What is Legibility in Gardens? January 2025

I've posted a few times about the notion of 'repetition' in the garden and how it is a technique that helps create an eye-pleasing and easy-to-navigate visually garden.  I've taken up the idea of repetition a little bit in more recent years by focusing on a could of core, foundational plants that I can carry throughout the backyard.  

I was happy with the idea of getting to know the concept of reptition in our garden.  Until....I came accross this piece on Meristem Horticulture by Jared Barnes, Ph.D where he introduced me to the idea of "Legibility in the Garden".  Here's a link to the piece and below is a screenshot of the lede.

First things, first.  Dr. Barnes knows his stuff.  And, he takes pretty wonderful photos and is an engaging garden writer. He says: "I love cultivating plants and cultivating gardeners. Over the years, I’ve helped thousands of people of all ages learn to garden better."

He's been doing that with me for a while via his newsletter.  You SHOULD subscribe to it here.  

Now...with that preamble out of the way, let's get back to "Legibility in the Garden".   

Dr. Barnes proclaims that Legibility is the answer to naturalistic/new perennial/Roy Diblik/Piet Oudolf-style plantings and gardens.   Fears of messy or - as he puts it - "chaotic" plantings that are "hard to read" and "hard to navigate" are what I feel all the time.  

But, fear not.  Legibility is the key.  

Dr. Barnes credits Thomas Rainer and Claudia West with the idea from their book "Planting in a Post-Wild World" where they talk about the concept of "legibility" as part of a larger, even more-important framework around human interaction/experience with the world.  

Barnes also introduced me to a husband and wife team (I think??) of Rachel and Stephen Kaplan,  at the University of Michigan who, as a result of their research, discovered that humans encounter any environment - built or landscape in two ways.  Humans "seek to understand".  And we "seek to explore".

Coming out of that concept, the Michigan Kaplans created something named their "Landscape Preference Matrix" that is made-up of four components: Coherence, Complexity, Legibility and Mystery.  (Note:  Roy Diblik up in Wisconsin also talks about a "matrix" when it comes to his planting, but this is a little different.)

Dr. Jared Barnes at Meristem further detailed the Landscape Preference Matrix and those four components.  Before I go any further, I can't tell you in any stronger fashion...to go READ HIS PIECE.  Then come back here because I'm going to only scratch-the-surface.

Barnes boils down how we can 'achieve' or 'incorporate' legibility into our gardens into seven key elements:

1.  Clean edges

2.  Desire lines and paths

3.  Primary and secondary axes

4.  Sightlines

5.  Focal points

6.  Entrances

7.  Seeing over plantings

Those seven elements are worth exploring even more.