viewers, |
| its delineation. | | | | inspiring them to develop their own creative insights. |