GardenDesignOnline

Happenings November 2013

Selected Events Around the Country:

Thru May 2014: Chihuly Exhibit, Phoenix, AZ
Desert Botanical Garden, 480-941-1225

Nov 2, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tour, Mount Kisco, NY
Nov 4, Landscape Design Lecture, NY, NY
6:30PM, Landscape Architect Mary Margaret Jones of Hargreaves Associates, NYBG Midtown Center, 718-817-8700 (CEU's)
Nov 5, The Natural Landscape Symposium, Stoneham, MA
8:30AM-4:30PM, Ecological Landscaping Association, 617-436-5838

Nov 6, "Understanding Landscape History," Boston, MA
9:20AM-12:30PM, Lecture, landscape preservationist Phyllis Anderson, The Landscape Institute, 617-585-0100
Nov 7, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Lecture, Boston, MA
7PM, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 617-278-5156
Nov 7, Landscape Architecture Lecture, Philadelphia, PA
6-8PM, "The Trip," Landscape Architect Teresa Gali-Izard, Penn Design, 215-898-6591

Nov 10, "Sole Practioner Outside the Box," Boston, MA
12:30-3:30PM, Panel Discussion, The Landscape Institute, 617-585-0100
Nov 12-14 International Pool & Spa Expo, Las Vegas, NV
Nov 13, Environmental Psychology & Design, Boston, MA
6PM, Lecture, The Landscape Institute, 617-585-0100
Nov 14, Dan Kiley Exhibition, Boston, MA
4:30PM, Opening Reception, "The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley," Boston Architectural College, (sponsor: TCLF, 202-483-0553)
Nov 15-18, ASLA Annual Meeting, Boston, MA
"Gaining Ground," Lectures, Tours, Trade Show, More 866-229-3691
Nov 16, 10th Turning a New Leaf Conference, Shepardstown, W.VA
8AM-6PM, Conservation Landscaping, National Conservation Training Center, 410-212-7014

Nov 19, Designing & Building Outdoor Kitchens, Bronx, NY
1PM-3PM, Workshop, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700

 LOOKAHEAD:

 Dec 4, "Larger Landscapes," Boston, MA
6PM, Lecture, Landscape architect Ken Smith, The Landscape Institute, 617-585-0100

 

Landscape Design: The Art of Color

 

click to enlarge images

To  understand this garden, you have to start at the very back of the property and work your way forward.  It overlooks the Westport River in Westport, MA, and in the height of summer, the natural grasses at river's edge take on a pale yellowish-green cast. 

Designer & author Nan Sinton picked up on the blue of the water and the yellow of the grasses and brought them forward into the landscape:  the blue hydrangeas and the yellow Adirondack chairs.  A little further back from the water, a bright yellow fence hides the A/C units on the side of the house.

Golden hakonechloa sit at the entrance to a vernal pool near the front of the residence, and note the upright evergreens, which are placed throughout the landscape, and along with clipped inkberry hollies, provide structure for the garden.  The evergreens also echo the color of the native vegetation nearby.

On the other side of the house, a bed filled with hydrangeas, a number of yellow daylilies, and a school of whimsical fish is a transition from the water and on into a garden filled with wilder, more natural plantings.

A bright blue gate takes one back to the front of the house and the entry garden, again past a sea of yellow blooms. Amazing what an artful designer can do with just a couple of bright colors, along with various hues of green.

 

 

 

 

 

October Events Update

Oct 29, Boston Architectural College Design Talks: Green Buildings
4:30-6:30PM Designing Green Roofs & Green Walls
7-9 PM  Greening Existing Buildings

First Floor Meeting Room, 320 Newbury Street, Boston, MA
4 CEU's for both. 617-585-0100

Books: The English Garden -- Updated

You might just get a hint of it from the cover, but perhaps what we've all known so long as the "English Garden" is dead.  In his latest book, The New English Garden (Frances Lincoln Limited, 2013), British writer, photographer, and historian Tim Richardson offers solid proof that the English garden is in the midst of an extraordinary transformation.

Richardson profiles 25 "new" gardens by some of Britain's most celebrated designers.  They are gardens that, as he puts it, have been "made or remade during the last decade."  At that point, designers began switching from "Arts and Crafts color-theming," he says, and embraced a simpler, naturalistic approach to horticulture, influenced greatly by Germany's Karl Foerster and Holland's Piet Oudolf.

I'll add that here in the U.S., the somewhat similar "New American Garden" of James van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme took off in the mid 1980s and spread like wildfire among American designers.

In any event, it's evident that the British are now using a lot of ornamental grasses and  huge perennials in the looser style favored by those in the forefront of natural gardens.  At Mount St. John, Tom Stuart-Smith has mixed traditional clipped yews and boxwoods with a rhythmic mix of perennials. The layout is quite formal, but the plantings, according to the designer, are in a "supernormal" gardening style that evokes "a sense of the confusingly semi-familiar."

At Olympic Park, James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett designed sweeping meadows filled with powerful combinations of texture and color.   And at Pettifers, Gina Price combines formal hedges and tall flask-shaped yew topiaries with informal grass paths and wide borders of bold ornamental grasses and perennials.

Although many of these gardens retain familiar formal elements, you'll be amazed by the creativity and the innovative new planting styles.  They are definitely different, and definitely worth a look.  Stunning photos by Andrew Lawson accompany each garden profile, and more than 300 of them throughout the book will give you a great sense of the new English style. If you're bored with English gardens and not really tempted by the natural style, this might just be the perfect book for you.

Green Roof Design Awards 2013 - II

Three more top design awards for 2013 announced by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities:

photos: courtesy GRHC - click to enlarge

 Drew School, San Francisco, CA
The ROMA Design Group of San Francisco worked with French master Patrick Blanc on the design of the vertical garden covering the street-side wall of the new theatrical arts and assembly building at the Drew School.  The 1800 square foot garden is home to more than 100 species that attract hummingbirds, butterflies and more in this dense urban location.  Small trees and shrubs are at the top of the wall, while smaller plants are located down near the sidewalk.  It is also design as a living laboratory for educational purposes, integrated into the school curriculum.

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
An interior green roof visible from the street was designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects and NEDLAW Living Walls.

The 1460 square foot wall engages the five-story atrium and a four-story elliptical stairway.  It has a closed-loop hydroponic system and contains 1500 plants, all integrated into the air handling system of the new Papadakis Integrated Science Building. The living wall is said to have the potential to provide 75 to 80 percent of the fresh air intake of the building. Wow!

Kaufman Performing Arts Center, Kansas City, MO
Reed-Hilderbrand designed the green roof over the parking garage and arts center -- a four-plus acre park that's actually a green roof stormwater detention facility. The six and eight inch growing media stores surface water for use in the landscape, which includes switchgrass and liriope, red oaks and Colorado spruce.

The green roof is open 24 hours a day to the public and tours are conducted on a regular basis.

 

 

Landscape Design: Japanese Garden Art

photo: NYBG - Joshua Lieberman

Kiku Opens at NY Botanical Garden

Kiku is the Japanese word for chrysanthemum, and only the Japanese have learned the art of transforming the flower into myriad shapes and styles.  Head to the NY Botanical Garden (through October 27) to see this year's display.  The exhibition focuses on hanami, the traditional Japanese custom of enjoying the ephemeral beauty of flowers -- and what's more appropriate than the chrysanthemum.  Shown above is Kengai -- or casade -- which features small-flowered chrysanthemums.

photo: NYBG - Raimund Koch

In this technique, Ozukuri, a single stem of the flower is trained to produce hundreds of blooms in a dome shape. 

Many other techniques are on display, and special events include classes in Japanese flower arranging, a bonsai weekend, poetry, and much more.

Books: Hudson Valley Gardens

From "The Wow Factor" to "Structure and Style," the 26 private gardens profiled in Jane Garmey's latest book, Private Gardens of the Hudson Valley (Monacelli Press, 2013), surveys this magnificent landscape not too far from New York City.

In Quaker Hill, a naturalistic garden was designed by Robin Zitter to go with the 18th century house. In Amenia, architect Gil Schafer hired noted landscape designer Deborah Nevins to help him create a series of enclosed gardens around the house. 

Some of these gardens were designed by their dedicated owners, others by professional landscape designers. Most of the gardens are quite traditional, with the exception of the very modern garden of Steve Trevor and Ronnie Planalp in Clinton Corners. They hired landscape architect Peter Meyer, who had worked with Dan Kiley, to re-design the areas around the house (which were first designed by Oehme van Sweden)  and integrate them into the larger property. 

Plentiful and beautiful photos by John M. Hall will give any reader plenty of ideas for design and plant combinations.

 

 

 

"Select 10" Designers

Check out this year's  "Select 10" of up-and-coming designers named by Metropolis Magazine.

Read the list here.  It includes the landscape architects PEG of Philadelphia, selected by James Cormer.

ASLA Awards 2013

image: Erika Shank

ASLA has announced its 2013 Professional Design Awards. Following are some of the awards in the Residential category.

Sagaponack Residence
This oceanfront property in Sagaponack, NY won the top Award of Excellence. LaGuardia Design Landscape Architects of Water Mill, NY created a new dune-like landscape around the residence, which was moved inland 400 feet to a flat cornfield in an attempt to save it from the inevitable rising tides.  The designers created a pond and used the fill from it for the house, whose first floor terraces were raised 17 feet.  Closer to the water, dunes were rebuilt and native plants were used for screening and for wildlife habitats.

 

image: Mayer

 

Recovered Modernism: A Landscape Matrix Enriches a Dallas Hacienda
Reed Hilderbrand won an Honor Award for his redesign of the landscape around this 1981 modern house, which was over-run with invasive plants. After removing the invasives, Hilderbrand discovered a piece of rare Texas blackland prairie, and the design focused on preserving it and connecting it to the rest of the landscape.  Plantings near a stream on the site were chosen for their ability to withstand flash floods, and boulders and weirs were sited in order to prevent erosion.

photo: Nic Lehoux

Combs Point Residence
This property on the shores of Seneca Lake in New York's Finger Lakes region is sited in a ravine that empties into the lake.  Michael Vergason Landscape Architects was called in to preserve existing trees and stabilize the native landscape, which had four distinct ecological communities.  The design, which won an Honor Award,  included plantings on slopes and tying down dead trees in order to slow erosion and create nursery areas where seedlings could be planted.

photo: Marion Brenner

Woodside Residence
A run-down landscape in the Coastal Range south of San Francisco has now been restored to native California grassland by Lutsko Associates Landscape, which won an Honor Award for the project.  The house was sited to bring in the oak woodlands and the surrounding grasslands.  A new meadow planted with native grasses and wildflowers surrounds the formal landscape elements around the house:  a pool, a courtyard, lawns, and vegetable gardens.  A very simple palette completes the picture: trees, stone, gravel, and water.

 For more detail on the above projects and all of the award winners, see the ASLA  website here.

 

 

 

New Plants 2014 - I

images: Monrovia - click to enlarge

A few of the new Monrovia plants for 2014:

Helleborus x 'Windcliff Slaty Blue'
Trust Dan Hinkley to come up with a slate blue lenten rose.  It has gray-green foliage and grows in dappled shade, forming clumps about 15 to 18 inches tall and two feet wide.  An added plus, it has strong stems that are said to hold up well in cut flower arrangements.  Zones 4-9.

 

Deutzia 'Nikko Blush'
Not sure I ever thought I'd see a pink deutzia, this new hybrid is from the US National Arboretum. It's a compact shrub, but grows to six to eight feet tall and six feet wide.  Foligage is bright green on arching stems, and it's covered in spring with a profusion of light pink blooms. Would be great in masses.  Zones 5-8.

 

Tsuga canadensis 'MonKinn'
(Golden Duchess™ Eastern Hemlock)
I LOVE plants with chartreuse foliage, and I can't wait to see this dwarf hemlock.  It forms a low mound about 3-4 feet tall and 3-5 feet wide.  It has brilliant golden foliage on arching stems and although it prefers dappled shade, it's more tolerant of sun than other hemlock cultivars.  Zones 4-7.