Much of what keeps a community, or a landscape workable is about transport. These vegetables need to get to market before they go bad. Those M and M peanuts-bags of this candy get shipped all over the country. You and I need to get to work; we require transportation from one place to another. A drivecourt can be a very utilitarian landscape feature-but that does not mean it needs to be an endless expanse of hard surface like the parking lot of a gorcery store. A drivecourt facilitates transport-but it can have its own 15mph zones. This drivecourt-I designed and built a water feature with three jets-as big as an SUV. This takes one attention away from the floor and provides some interest at eye level. The cistern is placed in the drivecourt such that it directs both physical and visual traffic. Only days away from having the water lines hooked up, the soil brought up to grade, a boxwood skirt and flowers to finish, I only hope the music of the water running will transport them, the moment they get home.
Establishing some structure in a garden has much to do with traffic. How will you get from one place to another. This river front property is owned by clients with older parents and family. A motorized cart provides transportation from the front of the house to the water. Gravel walks large enough to accomodate that vehicle were essential to everyone being able to enjoy the outdoors.
A fenced vegetable garden with raised beds was high on the list of their requests. They entertain family and friends, and cook-passionately. The ability to grow their own summer vegetables and fruits was important. Much of their family life and tradition revolves around the exchange and community of the dinner table. This is an old world attitude that I like and respect. The south side of this new addition had the best sun. The design issue-how to combine a working vegetable garden, a means by which materials, people and tools could be transported in a beautiful way. I designed this garden immediately adjacent to a covered porch, home to seating, and an outdoor kitchen. The best part of designing is that occasion when you have a client keenly interested in that process. The deisgn of this garden gate, an exact replica of my client’s grandfather’s vegetable garden gate in Italy. I will say this gate is my most favorite detail in the entire landscape.
Six raised beds provide lots of space to grow. I have yet to meet a passionate grower of food who thought they had plenty of space to cultivate. The curved end boxes provide visual relief from the expected rectangular boxes one usually sees. A series of wood tables that have been in the family a long time can be set up for a dinner party-in the garden. I heard a party last weekend resulted in an impromptu bocce game. Though by no means does this space approach a regulation court, it has the advantage of not looking like a regulation court. Company on the porch and in the garden-a pleasure. The center space is large enough to permit the acrt to pass through, without looking like a road.
My clients have to deal with a considerable deer population. When they are not entertaining, portable screens sheild the garden from the porch. Lacking this, deer would use the porch as their roadway to the garden. Hardware cloth set below garde and up to the bottom of the Belgian fencing keeps out smaller intruders.
Curving a section of 4″ by 6″ lumber is no mean feat. Each of the bottom four boards have 90 parallel cuts perpendicular to their length, side by side. The cuts-each the width of the saw blades, is called a kerf. The saw removes small parallel slices of wood from the board. After soaking the boards overnight, Steve, my landscape superintendent, was able to bend their 4 foot sections into place. 360 cuts all together. The top section, comprised of a series of smaller chunks of wood perfectly fitted together to form the curve-made my Steve’s brother-a carpenter, cabinetmaker, and shop teacher. This painstakingly contructed detail makes a world of visual difference to the end result.
There are times when lawn is suffient to permit traffic, and gathering. traffic The firebowl, set on the opposite side of the porch from the vegetable garden, is set at seat height so guests can congregate without the need for additonal seating. All the these spaces in proximity and easily accessible to one another makes entertaining easy. There are places to be, and places to move to.
The large lawn plane which spans both the old property and the new one, is finally finished; we have planted the boxwood buttons. A large party which is planned for late June-tables will be set over top of the boxwood-what fun. This very long rectagular space can easily accomodate a tent if need be-with a dressy floor already in place. The view from the upstairs balcony is lovely.
The decomposed granite walk traverses the entire back of the property. Its strong shape helps to knit the old house and propert yto the addition and new property. There is a strong sense that every architectural and landscape element has always been there. There is no evidence of spaces being stitched together.
This was a long and large project; I am on the verge of finishing. I think my clients are pleased to have spaces that will be completed by friends, family, dinners, bocce-and growing tomatoes. I like landscapes that invite people to partake of them.
In my business, there are machines that are engineered to do the heavy lifting. Though my crew can handle a lot, there are those projects which could not be done efficiently without the help of machines. Two landscape projects of considerable scope and size need finishing before we loose our working weather. The first phase of this project-the installation of a new driveway. The original drive, set much too low, flooded with every rain. The drivecourt was set some six inches above grade; water draining off the drivecourt was finding its way to the basement of the house. 
Given that a new driveway was a necessity, I suggested an alternate location that would provide a great view of the lake and property, and gracefully deposit guests at the front door. A large tree in very poor condition would come down. As the driveway would come through this area with eight inches of road gravel and decomposed granite, an oversized stump grinder was used to remove the top 14 inches of stump. There is no digging out the stump of a tree this size; nature intended that the forty feet above ground would have a solid foundation. This large four wheeled machine is designed to power a giant blade, that sweeps back and forth over the stump, chewing up and spewing out the bits. 
The original drivecourt, partly hand made brick pavers from the early twentieth century, and asphalt, needed complete removal, so as to lower the grade around the house. This excavator makes two days work of this big job. A front end loader collected the intact bricks, so they could be stacked on pallets for use in the new drive, and later dumped the asphalt into a truck for removal from the property. Was I fascinated by steamshovels as a child-absolutely. 
At some point concrete was added to the existing drive. As the house is a long distance from the street, any guest parking had to be provided for on the property. As a driveway is not something one takes out on a whim, and redoes, if there is a need for more parking, the add on was just that-an add on. This machine cuts concrete; as the blade turns, a spray of water keeps the blade from overheating. I understand little about how machines work, but how this works made a monumental job possible. 
In conjunction with a new driveway, an asphalt go-cart track. I will admit, this is my first. I had my clients drive the proposed drive and cart path many times. Once any driving surface is done, its not easy to make changes. Over a period of four days, we tuned up the final design. This machine, rolling back and forth over the freshly laid asphalt, is solely intended to compact the oily mixture into a tough and durable surface. You can tell from all the steam we are in a race aginst the cold weather. Asphalt plants typically close the end of October; our late fall weather has been unseasonably warm.
The particulate asphalt is hot, and set with this machine. I have no idea what drove the design, but it enables the two operators to lay out a layer of asphalt in the desired width, at a consistent thickness. Bush Brothers Asphalt is just that-five brothers who quote, install and finish driveways, parking lots, roads-and in this case, a driving course.
Buck builds things from steel; much of what he builds is impossibly unwieldy and heavy. He has another pair of hands that enables him to position and move material, how, where and when he needs it. A bridge crane, affixed to an overhead track, can pick up 5 tons worth of any material he needs moved at a time. A control gauge at the floor level enables him to move materials up and down-and finally out. His eyes are always on the object he is moving, not on those buttons. An object of great size and weight he moves with great attention and respect. Machine operators are as much a marvel as the machines themselves.
