Three years ago today, April 1, 2009, I published my first post. To follow is a reprint of that post, entitled “Vernissage”.
Strictly speaking, the French word vernissage speaks to the opening of an art exhibition. I learned the word recently from a client with whom I have a history spanning 25 years. This speaks a lot to the value of nurturing long term commitments. I have learned plenty from her, and from her garden, over the years. In the beginning, I planted flowers for her. Our relationship developed such that I began to design, reshape, and replant her landscape. She was passionately involved in every square foot of her 8 acre park. Needless to say, the years flew by, one project to the next. I have favorite projects. A collection of fine white peony cultivars dating from the late 19th century was exciting to research and plant. A grove of magnolia denudata came a few years later. Another year we completely regraded all of the land devoted to lawn, and planted new. I learned how to operate a bulldozer, I so wanted to be an intimate part of the sculpting of the ground. There were disasters to cope with, as in the loss of an enormous old American elm. Deterring deer was nearly a full time job. Spring would invariably bring or suggest something new.
In a broader sense, vernissage refers to a beginning- any opening. This has a decidedly fresh and spring ring to it. I routinely expect the winter season to turn to spring, as it always does. But every spring opening has its distinctive features. Last year’s spring was notable for its icy debut. Grape hyacinths and daffodils ice coated and glittering and giant branches crashing to the ground. This year, a different kind of drama altogether. My first sign of spring was the birds singing, early in the morning. It was a bit of a shock, realizing how long it had been since I had heard the birds. Why the break of my winter this year is about hearing the singing-who knows. Maybe I am listening for the first time, or maybe I am hearing for the first time. Every spring gives me the chance to experience the garden differently. To add to, revise, or reinvent my relationship with nature.
Much of what I love about landscape design has to do with the notion of second chances. I have an idea. I put it to paper. I do the work of installing it. Then I wait for an answer back. It is my most important work-to be receptive to hearing what gets spoken back. The speeches come from everywhere-the design that could be better here and more finished there. The client, for whom something is not working well, chimes in. The weather, the placement and planting final exam test my knowledge and skill. The land whose form is beautiful but whose drainage is heinous teaches me a thing or two about good structure. The singing comes from everywhere. I make changes, and then more changes. I wait for this to grow in and that to mature. I stake up the arborvitae hedge gone over with ice, and know it will be two years or more-the recovery. I might take this out, or move it elsewhere. That evolution seems to have a clearly defined beginnings, and no end.
But no matter what the last season dished out, I get my spring. I can compost my transgressions. The sun shines on the good things, and the not so good things, equally. It is my choice to take my chances, renew. The birds singing this first day of April means it is time to take stock. Start new.
I can clean up winter’s debris. My eye can be fresh, if I am of a mind to be fresh. I can stake what the heavy snow crushed. Spring can mean opening-the opening of the garden. Later, I can celebrate the shade. I can sculpt ground. I can move all manner of soil, plant seeds, move, and renovate. What I have learned can leaven the ground under my feet-if I let it. Spring will scoop me up. Does this not sound like a life? I can hear the birds now; louder.
Vernissage. Think of it. Spring
The client I spoke of in this post April 1 of 2009 is moving to a new house, a much smaller property the end of this month. Her passion for one garden is coming to a close. A new garden is waiting. No spring that came before will be quite like this one.Though I have published 987 essays in 3 years, the most important one is the next one. And the next one after that. Today also marks 20 years to the day that Rob and I began working together. There have been ups and downs, but the relationship endures, and evolves. Suffice it to say that Detroit Garden Works is an invention that reflects that relationship. Vernissage? This 20th anniversary is most assuredly a spring moment. The both of us, in concert, and individually, have plans for the next twenty. Yes we do.
As my layout table has its first new coat of paint in 14 years, all the prints I’ve had stored there are piled up in my office. OK, I couldn’t resist taking a look before I put them back in storage. Some of them entertain me-I can see exactly what was influencing me at the time. The roll of drawings for the Bluewater project was just that-drawings. These unpolished sketches of landscape elements for a commercial project were highly conceptual-and certainly predate any computer programs that are now readily available to designers. 
Land forms have always been of great interest to me. A big chunk of my library deals with mazes and labyrinths, land sculpture and earthworks. Robert Smithson’s 1970 sculpture “Spiral Jetty”, constructed in 6 days on a leased piece of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, is now completely landlocked as the lake is so low. The sculpture spent 20 years or better completely submerged. The sculpture has presented in many forms over the past 40 years. I have always admired it; no doubt this conceptual drawing of a maze half in and half out of some water was directly inspired by Smithson’s work. 
Another favorite-the land form drawings of Hans Dieter Schaal in his book “Landscape as Inspiration”. Inspired indeed. His sprawling and energetic drawings of natural forms exposed me to an entirely different way of thinking about dirt and nature. I had never seen landscape spaces rendered in this way before. I was equally taken with the beauty of the drawings. They are by no means scaled prints, they are gestural and interpretive marks on a page. This work inspired me to take up a marker and put it to a page, and see what happens. I refer to his book regularly. 
Any reference to natural forms intrigues me. A log twig bridge over Bluewater’s man-made lake seemed like just the right combination of architecture and natural materials. Buck shakes his finger at me when I design with no regard for construction, but I still think a little free spirited doodle drawing has its place. A sketch that seems to be going no where is easily discarded-provided you have not spent so much time with it that you have become attached. It is difficult to be objective about one’s own work-so I try to work fast at the conceptual stage. Anything I have invested a lot of time and work in can be hard to trash-even when trash it I should. 
None of these drawings would convince a client to commit their time and money. But they might convince a client that there was a reservoir of ideas from which something of interest might emerge. If you don’t believe your designer is a person of interest, then a collaboration on your project is unlikely. If you are designing for yourself, drawings can bring ideas to the surface you didn’t know you had. Keeping a waste basket handy can be a comfort!
I am happy to have these drawings, not for their design, but for their energy. Being the fan of science that I am, I wholly subscribe to the notion that everything in motion tends to stay in motion-and what’s at rest tends to stay still. This applies as much to a design sensibility as it does to the physical world. Inertia being gravity that has gotten the upper hand, I make the effort to feed whatever energy I have regularly. 
This drawing suggests at least 6 different ideas. They have similar elements, but are disconnected from each other. At the end of a series of drawings comes the integration phase. How visual and sculptural elements relate to each might be more important than any given piece. That relationship provides for good flow and rhythm. I see lots of landscapes that have good bits, but no flow. In the print, I plan for the transition between one space and another to have its own space. 
