Tashiding: Beyond Earth and Sky: The Gardens of Douglas & Tsognie Hamilton

"Tashiding is one of the oldest and most venerated monasteries in the historic Himalyan Kingdom of Sikkim. Loosely translated, the word means 'a very auspicious place.' We appropriated the name for our auspicious place" - Douglas & Tsongie Hamilton Tashiding: Beyond Earth and Sky presents a sumptuous portrait of a 100-acre rural landscape and stunning residence, in Maryland, USA, developed in connection with the land and the environment. Stunning photographs and the book’s elegant design take readers on an exquisite visual tour of the property and its development, including the origins and culture of its owners—Douglas Hamilton former president and chairman of The Walters Museum in Maryland and Tsognie Wangmo, the eldest child of the last king of Sikkim, shortly before the Himalayan royal kingdom was taken over by India. This is the poignant and inspirational story of the origins and creation of Tashiding, which was developed by Douglas and Tsognie without plans, a design on paper, or a professional landscape architect or garden designer, personify their intuitive sensibility and innate knowledge—approaches that every gardener can use, and every designer will appreciate. Tashiding showcases the joining of two distinct cultures, and how their Western and Eastern backgrounds are manifest in the landscapes, garden themes, sculpture, ornament, and the house’s interiors. Everyone who has visited Tashiding is moved by the experiential sensation of the landscape’s different places. In developing Tashiding’s four-seasons gardens, Douglas and Tsognie envisioned an environment that invites a sense of harmony and well-being—part arboretum, part park, and part Xanadu. It is a garden for both walking and quiet contemplation, for feeling the thrill of the wind on a cool March day or for sitting in the tea house on a rainy afternoon, watching the wind form abstract ripples on the surface of the lake. Collecting and arranging the extraordinary quantity of rocks, boulders, trees and shrubs, they see their hands in all they did. Yet as the years have passed, each tree and plant grows in its own unique way, knitting together to form a new and perhaps more naturalistic landscape.

About the Author :
Douglas Hamilton Jr., a self-taught gardener, credits his lifelong curiosity about the natural world, horticulture, travel, and Asian aesthetics as inspirations for the gardens he and his wife, Tsognie, developed at Tashiding. Douglas serves as board chair of Hamilton Associates and related entities, a family of entrepreneurial companies where he served as CEO for 37 years. A former board chair and president of Baltimore’s renowned Walters Art Museum, Douglas has also served on the board of the Bhutan Foundation as well as those of the McDonogh School and the Valleys Planning Council. Norman Barker is a Professor of Pathology and Art as Applied to Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Norman is an award-winning science photographer, writer, and designer. His work appears in textbooks, journals, and museums worldwide. His photographs are in the permanent collections of more than 40 museums, including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the George Eastman Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Science Museum in London. He is an Accredited Senior Imaging Scientist and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in Great Britain and the Biocommunications Association. Foreword writer Kate Markert, executive director of Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens since 2010, knows something about transforming a public treasure in the heart of northwest Washington, DC, into a major, landscaped destination.