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" From her serene offices in New York&amp;#039;s SoHo, Deborah Nevins conceives some of the most beautiful outdoor spaces in the world. She designs everything from townhouse gardens to baronial estates, and her high-powered clients include David Geffen and Ian Schrager. Her latest project: a 40-acre park she is creating with Renzo Piano for a new cultural center in Athens, Greece. Nevins prides herself on landscapes that are in tune with their surroundings. &amp;quot;The best compliment one can pay me,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;is to think I didn&amp;#039;t do a thing.&amp;quot;  At Home Outdoors  \u2022 People love intimate landscapes: simple but contained areas that act as a gathering point. A grid of trees, or a less-formal grove, can almost feel like a house, but one that is open to the sky and surrounding world. Even in a small townhouse garden I&amp;#039;ll often add a platform for people to sit and gather.   \u2022 I love flowers, but landscaping isn&amp;#039;t about decorating with flowers. What&amp;#039;s vital is to create a sense of structure. A garden should relate to the space around it\u2014to the architecture of a house or a distant view.   \u2022 One of my favorite &amp;quot;sports&amp;quot; in a garden is staring. It&amp;#039;s like meditation or looking at art. You go to a garden to be still, to look at beautiful things, to be with people outside. There is a sense of freedom\u2014that you&amp;#039;re outside, you&amp;#039;ve been let out of prison.   Get Personal  \u2022 With a garden, it&amp;#039;s important to tell a story. Think about your goal: Are you interested in privacy? Do you like eating outdoors? If you travel, visit gardens, but don&amp;#039;t come back from Italy wanting a Tuscan garden. The thing to take away is how the Italians use their outdoor space.  \u2022 A garden should resonate psychologically. Don&amp;#039;t think it has to match the style of your house. If you have a historic home, you might want a more modern garden. The important thing is that the house and garden relate. The only thing I wouldn&amp;#039;t do is a Japanese garden unless you have a traditional Japanese-style house.   \u2022 My own property in the Hamptons isn&amp;#039;t that big. It affords a lot of experience in just two acres. I designed my house with triple-hung windows, like at Monticello, so I could bring my Meyer lemon trees inside. I&amp;#039;ve grown hundreds of lemons\u2014lemon souffl\u00E9 is my specialty.   Go Green  \u2022 I&amp;#039;ve done a number of organic potagers, from Connecticut to Chicago to Bel Air. In Bel Air, they get four crops of corn a year. The owner told me she feels like she is in the country.  \u2022 I try to talk people out of a lawn in California. But in other places, if you&amp;#039;re careful, you don&amp;#039;t have to water much. I advise clients to not have the perfect lawn, which requires chemicals. I read that Harvard Yard is going organic, and organic compost is used on the National Mall.   \u2022 I&amp;#039;m doing a green roof right now for a Renzo Piano project in Greece. If your roof is flat, you can easily retrofit a green roof, and it has tremendous cooling effects for the building.   Flora  \u2022 I don&amp;#039;t like gardens that have a lot of color. Maybe I&amp;#039;m too tied to nature. But if you think about it, nature does have a color palette. In May and June, wildflowers are pale pink and blue; in August, they&amp;#039;re bright orange and yellow, hot pink and purple.   \u2022 I encourage the planting of cutting gardens. People think they are spoiling a garden if they cut plants to bring inside, but actually it&amp;#039;s the best way to get to know them better. Even if you don&amp;#039;t have a cutting garden, snip branches or small flowers and put them in a vase. You can even cut judiciously from a perennial border\u2014just not too much.   \u2022 I love species flowers\u2014those found in nature that haven&amp;#039;t been hybridized\u2014like Hellebores, which are hardy. Some of my favorites: Rosa &amp;#039;primula,&amp;#039; which scents the air like incense; Yulan magnolia; Hoop Petticoat daffodil; Snow Goose flowering cherry trees.  See some of Deborah Nevins&amp;#039;s garden designs. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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