an armistice with Orange

ONE DESIGNER'S TRUCE WITH AN AGE-OLD NEMESIS

- Victor Lazzari

my very first copy of Horticulture was the January 1997 issue, when I was just 15 years old and living with my parents in suburban Maryland. As with most magazines, the cover was what grabbed my attention. Over an elegant cascade of reddish-purple roses-Rosa gallica 'Rosa Mundi', if memory serves-ran the intriguing and, for me, quite literally page-turning headline: "How to Handle Magenta." 

This article, written by the wonderful and sadly departed Wayne Winterrowd, marked a turning point in my life, for this was when I first learned that flower colors were not mere abstract "things" (e.g. red roses or yellow daffodils). They were also tools, tools that could be used deftly, clumsily or nails-on-a-chalkboard painfully.

Winterrowd's tutorial gave me a sense of control over the only thing in my teenage world that I could control: the quarter-acre yard around our family home. Just like the Secret Garden did for Mary in its eponymous novel, it became my little kingdom, and I was its queen-er, king-cheerfully laying it out just so with weeping cherries here and perennial borders there. My parents couldn't have been happier, seeing themselves simultaneously relieved of yardwork and upping their property value through an obsessive child's sweat equity. In the words of my dad: "Do whatever you want to the yard, Victor, as long as it looks good." Whatever I want. As it should be! Inspired by this, I gathered resources at the public library (remember those?) to learn more about landscaping. Soon, I considered myself the Harry Potter of garden design, a young wizard with powers growing stronger by the day through my tutelage. And as I read up on everything from Gertrude Jekyll's signature borders to Martha Schwartz's bagel (yes, bagel) garden, the realization hit: "This is who I'm supposed to be...a garden designer!" And so, I became one.