If you love nature in all its form, be it as indoor plants or as lovely wall mural displays or fresh beautiful gardens, then the landscape designs of Miranda Brooks will truly amaze you. It’s not like anything else as the designs have a sense of uniqueness yet familiarity in them. Miranda Brooks designs the gardens so that they look as if they have been some work of nature rather than the human hand. With these creative designs, she has captivated A-list clients all around the world. Read on to learn more about the life and works of Miranda Brooks.
About Miranda Brooks
Miranda Brooks is based in New York for 25 years and she manages an interplay between structural design and wild plantings. Her creative ideas has been described to defy categorization and weaves a spell of magic and mystery. Her designs have made her a celebrity in the world of landscape design.
Miranda Brooks grew up in the rural Hertfordshire and very much adored the English countryside while riding her horses. You will be surprised to know that her love for gardens and landscaping was just a result of her punishment when she crashed the family car as a teenager. Her punishment was an extended weeding. However, instead of the feeling of being punished, she actually enjoyed the stint and fell in love with the whole idea of gardening.
She has a degree in art history with a postgraduate degree in landscape architecture and afterwards went on to refine her talent under the supervision of award-winning horticulturalist Arabella Lennox-Boyd. Miranda Brooks credits her to be the first to train her in landscaping.
When she followed her first husband in New York, she despaired of getting anything other than small commissions. Luckily, she hit a jackpot when the American Vogue editor Anna Wintour asked her to design the garden at her weekend retreat in the Hamptons around 20 years ago.
Brooks designed the 16 hectare garden wherein the entry is bounded by meadows and trees. The drive ends at a tiny door surrounded by roses.The garden itself is full of surprises with curving paths which lead the visitors to hidden spaces, rolling meadows planted with cottage garden flowers, arbours and hedges disguising vistas, rustic gates leading to mown paths, fruit trees and herbs with formal hedging and pleached trees.
The garden itself has a sense of mystery that makes the place magical. Surrounded by something chaotic, this style is considered the trademark of Miranda Brooks.
Tips in creating wonderful gardens
Here are some tips how Miranda Brooks successfully designed her gardens:
1. Embrace nature. The appearance of the gardens Brooks designed seem as if they have naturally occurred. The key to have this appearance is to sow a selection of attractive grass and wildflower mixes. If the garden is smaller, the look can be achieved by sowing hardy annuals such as Californian poppies and daisies so they grow haphazardly in gaps in the paving and in gravel or pebble surfaces. Lavender, colorful hybrid flaxes as well as ornamental grass will help create a natural feeling.
2. Create a sense of mystery. Miranda Brooks likes a garden to unfold its own leisure. Place plants so that the eye cannot perceive the whole structure of a garden at a glance. Make the garden unpredictable to visitors, slowly opening up to reveal its attractions.
3. Include the landscape. Take cues from the landscape of the garden around. For instance, if the area is flat, then the garden will embrace the typography and have a hidden, enclosed feel rather than offering panoramic vistas that come from raised sites. Embrace the form of what is around you.
4. Welcome the seasons. Include specimens that celebrate seasonal changes. Trees such as cherries, tulip, magnolias and jacarandas may have a short period in bloom can be relied on to create romantic impact as season changes.
5. Add edible plants and trees. Planting fruit bearing trees and herbs in among ornamental garden beds can serve both an attraction and of course food.