GardenDesignOnline

Landscape Lectures

MIssed some of those terrific lectures by the world's top landscape architects at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston? 

If you can't make it up to Boston for them, you can listen to past ones on the museum's website. Check out lectures from 2014 to present here  featuring such luminaries as Ken Smith, Kathryn Gustafson, Richard Haag & many more.  Upcoming: Walter Hood, Margie Ruddick and Mario Schjetnan.

Books: Top Women Landscape Designers

This book is a celebration of renowned female landscape designers from around the world -- the best from the beginning of the 20th century until today. In Women Garden Designers: 1900 to the Present (Antique Collector's Club, 2015), garden historian and author Kristina Taylor profiles 31 distinguished women and some of their most important projects. 

American designers will recognize designers like Gertrude Jekyll, Beth Chatto, Beatrix Farrand, Isabel Greene.  But others, like Japan's Haruko Seki, Petra Blaisse of the Netherlands, and Poland's Monika Gora are not so familiar.

Taylor contends that women design differently than men because they view nature in a different way.  As Taylor says, "...women ... because of their need to nurture infants over many years, may have a different understanding and knowledge."  And, she writes that Beatrix Farrand and Australian Edna Walling were "ardent conservationists long before ecology was even part of our vocabulary."

There's a brief biography of each designer, along with each one's design philosophy and major projects.  Beautiful photographs accompany each entry, and you'll be intrigued by many of them: the 'anti-garden' of Britain's Jinny Blom, an Inca-inspired staircase by Chile's Teresa Moller, the tropical plantings of Brazil's Isabel Duprat.

It's an inspiring book packed with ideas, and one that will stay on your bookshelf for many years.

 

 

Happenings October 2015

Selected Events Around the Country:

Oct 1, Sustainable Site Design Basics, Framingham, MA
9:30AM-4:30PM, Workshop, Garden In the Woods, 508-877-7630
October 3-4, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: CT, NC, PA, TX
CT: Fairfield, New London, Westport; PA: PHiladelphia; NC: Raleigh, TX: Fort Worth
October 5, Looking for Meaning: Man-Made Landscapes in Dry Climates, NY, NY
6:30PM, Lecture, Architect Barbara Aronson, Scandinavia House, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700
Oct 5-8, Cities Alive Annual  Green Roof & Wall Conference, NY, NY
Sponsor: Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. Garden Tours, Workshops, Awards & Much More
Oct 8-12, APLD International Design Conference, Washington DC
Lectures, Garden Tours, Workshops & More.
October 10, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours
Bucks Cty, PA; Dallas, TX; Stockton, NJ
October 10-11, What's Out There Weekend, Denver, CO
The Cultural Landscape Foundation: Tours of Denver Landscapes 202-483-0553
Oct 10-15, Field Study: Native Plant Communities, Cornwall, NY
Five-day workshop, Black Rock Forest, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700

October 13, Webinar, "Natural Swimming Ponds."
5PM-6PM, Ecological Landscape Alliance 617-436-5838
October 16, Perennial Plant Conference, Swarthmore, PA
7:45AM-4:45PM, Swarthmore College Arboretum, 610-328-8025
Oct 17, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours
Austin, TX; Dutchess Cty, NY.  Private Garden Tour in Austin, TX.

October 19, "Beyond the Metrics," NY, NY
6:30PM Lecture, Landscape Architect Ken Smith, Scandinavia House, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700
October 21-23, Landscapes 2015, Louisville, KY
Natl Assn of Landscape Professionals Conference, 703-736-9666
October 24, Long Island Native Plant Symposium, Farmingdale, NY
8AM-5PM, Long Island Native Plant Initiative, 631-560-9945
October 24, Natural Landscape Design Strategies, Washington DC
2PM-3:30PM, Lecture, LA Larry Weaner, US Botanic Garden, 202-225-8333
October 24, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: Westchester Cty, NY

October 27, "Finding Form in Urban Landscape Design," Bronx, NY
1PM-3PM, Workshop, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700
Oct 31, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: Mt. Kisco, NY

LOOKAHEAD:

Nov 2, "Before the Memorial," Bronx, NY
6:30PM Lecture, Landscape Architect Peter Walker, Scandinavia House, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700
Nov 6-9, ASLA Annual Meeting & Expo, Chicago, IL
Nov 12, Landscape Lecture: Walter Hood, Boston, MA
7PM, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 617-278-5156

Books: Designing with Self-Seeding Plants

If you've ever wondered how designers like Piet Oudolf and other Dutch Wave notables -- or designers of grand-scale meadows -- achieve that naturalistic look -- then this is the book for you.

In Cultivating Chaos: How to Enrich Landscapes with Self-Seeding Plants (Timber Press, 2015), German garden editor Jonas Reif, nurseryman Christian Kress and photographer Jurgen Becker take you through all the steps to planting species that will seed around without crowding out the plants you want to survive.

 In the introduction, British designer and author Noel Kingsbury says that allowing plants to self-seed in the garden and spread themselves around "is part of the new garden zeitgeist....Gardening now is much more accepting of spontaneity, of natural processes of birth, death and decay."

The authors explain the general philosophy of designing with self-seeding plants, profile successful self-seeded gardens, give you the garden basics of planting and seeding, and finally, outline strategies for design and maintenance. Toward the back of the book, they list plants suitable for masonry joints, gravel beds, those that are best for flower borders, and species that do best in sun and in shade.

I've had good luck myself with some plants that seed around ... this book makes it easy to have a low-maintenance garden (at least in some parts of the yard) ... and takes out the mystery of how to do it.

Plants: Rose Awards, 2016

American Garden Rose Selections (AGRS) has announced its winning rose selections for 2016.  You may recall that the national testing organization for roses, AARS, (All America Rose Selections) went out business three years ago, and AGRS was formed in its wake.  AGRS is a non-profit organization, a consortium of rose pros and members of the American Rose Society who wanted national rose tests for the average American gardener. 

The new awards system is slightly different in that scoring is weighted 30 percent for disease resistance, and there's a fragrance award for the rose with the best scent.  There are now 12 test gardens throughout the country, and winning roses must have an 80 percent score in at least three of six regions. 

images: Star Roses - click to enlarge

Dee-Lish® Rose (Rosa 'Meiclusif') (Star Roses)

Dee-Lish. a hybrid tea available from Star Roses, won the 2016 fragrance award.  It has a strong fragrance of citrus and verbena, and has large, deep pink flowers and semi-glossy foliage.  Hybridized by Meilland International, it reaches a height of about six feet and is hardy to zone 5. 

Look-A-Likes® Phloxy Baby Rose
(Rosa 'Radcleome')
Also from Star Roses, this is a shrub/polyantha rose hybridized by Will Radler, the man behind 'Knock Out' roses.  It won a 2016 regional award, as it does well in the Southeast, North Central, and Northwest parts of the country.  It's most useful as a hedge, has great disease resistance, and is more upright than most polyanthas. It has small pink petals, it attracts bees, and is hardy to zone 5.  It attains a height of about five and a half feet with a slightly smaller spread.

Thomas Affleck Rose
(Rosa 'Thomas Affleck')
Bred by the Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas, this shrub rose with deep pink repeat blooms also won a regional award for the Northeast, South Central, and Northwest parts of the country.  It can be used in the garden as a specimen and is also suitable for containers, particularly because of its nice scent and because it is thornless.  It gets three to five high and is hardy to zone 5.