GardenDesignOnline

On Vacation

Since so many of you readers are obviously on vacation, I'm taking a break as well.

I encourage everyone to poke around the website ... there are more than six years of posts on myriad subjects ... so take some time, relax, and enjoy the gardens, plants, and people that occupy these pages.

That's a photo of one of my favorite clematis ... Lord Neville.

Back in a few weeks.

Jane

 

Design: America's Greatest Forgotten Garden?

 

photos: Untermyer Garden Conservancy- click to enlarge

 We don't often think of traveling to Yonkers, NY to see a garden ... but this one is definitely on my list.  I didn't know about this garden until I read an article about its restoration in the July 20th New York Times (read it here), and it's something we should all support.

The Untermyer Gardens Conservancy is raising money to bring the celebrated gardens back to life, a garden they call "America's Greatest Forgotten Garden."  Samuel Untermyer was a prominent New York City lawyer (instrumental in establishing the Federal Reserve System and promoting regulation of the stock exchanges) and an avid gardener. In 1912, he hired Welles Bosworth to design his gardens on 150 acres overlooking the Hudson River.

gazebo celing

The site includes a walled Persian garden with typical water elements, mosaic floors and viewing platforms; a pavilion and swimming pool with more mosaics; Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns; and a circular temple.

The garden was created on several levels, and the lower level includes a loggia with views across to the Palisades in New Jersey, a design patterned after the Villa D'Este on Lake Como in Italy.

There's also a Temple of Love, large sculptures of lions and horses, waterfalls and crumbling walls. I frequently drive through Yonkers, and now there's certainly a reason to stop.

 

 

Design: An Unusual Garden in Amsterdam

Photos: Claude Pasquer - click to enlarge

It's a mushroom ... it's a log pile; it's a chair ... it's a logpile.  French designers and artists Corinne Julhiet-Detroyat and Claude Pasquer were asked to create a sustainable courtyard garden for Droog Design, a Dutch conceptual design company in the heart of Amsterdam. 

The two transformed "junk" into useful garden ornament and accoutrements, in line with Droog's emphasis on the integration of natural and artificial materials. 

In the sunniest areas of the courtyard, the designers installed an area for relaxation, with accents of yellow, gold, and orange punctuated by purple sculptures made of chicken wire.

In shady areas, blues and greens are brightened with sculptures made of yellow chicken wire.  There are also artificial wire mesh flowers, and "Asperso-flowers" that water the garden and also serve as birdbaths.

It's a fairy-tale atmosphere, and as one writer called it, "weird and wonderful" too.

 

Happenings August 2012

Selected Events Around the Country:

Thru Oct 21, "The Artist in the Garden," Bronx, NY
Exhibition on Monet's Garden, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700

Aug 2, Contemporary New England Landscape Design, Portsmouth, NH
6PM, Lecture, Landscape Architect Danielle Desilets, Gov. John Langdon House 603-436-3205
Aug 4, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours, NY
Tompkins & Ulster Counties
Aug 11-12, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours, VT, NY
VT: Windham County; NY: Putnam County
Aug 13, Repurposing Salvaged Materials for the Garden, Del Mar, CA
6PM, Lecture, San Diego Hort Society, Surfside Race Place, Del Mar Fairgrounds 619-296-9215
Aug 14, Meadow Gardens Workshop, Framingham, MA
9:30AM-12:30PM, New England Wildflower Society, 508-877-7630

Aug 18, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours, CO, NY, WA
CO: Arapahoe, Denver Counties; NY: Columbia, Orange Counties; WA: Thurston County
Aug 23-25, Farwest Show, Portland, OR
Aug 24-26, Garden Study Weekend, Washington, CT
8AM-5PM, Hollister House, "Gardening Anew: Fresh Perspectives on the Garden," 860-868-2200
August 24-25 Speaking of Gardening Symposium, Asheville, NC
8:30AM-4.30PM, North Carolina Arboretum, 828-665-2492
Aug 26, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours, CT
Litchfield, New Haven Counties

LOOKAHEAD:

Sept 16-22, APLD Annual Design Conference, San Francisco Bay Area
Sept 28-Oct 1, ASLA Annual Meeting & Expo, Phoenix, AZ
Oct 6-7 What's Out There Weekend NYC, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, NYC
Oct 19, Perennial Plant Conference, Swarthmore, PA

 

 

Books: What You Don't Know about Sustainable Design

It's all well and good to talk about sustainable design ... rain gardens ... native plants ... permeable pavers ... green roofs ... you know the drill. But there's much more to "green" design than simply coming up with a  design, and landscape architect and writer Adam Regn Arvidson lays it all out for us in Greening the Landscape: Strategies for Environmentally Sound Practice (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2012). 

As Arvidson writes in the introduction, "Anyone who designs, plans, installs, maintains, grows plants for, or otherwise cares for a landscape has some responsibility for doing so in a more environmentally friendly way."  That includes consideration of the fuel used by the big delivery trucks and bobcats, the disposal of plastic plant containers, water, fertilizers and pesticides, nitrous oxide emitted by gasoline-powered garden equipment. 

He notes that designers, for instance, might specify bare-root shrubs or plants that come in peat or paper containers; or specify that plant containers be recycled. Nurseries might upgrade old equipment, compost green waste and recycle rainwater for irrigation. And he advocates that all green industy professionals work to promote environmentally sound policies at state, local, and national levels. 

Throughout the book, Arvidson offers case studies of green industry firms that have changed their practices and business models to make production more efficient and apply techniques that will help protect the planet.  As the author notes, "Researach suggests that humans are altering the Earth's climate in a way never seen before .... the problem of climate change can only be solved through comprehensive change at all levels of society and industry."

Arvidson's companion website, www.GreeningtheLandscapeBook.com, has additional resources and case studies.

 

 

Design: Tiny, Tiny Gardens

Randy Harris for New York Times

I can barely imagine a 66-square foot garden, but be inspired by NYC designer Marie Viljoen, who blogs about it at 66 Square Feet.  The garden includes 50 containers, 83 plants, on a Brooklyn rooftop.

Read about it (and see the photos of it) in today's New York Times here.

The article also profiles a 225 square foot garden by Alejandro Aguilar that has more than 300 plants and 48 containers.

If there are dedicated gardeners, anything is possible.

Design: Plant-centric in Cambridge

 

click on photos to enlarge

Formal houses usually end up with formal gardens, but although the design of this garden was fairly formal, I sure liked its informal feeling.  It was recently open during a tour of gardens in Cambridge, MA.

 

Just past the front and around to the side, there's a fenced garden (wisely, to keep out the dogs) where the owner grows herbs, vegetables and strawberries.  Fruit trees are located just to the rear of it, along with blueberries and raspberries. (That's real dedication in such an urban area).

The serene flagstone patio at the rear of the house is spacious enough to accommodate friends and family, and the nearby fountain drowns out most of the ambient city noise, but not the sound of ping pong balls.

At the rear, I loved the vine clamboring up the house behind the spiral staircase that leads to the upper story deck, and the gardens in front of it were lovely, ablaze with color and texture. 

The garden designer left out nothing. The spacious lawn is bordered by a number of tall trees to provide shade, including a willow tree and two Japanese katsuras.  Must be very striking in fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Design: High on the High Line

 

click on images to enlarge

 I've read so much about the High Line in New York City -- the park built atop the old west side elevated rail line -- I still can hardly believe that I first visited just a couple of weeks ago, although I'm in NYC several times every year.

We went early on a weekday, at 7:30 AM, just half an hour after the park opened.  We almost had the place to ourselves, so early is a great time to visit.  The horticulturists were out, weeding and watering and doing other chores, most likely to beat the mid-day heat.

Most of the photos I'd seen beforehand focused on the billowy plantings by Piet Oudolf or the crowds that congregate at overlooks, performance spaces, and other places where the path widens out a bit.  So I didn't expect the old rail lines to be so prominent ... but they obviously play a big part in the design by James Corner, whose firm, by the way, gives periodic design tours of the site. (Well worth it, I'm sure).

In the Magazines July-August 2012

Garden Design July August
*New outdoor furniture from the furniture fair in Milan
*NYC roof terrace by designer David Kelly -- glass railings & more
*SF rooftop by Topher Delaney - note the colored glass panels
*Eco-friendly house in the LA hills by landscape architect Mark Tessier
*New blooms from Japan

 

Sunset July
*LA interior designer Alexandra Angle transforms a ramshackle farmhouse into an outdoor oasis with orange trees, jasmine, ferns, bamboo & much more
*Landscape designer Cameron Scott designs a raised veg garden in Seattle with beds fashioned from recycled Cor-ten steel.  Very cool

Fine Gardening August
*Fast growing fillers
*Unified look, varied exposures
*Plants for year-round fragrance
*Interview with plantsman Tony Avent