Welcome to
Tilting Windmill Landscape Design

If you're familiar with that story, then you know Don Quixote was a man, who after reading too many heroic tales of chivalric knights, lost his mind and decided that he would become a knight errant. There is one scene wherein Don Quixote, riding through the Spanish countryside, comes across a group of windmills. Again, because he's gone mad, he does not see windmills, but rather sees a group of giants. He proceeds to charge the 'giants,' attacking them with his lance (tilting is another term for jousting), and much hilarity ensues in 17th-century-pratfall fashion.  As such, in our modern lexicon, the term 'tilting at windmills' has come to mean 'fighting imaginary enemies,' a definition which has never set well with me.  I've always preferred a more romantic definition. To me 'tilting at windmills' is the same as fighting an unwinnable battle. But are we not nobler for the fight?  The same is true for a garden. There is no way to 'win' a garden. A garden is never done. We are working with living things in a garden. Living things grow, they change form, and they die. So, while a garden is never done, there are moments in a garden when everything is harmonious and in balance. We strive for those perfect moments. And we are nobler for that pursuit.