PLANTS AND PASSION

January 8, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Chicago Tribune

Talking garden design with John Cullen is more than discussing which plants will grow where.

Spirituality comes up.

“I genuinely believe the old Thomas Aquinas philosophy: Beauty helps protect mankind from sinking into despair,” he says. “There’s nothing more beautiful in this world than nature.”

So does the quest for authenticity.

“We did a chapel [at the Gardening World Cup] in Nagasaki [Japan]. We had a 13th-century mortar recipe because we wanted it to be authentic. ... We’re giving it that something extra.”

And there’s the determination of beauty.

“The more one studies botany, plant design and horticulture, the more they’re able to recognize a beautiful garden. It’s not just a (person’s) personal opinion; it’s someone able to recognize true beauty.”

Cullen is owner of Celtic Gardens, a small landscape design and building company in Dexter, Mich., that focuses on period gardens. His guiding precept has always been “God creates, man shapes.” It has served him well in his 20 years in the business.

He’s a heavyweight on the international garden design circuit. In 2010 he represented the U.S. at the Singapore Garden Festival and won a gold medal as well as the People’s Choice Award. Also in 2010, he won a silver medal at the Gardening World Cup in Nagasaki. He was named Landscaper of the Year in 2011 by Total Landscape Magazine. Most recently, he represented the U.S. at October’s Gardening World Cup in Japan and won a gold medal in the show garden category.

It’s an impressive resume. But he seems just as excited about designing for everyday people. Most of his customers are in Michigan and the Chicago area and are as likely to be small spaces as large estates.

When designing a garden, he says, the goal is to help clients “create a little oasis where they can go and unplug and find peace in a crazy world.”

He used a recent project in Wisconsin as an example.

He visited the site to talk to the homeowners and see firsthand what he had to work with.

“I try to understand their personality, the individual, the natural setting, the architecture,” he says.

The client has a bungalow-style home, new construction. Cullen decided to evoke a sacred space by designing a Kyoto temple garden. But he wants everything to mesh, “to nurture nature” with his design, he says.

“We are striving to have a marriage between the existing architecture and the natural Door County surrounding, which is a mature woodland setting.”

Cullen studied history and literature at the University of Michigan, working summers as a gardener. The decision to go into landscape design came after school; everything he knows about the business he learned in the field, not a classroom. But what he studied in the classroom, history, is reflected in his work.

“We want to finish a garden and have it look like it’s been around for centuries,” he says.

That means using old, authentic elements from around the world. He once heard that a street of old cobblestones was being replaced in Dublin. He purchased a city block’s worth.

“We’ve been collecting 15 years,” he says. “Our sister company, Celtic Garden Imports, provides us unique materials that give a garden a sense of pedigree. When you’re trying to suggest a sense of permanence, you start with those materials.

“When people walk on 18th- century cobblestone, they recognize it’s not newly made. It has to be real.”