An invisible hand is at work in successful naturalistic landscapes. Nature gets all the credit in the eyes of the beholder, but there's plenty of hard work behind the scenes.

That human hand -- well-concealed -- shapes visitors' experience of Fallingwater, the magnificent home in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s as a weekend retreat for Edgar Kaufmann and his family. The home and property are now managed by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Every year, thousands of people come to see the house, an architectural gem poised like an ark precariously at rest over dramatic waterfalls in a stretch of Bear Run. The home itself is a marvel, and the meticulously managed landscape offers many lessons that gardeners and designers can take home with them and put into practice in their own backyards.

Fallingwater's landscape is "not designed; it is enhanced," says the director of Fallingwater, Lynda Waggoner, who first came to the property as a tour guide when she was a high school student 50 years ago. It looks natural, but nature had plenty of help: Views are carefully framed, and the palette is tightly controlled. At Fallingwater, the context is spectacular, but even in a city garden or on a suburban plot, views can be framed, shaped, blocked out and improved with plantings. Identifying the prospects within and around a garden and taking proper advantage of them is something of an art: These perspectives, exposures, sudden revelations and subtle concealments are fundamental parts of the context of your home.

In the Kaufmanns' day, the woods around Fallingwater were manicured by numerous gardeners. Today, with a significantly smaller staff, the look is less controlled but perhaps more exciting. "We promote the richness of the native landscape," Waggoner says. The lines and layers of trees and shrubs seem part of the home, "a seamless experience between inside and outside," Waggoner says. The plant selection and the plant palette are skillfully edited to bring visitors close to nature without feeling overawed by it. "The wildness is just kept at bay," she says.

Home gardens can capture this same sense of the harmony between a structure and its surroundings. Neighborhood trees are a great gift to a gardener, and plantings can be arranged to take advantage of the striking backdrops they provide, changing constantly through the seasons. When you study your landscape and frame the views, both from your windows and from the outside approaching your home, you're working on what Edgar Kaufmann Jr. described as one of the great successes of Fallingwater, bringing "people and nature together in an easy relationship."

Frank Lloyd Wright, who grew up in Wisconsin and is well-known for his interpretations of prairie style, found nature rejuvenating, says Rick Darke, an author and garden designer who takes a special interest in the interactions between culture and horticulture. "The house is in sync with the forest with each step, in every passage, in every season," he says. At Fallingwater, there are no traditional flower beds, but the outdoor spaces, Darke says, are nevertheless "carefully choreographed." Quite a dance can be staged, even in a small urban garden. The key is to get the eye and the feet moving through the setting.

Wright celebrated seasonal changes and provided opportunities to experience them from different vantage points -- ranging from a terrace outside a bedroom to what Waggoner calls the "bug's-eye view" of plants along a stairway to the guesthouse, up the hill from the main house at Fallingwater. Changes of level, even just a few steps up or down, affect the mood of a space: You may step up onto a porch with a sense of arrival, or step a short way down into an intimate little patio sheltered by close-by plantings.

Kary Arimoto-Mercer, a landscape architect who wrote her master's thesis on Fallingwater, compares the landscape to New York's Central Park, where Frederick Law Olmsted's design also evokes nature but controls it carefully. "Many visitors tend to believe the site evolved on its own," she says, that "nature took over and, in its godly way, made everything beautiful." As she researched her thesis, she says, "I came to realize that Fallingwater's landscape was and is as much a construction as the house itself."

So you can strike out for the wilderness, or you can get to work in your own backyard. Even on a city lot, nature is all around: Construct yourself a garden that embraces your house and draws you outside into your own natural little piece of the environment.

Source

-- Fallingwater is open for guided tours from March through December. Advance ticket purchases are required; see www.fallingwater.org.

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There's a reason why farmers -- not gardeners -- are the great producers of wheat, oats, barley, and other major grains: These are challenging crops to manage. But other interesting and beautiful grains are easy to grow in your own backyard, and they put dash and drama in among the daisies.

Growing ornamental grains is richly rewarding. Easy garden grains, such as millet and amaranth, are striking plants by themselves, and they are terrific in combination with annual and perennial flowers and shrubs.

Garden designers love grains for their brashness: They tend to stand up tall in a garden, making them a great choice for the back of a flower bed or the center of a bed you can see from all sides. Tall varieties of millet and amaranth -- sun-loving annuals that are easy to grow from seed -- will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with canna lilies or tall sunflowers. The dark foliage of Purple Majesty millet, which grows up to five feet tall in the garden, makes a striking backdrop for smaller summer flowers, and its dramatic flower spikes, which resemble cattails, are as handsome in flower arrangements as they are in the garden.

Purple Majesty comes straight off the farm: It was discovered in the course of a breeding program for forage grains at the University of Nebraska. The breeder's background and the majority of his work "is feeding the world, not providing ornamental flowers," says Mary O'Connor, a product manager for Pan American Seed who now works with the university's experts on ornamental millet. The instant popularity of Purple Majesty led to the introduction of shorter ornamental millets and to a greater range of colors, O'Connor says. Jester grows to only 3 feet tall; another small millet, Jade Princess, is only about 2 feet tall and has dense purple flower spikes that stand out against chartreuse foliage.

Ornamental grains of all kinds have especially caught on with flower farmers, who supply bouquets by the bucketful for farmers' markets and have a growing influence with florists and event planners. "Demand for ornamental grains -- and grasses -- is strong in the floral design world," says Debra Prinzing, author of "The 50-Mile Bouquet" and "Slow Flowers," which both feature the specialty blooms of flower farmers around the country. Ornamental grains are "not really a product that the huge South American exporters take the time to grow," Prinzing says, and consequently, U.S. flower farmers have turned several ornamental grains into top sellers. Prinzing calls ornamental grains "the couture category of specialty floral."

Diane Szukovathy, owner of Jello Mold Farm in Mount Vernon, Washington, grows about 150 different cut-flower varieties on her 7-acre farm, including half an acre planted with 10 different kinds of amaranth, another traditional farm crop that is worthy of a spot in the garden and easy to grow. "We are botanical freaks," Szukovathy says, explaining her interest in ornamental grains. She has also experimented with wheats -- especially a showy variety called Silver Tips -- and has grown orach, sorghum, quinoa and millet, as well.

Cut-flower trends are always changing, Szukovathy says, but the wildflower look is a perennial favorite with brides for bouquets and wedding decorations. Ornamental grains fit nicely into the niche, she says: They give bouquets and centerpieces an earthy sophistication.

Amaranth has been grown as an ornamental for generations. It is "an old-timey garden plant; it touches the heartstrings of a lot of people," says Mary Garcia, a spokesperson for Swallowtail Garden Seeds, a mail-order seed company that offers 10 different kinds of amaranth seeds. The old-fashioned amaranth called Love-Lies-Bleeding is one of the showiest, and it's easy to grow in the garden or in pots.

One of the most popular amaranth varieties is Hot Biscuits, a tall plant with tawny-gold seed heads in fall. The heavy seed clusters are dramatic in a garden and gorgeous in a bouquet. Last year, the lifestyle and garden shop Terrain in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, gave Hot Biscuits a prominent spot in a flower bed featuring orange, crimson and gold flowers, foliage, and seed heads.

If you're interested in cultivating a crop of wheat, barley or oats for bouquets, the best place to plant them might be in a row in the vegetable garden, where you can give them the special care they need. But go ahead and make room for millet and amaranth varieties in flower beds or in a big pot. They'll sparkle in the garden and turn bouquets into works of art.

SOURCES

Millet and amaranth are both easy to grow from seed or from transplants available at garden shops. Plant them in well-drained soil in a sunny spot. Tall varieties may need protection from wind. Find seeds here:

-- Swallowtail Garden Seeds, swallowtailgardenseeds.com

-- Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, rareseeds.com

In "Slow Flowers" (St. Lynn's Press, $17) Debra Prinzing, debraprinzing.com, shows how to use fresh flowers from local growers to make bouquets all year long. In her fall arrangements, she makes the most of the grace and beauty of ornamental grains. The website slowflowers.com will help you find fresh, locally grown flowers no matter where you live.

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Tired formulas for foundation plantings only make a house look frumpy. Forget about pointy evergreens at the corners of the house and bun-shaped shrubs in the center under the windows, and give your front-yard landscape an upgrade.

"I just like to get away from the term foundation planting and make the entire front yard useable," says Barbara Hilty, a landscape designer in Portland, Oregon. Old-fashioned plantings with evergreens across the front of the house and then lawn all the way to the curb do not really take full advantage of the possibilities, she says. When you re-imagine the space and bring the design out into the garden, away from the facade, a house becomes a nicer place to come home to. Reducing the size of the lawn and adding variety to the plantings out front is also better for the environment, Hilty says.

Foundation plantings traditionally were designed to cover up the stone or brick around the base of a house. A very simple old-fashioned planting might rely on just one species, such as yews or junipers, or perhaps azaleas, to help nestle a house into the landscape. Too often, these shrubs are planted too close to the house and then ignored until they become overgrown, obscuring the house and blocking views from inside.

Jane Cantin, a landscape architect in Norfolk, Virginia, sees overgrown foundation plantings all the time. "It's those cute little Alberta spruces," she says. "They look like little baby Christmas trees. But after a few years they eat up the sidewalk. You can't even get to the front door." In frustration, homeowners try to prune them, but their efforts frequently backfire. "The shrubs get so whacked and wonky that they don't come back, and you just have to take them out," Cantin says.

Taking out inappropriate or overgrown plants can be liberating, designers say. It's often a hard decision, but "a lot of times, just the act of pulling them out -- homeowners suddenly love their house again," says Carolyn Mullet, owner of Carex: Garden Design, in Takoma Park, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. "It was dark and foreboding, and now it's light and clean and they can see out of their house again."

Good-looking foundation plantings should really start at the street, and move back toward the home along an attractive front walk, with perhaps a small entrance court or patio with a bench at the front door. If the scale of the steps and stoop do not suit a house, or if they are in bad condition, "this may be the time to take out that old hardscape, put in things more gracious and safer, more fitting with the design of the house," Mullet says. "It's an important part of giving your house a facelift."

Well-chosen plants are part of the overall design, not just an added improvement. "I take the architecture and the setting and the region into consideration," Cantin says, "and whether the home is contemporary or traditional." Her designs favor high-quality materials and rely on plants that do not need pampering and that look attractive through the seasons. Where appropriate, Cantin likes to suggest an informal, naturalistic style, with native plants. In formal settings, she sticks to simple designs with just a few sculptural plants.

Ornamental grasses have earned a place out front, these designers say, especially in combination with evergreens and flowering perennials. Mullet says she might combine an evergreen shrub with a stalwart switchgrass (Panicum) or Korean feather reed grass (Calamagrostis), with low perennial flowers in front of them for their seasonal color and contrasting textures. Hardy geraniums, coneflowers and hellebores are among her favorites. Mullet also likes to use native shrubs, including oak leaf hydrangea and Annabelle hydrangea (sometimes called smooth hydrangea), which both hold their flowers for weeks, have an interesting structure through the winter, and can be pruned easily.

Working with a designer is a good way to help you develop a vision for the front of your house, and to avoid common mistakes. Designers have the advantage of years of experience, and they work closely with contractors who can build and repair fences, lay brick or stone walls and walkways, and install lighting to bring out the best in a design. Designers are good at combining plants and know which plants thrive in your local conditions.

"There's no cookie-cutter solution: It always depends on the site," Cantin says. Getting away from the predictable styles -- and the usual tired plant combinations -- will change the way you and your neighbors and guests see your home, she says.

SOURCES

Checking out great front-yard designs in your own neighborhood -- and in books and magazines -- is a good way to start thinking about a new foundation planting. Garden designers can also provide inspiration, designs and plant selections specific to your home and garden. Here are some sources:

-- The Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) is an international organization for industry specialists. To find a designer in your area, check the organization's website, www.apld.com and use the "find a designer" feature.

-- The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is another organization for professional designers. Landscape architects have a bachelor's or master's degree in landscape architecture and frequently work on large-scale projects such as campuses and parks, but many LAs specialize in residential design.

-- Carolyn Mullet, owner of Carex: Garden Design by Carolyn Mullet, www.carexdesign.com

-- Barbara Hilty, owner of Barbara Hilty Landscape Design LLC, www.hiltylandscapedesign.com

-- Jane Cantin, www.janecantin.com

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