You are here: Home / Archives for Strictly Opinion

Sunday Opinion: Making It Work

I have a new client-a daughter of an old client.  She is a young person, with children.  She has a fairly large property in a really nice neighborhood; she has lived there 6 years.  They have ripped out some things.  They installed a really nicely done terrace in the back-that took a big chunk of their landscape budget.  Now what?  Lacking a clear idea of where she might want to see in this landscape and garden in 10 years, she is circling, waiting, and wringing her hands.  Finally, she calls; I am glad she did. 

I plan to provide her with a schematic plan.  A different sort of schematic plan.  When I was her age, I had loads of energy-energy to burn.  I feel quite certain that she has that same level of energy-I will suggest that she use it.  There are so many things that young people can do for themselves to make a landscape come to life.  She is passionately involved in everything about her life.  My plan is to siphon off a little of that passion in furtherance of a great landscape.  She has enough energy to power a Volt-it just needs a little direction.  What makes a young gardener put their foot down on the accelerator?  A plan that makes her feel that a beautiful landscape is within her grasp.  A plan that enchants her such that she cannot wait to get out there and make it work.

The plan also needs to address the issue of success.  Nothing is more disappointing than a great plan that once implemented, does poorly, or dies.  I was garden obsessed such that the dying and the dead did deter me in the least.  This is partly my personality, but I did not have kids to raise.  The people that I know with children are very busy people.  My evenings were my own-I could dig a drainage trench, or dig rocks into a garden-I had nothing calling me after dinner beyond my own exhaustion.  For her, I would design with a time table in mind.  Prepare this ground, go shopping for plants.  Take the plants out of the trunk, and plant them.  If she cannot swear she will water until she is blue in the face, I will teach her about how to lay soaker hoses, and tell her where to go to buy them.  Then, and only then, go to the next spot.

I do intend that she will lay out, and dig her own beds.  She is perfectly capable.  It may be the most valuable thing I will say to her-that she is capable.  She has a very nice husband who is encouraging her to make some moves.  He clearly knows how to make things, build things, look after things.  Together they will make a great landscape installation team.  Their joint efforts will save them a lot of money. 

There will be lots of places in the plan to play with.  They may decide to grow roses, or invest in peonies. They may switch this plant for that one.  My job is provide them with a foundation they can get behind today, and appreciate many years from now. My big idea here?  There are many ways to make something work. 

My first garden was a God forsaken, utterly neglected 5 acre piece of property.  On the down side, I had just about 25 dollars to devote to the reclamation.  On the upside, I held this property for 15 years-every year I made a dent.  15 years of dents can add up to a transformation.  I am counting on this for her.

There are lots of ways to make things work.  This client-no doubt she has the ingenious gene.  My job is to loosen that rusty valve, and get her to turn the tap on.  This part of the schematic plan is every bit as important as the plan itself. 

I can dream.  I can draw.  I can wave my hands.  I can explain, I can quote-but in the end, the best thing I do is provide a plan for making things work.

Posted on: September 18, 2011 1 Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

Monday Opinion: The Drawing

No matter how well I communicate an idea about a landscape to a client, I need a drawing.  The drawing is a bird’s eye view of a property which in no way communicates the sculptural volumes that might bring an idea to life in a dimensional way, but it formalizes my thinking.  It helps me explain my idea, and all of the details of that idea.  For me, the drawing and the creating happen at the same time. Some clients take the drawing of the design, and install it themselves, or contract with someone else to do the work.  All of this is fine with me. I could make models, but I have too many design projects at any given time to make that idea practical. And truth be told, most clients want to feel comfortable that what they are getting has value, beauty, sensibility, and inspiration.  They want this much more than a drawing.    

A drawing is a series of lines put to a piece of paper.  A definition of a drawing includes the signature on a check, a couture designer’s gestural record of shape, a graph tracking any number of trends, the doodling most people do while on the phone.  It can be utterly simple, or amazingly complicated. Architectural drawings are incredibly detailed.  They are a map which details how a structure should be built.  Topological surveys, mortgage surveys, drainage plans, installation details-these are all highly technical drawings from which an idea can come to life.  There are drawing made by Picasso whose lines can be counted on one hand.  There are drawings by Albrecht Durer that involve thousands of intersecting and overlapping lines.

These drawings are not technical in nature.  They are emotionally generated, and emotionally charged.  A pencil, a charcoal or pastel stick-some line drawings are not so much about the shapes the lines describe, as the pressure placed on the medium.  My drawings are a skeletal and dispassionate version of a sculpture which I passionately believe will live and breathe.  Not art.  They are a means by which I can better express an idea.

I do all of my drawings by hand.  I find the time I spend creating the drawing influences the design.  There are times when in the process of constructing an angle or a space-I have a different idea.  I value an idea, no matter what time it appears. These hand drawn plans may not be as perfectly crisp or accurate as a drawing assisted by a computer,  but my hand made gestures speak volumes to a client.  There is a person governing that hand. 

I am very stubborn about taking the time for a plan to develop.  I like to see homes or buildings out of the ground before I commit myself to a plan.  Most of the the time I spend designing happens in my mind, in the course of the day.  Just before I wake up.  Monica has learned to distinguish those times when I am looking at her, but actually somewhere else.  I rarely put a pencil to a piece of paper before I have reviewed and determined a point of view in the abstract. 

Ideas that help to design a garden can come from lots of places.  A picture in a magazine.  A comment from a friend.  A favorite color.  I subscribe to lots of design magazines.  I read them twice, then I rip out any page that still appeals to me.  I don’t need to know what I like about anything I see at that moment.  The time will come when that picture will inspire a particular design.  But nothing helps my creative process so much as the drawing.  It does not need to be finished or fancy.  It needs to have rhythm.  I cannot explain this very well, but what you are thinking needs to come out of the end of your pencil as a drawing.  No gardener plants ideas.  They plant living things appropriate to or in celebration of an idea. 

None of my clients like to draw for me.  Sometimes I insist.  I learn more about how a client feels about a space by seeing their drawing of it, than I do talking to them about it.  Their drawings are about clearly expressing spaces and shapes; this is an art of a different sort.  In just a few lines, they express to me what they hope for, what they need, what they expect.

People’s signatures interest me.  They are usually highly individual, and beautifully gestural.  A signature is a drawing that has been developed and practiced over a long period of time.  Most signatures are very confident, and sculptural.  Your garden bears your signature-so does mine.  I might not really be aware of what my signature is-who thinks throught the process of signing a check or document?  I do what I do-you do what you do. That expression-it is a drawing you could do at a moment’s notice.  A design for a landscape should have that same immediacy and confidence.  My advice-do not second guess your signature.  Just sign, and build.

My drawings sign-sorry- assign spaces, places, accessibility, movement, rhythm.  They are simple maps, detailing what I hope will be a good journey.  That line drawing at some point will become something else entirely.  A place to live.  A place to grow food.  A place to cut flowers. A place to be.  A place to entertain friends and family.  A mini-soccer field.  A place to relax and read.  

My advice?  Blow up your mortgage survey to a scale you can easily study.  Draw the beds and spaces you have, the best you can.  Draw your ideas and dreams over top of what is existing.  Look at the picture this makes.  Make lots of marks with your pencil.  Draw lots of lines before you ever put your shovel to the dirt.  Your drawing may turn out to matter more than you ever thought possible.

Posted on: September 12, 2011 2 Comments
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion Tagged With:

Sunday Opinion: The Changing Of The Season

Every year I tell Buck with great confidence that I will keep my summer season going past Labor Day.  I watch the weather-especially the night temperatures.  I water like crazy-all of my completely root bound containers need water daily.  We just had a 4 day spell of temperatures in the 90’s-one day we soaked the roof boxes twice.  Of course I interpret this to mean that somehow summer will go on into September, at the expense of the fall. 

I have plenty of half baked ideas-this is just one of them.  I know Labor Day formally celebrates the economic and social contributions of people who work.  It is celebrated with speeches, barbeques, picnics, and fireworks.  I love labor day weekend-my neighborhood streets are jammed with cars.  There is music in the air.  My immediate neighbor always has a party.  I get to go to the party, based solely on my proximity.  But labor day also represents the opening day of the fall season.  Kids go back to school.  The night temperatures drop.  My containers may go on another 6 weeks, but the season is already changing.  Those beginning changes are so subtle, it is easy to ignore them.  The days are a little shorter, the nights cooler, the sun not nearly as hot.

We have four seasons in Michigan.  Not just summer and winter-spring, summer, fall, and winter.  Each one lasts about 3 months.  The summer season has been extreme-lots of cold, then rain, then the fierce heat and more rain.  Most of the maples in my neighborhood have been defoilating from fungus for weeks. There is mildew on everything; I started getting calls for fall plantings two weeks ago.  I do not fault the gardeners for this.  There is always something that doesn’t work out. How hard you work, how passionate you are, the amount of time effort and money you spend, has little or nothing to do with success.  I have plantings that I have tried every gambit I can dream up; they can still do poorly, given the right circumstances.  The lime nicotiana I plant on my deck every year with glorious results is completely out of bloom. I can put the entire weight of my experience and interest to a planting that is struggling, and still come up wanting.  That summer is coming to a close can be a very good thing.  I am ready to be relieved of that which just didn’t work out.

This labor keeping up a garden is considerable.  This is a polite way of saying that should you decide to garden, you will have blisters, scratches, bug bites, soaking wet feet, aching muscles, sweat running everywhere, calloused hands, sunbaked arms, and a  A giant amount of sweaty work that every day will threaten to do you in.  Late this afternoon I chopped down the asparagus in between my roses to 12 inches above ground.  This took 2 hours.  I had gobs of debris-all of which I hauled down the steps to the trash.  This may not be the best move for the asparagus, but I have boltonia and white Japanese anemone coming on that I would like to look at. I went on to water 2 new plantings by hand.  I watered all of the pots-I have 26.  At the shop, I have 40 pots, the driveway gardens, and the roof boxes.  I am on duty for that over the holiday.  That the temperature is 59 today-excellent.  My labor day will not be labor free, but it will be manageable.   

Overall, the shop gardens look good-but for the window boxes.  There is too little contrast in leaf forms, and the overall shape is ungainly to my eye.  The mildew is spreading underneath.  Grassshoppers, snails and aphids have been lunching there nonstop.  On the up side, I will not have to deal with them much longer.  My windowbox troubles are about to be eclipsed by the coming of the fall.  A new season means looking forward another chance to interpret the garden.

Posted on: September 5, 2011 4 Comments
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion, Uncategorized

Sunday Opinion: The Sky’s The Limit

I have never been asked to undertake a landscape or garden project where the sky was the limit.  Do I regret this?  In theory, it all sounds good-a design project from my heart, head and hand, given the chance to soar without any need for fuel, wings, wind, or approval.  This thought might, for a moment, be thrilling.  Let’s test the no limits theory.  Should I put a piece of blank drawing paper on my drafting table, what would be my first move?  Picture me unable to put the pencil to the paper. 

Were I have to walked into my own house for the first time, with no interior walls, no division of space, no ceilings or floors-I would be way over my head, trying to make any visual sense of it.  One cannot imagine a building into being. Making a building has much to do with understanding all kinds of limitations.   A building has lots of restrictions as to its placement on a lot.  Properties are required to drain or perk, before a building can be built.  Water and electrical lines must be installed according to building codes.  Weight bearing walls, sanitary sewers, height restrictions-there are no end of mitigating factors that influence the design of a building.  I greatly admire and respect architects who design beautiful buildings.  When I look at them, I do not see compliance with building codes, or physics, or proper engineering.  I don’t see how the heat, light and water functions.  I am not aware of what keeps the walls standing or the roof in place.  I see a sculpture; I see shelter.  The architect has managed to create a visually sound sculpture that first and foremost is structurally sound.  Anyone who owns a home understands what it means when there is a structural problem.  My house is 81 years old.  A lack of vents in the roof soffits was allowing water vapor to build up such that plaster was falling off the ceiling in 3 rooms.  Did I see this coming?  Of course not.  I only saw a beautiful old house that would provide me a home.  That home now has 36 soffit vents, and repaired plaster, neither of which I think about any more.

 I just finished a landscape design for a property on a lake that has been a field for 25 years.  I have a client who is willing to trust my judgment about the landscape.  This does not mean it is a project without parameters.  First and foremost, I have a client with a family and a history who purchased this property with the intent of building a home.  She has likes and dislikes.  Notwithstanding that she is willing to listen, this will be her home, and her garden.  The landscape design needs to respect her parameters.  This is a given, not an option.  At this moment, there is her residence under construction which occupies a very specific space.  That house has created certain  outdoor spaces which govern how and what I will do.  Every room has a specific orientation to the light which is non-negotiable.  The rear of the house facing the lake faces south.  There are lots of windows on this side of the house.  A large porch attached to the house has a roof over the entire space.  The views will be great; the protection from the south sun will be great too.

The property has boundaries-there is a formally and legally determined set of lot lines, on three sides.  The 4th lot line, a curving border, describes a set back from a lake. Those boundaries are a given. Any landscape plan can take advantage of neighboring views, but it cannot impose on neighboring views.  A neighboring house has a view across my client’s property of the lake.  The purchase of the property included a height restriction on plant material in this space, so the neighboring lake view would not be obstructed.  The challenge of the landscape design is to create something beautiful in that space that makes no visual reference to a restriction.     

  As for other restrictive circumstances influencing landscape design-there are lots.  Plants that thrive in California will not thrive in Michigan.  Plants are very specific about what they want.  Would that I could grow the roses that thrive in California.  But no matter how badly I want them, I cannot have them.  There are hardiness issues that govern what can be successfully grown.  Soil composition and exposure narrows one’s palette of plants. Trying to grow most roses on sand is an exercise in futility;  unless you consider rugosa roses. Rhododendron do not like our heavy clay alkaline soil.  They hate even worse our winter winds.  It is easy to fall for them at the nursery.  It is incredibly difficult, maybe impossible, to get them to thrive.  I inherited a stand of them planted on the north side of my house.  15 years later, they are still here.  They are big, and have that gangly and windswept look that comes from having been planted in a hostile climate. Are they beautiful-not really. The question of beauty in the landscape has everything to do with how well it thrives. 

Your constraints, restrictions, parameters, restrictions, boundaries and mitigating circumstances are good friends to your design.  A garden of great beauty is a garden that works.

Posted on: August 22, 2011 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion