Sanctuary 1 (Yun 云)
When I go for a stroll in my garden, ideally, I would like to come across many spots where I can linger, sit and relax; perhaps have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine while I enjoy the garden surrounding. I refer to such little hang out areas as ‘sanctuaries’. Ideally, the environment of such hang out places should be conducive to the reflection/refreshment of your thought, or at least stress relieving.
By sanctuaries, I don’t mean expensive or imposing hardscape. In my garden, only very simple and minimal hardscape elements are implemented; just enough to allow us to visit all the plants in our garden. Many of the so called ‘benches’ in my garden are really just casually constructed ‘rustic’ boxes that house my irrigation piping manifolds, control valves and watering hoses. The gardens around these ‘sanctuaries’ seem to be always under various stages of active ‘doodling’. Visitors can easily walk past these so called ‘sanctuaries’ without noticing any ‘garden attractions’ (unless they have imagination similar to mine).
The objective of preparing the pages here is primarily to force me to review the status of my progress (or lack of it) in the compositions for each area, since, as you know, gardeners can bury their heads in the dirt or plants, and forget about time and progress indefinitely.
Currently, there are about 25 areas in my garden being considered for ‘sanctuaries’. Here are a few that look somewhat ‘established’:
(Since simple numeric ID for each sanctuary is hard for me to remember, I assigned an unique syllable to each sanctuary to help me remember.)
