Idea Lanscaping

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Northumberlandia

I was excited to see details of the latest work by Charles Jencks. ‘Northumberlandia’ - a giant sculpture in the form of a reclining woman, unsurprisingly located in Northumblerland and constructed from waste material arising from local mining operations.

I’ve been meaning to write about Jencks past work for some time, but had never quite got round to it. For the few that aren’t aware, Jencks is an architectural academic, writer of rather wordy, but interesting books and with his late wife Maggie, the creator of some extraordinary gardens. “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” is his best known work, and in my opinion, it is one of the most astonishing works of art and design in the modern era. Below are images of Jencks recreation of the garden at the Scottish National Gallery.

I’m not sure they really do the garden justice (the design intent is rooted in some pretty mind-bending ideas of the universe), but hopefully they show how Jencks created a whole new design vocabulary, with chiselled and sculpted earth mounding.

Having been widely imitated, it’s interesting to see Jencks returning to earth shaping. For me this looks like a terrific project – taking something mundane and typically unattractive (how many restored mining landscapes really look good?!?) and turning it into something exciting, beautiful and unique. I’m really enthusiastic about works of art that become landmarks, so will look forward to seeing how this project works out. In the meantime I’m posting all the images of the project that I can readily put my hands on!

HEDGES

The word "hedge" appears to stem from the Old English word "HEGG" which is believed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon words ;

HAEG - hurdle

HECG - territorial boundary dead or planted

HEGA - living border boundary 1

Hedges are a bordering and design tool. They enclose and subdivide fields, orchards, yards, parks and gardens. They form vegetative edges, topographic spaces, garden rooms, gateways, screens, enclosures, foci and forms within the landscape.

The term Hedgerow used to refer to 2 hedges running side by side separated by a track or pathway. These hedgerows served 2 traditional purposes , that of being a barrier to livestock and as a means of marking out territory or property boundaries. The term however tends to be used these days to describe a hedge of shrubs and occasional trees that create a border between fields and gardens or to create a privacy wall for a homeowner.

An extreme privacy hedge

www.dicts.info/img/ud/hedge.jpg

It is believed that the Romans may have first planted hedges in Britain but most of the few ancient hedges date from Saxon times, making some of them 1000 years old. The Saxons organized ‘strip farming’ in which each community of people would have a field which was divided into strips separated by grass verges. Each strip was one furrow long (one furlong or 201 metres). People were given a number of strips to farm by the lord of the manor. This system changed in the late Middle Ages when landlords wanted to put boundaries around their property, so they enclosed their land with walls or hedges. Enclosure Acts in the 18th and 19th centuries allowed farmers to put more hedges round their fields and most of Britain’s 300, 000 miles or so of hedges date from this time.

“During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, dense hedgerow patterns provided shelter for persecuted Protestants in France and Holland to organize their clandestine religious meetings. During the WW II the dense bocage in Normandy caused the invading Allied forces much trouble in advancing to conquer the Nazi regime.”2

In the past hawthorne (Crataegus monogyna) was the most popular choice for hedgerows in the ancient woodland for marking territory or as barriers to contain livestock. Nowadays hedges are commonly constructed of various plant and non-plant material for more ornamental purposes yet still as a privacy tool. Boxwood, Privet, Beech, Cherry Laurel, Hedge Maple, Hornbeam, Holly and Yew are but a few of the more desirous plants used currently for hedges.

Designer Luciano Giubbileis masterful use of hedges at a Chelsea Flower Show garden in 2009

1. Hedgerows, Hedges and Verges of Britain and Ireland

2. Natural History Museum of Britain. www.nhm.ac.uk/index.html

*all photos copyright Todd Haiman unless otherwise noted

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!

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Worth A Read Or Two

I buy a fair amount of gardening books, and I read a whole lot more. But my frustration is that they are often not easily translated to a South African context. I see tons of books that are almost useless to South Africans because they have information that is very specific to a northern hemisphere temperate climate. I feel sorry for the people who unwittingly buy these gardening books and will never be able to use them apart from coffee table books or as drool material.

Fortunately some good quality books are starting to come from places with a similar climate to ours - mainly Australia. Added to this is the fact that South African gardening books are also improving. Theyre starting to look less like the gardening books that I inherited from my grandmother that contained information that is now either irrelevant or outdated.

especially in a South African context.

Carroll Street Condo Garden in early Fall

Click on image for better viewing

Four of Clock Flower

Mirabilis jalapa
A tuberous rooted, bushy, herbaceous perennial, reaching a maximum size of 6.5 x 4 ( rarely over 4 ), that is native to subtropical to tropical parts of the Americas. In cooler climates it stays closer to 2 x 2 feet.
The heart-shaped leaves, up to 6 inches in length, are deep green.
The fragrant, yellow, purplish-pink to red, trumpet-shaped flowers, up to 2 x 2 inches , are borne throughout the summer. The flowers each open during late afternoon, lasting into the following day. The short life of each flower is made up for by their continual abundance.
Hardy zones 8 to 11 in full sun.

* photo of unknown internet source

Mirabilis multiflorus
A very dense, broad, mounding perennial, reaching up to 1.5 x 6 feet.
The attractive leathery foliage is mid-green. The leaves are up to 3 inches in length.l
The very profuse, intense purple-pink, funnel-shaped flowers are borne over a long season lasting from mid summer to late autumn or first hard frost.
Hardy zones 4 to 8 in full sun to partial shade on dry, well drained soil. It is very drought tolerant due to its massive deep taproot. Slow to establish but very long-lived. It is not eaten by rabbit or deer.

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."

The romantic structure in the landscape has a rich intellectual heritage. Even before British Romantic poets exalted the crumbling hermitage tucked into the pastoral landscape, architectural ruins enlivened the imaginations of artists, poets, and gardeners since classical antiquity. Something about these beacons of shelter in otherwise wild landscapes appeals to us at an instinctual level. The British Romantics loved the stimulating effect they had on the imagination. These architectural ruins were an ontological fragment that, in their incompleteness, aroused the minds eye. Ruins were potent symbols of both the permanence and transitory nature of man. [Image on left is Landscape with Draughtsman Sketching Ruins by Claude Lorrain, 1630]

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]