Posts | Deborah Silver & Co.

Sunday Opinion: Keeping America Beautiful

Keep America Beautiful is an organization which has been devoted to promoting the idea that a clean environment is a beautiful and healthy environment since 1953. The original group of business people and public figures had the idea to link the private and public sector in a campaign to stamp out littering. If you are any where near me in age, you will remember the public service announcements in the 1970’s featuring Chief Iron Eyes Cody and the tagline “People start pollution. People can stop it”. The Ad Council of America considers it one of the most successful public service campaigns ever mounted. It had to have been fairly successful-I still remember it vividly, some 40 years after the fact. I would sooner stuff my lunch trash in my own coat pocket than throw it on the ground. Their role in recent years has been to focus on the merits of recycling. Both technology and human ingenuity have helped to create ways to transform trash into products that can be reused.

Why am I talking about litter? We were downtown last week, decorating 50 planter boxes on Woodward Avenue that feature trees at the center. As the aluminum fencing around each box is about 18 inches tall, I suggested decorating each tree truck with corn shocks, and other decor that suggested fall. The result is a celebration of fall that can be seen from a car, or on foot. So what does this have to do with litter? The boxes themselves were littered. Lots of litter. I would guess that it takes an incredible amount of time and money to regularly clean them. Though there’s no need to litter, it happens.

While we were installing this fall display, a Detroit police officer pulled over to the curb near us, set off his siren, and turned on his lights. Yes, we were startled, and yes we watched. The officer called out to a man on the side walk who had just thoughtlessly dumped his lunch trash and plastic bottle on the sidewalk to pick up his mess, and put it in the trash barrel not 10 feet away. There was much discussion and lots of resistance, but the man finally picked up his mess and put it in the garbage can. I admire that officer who treated littering and polluting as a crime against the environment.

That officer let it be known loud and clear that he expects his city to be orderly, safe, friendly, busy, crime free-and clean. Pollution free-one trashy moment at a time. The incident made a big impression on me. Obviously clean cities happen via groups of concerned people who bring their influence to bear. Clean cities perhaps rely even more on those individuals who take the time and effort to protect the environment. It also occurs to me that a clean and litter free city has much to do with a collective sense of ownership, and stewardship. How can that pride of ownership and stewardship be fostered? One litter free block at a time. One clean day at a time. One proud person at a time.

We were hired to make a statement about fall in the downtown Detroit area. My thoughts regarding the design were as follows. I wanted to celebrate those trees on Woodward Avenue that managed to grow in a thoroughly urbanized city. I wanted to draw attention to the trees, and the planter boxes. I wanted to make anyone who rode or walked down Woodward to be engaged by what we did. I wanted to, for a brief moment, to draw attention to nature. My hope was that attention would foster respect.

I may not get my wish-this go round. If you are a gardener, you understand that it can take a lot of time to develop a garden, or a landscape. It can take more than a lifetime. As for a litter free America, it may take many generations. But I am happy to report that more people than not are informed and supportive of a clean, beautiful, and healthy America. Gardeners have for generations been interested in a clean and beautiful environment.

Gardeners have homes that they choose to keep beautiful and clean. Gardeners who move to another property have been stewards. My idea? I would encourage anyone and everyone to garden. Once you garden, you understand the treasure inviolate that is nature. Would that everyone would be a gardener.

Posted on: October 20, 2013 14 Comments

Making A Lot Of Little

An old client bought a new house. The landscape out front was not so swell-I am sure you can see an overgrown and poorly tended collection of plants that have no relationship to each other. A great landscape needs to respect, enhance, and challenge the space and the architecture. Not to mention the need for an expression that is interesting, and polished. This home was built in the 1920’s. Who knows what landscape might have been planted after the house was finished. I felt really certain that the current landscape was cursory, if not left over, and not so much oriented around the architecture. This is not an unusual. Not everyone is so interested in the landscape, much less good landscape design.

My client, however, was very interested in landscape design. She wanted her new home to have a new landscape. A fresh design. A design that she would delightedly call her own. Delight is a state most everyone can relate to. Landscape delight revolves around a few issues. A home is the largest feature on any plot of ground. The shape, the size, the height, and the style of that architecture should inform the attending landscape. A delightful landscape looks like it belongs to the house and property upon which it is planted. A good landscape resonates with a house and property. That house informing the design does not mean reproducing the landscape design of that period. It only means that any large structure that sits on a property needs to be grounded in a thoughtful and beautiful landscape design, properly proportioned. A good landscape has an idea about house and ground that is delightfully framed and executed. On my first visit, I so loved the house, and all of its features.

My first installation visit to this property was about eliminating her feeble collection of plants in front, and creating some basic green structure. The cost of implementing this part of the plan would depend in large part on the size of the plants. Great design is not one bit related to the cost of an installation. We can buy and install plants of many different sizes. The design called for green structure that came away from the house, and enclosed the sidewalk to the driveway in a configuration that made visual sense. In other words, a bed of some size. She wanted to make the biggest impact she could within the confines of her budget.

Great landscape design may be about a moment imagined for the future. Small plants cost less. Big plants cost a lot. Most of the boxwood on this project are 12″ to 15″ tall. We paired lots of those little boxwood with four boxwood of considerable size. Contrast is a very powerful design element. In this case, the contrast in size made the entire installation look more important visually.

The 15″ Green Gem boxwood are really small. Small enough that they are grown in pots. Small works great, when they are contrasted with companion plants of greater size. 36 inch round Green Gem boxwood spheres are rare, indeed. Splashy. These four big bits would make lots of the smaller bits.

This is the first part of the plan to be installed. Designing with staging in mind involves 2 things. The part has to look finished on its own-not piecemeal. The “part one” also has to be ready and friendly to the next phase, whenever that phase comes along.

The installation of this boxwood parterre would look fairly routine, but for the larger balls on the four corners. The four boxwood of scale attract attention. Behind the boxwood, several rows of Little Lime hydrangeas.

What goes between the hydrangeas and the boxwood is under discussion. We probably will not do anything here until the spring, which means there is time to think it through.

This picture explains the visual logic of the location of the parterre. That space could be handled in lots of interesting ways. It could be lawn, or ground cover, or more boxwood, or a combination of all the aforesaid, or gravel, or? For now, part I is holding its own.