Every autumn, we owe a debt of gratitude to our trees.   They give our gardens the best gift: leaves.   Over the past decade, there's been a resurgence of interest in the restorative power of leaves in the garden. For some gardeners, this is new news. Yet, we've known about the wonderful contributions of leaves in the garden for a long time.   As proof, here's a little post from the The York Daily  out of York Pennsylvania on October 23, 1879:   "Fallen leaves make excellent compost for the garden."   And, theSunday News out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania from November 16, 1952, wrote this:   "Many city gardeners and suburban farmers... now realize the value of leaves as fertilizer and mulching material and are glad to take the leaves off the Street Departments hands...      This helps solve the problem of what to do with the fallen leaves, but it doesn't help the raking aches."       Brevities #OTD   Today is the birthday of the English watercolorist and founding advocate of the picturesque landscape, William Gilpin, who was born on this day in 1762. As an early headmaster and vicar of the Cheam School, Gilpin taught vegetable, as well as ornamental, gardening to the students. In 1777, Gilpin became the parson at the Boldre church of St. John the Baptist in the New Forest district of Hampshire. The church dates back to the 11th century. Gilpin was a fount of knowledge about the area surrounding Boldre Church and its flora and fauna. Gilpin served as the Boldre church parson until his death in 1804 at the age of 80. Gilpin is buried, alongside his wife, in the church cemetery beside an old maple tree. His inscription reads: "It will be a new joy to meet several of their good neighbors who now lie scattered in these sacred precincts around them."   Gilpin would travel around the English countryside, creating beautiful watercolors of the landscape and keeping journals where he refined his thoughts on the picturesque landscape . Gilpin filled his sketchbooks with drawings and observations on landscapes and how to paint them. Gilpin wrote, "In order to color chastely and harmoniously, use only 3 tints: red, yellow, and blue..."   Gilpin's accounts of his travels were published in guidebooks and created popular interest in natural beauty and the picturesque landscape.  Gilpin's bestselling book, "Observations on the River Wye: And Several Parts of South Wales, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty: Made in the Summer of the year 1770"  (often referred to as the River Wye guidebook),  brought scads of tourists to the area during the 18th century. Gilpin wrote: "Every distant horizon promises something new; and with this pleasing expectation we follow nature through all her walks."   During his time, Gilpin was an arbiter of artistic taste, and he thought that artists should try to find the most "picturesque" view of a landscape. Gilpin didn't enjoy artificial creations and lines in the garden. He was a fan of more natural-looking landscapes that were often  savage and less domesticated. To Gilpin, the best landscapes offered ruins and mountains along with trees. Gilpin's watercolors were created on site and he wasn't opposed to using a little artistic license to make the scene more compelling; adding a little bridge or tree or making a ruin ever more ruinous. In 1786, Gilpin wrote, "A ruin is a sacred thing. Rooted for ages in the soil; assimilated to it; and become, as it were, a part of it ..."    A simple way to remember the picturesque style, is to remember that Gilpin was a painter and he was seeing the landscape with “a painter’s eye”. The picturesque was a view that was worthy of being painted and Gilpin said it was "that kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture." The bottom line is that the images were designed to get your attention.  Gilpin wrote: "Our eyes are only glass windows; we see with our imagination."   Gilpin was the first president of The Royal Watercolor Society and he is remembered for his boo