In 2006, Golden, a writer who had spent his working life in the corporate world, bought several acres of woodland and wetland in New Jersey in the Delaware River Valley.  A house built in 1965 occupied the high point of the land and stretching below was a thicket of weeds, shrubs, and trees densely covering wet clay soil.  It was hardly the optimal setting for a new garden, but Golden saw it as an opportunity to develop a new kind of garden, one in harmony with its natural surroundings, with their wildness and immensity, one that used the natural setting, light, and weather to clear and delight the mind, to provide atmosphere and mood, mystery and beauty.

Patiently clearing the land and experimenting with plants that might survive both the soil and the encroachment of neighboring vegetation, he slowly built Federal Twist over several years into a model of the new natural landscape garden, a concept that had been pioneered in Holland by Piet Ouldoff and Noel Kingsbury.  Starting by mowing a broad path through the overgrown space, Golden introduced large masses of grasses (primarily Miscanthus grass species), tall perennial prairie plants (Sylphium and Inula), and shrubs and small trees while he developed the paths lined with stone walls and layered with pea stone.  Two small reflecting pools, some Adirondack chairs, a naturalized canal, and several pieces of sculpture followed, and Federal Twist became a popular pilgrimage destination for gardening enthusiasts.

Twenty years in, Golden continues to add, subtract, and edit his space.  Interestingly, he doesn’t do the work himself because he doesn’t enjoy the hands on of gardening. Rather, he began by “reading, learning, observing, living in the place as it becomes a garden”.  As he states it in the final chapter:  “I took making a garden extremely seriously, almost as if it were a life or death proposition”.  While I’m not that invested in my own gardens in Vermont, I do love to develop our property there, and I found Golden’s commentary to be moving, his plant suggestions and descriptions to be useful, and the photographs to be quite beautiful.  I’m more of an orderly gardener, especially given our open meadows, woodland, wetland, and brook in Vermont, but this is a wonderful addition to my garden reading.