GardenDesignOnline

It's Your Park - Get Involved

The National Park Service has announced plans for a major update to the National Mall in Washington, DC, home to the White House and Capitol grounds, Smithsonian Museums, and national monuments from the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial to the Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR Memorials, and many more. The public is now invited to participate in the plans for the future.  Congress has already authorized several new Mall additions, including memorials to George Mason, Martin Luther King Jr. and Black Patriots of the Revolutionary War.  National Park Service Director Mary Bomar said the mall "symbolizes our nation and our freedoms," and she added that the Park Service "wants to give the American public the chance to help determine how future generations will continue to honor, commemorate, and celebrate and enjoy this national treasure."

Exactly what that's going to mean is as yet unclear.

(photo: NPS)

Saving Landscapes

Landscapes often get the short shrift when it comes to historic preservation, although the contributions of landscape architects and designers are just as important to the country's cultural legacy as historic buildings and monuments. Now,The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has released it's third biennial list of endangered properties, Landslides 2006, which focuses on American Gardens at risk.

The 18 unique gardens on this year's list include public and private landscapes designed by some of America's most famous landscape architects as well as others designed by horticulturists or homeowners.  The gardens at Gibraltar  in Wilmington, DE, were designed by Marian Coffin in 1916.  She was one of the best known landscape architects during the "Country Place Era" from the late 1800's until World War II.  This garden, with Italianate design and English planting style, is laid out in a series of terraces that descend 30 feet, connected by a curving marble staircase.  Now a public garden, Gibraltar needs volunteers and money to continue restoration and to maintain the garden for future generations.

In Yachats, Oregon, Jim & Janis Gerdemann have spent 25 years creating a masterpiece woodland garden on three and a half acres right next door to the Siuslaw National Forest and facing the Pacific ocean.  The garden is filled with native perennials (trillium, viola, columbine, Western lily); rare rhododendrons; and unusual plants from abroad, including New Zealand tree ferns, the Chilean flame tree, Grevillia from Australia, and many more. It's also home to a variety of wildlife, and the rare Giant Pacific Salamander has been sighted three times.  The Gerdemanns are now in their 80's and in declining health. The garden could be subdivided upon their deaths, but they are seeking ideas on ways to preserve it for the future.

(photos: TCLF)

Olmsted Park Restoration

Riverside Park in Buffalo, NY is getting a state grant to construct a pedestrian walkway and garden, reviving part of Frederick Law Olmsted's original 18th century design.  The Buffalo News carried the story about the $100,000 grant to the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, which is working to restore the park to its former glory.

(photo: Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy)

Garden Conservancy Open Days 2006

Sacramento Area Private Gardens Tour March 31
The Garden Conservancy kicks off its 2006 Open Days in Sacramento, CA, with tours of three exquisite private gardens.  The GC is the premier organization in the country that works to preserve the finest gardens in the United States for posterity, and everyone who's even vaguely interested in gardens should take advantage of these tours -- you won't see finer gardens anywhere.  Two Japanese Gardens and one enormous 50-acre garden are featured on opening day.

Maple Rock Garden (above) in Newcastle features extensive Japanese maples and rocks covered with moss; an English walled vegetable garden; a Japanese meditation garden; a fruit orchard; and a three-level redwood pavilion covered with wisteria, clematis, creeping fig, and azaleas.  And there's much more.

In Lincoln, CA, the 50-acre Gardens of Springhill includes a rose and a knot garden; a shade garden; a cactus & succulent garden; a palm garden; a formal Italian garden and -- under construction -- a 400 foot long cypress avenue with an aquarium.  Hiking trails, ponds, waterfalls and wetlands complete this amazing enterprise.

Finally, stop in Granite Bay to see Myo Wa En, the Japanese World Peace Garden designed in 1985 by then 93-year-old Katsuo Saito.  Take in three Zen gardens, the Japanese tea house, as well as six 50-year-old bonsai Japanese black pines.  Saito authored  several books on Japanese gardens, including Magic of Trees and Stones: Secrets of Japanese Gardening; and Quick and Easy Japanese Gardens. Both are still available at used book sites, including Amazon.com.

The complete Open Days Directory -- with directions to the gardens -- is available through the Garden Conservancy.

(photo: Garden Conservancy - photo by Frenk Andrews)

New Garden Conservancy Project

The  Garden Conservancy has announced plans to preserve the garden at Hollister House, a 25-acre site in Washington, Connecticut. (Litchfield County) The property, owned by George Schoellkopf, has been on the organization's annual Open Days program, which began in 1995, every year except one.  Hollister House is only the second Open Days private garden that has been designated for preservation in perpetuity.

Bill Noble, GC's director of preservation projects, described the Schoellkopf garden as seductive and said it's also a true American garden:  "There is a real sense of place and history, even though the inspiration is English," he said.  "It's New England in materials, architecture, scale, and views to fields and hillsides...The inspiration may have come from Sissinghurst, but George understands how Sackville-West's principles apply to Connecticut."

The two-acre formal garden is divided into separate garden rooms that are formed by yew hedges, brick walls, and fieldstone.  Plantings are informal, spilling over the edges of paving materials, over the walls and down inclines. Bold colors predominate, along with many unusual plants.

(photo: Garden Conservancy)

 

Rockefeller Environmental Award

As part of its 100th anniversary, The National Audubon Society is honoring the Rockefeller   family for its work over the last century to create national parks and preserve the natural beauty of the Ameircan landscape.  In a New York Times article, Audubon president John Flicker said that no other family in the country has made such a large contribution to conservation.  The Rockefellers are responsible not only for Rockefeller Center in mid-town Manhattan, but also for Acadia National Park in Maine, the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, but much, much more.   

Last Shaker Village to be Preserved

An agreement has been reached between the state of Maine, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and several non-profit preservation groups to preserve the last working Shaker village in the United States, the Sabbathday Lake Shaker village in Gloucester, Maine, founded in 1783. The Shaker village has 1700 acres and 19 historic structures, and it's the last place where Shakers work, farm, and worship.  The groups have joined forces to ensure that the Shaker landscape will be preserved in perpetuity and never be developed.  Other sponsors include The Trust for Public Land, Maine Preservation, the Friends of the Royal River, and the New England Forestry Foundation.

(Photo: Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village)