GardenDesignOnline

Urban Gardens: A Tiny Jewel

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)

 

ASLA Awards 09

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.

Orchids, Brazilian Mod, Jungles & Burle Marx

NYBG Orchid Show Feb 28-April 12

When the NY Botanical Garden decided on a "Brazilian Modern" theme for the 7th annual Orchid Show, there was only one designer to call.

Not only is landscape architect Raymond Jungles a master of modernity, he is also steeped in contemporary Brazilian design.  He studied and worked with the late architect, designer and artist Roberto Burle Marx, celebrated as one of the 20th century's foremost modern landscape architects. As Jungles put it in an interview with Garden Design Online,  "To me, Brazilian modern is Burle Marx."

As you walk into the NYBG show, you'll encounter this towering Burle Marx mosaic, circa 1991 (being installed in the show, left).  The work is one of many owned by Jungles, and it was last displayed some years ago at the Sala Mendoza Gallery in Caracas, Venezuela.  It's headed for an eventual home at the Naples Botanical Garden in Naples, Florida.

Jungles said the design for the orchid show includes "strong, bold gestures," akin to something that Burle Marx might have done. He explained that Burle Marx often did shows for Carnival and theater settings.  "He was a master of the theatrical," said Jungles, and the orchid show "is my interpretation of what he might have done in a similar situation."

From the entrance gallery, you pass through a long corridor filled with walls of living orchids, epiphytic orchid sculptures, and signature tropical plants native to Brazil, including bromeliads, staghorn ferns, philodendrons, and many palms. Along the way, you'll encounter thousands of orchids, including Cymbidium (Asian corsage), Phalaenopsis (moth), Oncidium (dancing lady) and many other species.

Finally you enter another gallery at the opposite end of the corridor, with explosions of orchids above and below.  Orchid "chandeliers" (left) are suspended above a 20 x 20' pool, where they are reflected on the water's surface, giving you "a double whammy of color," said Jungles.

A garden designed by Raymond Jungles is one that contains a lot of strength without a lot of busy elements. "I'm not happy," he says, "until I sense there's going to be a peaceful quality, even though it may be a bold space."

When Jungles designed the orchid show, he was well aware that the glass houses would be filled with people.  "I tried to build nooks and crannies," he said, "where people can tuck out of the turbulence into these eddies, look around and enjoy the space, enjoy the sight lines that connect one place to another, and experience a scene that ... gives the entire space a sense of cohesion."

If this design does one thing, it produces a sense of excitement; only a rare few could make it produce a feeling of harmony as well.

Jungles will be at orchid show on Saturday, February 28,and will give a lecture at 1PM in the Arthur & Janet Ross lecture hall, where he'll also sign copies of his new book,
The Colors of Nature: Subtropical Gardens by Raymond Jungles (Monacelli Press, 2008)

(images: NY Botanical Garden - click on images for larger view)

Burle Marx Exhibit

Probably not many of you can hop on a plane to Rio for a new exhibition on the works of Roberto Burle Marx, one of the 20th century's greatest landscape architects.

BUT ... you can read about his life and work -- and see some beautiful photos of his landscapes in an article by NYT correspondent Larry Rohter in today's New York Times.  Well worth your time to read it here.

Vacation with Halprin at Sea Ranch

Just in case you missed this week's travel section from the Sunday New York Times ....

Fans of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin can actually vacation at one of his premiere sites, and stay in a home designed by some of the 20th century's iconic architects: Charles Moore, Joseph Esherick, William Turnbull, Donlyn Lyndon and Richard Whitaker.   Sea Ranch occupies a 10 mile stretch of coast about a two and half hour drive north of San Francisco.   You can walk along wind-swept trails laid out by Halprin, and follow others into deep forests.  You can stay in one of the spectacular houses designed to take the wind and blend subtly into the natural landscape.

Read the entire article, including full descriptions of the site, the houses, and how to rent them, here.

Landscape Architect Tom Oslund

Landscape architect Tom Oslund of Minneapolis is the person who gets called when the client wants something out of the ordinary.  Some of his latest projects include the design for the new I-35W bridge (to replace the one that collapsed last year); the city's Harley-Davidson Museum; and the new Minnesota Twins ballpark, scheduled to open in 2009.

He was recently interviewed by Metropolis Magazine about his projects, his design philosophy, and the practice of landscape architecture.  You can read the entire, fascinating interview here.

Landscape Architect James Corner

The latest issue of Metropolis Magazine (November) has a terrific profile by Andrew Blum of landscape architect James Corner, who is head of the landscape architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Blum, says Corner has spent the last 25 years re-inventing the profession and pushing landscape architects to "design the post-industrial city."  Blum says Corner believes landscape architects "are best prepared to tackle the complex, large-scale, often environmentally damaged sites that have become the hallmark of urban regeneration. He approaches them with the intellectual assurance of a philosopher and the political bravado of a pow­er broker. “I don’t want to be embarrassed to be a landscape architect because we’re thought of as tree people who come in at the end of the day,” he says."

If you're in any way interested in landscape design, you should definitely read this great piece of journalism.

Read the entire article here.  And check out Metropolis Magazine while you're at it.

And, read about the park Corner is building atop a trash heap on Staten Island -- detritus from millions of New Yorkers.  The New York Magazine article is here.

Gardens of James Doyle 2

This is another garden by James Doyle (see post below) that members of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) visited late last summer in North Salem, NY.

You enter via a long gravel driveway, and as you look to left, not too far from the entrance, you encounter an austere reflecting pool with a bronze sculpture by Hanneke Beaumont. It's flanked on both sides by alleés of flowering cherry trees. (Prunus serrulata).  This lovely, uncluttered water feature gives you a hint of what lies ahead.

From a parking courtyard, you walk through tall hedges to a small dining patio with another of Doyle's tall zinc fountains in the center.  Again, water cascades down in flat sheets, this time into a hexagonal basin. As you walk through the patio, there's a small, ordered grove of apple trees to the right.

As you emerge from the patio courtyard, you take a left around the side of the house, walk through an alleé of hawthorn hedges and come upon this arbor-like sculpture "C Note Chicago Blues" by Chakaia Booker.  It's made from recycled tires. A walk through the arbor will take you straight to the formal perennial garden.

Gardens of James Doyle 1

 James Doyle Design Associates

As soon as you pull up in front of the house (in this case, in Greenwich, CT), you know right away that the garden is going to be something different. The difference is broadcast by those two tall  clipped hedges, boxed in by more of them and centered on the residence.

You then walk through a side yard that is a magnificent statement in simplicity: more boxed hedges that surround a central fountain and are perfectly lined up with the exit gate.

 

The gate at the end of the side yard is centered on the swimming pool in the back yard of the residence, which is not all that huge.  Set directly into the flat plane of the lawn, the sparely-designed lap pool fits in perfectly with the simple yet strong geometric design.

Two generous shrub and perennial beds run along the sides of the yard. At the entrance, a tall meadow rue adds height and an airy light quality, while also marking the beginning of a garden journey.  Along the sides, hydrangeas of various kinds spill over the boxwood border.

Contemporary Design on the Water

I'm not sure who did the landscaping, but this house on Pinquickset Cove on at the end of a narrow peninsula in Cotuit, MA -- looking out to Popponesset Bay -- was designed by architect Peter Forbes & Associates, Inc of Boston.

The wind-swept landscape, however, is perfect for the  Hollywood junipers nestled up against the low building that arcs along the water on the rear side of the house.

Forbes built a series of decks off the back of the house that complement the horizontal architecture and provide seating and dining areas, along with panoramic water views.  The decks, obviously, keep homeowners and visitors off the wetlands for the most part, and colorful perennials are planted to enhance the summertime atmosphere and link the landscape to the natural plantings in the distance.

A mulched area just off the decks allows passage to the garden beds for maintenance without inviting anyone to step off into the landscape.