Archives for July 2009

Sunday Opinion: Sometimes its Good to Give Up

I think of myself as a focused and self disciplined individual.  I make a sincere effort to be organized.  I am a” deal with it within twenty-four hours” girl.  I try to follow a thought along, even if it is one layer under the day’s business, as long as it takes, to get that thought in a form that energizes me enough to speak, or draw. For me doing a design doesn’t stop with the drawing.  A design needs explanation, supporting photographs or other material, a time frame, a plan to stage the installation.  It has taken me fifteen years to install the landscape on my lot.5; why wouldn’t I address staging with everyone else? 

 Walking through the store in the am, on my way to my office, I can spot 15 things that need cleaning, weeding, straightening, grooming, levelling, vignetting, attention-and water.  I can spot a plant that needs water when my eyes are closed. I can as well spot from yards away a plant whose green leaves have gone dusty from lack of water.  I call this focused;  Buck calls this obsessed.  I about fainted with shock and surprise the first time he casually suggested it might be better for me all around, if I could realize that sometimes it’s good to give up.  Let things go that don’t deserve your energy.  Sure, be in charge, put your name to your work, think everything through, do the best you can.  But most of all, give up when it’s time-good things can come of giving up.  Other outcomes can be good.

I am sponsoring a tour of gardens of my design in one week, July 19, to benefit the Greening of Detroit.  They have been planting trees, sponsoring urban gardens, teaching people to plant and grow to feed their families, and sell at the Eastern Market in Detroit, for the past 20 years. They impressed me.   Last year we raised 10,000.00 for them; I am very proud of this.  But today I am seeing that my own garden, which is on tour, is two weeks behind a normal season.  There will be no Limelight hydrangeas in bloom, and my pots are not the best, given the cool weather.  I see weeds, fungus, unfinished areas-and I am the person who ventured in last Sunday’s opinion post to suggest there is no World Series of Gardening.  Talk is cheap, is it not?? 

The entire impetus for this post is a pair of fabulous Italian pots on pedestals, on my terrace,  planted identically.  Both pots are coming along fine, albeit slowly-except for the centerpiece plant.  The nicotiana mutabilis in the north pot has spiked, and is blooming.  The southern nicotiana mutabilis is in stall mode.  For three days I have been agonizing over replacing that recaltricant nicotiana.  Given Buck’s commentary, I think I will stand pat with the two pots that do not match.  Do these two glaringly unmatched pots say everything  about when it is good to give in, and give up?  Do they not speak reams to what every gardener aims for, and does not get?  Buck  says not one gardener on the tour will fail to recognize that in spite of  my efforts,  our efforts, I am not really in charge.  He thinks I should leave it be.  I think he may be right.  Better the garden be real, than engineered like a stage set.

No matter how enchanted I am with a design, my relationship with my client comes first.  My ideas are just my ideas.  Not the be all and end all.  Great designs depend on a solid relationship between me , and my client -and whatever shakes out from there.   Giving in is not necessarily a gesture of defeat.  Giving in can be a recognition of the other party;  a resolution not anticipated.  Giving in can be a way of letting go of issues that have no resolution, for better or for worse.  Giving in is sometimes a striking move; amazingly, things can be better for it.  I have landscapes in which the big idea came from the client that work just fine. My two unmatched pots which will be going on tour-they are charming me.

At A Glance: Freedom of Expression

quirky1

quirky2

quirky4

quirky5

quirky3

quirky6

quirky7

quirky8
quirky9

Berms, Bark and Boulders

berms1

Suburban landscapes can be bleak.  I sometimes think they are more about what has been replaced on impulse, or places that are just left blank when something dies, than a design.   This landscape was suffering considerably from what I call  “berm, bark and boulder”  blight.  Mini- mountains of soil are studded with rocks, and a collection of plants are installed. If there was a big design idea here, I cannot spot it.  After planting, the entire area is covered in bark, usually deep bark.  But what baffled me the most here was how every plant was pruned into ball shapes, without regard for their species,  habit or culture. My client spent a lot of years raising her kids, and then more years redoing the interior of her house-which by the way is beautiful.  When she got to the outside, she called me.  Looking at a landscape on a cold March day can be sobering.  There are no leaves,  flowers or sunshine dressing up problems so they aren’t so obvious.  The first order of business was to engage a new maintenance company that knew how to prune properly. 

berms2The house sits on a piece of property that is very high and steeply sloped.  The berms only exacerbated this precarious look; the second order of business was to grade.  We dug up as much plant material as we could, and heeled it in.  We cut the berms down, and filled in the slope to soften it. We added many more yards of soil.  The existing plants we were able to save we grouped together, so every plant had like company, and replanted in another area of the yard.  

berms3The bermed soil right up to the drive edge meant dirt and debris on the drive, non-stop.  Any design needs a component that addresses ease of maintenance.  I am happy to attend to the maintenance of my pots every day.  Needing to sweep debris off a drive every day is annoying.  This kind of thing can make people dislike gardening for no good reason.  

berms4Once the grade issues were addressed in a way that worked, we laid out the design.  My client likes white, simple and dramatic.  She wanted to drive up to that, love it,  and then go to her back yard garden to spend time.  This first element of drama came from the grading. 

berms5The irregularly sloping and steep ground was graded to slope gently on a consistent angle to the street.  Particular care was taken to insure that the view from the house to the street would feature ground with sculptural appeal.

berms6For anyone who likes white, dramatic and simple, Limelight hydrangeas are a logical choice.  The dark green yews, and the sleekly trimmed arborvitae make great companions to all the profusion to come.

berms7The walk was redone in chocolate, or lilac bluestone.  This is an unusual color, but great looking with the color of the house.  The walk is bordered in annuals in the summer, and white tulips in the spring. 

berms8This new look helps to focus some attention on the architecture of the house, and features the front porch.  We enlarged the front porch, and repainted all the trim and wood on the house.  Sometimes a landscape project can spill over into another area of design.  In this case, a new landscape helped generate changes to the house, lighting, and porch.

berms10A pair of large contemporary French faux bois pots flank the front door; what a handsome view this is now.  Very friendly formal, I call this. She calls it a blast.

The Ball Field

field1st1

I have been a fan of baseball my whole life.  Early on, my Mom and Grandmother listened religiously to Ernie Harwell announcing the Detroit Tiger’s games, so I did too.  I miss this.   Once in a blue moon would we get to go to the park for a game.  The landscape invariably changes, does it not?   Now Detroit has a new ballpark, Comerica Park.  The lions outside are garden sculpture of a massive scale-and so beautifully done.  Kids climb on them, and pose for pictures underneath them. They generate a lot of excitement for the game before you ever go inside.   The huge piazza accomodates lots of fans, so fine for people watching.   

field1st

I was given box seats behind home plate for my entire crew and their families by a client. This was a very special treat for us all.

field1  �
A ball field is a landscape of a very particular sort.  The grass is lovingly tended, mowed in both directions, and grown to perfection. The ground is flat, but for the infield which has just enough pitch to drain quickly.   The infield is a certain clay over sand that absorbs moisture, enabling ball players to dig in yet still firm enough that they can run for their lives.  This clay also cushions  the shock of a slide into second base. There is just the right amount of dust-up. The composition of infield soil has quite a body of literature, should you be interested.  This probably has no basis in science whatsoever, but I believe the sharp crack when the bat hits the ball owes it resonance to the even moisture in the soil.  This ball park is lit by gigantic high intensity lights.  The lighting is perfectly even everywhere.  No shadows.  This light, which is so unlike the light from the sky, makes everything very sharp and clear.  We American take our baseball seriously-no romance welcome here.  

As soon as a sprinkle of rain becomes regular, the grounds crew appears with a giant tarp rolled-rolled onto a cylinder.  Eighteen grounds crew, and their superintendent, get down to business in a big hurry.  A sopping wet infield makes play impossible. �
 field3
I had never seen the rain tarp rolled out before.  As disappointed as I was the game might be called on account of rain, it was like watching a precisely choreographed ballet, seeing that tarp put in place.  Who tarps their landscape in rejection of water from the sky? Ball field landscapes, of course.  The size of this job is no doubt vastly more staggering from the ground plane, than it appeared to me from my box seat.  It appeared effortless and fast; I was impressed. �
 field4
I admire the precision of this landscape, as much as I do its maintenance.  Like many Detroiters, I have memories of summer that included baseball;  the 1968 World Series I remember in some detail. field5
The landscape and lighting enabled and encouraged me to watch the play, single out favorite players, follow a fly ball that might do a home run distance, or a close call at the plate. A hotly contested game needs a perfectly maintained landscape-so fans and players alike focus on the play at hand.fieldlast

How amazing that 18 people managed to cover this infield in a manner of seconds.  I am thinking about Heather Nabozny, the only female head groundskeeper for any major league baseball team.  She is young, and people say has a fire burning-this I admire in her. I understand what it means to be responsible for making things happen.   I like it when women do well with landscape.  This has to be a highly technical and demanding landscape to maintain.   She is doing a truly great job; I think the park looks beautiful.  I support my home town team, and all that its landscape does to make the game happen. But most of all I admire Heather Nabozny-she is making my experience, and the memory of my experience, possible.