FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation's foremost “parkmaker.” Olmsted moved his home to suburban Boston in 1883 and established the world's first full-scale professional office for the practice of landscape design. During the next century, his sons and successors perpetuated Olmsted's design ideals, philosophy, and influence.

Over the course of his career projects

 he designed, established and contributed to scenic reservations (i.e.: Yosemite Valley 1865, Niagara reservation 1887), major urban parks (i.e.: Central Park 1858, Prospect Park 1866) park systems (i.e.: Buffalo Park system, Boston’s ‘Emerald Necklace’, Rochester and Louisville), residential campuses (Stanford University, Hartford Retreat), government building grounds, parkways and site planning for the World’s Exposition of 1893.

Lesser known and spoken of are the designs of country estates for wealthy clientele, of which Olmsted designed a number of.  His greatest private client was the Vanderbilt family and it’s many heirs to the fortune of William Vanderbilt. (Olmsted had actually been a neighbor to William Vanderbilt on Staten Island in th 1840's and was now designing the family mausoleum in that same area.)   Olmsted created the Biltmore estate (beginning in 1888) in Asheville North Carolina for George, the youngest of the eight children. Three of George’s sisters had also engaged Frederick Law Olmsted to design their properties.

One of these sisters was Eliza Vanderbilt who married Dr. William Seward Webb, who left the medical profession at the urging of the Vanderbilt family. Webb was propelled into the finance and railroad industries, eventually increasing his fortune as builder of Adirondack Railway Services. The couple lived in New York City and built an ambitious estate in Shelburne, Vermont, which has survived and become notable for its agricultural, technological and architectural achievements. A working farm, at it’s peak in 1902, "Shelburne Farms" included nearly 4,000 acres of farmland with 300 employees to maintained this estate. Between 1886 and 1902, the Webb’s purchased 32 farms on Shelburne point, amassing all this land situated on Lake Champlain in Northern Vermont, framed views of the Green Mountains in the distance, just south of Burlington. 

Shelburne House

view from house looking east

view from south lawn of house looking west

The architect was Robert H. Robertson, who worked alongside F.L. Olmsted.  Shelburne Farms includes four major building on the site – “Shelburne House” (now an inn) the “Coach Barn,” Farm Barn,” “Horse Breeding Barn  Sheep and “Dairy Barn” -- dairy cattle, horses, pigs, gaming pheasants and poultry were raised on this farm.  As many as 100,000 trees a year were planted to create the sculptural landscape, (Capability Brown would be envious), 20 miles of roads and carriage trails were built.

serpentine road leads through...

woodlands...

opening to a clearing in the distance..

. 

with the house perfectly sited on a hill.

Olmsted brought to this site an organizing concept that separated the farm into three types of spaces: farm, forest and parkland.  He also brought design principles learned from his early European travels and mastered in parks such as Prospect Park, Brooklyn.  

Shelbourne Farm: a (Lancelot "Capability') Brownian landscape via F.L. Olmsted

These design principles, commonly though of as the  English naturalistic landscape tradition of the early 18th century – are broad meadows with occasional clumping of shade trees, undulating hills, rich and diverse woodlands that transition into these meadows, looping roads strategically through the landscape to alternately reveal and obscure views and the appreciation of an expanse of water to reflect the sky.

rolling hills + meadows meets lake

(framed views from house)

Guests would tour the farm and horse operations, enjoy carriage rides, boating on Lake Champlain, croquet or golfing on the estate’ golf course. Presently, the site is designated a national historic landmark and has evolved into a non-profit (supported by significant donations) with a teaching component (environmental education center) working farm and an inn.

**With exception of F.L.Olmsted public domain portrait, all photos ©Todd Haiman 2010

FAMILY IN THE GARDEN

Edith Wharton, Beatrix Ferrand and Mildred Bliss.

Within the last two months I have had the pleasure of visiting both Edith Wharton’s estate “The Mount” in Lennox, Massachusetts and “Dumbarton Oaks” in Georgetown, D.C. 

As I recall both visits and the design of the sites I thought it would be interesting to research some background material regarding the two sites, the property owners and the relationships with and about Beatrix Ferrand.  Beatrix Ferrand was arguably the first female landscape architect of note (although she preferred the term “landscape gardener”) and the lone woman among the founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

The Mount reflects the taste of Wharton and to some degree her indirect influence on the future masterpiece that Ferrand created with the owners Robert and Mildred Bliss - Dumbarton Oaks.  Through Edith Wharton’s social connections, Beatrix was introduced to many of her future clients, among them the owner of Dumbarton Oaks, Mildred Bliss.

Edith Wharton was many things -- writer, socialite, gardener a supreme arbiter of taste.  (She claimed to be a better garden designer than writer!) Among the forty books she authored – best selling novels and collections of short stories, were authoritative works on architecture, gardens, interior design and travel. Wharton is credited with designing the gardens at The Mount, with additional landscape design/architecture by Beatrix Ferrand.  While Edith Wharton was laying out the gardens she was also working on the book “Italian Villas and their Gardens” – a strong Italian influence can seen in the Mount’s landscape design.  According to the Edith Wharton Restoration organization, Ferrand completely designed the maple-lined drive leading to the house and an elaborate kitchen garden (no longer functioning) that occupied the field in front of the stable.

The Mount is essentially a house with a grand terrace built overlooking the Italian inspired gardens.  A broad Palladian staircase leads down from the terrace to gravel walks that descend to a lime walk (linden trees).  This serves as a connecting hallway between the two major garden rooms.  

View of the flower gardens

View of the flower gardens

Views of the giardino segreto from the house and return view looking back at the house. 

The “giardino segreto” was paid for with the proceeds from Wharton's first bestseller, “the House of Mirth.”

dolphin fountain

dolphin fountain

To the right, facing away from the house is the walled garden (or “giardino segreto”).  On the left there is a French-style flower garden with arborvitaes arranged around a pool with Wharton’s dolphin fountain.  Other items of interest include two flights of grass covered earthen steps, which lead up to the terrace, a rock garden, and various other niches. What I found of pure delight was the pet cemetery.

Grass steps

Grass steps leading up to the house

Pet cemetary

As a supreme arbiter of taste within her social circles, Wharton carefully planned the grounds of The Mount. Similarly, Mildred Bliss had a very controlling “hand” in the creation of Dumbarton Oaks.  Bliss’s ideas for the gardens began well before she brought a professional onto the scene. Her ideas were primary to the design of the Oaks. British Landscape Architect Lanning Roper, a friend to both Bliss and Ferrand, has stated that ‘Mrs. Bliss knew from the start what she wanted to create.  She had definite conceptions, some of which she treasured from childhood.” *

Grass steps at Dumbarton Oaks

Both properties/gardens have strong Italianate influence – in the topography built upon, design of the garden rooms and aesthetic within these “rooms.” Historian Walter Whitehead suggests that the pre-existing, rudimentary terracing of the steep slope that Dumbarton Oaks was built upon suggested to Mildred Bliss the siting of many of the great Italian country house of the 16th through 18th centuries.  She was familiar with such renaissance villas both from her extensive travels to Italy and from Edith Wharton’s influential Italian Villas and their Gardensof 1919. *

Plan of Dumbarton Oaks

Several years earlier Bliss had arranged to meet Edith Wharton in Paris after reading her novels and influential articles on interior decoration. Later in her life, Bliss eventually wrote of her admiration for Wharton who had been “her stimulus for nearly forty years.” 

From that meeting in Paris, they consistently traveled in the same social circles – during WWI both sharing France’s highest civilian award for their wartime charitable activities in Europe. 

“Years later when Milded Bliss returned to the United States, she used memories of civilized life in Europe before the war as the model for the home she planned to create.  The Oaks would be based upon the Mediterranean model, first developed by the Romans, in which outdoor spaces, and especially those nearest the house would be treated as rooms – extensions of the interior living areas.” The steep slope at the Oaks suggested an organization along the lines of the Italian Renaissance gardens, with these individual rooms dropping down the hillside in terraces, their character gradually devolving from formal and architectural near the house to informal and naturalistic at the perimeter.” *

Ferrand had the good fortune to grow up in the gilded age with her aunt, Edith nurturing her career that began with her design of the Kitchen garden at the Mount. Wharton was only ten years her senior and in much of my readings, is seemingly just as much a close friend and confidant than niece.  She was introduced to many of her future socialite clients not only by her aunt, but her lifelong dear friend, Henry James.

Interestingly, while Edith eventually introduced and spoke of her niece to Mildred Bliss, the first commission of Ferrand’s career was working with a swampy area on a family’s property in Bar Harbor, Maine.  The property owner was Anna Bliss, Mildred’s mother!  (Mildred was several years younger than Beatrix and in her writings had no recollection of this coincidence.) Twenty-five years later they worked together on Dumbarton Oaks.

*

Dumbarton Oaks, Garden into Art; Susan Tamulevich, Monacelli Press, N.Y., N.Y.

** All photographs ©ToddHaimanLandscapeDesign 2014 New York City

BROWNFIELD REMEDIATION

On the north bank of the Thames River, between North Woolwich Road and Thames Barrier in Silvertown (on the outskirts of London, England) lies one of the finest modern parks in Britain.  The Thames Barrier Park was opened in the new millennium (2000), a regenerated formerely contaminated site that once housed timber treatment plants, petrochemical and acid works for over 150 years on the riverbank. It is a 27-acre site of inner city greenery wedged between two modern housing developments along the riverside.

French designers Alain Provost (designer of Parc Citroen in Paris) and Alain Cousseran of Group Signes teamed up with Brit architects Patel Taylor and Ove Arup to transform this former brownfield site.

A parti diagram of this landscape would be a simple rectangle sliced by a diagonal line.

What you see is a vast carpet of rolling hedgerows and lawn blanketing a space between the railway line and the silver domes (or as locals refer to them –“cockleshells”) of the Thames Barrier (the dramatic engineering structure that prevents the centre of the capital being inundated when floods of water are coming down river, and high tides advancing from the east.)

To remediate this brownfield a significant amount of the soil was hauled off, but the bulk of the materials were simply rearranged to reflect the vision of the design team. This profile was then capped with crushed concrete and a geotextile layer and topped off with imported clean soil to confirm the site's suitability for use.

Fields of wildflowers, a grid network of birches and stretching the length of the park is the largest and perhaps most modernesque sunken garden in London – known as the “Green Dock”.  This simulation of a marine dock is accessible by the public and crossed by two viewing bridges.  The planting is a tidal flow of wave-cut hedges alternating with beds of perennials such as Geranium cantabrigiense, Nepeta (catmint), Papaver (poppies) and more.

A group of local friends regularly play hide + seek in the park

Note the separate trash can for fido waste

**all photos Todd Haiman 2010

LANDSCAPE DESIGN AS SCULPTURE

“The importance of outdoor space I based upon the philosophy that residential site design is based upon the three-dimensional organization of space and not just the creation of two-dimensional patterns on the ground or the arrangement of plant materials among the base of a house.  Space is the entity where we live, work, and recreate.  Consequently all the site elements that make up the outdoor environent, such as plant material, pavements, walls, fences, and other structures, should be considered as the physical elements that define outdoor space.  A residential designer should think of design as the creation and organization of outdoor space and study how these components define and influence the character and mood of space.”

-

Norman Booth, Residential Landscape Architecture

"I like to think of gardens as sculpturing of space: a beginning, and a groping to another level of sculptural experience and use: a total sculpture space experience beyond individual sculptures. A man may enter such a space: it is in scale with him; it is real. An empty space has no visual dimension or significance. Scale and meaning enter when some thoughtful object or line is introduced. This is why sculptures, or rather sculptural objects, create space. Their function is illusionist. The size and shape of each element is entirely relative to all the others and the given space. What may be incomplete as sculptural entities are of significance to the whole." - Isamu Noguchi

Wade Cavanaugh + Stephen Nguyen's, "White Stag" in the Material World exhibition at MassMOCA.  

Am I surrounded by very mature English Oaks?

Following, in a very literal juxtoposition of two images, I've compared a site element (the use of plant material) with a sculptural installation. 

The hedge below is found in Regents Park, London.

Here is an

 Installation 

at the Camden Arts Center

 - 

"Continuous"

 by Anna Maria Maiolino 

**all photos Todd Haiman 2010

NAUMKEAG CONTINUED

Fletcher Steele is known to have exclaimed that “the chief vice in gardens is to be merely pretty." With one of landscape design’s most renowned built gestures – "the Blue Steps,"  Steele has turned vice into virtue.   

From SUNY ESF Fletcher Steele Manuscript Collection

To continue my tour of Naumkeag, we reconveine on the runnel that links the pyramid steps on the upper terrace with the top of the Blue steps.

The concrete stairs are shaded by a luxurious grove of Betula papyrifera (Paper Birches) providing a canopy above the Taxus (yew hedge), native ferns + perennials which provided Mabel Choate a gradual descent to her cutting garden at the base of the hill.  This vaulted Art Deco design uses industrial materials -- cast concrete and painted white pipe which are formed into handrails for the four flights of stairs complementing the natural coloration of the birches.  

The blue coloration of the mini fountain pools underneath each staircase provide an exclamation  and color to the extension of the water flow from the runnel above, which is emphasized sensorially by the sound of tricking water and the reflections within the grottos.

Notice the upright hammered wood logs used as edging for the plant material, then repeated as stone in the mini fountain pool/grotto. (These upright hammered wood logs were also used as the serpentine edging for the Oak Lawn)

Planted at the base, flanking the lower fountain are classic yellow-orange hemerocallis (Tiger lillies) which provide a colorful contrast to the blue fountain/grotto.

Fletcher Steele, Mabel Choate and terrier choosing paint colors! (from Periodhomes.com)

Rose garden – a modernist design to be seen by Mabel Choate from her second story bedroom windows, the rose garden is best viewed from above. Steele painted the railings purple – he considered this color the least obtrusive. The serpentine lines of gravel wind through sixteen beds of Rosa floribunda.  I have read that these curved lines of gravel (originally pink colored) are reminiscent of common motif in chinese art – the imperial scepter.   In this way Steele attempts to provide a link to the nearby Chinese Garden.

At the center of the evergreen garden is a circular pool surrounded by a hedge of Buxus sempevirens (boxwood), which forms the focal point of this garden.  In late July (sorry, these pictures were taken in very early June!) tall, white spires of Cimicifuga racemosa (snakeroot) and Yucca filamentosa (Adam’s needle) make a striking feature against the background of various evergreens.

From SUNY ESF Fletcher Steele Manuscript Collection

If you tour the gardens you typically approach the Chinese Garden by climbing a staircase from the evergreen garden below, transitioning these series of stairs up to the Chinese Garden which has high brick/stone walls, seemingly representative of a Forbidden Palace. Entrance into the Chinese garden is through a zigzag screen, also referred to as a Devil’s screen.  Once inside are treasures that Mabel Choate collected from travels to the Far East, including a pair of Foo Dogs that guard the Temple stairs. Plant material also have an eastern flavor as Ginkgo bilobas (Maidenhair tree), Acer palmatum (Japanese maples) and various Phyllostachys (bamboo) are generously placed throughout this garden.

You may exit the Chinese Garden through the Moon Gate or… glimpse the Chinese Garden from afar through this portal if you were to arrive directly from the mainhouse.  In sheer brilliance, Steele created an intriguing, sensory journey regardless of one’s direction through the landscape.  This garden essentially completed the landscape at Naumkeag.

Ironically the first garden creation, the Afternoon garden was created with a pair of stone chairs that client and designer would relax in. The final creation, which was the Chinese Garden has a pair of wicker chairs placed at the top of the Temple in the Chinese garden for viewing purposes.

*unless noted all photos ©ToddHaiman2014

NAUMKEAG

Three pioneering figures in the history of landscape design within the United States are forever linked for their influence on the modern landscape-- Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley and James Rose. While enrolled in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in the 1930’s, the three students became disenchanted with and rebelled from the status quo design aesthetic and conventional Beaux-Art teaching of the era. 

However, Fletcher Steele (along with Walter Gropius) were the only designers they respected for their development of modernism within the American garden.  Garret Eckbo remarked that Fletcher Steele was 'the transitional figure between the old guard and the moderns.”

Steele's work is considered by many to constitute the essential link, the transitional figure between nineteenth-century Beaux Arts formalism and the modern landscape design that Eckbo, Kiley and Rose ushered in.

Kiley states 'Steele was the only good designer working during the twenties and thirties, also the only one who was really interested in new things'.  Of the hundreds of gardens Fletcher Steele designed, Naumkeag remains his most written about creation.

map from Naumkeg website

Prominent attorney Joseph Choate hired Stanford White of McKim, Mead, White to design his 44 room “cottage” in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that he entitled Naumkeag (the native American name for the indigenous people of Salem, Ma.). Nathan Barrett developed the original design of the landscape, or Master plan. Mabel Choate (Joseph’s daughter) inherited the property and in 1926 began the famous collaboration with Fletcher Steele to create this most famous garden. This collaboration lasted thirty years as Mabel Choate and Fletcher Steele became close friends.  Within the mansion there was a bedroom maintained solely for Fletcher Steele, drawing table included.

Legend has it that the two of them (Mabel and Fletcher) were fond of a good martini and would spend many a day in the afternoon garden (which he designed) in a pair of stone chairs (at left in following photo) imbibing and collaborating… eventually they’d come to an agreement on their next project after several martins, and before the day was done Mabel would summon her staff for her checkbook and so began the next project.

Afternoon Garden – this is the first project Steele created at Naumkeag.  The brightly painted Venetian gondola poles around the perimeter of the garden frame views and give the garden a sense of enclosure.  The black obsidian oval within the two scalloped fountains mirror the infinite sky.

Fletcher Steele reclining in stone chair, afternoon garden

As an aside…Choate had originally approached Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to design the master plan. When Olmsted expressed his thoughts that the house should be situated at the bottom of the hill, Choate realized he had approached the wrong designer, as his attraction to this parcel of land was the grand view of the Berkshire Mountains and the valley below from the top of the hill. 

Perugino view – located at the south end of the top lawn, the view was named after the Italian painter Perugino.   The dramatic vista through the gardens and orchard is framed by Monument Mountain.

Of all the grand gestures at Naumkeag, The iconic Blue Steps are perhaps the most celebrated. Simply breathtaking,... every connoisseur of garden design should experience them.  But what I found of special interest are the grand views, the linkage between spaces, the changes of perspective, the intrigue and sensorial journeys you embark upon as you move from one space to the next.

As you leave the Afternoon Garden, you traverse the Pyramid steps down to the Water Runnel or “Rill” which was created to link the fountains of the "Afternoon garden" to "The Blue Steps”

To one’s left is the South lawn where a curving line of Robinia pseudoacacia ‘umbraculifera’ define the west side of the lawn, while along the east side, a double hemlock hedge (Tsuga canadensis) separates the lawn from the driveway above.  The undulating shape of the lawn echoes the shape of the distant mountains.

A cast iron pagoda house is framed by Japanese maples (Acer palmatum), In the first photo of these photos an allee of Linden trees (Tilia occidentalis)  are in the distance, reminiscent of the strolling walks taken in Berlin.

The “Ronde Pointe”-- a low hedge of clipped arborvitae, (Thuja occidentalis) with a long teak bench and intricate patterned brick wall become “a gathering of paths” which lies adjacent to it.

Below the South Lawn is the Oak Lawn, which dominates the terrace.  This tall Oak (Quercus bicolor) that the family would picnic under was one of the primary reasons Joseph Choate purchased this parcel of land.  The vast area and orchards below/beyond the rock outcrops were used as farmland. Crops grown and harvested there supplied the cottage and the New York apartment in off-season.

The Blue Steps,  Rose Garden, Evergreen Garden, Chinese Garden to be continued in my next post…

*unless noted all photos ©ToddHaiman2014

THE EDEN PROJECT

I take an annual excursion to the Chelsea Flower Show as evidenced by my blogging throughout the months of April and May this past year. Lately friends have been asking for my photos and reports on the trip.  So here goes…

In the show garden category there were many thought provoking and stunningly elaborate gardens to speak of, but I’ll highlight the most socially redeeming – “Places of Change”, which was created by the Eden Project (creator of an equally special garden in last year’s show -  “the Key”).  This garden is a collaboration between the Eden Project, Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), Communities and Local Government (CLG), Homeless Link (HL) and approximately 50 homeless charities and eight prisons from across the UK.  The garden was built entirely by homeless persons and prisoners – a social investment program.  According to the Eden Project “The garden presents a series of achievements and aspirations from the people that are least likely to be heard and most likely to surprise us.”  Drawing on Eden’s “Growing for Life Program” --“it demonstrates how horticulture is the the foundation for so many opportunities, for example building skills, providing space for recvery, growing business and adapting to changing and difficult times.” Or as Landscape Manager of the garden Paul Stone puts it—“Eden has a worldwide philosophy of wanting to make people aware of the importance of the relationship between people and plants and the whole thing just ties in together. The overall theme is that horticulture is at the centre of life and from it come all the things we need. We can push that message home by involving the most unlikely candidates: homeless people and prisoners - amateurs who may be in the process of training or work experience – giving them an opportunity. We like to think of our teams as buried treasure, the ones that society tends to give up on, but here they are and I’ve got every reason, especially after last year, to expect just as much from this garden. “

Whereas the rest of the show gardens strive for gold medals, when asked if this is of importance, Landscape Manager Paul Stone responded, “Striving for excellence is the aim, if Gold is part of that then fine. We’re not classic gold medal material - our budget is being spent on people. I could buy lots of fine plants, but what benefit would that have for the people we are trying to help? OK, at the moment we’ve got people we’ve never met, who haven’t grown plants before, growing plants. It’s touch and go, but we are approaching it in a professional way and I expect the result to be comparable to the other gardens.”

Further information can be found on

their blog

. 

My pictures of the garden follow below, but first one of the many videos off their site which fully illustrates the redeeming value of this project.

There were a multitude of elements and areas to this, the largest garden plot at Chelsea.

courtyard

vegetable garden

the wishing tree - write a wish and affix it to the tree

my personal favorite - appliances turned into pots