Sunday Opinion: The Outer Limits

There are lots of things a competent garden or landscape designer can accomplish for a client.  Another pair of eyes, and a fresh point of view is usually a good idea.  What else does a good designer bring to a project?  The willingness to listen, and hear.  A working knowledge of design.  An ability to conceptualize.  Familiarity and experience growing a wide range of plants.  An understanding of good drainage, and grading.  The ability to place and plant properly.  A passable acquaintance with architctural forms.  I think a knowledge of the history of landscape and garden design is a plus. The designer should have the skills necessary to draw a plan, and make a presentation that clearly explains that plan.  A knowledge of available materials is essential.  A willingness to source materials difficult to find is a show of willingness that will help a project along.  A good sense of humor is always appreciated.

What else should you expect from a landscape designer?  Some designers have their own installation crews, as I do.  Some dsigners either subcontract, or recommend an installation contractor.  An extensive landscape project can require expertise from a lot of different fields.  You may need a topological survey, or a grading plan.  You may need an architect for an addition or a pool house.  An electrician, a site engineer, an irrigation contractor, an interior designer-I have seen projects needing all of the aforementioned.  You may simply need a stone mason to install walks or terraces.  A recommendation from a designer who has worked with lots of contractors can be of help.  You may need a different kind of mason for the installation of load or soil bearing walls.  A carpenter might be required for a pergola, a site engineer for a radical change of grade.  All of these trades on a project means there are permits to be pulled, and codes to be observed.  Small projects?  A small project does not imply that a designer with limited skills would be ok.  Small projects can require more imagination and problem solving ability than you might think.  But there are things a designer/contractor cannot do for you.

There is never any substitute for the touch that an individual gardener has to put to their project.  The best way I have to explain this is as follows.  I have had dinner at any number of restaurants-some of them extraordinarily good.  But was the best dinner I have ever had out, prepared by a professional chef, comparable to any number of dinners I have had at Julie’s, or Gerhardts,  or Julia’s, or Lauren’s or Jane’s, or Janet’s house?  Or at my own house-with Buck cooking?  No.  Not even close.  The best dinners I have ever had was by invitation, created and served by an individual that put every ounce of their time and energy to creating it. 

What is the idea here?  In the next three weeks, I have a daunting list of projects for landscape, winter and holiday containers, holiday lighting and decorating that have to be done.  I think the work will be good, and thoughtful-I take great pains to see to that.  But if I had only one project to finish over the next three weeks, I could do a truly extraordinary job of it-given that amount of time to think and plan, and construct.

I have seen private gardens-designed, engineered, planted and nurtured by individuals who have never consulted a professional designer- that take my breath away.  My best hope as a designer is to give a client a beautiful, solidly conceived and built framework.  We can rework or add to an older landscape, or install a new one.  The big gestures.  Gardens-yes.  Once a client takes ownership of that new landscape, the hope is that they will go on to make that landscape their own.  Those clients that have less time than I, I stand in for them in the best way I can. If you are an individual gardener who has created your own gorgeous garden-bravo.  If you are a client rushed by circumstance, every hint, magazine clipping or random idea you send my way- thanks.  Better gardens for all-I like this.

Posted on: November 25, 2012 7 Comments
Filed Under: Good Design, Strictly Opinion, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Monday Opinion: The Editors In Chief

Editing is a very important element of design.  Given a manuscript for a book, an editor may make suggestions about how to distill the message by editing the text.  An idea which takes too many loose and wandering paragraphs to fully explain will only appeal to the most devoted and hard working of audiences. Ideas that are simple and well crafted get attention.    

All of those distracting visual and written elements need to be swept off the page.  Clear, direct, concise, organized and distilled makes for a strong presentation. Distillation makes grappa, moonshine, and port much more potent.  Potent can refer to a taste, a smell, an idea or a vision.  A fully staged production of a ballet, a string quartet,  an opera, or play-visually potent.  One small painting by Lucien Freud could fire up, light up, an entire museum gallery.   

The written word can be especially potent.  A novel that is convincing and believable is a world unto itself, quite unlike any other world.  I am sure those sentences crafted by great writers have undergone numerous revisions.  When I read a novel, I am enchanted by the world that unfolds.  I am not privy to the editing.  While that process is interesting, I like a composition that at least makes reference to a finish. The visual word can be just as compelling.  A landscape that seems scattered and tentative might benefit from editing.  Getting rid of this, or grouping these with those, can help make a clearer and stronger statement.  Of course I have a point of view here.  I am drawn to landscapes that are simple, yet manage to aspire to the mysterious, the romantic, or the austere.  A critical eye put to every aspect of a plan from the grading to the plants to the planting gets rid of every element that is not essential to the design narrative. 

Who edits for me?  Clients, of course.  Clients have busy lives, and very real concerns.  They are the most important part of the design process.  Friends and children have an uncanny ability to spot a weak moment.Colleagues on whom I depend can spot trouble.  Close to nothing gets by my landscape superintendent.   They encourage me to edit my plan, for the sake of a clear and clean installation.  I can depend upon them to edit.  And then there is the editing from nature.  That is the toughest exam any design will ever face.

Posted on: October 22, 2012 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Landscape Design, Strictly Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Sunday Opinion: Research

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein
 
There are no end of quotes attributed to Albert Einstein that have to do with mystery, intuition, music, knowledge, curiousity, God, and nature.  This is more than I would have expected from a physicist.  But he was much more than brilliant scientist, he was a person of great depth and greater compassion.
The above mentioned quote about research is one of my favorites.  A friend and architect who came to call Saturday with some questions about his landscape made the observation that any conclusion one wishes to believe in regarding growing plants will find some article or another on the internet to support that assumption.  Though he had read countless articles about his issue, there did not seem to be any agreement.  No trend.  No discernible pattern.  
I find nothing unusual in this.  There are countless opinions about every horticultural issue.  Anyone who wishes to find the final and definitive word on how to keep lavandula going in my zone has a rocky road ahead of them.  I feel I can safely say that rocky road will not end at the lavender grail.  It will just end. 
 Also from Albert Einstein, information is not knowledge. I am beginning to understand what this means.  I am a voracious reader.  Books, articles, journals, magazines-multiply all of this by countless numbers when it comes to what is available to read on the internet.  How can I distill all of this information?
How does any gardener make some coherent sense of what opinion is out there?  If you read the blog Garden Rant, or Rochelle Greayer’s Studio G, you will get a different slant than if you read the magazine Garden and Gun.  If you read Scientific American, you will come away with a different point of view than what the RHS journal favors. The AHS bears no remote resemblance in subject,tone of emphasis,  to Garden Design.  If you love reading, and turning the pages of that great publication Garden’s Illustrated, does this mean you should not read Leaf-the digital only, and seasonally available garden magazine by Susan Cohan and Rochelle Greayer?   
Of course not.  Any information that comes your way about design and plants is all to the good.  Add what you like, and shed what doesn’t interest you.  Do your best to be persuaded , should something seem right.  But most of all, do your own research.
Knowledge that is solid has everything to do with experience.  Research.  Never be afraid to try something new.  Never ever be afraid to try something that someone else assures you won’t work.  My big view about gardening?  Lots of things work.  
What works for you is a matter directly related to your research.  Try this.  Try that.  Do what hasn’t been done before.  Change this.  Change that.  If you have a mind to complicate your garden, research what it would mean to make it more simple.  Sometimes going in the opposite direction is a very good idea.   Knowledge of the garden, beautiful gardens, are built on experience. 
Your experience makes sense of a lot of things-no matter what anyone else says.  Trust those results.  What you personally find that works, will make your garden better.  Is there a better gardener for your garden than you?  no.                   
 
 
Posted on: September 30, 2012 7 Comments
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

Sunday Opinion: Guaranteed

A garden comes with no real guarantee of success-just like everything else in life.  Gardeners buy plants-some work and take hold, some fail.  Some succumb to poor placement.  Some lack for water too long, and die.  Some rot and keel over from too much water.  Some cannot handle that once in ten years and especially vicious winter.  Some languish on for years, and finally give up.  Some plants die for no reason that you or I, or any other good gardener can figure out.  Some relationships just do not work. 

 A tree that is planted too deep will never grow out of that insult.  A maple in the right of way might take 35 years to die from girdling roots, but die it will.  A black walnut in a neighboring yard, 80 feet away from your spruce, is an unseen threat to your spruce.  Japanese beetles can defoliate your roses and lindens.  Anthracnose is a disease that kills dogwoods, and London Plane trees.  Impatiens downy mildew killed thousands of plants in my area this summer.  More than likely, this fungus will live over the soil where those impatiens were planted.

Late spring frosts, high winds, ice, drought-there are no end of natural conditions that conspire to kill your plants.  A kid rides a bike over your prize lilies.  A tree drops a huge rotten limb on your house-who knew it was rotted?  Disaster can happen in the blink of an eye.  The life of a garden is a big fluid situation for which there is no insurance policy available. 

 The salesperson who sold me my Chevy Suburban in 2004 wanted to go over the warranty agreement-line by line.  I was patient about that time I spent with her, but in my heart I knew it was my responsibility to maintain that truck.  I knew the vehicle would run a long time, provided that I provided the care it needed.  Parts wear out.  Fuses blow.  Electric windows quit working.  Oil leaks out onto the driveway.  All of this mayhem is to be expected.    

Nurseries, garden centers, and landscape professionals all have their individual version of a warranty on plants.  I warranty, and guarantee that I have placed plants properly.  I guarantee the health of the plants at the time of planting.  I guarantee that I have placed plants properly.   I go on to guarantee any situation in which is is impossible to determine what went wrong.  My clients are really great people.  Honoring a guarantee can be a way of saying thank you.  It is a way of saying I am in this with you-through thick and thin.  

I can guarantee that if you plant new trees or shrubs, and do not water them by hand, regularly, no doubt you will have problems.  I can guarantee that the smallest annual and perennial plants require the most attention.  A newly planted perennial lacking one moment too long for water can die.  A big tree, with an appropriately big rootball, might outlast and take hold in spite of intermittent care.    I can guarantee that any garden reads as the sum total of the care given to it.  I can guarantee that if you take on more than you are able to maintain, problems will arise.  I can guarantee that if you run your sprinkler system 2 times a day, and every day, plants will die.  A tree that sheds all of its leaves, or fails to leaf out-you need to call the doctor.   

Guarantees apply primarily to washers, garbage disposals, roofs, bed springs, phones and Chevies-mechanical devices.  Not living things.  Even so, I marvel that any manufacturer guarantees a device that they have no way of tracking.  Your doctor should be a great scientist, and an inspired diagnostitian.  Even if she is all of the above, she cannot guarantee a happy and care free outcome for your health.  No one will ever care about your health, your chevy, your washing machine or your myrtle topiary as much as you do.  Take care of all of the above.  At the first sign of trouble, ask for help.

 As for the garden, I would advise that you take charge.  From the day that landscape or garden is planted.  Clients hire me to design and plant. Beyond that,  I go the extra mile.  I coordinate with the irrigation contractor.  I swing by frequently for a few weeks.  I stay in touch.  I am happy to be a backstop.  Some clients contract for 6 months of supervision.  This says more about their sense of responsibility than their lack of attention to that landscape.  Lots of my clients are very busy people-should they ask for help, I give it.  In the end, most every gardener owns their own problems.  That includes me.  I have many times in hindsight kicked myself for the loss of a plant that I could have easily provided for.       

My advice? Be presidential.  Run your landscape as it should be run.  Self insure-it will free up your energy to do what you love best.  The time it takes to establish blame for a struggling garden is wasted time.  That negative energy-who wants to be stained by that?   Admit your failures, and move on.  Gripe all you want, and apply what you have learned to the next step.  

For sure, no one else will treasure your garden like you do.  Your garden is first and foremost your garden.  Take ownership.  Guarantee your committment.  Guarantee to learn from your failures.  This is what gardeners do.         

 

Posted on: September 16, 2012 5 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Design, Strictly Opinion