Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Friday, March 7, 2014
ETYMOLOGY IN THE GARDEN
a google search for "lot" yielded this..
a google search for "yard" yielded this..
a google search for "garden" returned this..
As an American overseas, if I’ve heard this once, I’ve heard this ten times in the U.K… why do Americans refer to their outdoor planted spaces as yards? Aren’t yards where cars are put up on blocks? Where railcars are stored?
Paul Groth writes in “The Meaning of Gardens”, “What does it mean that Americans chose to call their arrangements of cars parked outdoors as lots? Why not carparks as in Canada and the U.K. Why have we overtly fashioned no parking gardens, or at least parking yards? Three of these terms – lot, yard and garden –denote a simple but important hierarchy in the way Americans organize their space.”
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, here are the first seven definitions for the word "YARD":
1: a small, usually walled and often paved area open to the sky and adjacent to a building : a court
2: the grounds of a building or group of buildings
3: the grounds immediately surrounding a house that are usually covered with grass
4 : an enclosure for livestock (as poultry)
5: an area with its buildings and facilities set aside for a particular business or activity
6: an assembly or storage area (as for dry-docked boats)
7: a system of tracks for storage and maintenance of cars and making up trains
8: a locality in a forest where deer herd in winter
On Wiktionary… a yard is a small, usually uncultivated area adjoining or (now especially) within the precincts of a house or other building, An enclosed area designated for a specific purpose, e.g. on farms, railways etc. In Jamaica, it is vernacular for “one’s house or home.
Lot stands as one of the oldest words for a division of land. Yard denotes more enclosure, or an area for special work, business or storage. Or, lack of attention as in “open lot” and “vacant lot”. Groth associates the notion of “yard” with barns, prisons, ships, etc. In fact, the word harkens back to the 12th century middle English as a word for enclosure.
In terms of organizing open space design, there is a hierarchy of meaning within “lot,” “yard,” and “garden.” Lot is commonly used in real estate terms, historically it equates to a division of land. This is an enclosure.“We define lots or yards by their edges and their neighboring spaces; lots and yards hold something else. The garden is defined by what is in it. Its immediate meaning derives largely from itself and its contents.”
There is also a hierarchy of care, cultivation and pleasure among these three words. “The word ‘yard’ implies more value than something called a ‘lot’; in turn, the word ‘garden’ suggests something treasured.”
The Meaning of Gardens: Francis and Hester
MIT Press, 1990
Photos: lot/NYTimes, yard/sgvtribune.com, garden/lowcrapdiet.com
Thursday, March 6, 2014
GARDEN ORNAMENTATION
A discussion on this would certainly take into consideration gnomes, which I believe were introduced in Germany in the mid 1850’s or “Jocko” the African-American boy holding a lantern, believed by legend to hark back to the Revolutionary War – both of which I anticipate discussing in a later post. Instead, let me discuss the pink flamingo which is my personal favorite lawn ornament and most produced and sold within America. It is a cliché, which has now evolved into pure kitsch. John Waters even titled a film evoking what he considered the poor taste of this garden ornament.
Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, told the Los Angeles Times "as iconic emblems of kitsch, there are two pillars of cheesy campiness in the American pantheon. One is the velvet Elvis. The other is the pink flamingo." It is estimated that 20 million of these were produced by the Union Carbide company, designed by a young designer, Don Featherstone in 1957. Wal-Mart has been its biggest customer, selling 250,000 of the birds each year.
According to Charlyne Varkonyi Schaub, Home & Garden Editor for the Florida Sun-Sentinal, “Featherstone retired as president of Union Products about six years ago, but he still promotes his creation and will continue to do so post-mortem. On Oct. 5, he spoke on what would have been the upcoming 50th anniversary of Featherstones plastic pink flamingo at the Ig Nobel prizes at Harvard University. The Ig Nobels, a parody of the Nobel prizes, are given for achievements that "first make people laugh and then make them think," according to Improbable Research, creator of the awards. Featherstone was honored in 1996 for his creation, which he originally sculptured from clay using a National Geographic photograph.”
Landscape designer Martha Schwartz featured the pink flamingo in her celebrated 51 garden Ornaments installation. In her own words, “these ornaments therefore reflect who we are and how we would like to be seen. They come to characterize a larger collective landscape as we see them often in peoples yards. They represent areas of cultural similarity as well as difference.”
I checked,... and they can still be purchased on Amazon or Ebay!
Read More..
Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, told the Los Angeles Times "as iconic emblems of kitsch, there are two pillars of cheesy campiness in the American pantheon. One is the velvet Elvis. The other is the pink flamingo." It is estimated that 20 million of these were produced by the Union Carbide company, designed by a young designer, Don Featherstone in 1957. Wal-Mart has been its biggest customer, selling 250,000 of the birds each year.
According to Charlyne Varkonyi Schaub, Home & Garden Editor for the Florida Sun-Sentinal, “Featherstone retired as president of Union Products about six years ago, but he still promotes his creation and will continue to do so post-mortem. On Oct. 5, he spoke on what would have been the upcoming 50th anniversary of Featherstones plastic pink flamingo at the Ig Nobel prizes at Harvard University. The Ig Nobels, a parody of the Nobel prizes, are given for achievements that "first make people laugh and then make them think," according to Improbable Research, creator of the awards. Featherstone was honored in 1996 for his creation, which he originally sculptured from clay using a National Geographic photograph.”
Landscape designer Martha Schwartz featured the pink flamingo in her celebrated 51 garden Ornaments installation. In her own words, “these ornaments therefore reflect who we are and how we would like to be seen. They come to characterize a larger collective landscape as we see them often in peoples yards. They represent areas of cultural similarity as well as difference.”
I checked,... and they can still be purchased on Amazon or Ebay!
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
On Dwelling The Delight of Garden Structures
My most spectacular garden is the one I’m constantly creating and re-creating in my head. Where budget, space, and lack of time limit real gardens, these constraints vanish in my ever-evolving fantasy garden. The crowning feature of this fantasy garden is the artist’s retreat: a small architectural jewel mostly swallowed by jasmine vines, climbing roses, and pomegranates. As the sites for my fantasy garden vary—sometimes a small urban courtyard, other times a river valley in the Blue Ridge, or sometimes a high elevation conifer forest—the one constant in every garden is this retreat.
[Mark Twain in his writers study at Quarry Farm, photo from Elmira College]
Often during quiet moments, I ruminate on the pleasure of inhabiting a small garden shed or retreat draped in vegetation. Mark Twain’s writer’s study is one of the more delicious structures Ive ever seen. Built as a gift to Twain by his brother-in-law, the small octagonal structure used to overlook the Chemung River Valley. Twain wrote much of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in this study.
[A view inside Twains study; photo courtesy of Mike Paul]
“It is the loveliest study you ever saw," Twain wrote his friend William Dean Howells in 1874, "Octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window...perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lighting flashes behind the hills beyond and the rain beats upon the roof over my head—imagine the luxury of it."
One of my favorite blogs celebrates the lasting image of ruins. Romantic Ruins: The Sweet Lure of Decay, Death, and Destruction is dedicated to the continuing power that the image of romantic ruins holds in the contemporary imagination. The blog is written under the mysterious moniker I.N. Vain, and cleverly shows how ruins still influence fashion shoots, movies, and advertising.
[A former storage shed is transformed into an art studio. John Sutton Photography]
Even hard-edged, contemporary garden design sometimes succumbs to romantic impulses. A backyard terrace designed by San Fransisco-based Scott Lewis Landscape Architecture shows how a garden retreat can work elegantly in a compact urban space. The firm transformed a former garden shed into a luscious art studio by adding windows and cladding the structure in a metal grid that allows ivy and vines to flourish on the facade. The studio becomes the visual centerpiece for the garden.
[The angle of the terrace draws the eye to the shed and expands the perspective]
I struggle to identify what makes these garden structures so appealing. My attraction to them feels primal--a deeply rooted human impulse that draws me to these beacons. Perhaps weve evolved to to seek shelter in otherwise forboding landscapes; we are somehow wired to recognize these harbors of security to survive. Or perhaps it is just the yearning of the modern man to restore a right relationship with nature--one in which our footprints fit inside the natural order rather than obliterate it altogether. Or perhaps these structures speak to the essence of dwelling, the Heideggarian understanding ("poetically man dwells") of the way we relate both physically and spiritually to our environments. Whatever the explanation, I continue to delight in the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual pleasure that these dwellings have over me.
[A boat shed I sited among the schrub oaks and heath in Marthas Vineyard]
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