Features

Natural Order

Here’s how Donna Bone, founder of Santa Fe landscaping company Design with Nature, integrates art and science to make regionally inspired (and adapted) gardens and keep the desert blooming throughout the seasons.

For the past 25 years, landscape designer Donna Bone has been digging in the dirt. But it was long after the soft-spoken green thumb, formally schooled in art history, moved to New Mexico that she left a teaching career for one rooted in the earth. A friend, having seen Bone’s own garden, asked her to design another. Bone leaped at the chance. “It has always been my passion,” she says. She soon found herself hanging out at local greenhouses, absorbing everything she could, and in 1995, with horticulturist Tracy Neal, cofounded the landscape design-build company Design with Nature.“It’s been an evolution,” she says of the 12 years that have followed. “But what so challenges and motivates me is that I use all of my life’s interests—in architecture, nature, art, and art history—to create these gardens. I strive to combine all of these in a creative way.”

Bone finds her inspiration in the natural world—not in trying to control it but rather in maximizing its expression by pairing desert-friendly plantings with proper siting to take advantage of light, shade, protective elements, and water. “I walk in the arroyos and think of how to build dry stream beds,” she explains. “I have an affinity for nature, watching how, in the wild, plants grow in microclimates, and how that can work in a garden.” She also admits to loving stone. “Hardscaping is one of my favorite things,” she says, and she enjoys finding ways to incorporate boulders. “They really structure a garden. Whether retaining slope or in a dry stream bed, they are the more sculptural element of the garden.” Some of her favorite picks include locally harvested granite, basalt, and limestone.

Her goal is to create gardens that work throughout the seasons. In spring, she plans for bulbs, blooming shrubs, irises, and poppies for early color. Summer brings stronger statements, both in deep hues and a mix of textures. Winter showcases her stonework, evergreens, and fruit-bearing trees. “Because our region is strongly four seasons, we can work with that in our gardens,” she says.

One of her favorite concepts was for a Betty Stewart–designed home in Tesuque. The low-maintenance, xeric garden allowed the plants themselves—in all of their stages—to provide the visual interest. “The plants would grow to full expression,” says Bone, “but then spent blossoms and seed heads would be left on to become part of the texture of the garden.” The color palette “was inspired by the artist owner and by the Betty Stewart home itself, the plants organized to bloom in complementary colors,” she says. In the tiered landscape, Bone planted threadgrass, Moench asters, Autumn Joy sedum, and Terra Cotta yarrow, interspersed with roses and purple coneflower. “Essentially, it’s a constructed meadow.”

She took a dramatically different approach for a patio garden on Santa Fe’s historic Eastside. “This was a small, intimate, protected environment,” she says of the 50-by-15-foot enclosed space. In it, she wanted to capitalize on elements that nourish the senses, so she combined the soft color, fragrant blooms, and textures of Casablanca lilies, asters, columbines, roses, and blue Rozeanne geraniums.

At a property north of Tesuque, she focused on zones. A large cistern collects roof water that feeds the automatic irrigation system, allowing virtually all of the property’s extensive gardens to thrive on harvested water. A raised herb garden is within arm’s reach of the outdoor oven and cooking area. Naturalistic placement of boulders, moss-rock paving, and the charming effects of whirling butterfly plants soften and define the patio area. In another, she purposefully installed a spiral flagstone patio below the horizon. “It’s a designated place meant to be out of the larger views of the gardens,” she says, “and it has a whole different personality from the rest of the property.” Planted with xeric groupings of Russian sage and cacti, the courtyard, which also serves as overflow entertainment space, is surrounded by a meadow of native plantings that blends into the piñon-and-juniper-covered hills. “We do extensive site evaluation,” says Bone. “We listen to the clients—their heart’s desire—and we also evaluate the site to see its potential.” That includes studying wind patterns, the soil, the mix of sun and shade, and the amount of wildlife. “Our favorite thing is to bring in plants that are highly adapted to our climate,” she says, “but that are not well known yet in our region.” Her top picks: specimen conifers and deciduous trees that have a variety of interest, from bark texture to fall color and winter fruit.

“It’s important to track the seasons in a garden,” she says. For instance, crab apple trees provide blooms early in spring, then summer fruit that runs the gamut from gold to dark red—which also provides food for wildlife—and in winter, the trees’ bark remains appealing even though their boughs are bare. Many shrub roses, drought-tolerant once established, bloom throughout the season and then set rose hips for the winter, she explains. “Ornamental grasses have beautiful seed heads from fall into winter, and in summer provide a soft, flowing element that moves with the wind.” Her favorites: little blue-stem and blue avena grass. “Getting the structure in the garden—the hardscaping, the trees, the grading—that’s the important part,” says Bone. “The ornamental work—shrubs, grasses, blossoms—that’s fleshing out the bones.” And each site commands a unique approach. “In contemporary gardens, we mass and cluster plants differently. In old Santa Fe gardens, we lay out plants according to the bloom sequence.” Her approach is to break out of the tried and true. “We don’t really have a signature style,”she explains. “We’re not overly formulaic. We identify the spirit of the place and respond to it.” Details: designwithnatureltd.com