East Village Roof Garden - NYC
This roof garden features almost everything ... including an outdoor shower and a fountain fashioned from a block of white oak.
It's got views, its' got seating galore, not TOO many plants to take care of ...
It's by Pulltab Design of NYC ... and you can read the entire story about it in the June issue of Metropolis Magazine here. And there are lots more photos ©Bilyana Dimitrova / Pulltab
Oehme Van Sweden - Sullivan Garden
This tiny paradise looks far more spacious than it actually is (only about 28 x 32 feet) ... but the size is typical for a back yard garden in Washington DC's Georgetown area.
The old three-bay garage, at rear, was turned into a storage area, but another owner could just as easily decide to turn it into an office, a studio, or even a small guest house.
The plantings are typical of an Oehme van Sweden garden... ornamental grasses, magnolias (Southern and sweetbay), crape myrtles, perovskia and coreopsis, oakleaf hydrangeas, hypericum and hostas, and much, much more.
The garden is actually a showcase for Haitian art, which the owner collects, and the plantings lend the back yard a tropical island air.
A lily pond with the seated sculpture of a woman by Mary Brownstein is set at an angle to the residence, on the terrace outside the kitchen doors. It's just the first of many works of art that are featured in this small garden, some even built into niches in brick walls.
In winter, when a lot of the plantings disappear, the garden's design is carried by the artworks, the distinctive paving patterns, and the broadleaf evergreen textures of holly, magnolia, and groundcover hellebores.
A small dining / seating patio is at the rear of the garden, shown here just outside the old garage, and the vine-covered pergola provides shade from steamy summer DC temperatures.
The lead designer of this garden was OVS's Lisa Delplace, now the firm's CEO. The careful details in paving, in design, in special features and plantings are typical of the firm's work, particularly in small urban gardens like this one.
The Sullivan garden is frequently on the annual Georgetown Garden Tour sponsored by the Georgetown Garden Club -- and it was on this year's Garden Conservancy Tour. Don't miss it the next time it comes around...you won't ever see many others like it.
(click on photos to enlarge - images ©Jane Berger)
If you haven't read about NYC's new elevated west side park -- built on top of an old railway line ... there is a GREAT article (and photos) on Inhabitat.
Here's the link.
This garden that I toured a couple of weeks ago, near the New Jersey shore, is a great example of what unexperienced designers can do if they pay careful attention to design and plantings when touring other gardens.
The homeowners spent summers touring gardens in Europe, took lots of notes and photos, and then tried to duplicate aspects of what they saw when they returned back home.
The result is a garden with a lot of separate "rooms" or seating areas, divided by plantings and/or arbors that signal an "entry" into another space. The pond-like swimming pool is the main element in the back yard, but I particularly liked the contrasting colors of the plants around the swimming pool. Too many conifers for my own particular taste, but nevertheless the site has an open, spacious feeling and the evergreens also provide a lot of privacy when you're in the pool itself.
The day I visited, the roses were in full bloom, along with lavender, peonies, and many other perennials. And it was obvious from the azaleas, viburnums, lilacs, hydrangeas and rhododendrons that this garden has something that's pleasant to look at almost any time of year.
The homeowner, Mrs. Furman, employs a team of gardeners to help her keep things in shape, but there are some lovely touches that she obviously noted during her travels.
There's an ivy-covered garden house that contains all the tools for gardening; a pergola that you discover around back of the pool, perfect for secluded dining; an espaliered fruit tree in the front of the house; long and beautiful borders; a rose that climbs up a corner of the house and cascades down over the windows.
This garden in Rumson, NJ, owned by Beliza Ann Furman, is frequently opened to visitors, so watch the garden tour listings in your area.
(click on photos to enlarge)
(images ©jane berger)
Annual Awards, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities
Big Sur, CA
This guest house and garage complex is just 200 yards from the Pacific, and the challenge was to disturb the site as little as possible. The buildings are set into the landscape, and they feature a number of "green" materials as well as an extensive green roof, ie, a roof with low lying plants that provide maximum water retention and ground cover, as well as resistance to erosion. Extensive green roof plants are usually no more than six inches high and are supported in soil two to four inches deep.
This particular green roof and its surrounding area were designed and installed by Fred Ballerini, and the plant palette was selected from the surrounding habitat prior to construction. Several endangered butterfly host and nectar plants were chosen for the rooftop location, as well as other species that provide habitat for birds, reptiles, and insects.
The judges noted that the most exciting part of the project was the effort to reduce the building impact by re-using native plant communities and taking care to recreate local flora and fauna habitats. They also said the Big Sur project is a "superior example of a green roof that can minimize the impact of building by attempting to heal the ecological disruption that its construction caused."
Boston, MA
The 12-story Macallen Building residential condominiums are located between South Boston and an expansive industrial area. Landworks Studio Inc designed two separate green roofs for the complex, including an upper sloping roof with shallow-rooted plants, and a recreational terrace with planting medium of six inches to five feet. This is an "intensive" green roof, or one that supports a more natural landscape with trees and shrubs and many other types of plants.
The recreational terrace includes a lap pool, and the design team also wanted to make the roof attractive for those in surrounding buildings. The judges cited the project for different environments at different tiers of the building, and noted that there was an educational component to it during construction ... a class offered in green roof development at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
You're not going to see too many cut-leaf Beeches (Fagus laciniata) in your life -- it's at the end of the butterfly border, left -- and it's just one of the great plant specimens in this central Maryland garden.
The garden itself is five acres, fashioned over the past 25 years from an old tobacco farm. When the owner first encountered it, the landscape was completely open, except for just a couple of large trees.
This is a garden with everything ... even hens and peacocks ... and there are so many special trees that you could call it a private arboretum (Cunninghamia lanceolata, Magnolia 'Jon Jon' with huge pink blooms in spring, an enormous Franklinia alatamaha, Styrax japonicus and obassia, a rare East coast Sequoiadendron giganteum -- and that's just to mention a few).
In addition, there's a lily pond surrounded by lush, magnificent borders, a woodland garden overflowing with oakleaf hydrangeas and other shade-loving plants, a magnolia orchard, a nuttery with hickory, horse chestnut and pecan trees, a camellia garden, a cutting garden, a vegetable garden, a dogwood garden ... and ... many more special gardens tucked around the five-acre property.
There's an entire lilac border that runs along one side of a generous barn (that houses the hens) ... and if that's not enough, a Japanese Lilac Tree bursts into bloom when the blooms on the lilac shrubs have faded for the season.
The dwarf conifers planted some years ago are now not so dwarf, a lacebark pine shades a picnic table, and there are wisteria "standards" and a sizeable bottlebrush buckeye.
A cinnamon-colored rooster hangs out around the deck from time to time, there's a duck house, and also beautifully designed containers around the house and pond. It's a garden you won't want to miss when it's next open.
(photos ©Jane Berger)
Crack Garden San Francisco
Wow! This is a garden that can be created almost anywhere ... in any neighborhood ... for practically nothing.
With only a miniscule budget ($500). CMG Landscape Architecture of San Francisco designed this 800 square foot garden for residents of a four-unit building, who did the work on the project themselves. They jackhammered "cracks" in the concrete which are now filled with vegetables, flowers, herbs or weeds as the homeowners desire.
CMG says the inspiration for the design came from the tiny plants that occupy the cracks in urban landscapes, and it's aim is to reveal the "potential for beauty" beneath the concrete and asphalt in urban areas. CMG also installed a stainless steel cable trellis across a fence and a garage, supporting a potato vine and a Five-Leaf Akebia vine for texture and color. The garden also has a jacaranda tree, which helps the define the space and provides a little shade, as well.
It just goes to prove that you don't have to spend hundreds of thousands -- or millions -- for a garden that adds pleasure and beauty to a harsh and unforgiving environment. As the jury put it, "A profound project for the future we are about to embark upon."
It's notable that of the nine "honor awards" for residential design, six of them were in California. It's obviously the place where the latest in landscape architecture is happening, as this year's Cooper Hewitt award for landscape design also went to a CA landscape architect.
The Cooper Hewitt Museum has announced its 2009 design awards, and the top honor for landscape architecture goes to Hood Design of Oakland, California, founded by Walter Hood in 1992.
The firm was cited for its commitment to "issues that address the re-construction of urban landscapes within towns and cities." The jury noted that Hood's approach is "multidimensional, exploring the role of specific landscape typologies and topologies that together reinforce and re-make landscapes that are specific to place and people."
Shown here is Hood's design for Splash Pad Park in Oakland, which connects the park to the nearby commercial district through a series of walkways under the freeway -- and through visual elements that link it to Lake Merritt.
Hood is the former chair of the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning program at the University of California, Berkeley.
Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture of San Francisco was a finalist in the landscape design category.
Shown here is a photo of the Brookvale residence in Hillsborough, CA, typically spare, with a limited plant palette and clean lines that emphasize geometry, light, texture and color.
Rios Clementi Hale Studios of Los Angeles, CA was the second finalist. And isn't it interesting that all of this year's winners are based in California ... perhaps that says something about leading-edge design and where it's really happening.
Rios Clementi Hale covers a lot of ground in its multi-disciplinary studio: landscape design, architecture, graphic and interior design, and much more. This photo shows Chess Park in Glendale, CA, a pocket park that accommodates the city's large chess playing community and serves as well as a public performance space for theater and literary groups.
Couldn't ask for much more in a public park.
For complete information on the design awards, check the Cooper Hewitt website here.
(photos top to bottom: Tom Bonner, Marion Brenner, Marion Brenner courtesy Cooper Hewitt)
A panel of top design experts led by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), has called for a comprehensive plan to re-vitalize the National Mall in Washington DC. According to the panel, the Mall, which stretches two miles from the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, is now in a state of crisis.
At a Washington news conference, ASLA president Angela Dye said the Mall's "deplorable conditions" make it an "international embarrassment." She said that wear and tear from 25 million visitors a year has made the soil as "hard as concrete" and reduced the average life of newly-planted trees to no more than seven years. In addition, she noted, stagnant water in the reflecting pool at the base of the Capitol is a "danger to wildlife."
The six-member ASLA design panel issued its report after a two-day meeting and tour of the Mall in March. While the panel strongly supports a preliminary National Park Service plan to improve the Mall, it urged a broader vision that would also preserve the legacy of the original 1791 design plan by Pierre L'Enfant.
As panel member Gary Hilderbrand put it, "We need a comprehensive urban design plan that venerates the Capitol and venerates the Grant Memorial, one that accommodates our democratic tradition of public assembly... and one that re-connects these great symbolic components with the larger urban fabric of the District of Columbia."
Hilderbrand said the National Mall should be a "model of sustainable urban ecology," and he added that a plan is needed to re-vitalize the soil, improve the water quality, and revive or replant the "most significant stand of American elms in the United States," (600 of them).
The panel's report strongly supports the current standing ban on any new memorials or museums that have not already been approved; proposes an international design competition to reconsider plans for the Union Square/Reflecting Pool area at the base of the Capitol; calls for a centralized interpretation or visitor orientation center; and agrees with the Park Service plan to re-build the crumbing seawall around the Tidal Basin and calls on Congress to come up with the funds to bring the Mall back to life.
As the panel members noted, Congress should certainly consider using some economic stimulus funds to support the plan -- and create jobs in Washington DC in the process.
A new study by the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, OH, finds that about 2800 chidren a year are treated in emergency rooms because of injuries suffered in tree house accidents. The most common injuries were fractures (37%), bruises (20%), and cuts to the upper body( 20%).
The study's author, Lara McKenzie, PhD, of the hospital's Center for Injury Research and Policy, noted -- not surprisingly -- that the most serious injuries resulted from falls at great heights. "The odds of a child requiring hospitalization tripled if the fall was from higher than 10 feet, and boys and older children were the most likely to sustain falls from these heights," she said.
Dr. McKenzie said there are no national or regional safety standards for tree houses, and she is strongly urging adoption of such standards. Recommendations include tree house height no greater than 10 feet from the ground; a nine-inch deep protective surface such as wood mulch extending a radius of 72 inches from the tree's trunk, and solid barrier walls on the tree house at least 38 inches high. Adult supervision is also recommended.
Most of us in the design field have encountered at least a request or two for a tree house, and it might be a good idea to keep the above recommendations in mind when designing tree houses for children. If you're designing for adults (and yes, there are some huge tree houses around), the points might be moot.
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