GardenDesignOnline

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.

National Design Awards 08

The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum has announced the winners of its 9th annual National Design Awards, and the Olin Partnership of Philadelphia is this year's winner of the Landscape Design Award. 

Pictured left is the firm's design for the Gap Headquarters in San Francisco.  Olin, founded in 1976, is one of the leading landscape architecture firms in the United States, and it was cited by the museum for its dedication to "sustainability and green design." Some of the firm's recent projects include the Fran and Ray Stark Sculpture Garden at the J. Paul Getty Center in LA, and in New York City, the restoration of Bryant Park, and the reconstruction of Columbus Circle.

Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd of Seattle was a landscape design finalist, cited for its high-use landscapes in complex urban contexts.  The practice is led by partners Katherine Gustafson, Jennifer Guthrie and Shannon Nichol.  Shown here is Seattle's City Hall Plaza designed by the firm.

Stoss Landscape Urbanism of Boston was also a landscape finalist, for its practice "at the juncture of landscape architecture, urban design and planning.  Shown here is Stoss's Perkins Park in Somerville, Massachusetts.

(images: top, Marion Brenner; center, GGN Ltd; bottom, Stoss Landscape Urbanism)

Harvard Fountain - Landmark Award

Harvard's Tanner Fountain is to receive this year's Landmark Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Designed by landscape architect Peter Walker of the SWA Group, it's the first project for an institution in the "Landscape as Art" movement.

When the fountain was commissioned by then-Harvard president Derek Bok, he asked the designer to come up with a fountain without a basin.  Past fountains at Harvard had all been eventually filled with soil by maintenance crews and turned into planters. This fountain is roughly a 60-foot diameter circle formed by 159 granite boulders that were cleared from regional farms around the turn of the century. 

The water for the fountain comes from 32 nozzles imbedded in and around the stones, and they produce a mist that hovers above the circle spring through fall, producing rainbows when the sun falls just right.

After the fountain was installed, some critics suggested that it is a symbolic representation of the Big Bang.  Whatever the maintenance requirements, this fountain is not likely one day to be filled with plants.

(image: Alan Ward)

ASLA Awards 08

What to say about the winners of this year's ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) design awards? Well, we might start with edgy, eclectic, and very original.

Pictured here is The Lurie Garden in Chicago's Millennium Park Park, designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd of Seattle, winner of the top award in the general design category.  It's a three-acre rooftop public botanical garden, which, according to Guthrie, "celebrates the built-up, engineered landscape of the Garden site and the City of Chicago."  And they're not kidding.  It's composed of giant "plates" that reflect the city's mysterious and marshy past and its exuberant modern architecture as well. There's also a water feature, a long "boardwalk" that criss-crosses the site, and a monumental "living hedge" that provides shelter for birds and other wildlife.

Many of the perennial  plantings were designed by the reknowed Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf, using locally grown natives like prairie grasses that are a constant reminder of the Midwestern landscape.  As the awards jury put it, the garden "works on so many different levels, no wonder people love it."

(click to enlarge images by (left) Piet Oudolf; plan: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd)

Desert Botanical Garden Facelift

New Cactus & Succulent Galleries

The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix has opened two stunning, modern galleries to house its spectacular collections of three thousand cacti and two thousand succulents.  Award-winning landscape architect Steve Martino designed the 28-feet tall, arching structures that sit atop bold red concrete piers, with steel mesh ceilings to protect the tenderest plants.

Martino, known for his modern southwestern landscapes that complement the desert topography, told the Arizona Republic newspaper that the new galleries are akin to a "Tinkertoy set." As the tallest structures in the garden, "they're going to be a landmark," he said.

The new Sybil B. Harrington galleries replace the garden's aging aluminum lath structures that housed the two collections.  Some of the cacti, including the 22 foot tall Stenocereus montanus, had outgrown their old home, but they fit perfectly under their new steel canopies.   Most of the existing plants were moved to greenhouses during construction, but a few that were too large to move were left in place while the new structures were built around them.

Plantings were designed by Baltimore-based landscape architect and horticulturist Scott Scarfone, who grouped plants according to color and texture to dramatize their sculptural qualities.

The new galleries are part of a campaign launched in 2006 to expand the garden's educational goals and research initiatives.  The garden's overall plan is for a series of museum quality outdoor exhibits to showcase the garden's unsurpassed collection of desert plants from all over the world.

(images: Adam Rodriguez, Desert Botanical Garden)

Halprin: "The Choreography of Gardens"

Lawrence Halprin Retrospective, through April 4
Kroiz Gallery, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania

It's time to plan a trip to Philadelphia for this first-ever exhibition of the works of Lawrence Halprin, one of America's most celebrated landscape architects and environmental designers.

The U-PENN exhibition draws from the Archives' collection of Halprin's work, and features more than 60 design sketches, landscape plans, photographs, and other items that illustrate Halprin's lasting impact on the post-World War II landscape.

The show, "The Choreography of Gardens," explores the relationship between "movement" and Halprin's designs.  Married to a noted avant-garde dancer (Anna Halprin), Halprin himself has often called his designs "choreography," writing in 1949 that a garden is like "the fine sense of a dance."  He's long studied how people "move" in public spaces, and he coined the word "motation" (motion and notation) to describe his system of plotting movement through space with a notation system that some say look like hieroglyphs or even a kind of music.

Halprin was born in Brooklyn and attended Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin before going on the Harvard for a degree in landscape architecture. Halprin then moved to California and joined the San Francisco firm of Thomas Church, a leader in bold new approaches to landscape design.  After forming his own firm in 1949, Halprin embarked on a career that has encompassed urban renewal and public parks, private residences and rojects that focused on environmental planning.  Some of his mosts celebrated works include The Sea Ranch, a residential development on the California coast; Ghirardelli Square and Market Street in San Francisco; Seattle's Freeway Park; and the FDR Memorial in Washington DC.

Kroiz Gallery, 220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia (215) 898-8323
There is a gallery talk and tour with curator Alison Hirsh on Friday January 25th at 6PM

(images: The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania)

A Touch of Zen

Landscape Designer J.C. Stahl of The Poetics of Space in Chatham, MA, uses his experience in art to marvelous effect in the landscape.  An art and theater major at Dartmouth College, he spent a season with the Southwest ballet, learned to weld and make works of art, and went on to a master's program in landscape architecture.  Now, he says, "I use dance as the metaphor to describe the experience of moving through a space that functions as a work of art."

The living work of art shown here is Namaste, a lovely garden we visited earlier this summer in Chatham.  For JC, earth and stone are materials for sculpture  plantsare akin to paint, and the canvas is the bare landscape.  The garden is punctuated by plants of carefully contrasting colors, many with yellow-hued leaves or needles.

The garden is Asian inspired, in keeping with the philosophy of the clients, who are yoga practitioners and familiar with oriental gardens.  There's a small stream that spills over artfully placed stones and runs into a small pond at the edge of the patio; a vertical sculpture of a woman is set off by vertical conifers and a wide expanse of lawn; the large purple flowers of a clematis are echoed in a nearby smoke tree and several japanese maples.

In the front of the house, JC fashioned a striking modern sculpture with granite stones from the Charles Street jail.  It's set in a circle of gravel and surrounded by shade plants that ground it to the landscape and integrate it into the front yard.

(click on images for larger view)

Channeling Oehme-VanSweden

Well, OK, this doesn't exactly look like a garden done by Oehme Van Sweden landscape architects, but it was inspired by their work, and there are similarities.  Certainly, the plant palette is similar to what you'd find in a garden designed by the Washington DC firm: gooseneck loosestrife, black-eyed susans, Joe pye weed, Russian sage, lots of ornamental grasses, summersweet, hollies, Japanese black pines, and winterberry.

This garden in Chatham, MA is just across the street from a tidal estuary that flows into Pleasant Bay, and the designers -- Wesley Stout Associates of New Canaan, CT -- left the grade alone in the front yard to comply with a town prohibition against adding fill to the front yard swale.  The house sits about 13 feet above sea level, and the land slopes down and away from it seven feet before rising steeply again up to street level.

We visited the site last month, and the homeowners proudly showed visitors pictures from the landscape architects' classic book, Bold Romantic Gardens: The New World Landscapes of Oehme and Van Sweden (Acropolis Books, 1991).

In the back yard, tall junipers screened the neighboring property; a vegetable garden is fenced to keep out wandering critters, and of course no Cape Cod garden would be complete without daylilies and the ubiquitous blue hydrangeas.

Because of its setting, an additional challenge is using plants that will tolerate salt from sea spray, and high winds that sometimes buffet the town.

Oehme Van Sweden's work is generally called the New American Garden style, and typically uses lots of ornamental grasses and many native American plants.  The only one missing in this landscape is Persicaria polymorpha, Wolfgang Oehme's favorite plant.

(click on images for larger view)