Our Serbian garden & Russian landscape design

     We live now in Serbia, in a  magnificent place on the mountain surounded by woods and fields. We have a small parcel of land with an old garden which is waiting for its renovation. Trying to imagin the new life of this garden we looked through a lot of materials: mordern magazines and old volumes. 

      The project of renovation should be  throughly considered  and the previous exprience can be of rather limited use because of climate, landscape and soil differences. 

      Looking through variois publications I found a material about Andrey Bolotov, whose researches in the art of creating park and gardens can be of great value now inspite of the fact that he lived in the XVIII century.

     Andrey Bolotov was the farther-founder of Russian landscape design. Actually he was an outstanding scientists and had more than 300 publications. In Europe his name is well known, his work is highly evaluated in the sphere of landscape design, in particular.

       He knew very well decorative plants - trees, bushes, flowers - and created a magnificent park for the Russian imperor. Bolotov was also a talented painter, made a series of watercolors of this park and presented  them to Katherine the Great. 

       Practically all his life he lived in his homestead Dvoryaninovo (about 150 kms from Moscow). Today there is a nice museum, the forest and banks of the river still remind about  the beautiful park in the English style park that was created by thw owner of Dvoryaninovo more than 200 years ago.

An enjoyable pruning

       Pruning is a necessray phase of developing a garden. And this phase is not an easy one. All branches that are damaged or grow in the direction to the tree trunk should be cut off. Even very small branches as in a few months it will be necessary to saw them. 

        An ideal tree fruit tree shoul be as lace, without branches in the central part and sunlit. 

A tree that needs pruning badly.

                                          

         

       In our garden about ten years ago all the fruit trees were perfectly taken care of by the previous owner. However, today all of them looked rather abandoned. We didn't want to aggravate the situation and wait till we get all necessary instruments. We just bought a pruner in the nearest supermarket, climbed the trees one by one and sitting on the branches like monkeys cut off old branches,

       Thanks God, no neighbors passed by our garden at that time! The result was quite satisfactory:  more or less properly pruned trees and a lot of branches for a  Helloween fire.

Sunny presents. Welcoming neighbors - the main thing of life in a new place

    

      People often are afraid to change a place of living, particularly to an another country, because they do not want feel themselves as newcomers who have no roots and no friends. To find new friends is a very important factor for having a psycological comfort. 

      How to communicate with local folks if you do not speak the language well ? This difficulty can be easily overcome. Of course it's necessary to start learning local language. However, as a first step remember some phrases, how to say "hello", "please", "thank you". Be friendly and do not hesitate to say that you only started to learn language. 

      We are lucky to have very welcoming neighbors who  came just to say "Hello", listend what we tried to tell them, did'n understand anything,  presented a bag of wonderful grapes from their vineyard and explained with gestures that if we need something we ca come to them for  help.

My daughter can hardly hold the bag with wonderful grapes

Making a Mediterranean patio

       We chose to start renovating of our garden from the miniature vineyard.  Why? It doesn’t need much water, it grows rather well on the existing soil and it would be very decorative to have a kind of a Mediterranean patio.

        We could not find any wire which is normally used, and bought several hanks of green clothesline.   Then  we stretched it between the old wooden stakes and the rails  of the balcony. The cords should be stretched very tightly. Then we stretched the cord  horizontally and made a kind of a net over the patio.

       The next step is to put vine branches on the net in the needed directions. It might seem strange but the vines like regular pruning. Getting rid of old or broken branches gives the vines more force for growing. That’s why we spent  about on hour cutting off damaged branches.

          After it we put te vine branches on the net. In our case - as the balcony faces the sun - it’ll take   make the vine branches grow in the direction we wish and create a green roof over the patio.
           If you know how to take care of the vineyard, we'll aapreciate your advice ))

How to launch renovating a garden?

A drop of a plum resin

       Now we have a house and a garden in the mountains. The previous master practically didn’t live here for more than ten years. We made some renovations in the house just to make it livable. But our dream is to make a beautiful garden. Here it wouldn’t be frozen to the roots in winter and would be able to grow at least ten months a year. In my dreams I see a house enveloped with the energy of trees and flowers, the house and the garden as two interrelated parts of our environment as yin& yang or turizas&anzus in Scandinavian runes.

      The trees continue to give fruits: pomegranates, pears.

      We found a lot of sweet grapes in the vineyard.

But the soil is extremely dry and covered with yellow grass. Plants didn’t get water for a long time.What to start with?

If you have any experience or have ever been in the situation like ours, please share  your ideas.I’ll appreciate it a lot ))

Our transboundaries' travel

Autumn - beginning of a new life

       September. The Autumn is felt. In a few hours we'll start moving to a new place of living. A homestead is waiting for us which we'll make a nice place full of flowers. We hope we and our dogs will enjoy the place. I'll put posts about our traveling and how we start our new life.

A casual still life – a space for a mood and an experiment.

     What do we know about a still life? It’ a popular art genre, known from the XVth century. Six centuries ago, and may be more, artists began to paint flowers on their canvases, devoted to various religious scenes. Now dozens and hundreds of pictures with flowers, fruits, vegetables  can be found in every art gallery. But  far from all of them affect our soul, arouse memories  and create any mood, however many of them are painted ideally.

     A modern still life is of quite different style. I’d call it “casual”.  Rather ordinary flowers, fruits, glasses and other things  are put together on those pictures, brushes are very often seem careless, and the whole atmosphere is bright and easy.

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     These pictures give us a lot of fresh ideas how to decorate our space with flowers replacing traditional buckets. We can experiment with plants and vases or simple jars and create unique compositions full of  charm.  

 

How to find flowers that will help you?

Flowers are a source of powerful energy. They constantly  radiate vibrations  that meet and interact with  our aura or space  of our energy. Other notions are also used to indicate it, but whatever the term might be it is a real fact that flowers make a strong influence on us not only through  their beauty and  aroma.

For centuries flowers are endued with magic forces. In different cultures it varies. But still there are some well recognized interrelations  between a flower and an emotion, action or situation.  We can mention 

phlox which means “our souls are together”, 

clematis – poverty, 

hydrangea – dispassion, 

                               lilac -  a newborn love. 

About a lot of other flowers one can find in “The Language of Flowers” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. The book is exciting. It is a  poetic story about a girl who used her understanding  of energy force of flowers to help people to realize their dreams.

Is there any scientific background for such a fantasy?