WHIMSY IN THE GARDEN

Every year at the Chelsea Flower Show there’s always one designer who separates themselves from "the pack" in the design of their garden, perhaps with a bit of whimsy, tongue in cheek or simply just choosing not to take themselves too seriously.

In 2009 there was a magical garden created out of plasticine, designed and organized by James May, which elicited childhood memories of "Play-Doh" and plastic fruit “still-lifes” on dining room tables from the crowd.  It was essentially a sculpted art installation framed in the guise of a mystical secret garden. Dozens of people contributed to this garden, across all strata of British society, from children who never handled the material to war veterans that remember when it was the latest invention to professional model makers.

In 2010, “Welcome to Yorkshire’s Rhubarb Crumble & Custard Garden” (a mouthful in more ways than one), a bowl of Yorkshire rhubarb takes center stage.  Yellow Sedum acre ‘Golden Queen’ symbolizes a generous serving of overflowing custard, and the crumble is represented by a stonewall.  A Yorkshire handcrafted oak spoon doubles as a seat on the stone patio.  Rhubarb forcing pots create focal points. According to the designer, bronze fennel is meant to suggest the brown sugar sprinkled on a crumble.  The idea for this garden was envisioned while the designers were having lunch!

This year I’m looking forward to the Hae-woo-so garden. This garden is inspired by the Korean belief in the cathartic and spiritual experience of using the toilet.  Looking forward to the audience’s and critic's comments.

GARDEN INSPIRATION

Andy Sturgeon, a highly regarded garden designer had won several medals in past years from the Chelsea Flowers Show. Almost a year prior to designing a Chelsea 2010 show, Andy’s life forever changed.

His partner, Sarah Didinal, the mother of his three young boys  - Luke, ten, Cameron, seven, and Tom, five  - had enjoyed Chelsea Flower Show with him.

A week later Andy found her dead in bed. She was only 37, apparently fit and healthy. She died from an irregular heartbeat. Her last post on Twitter read, 'Going to bed happy.'

Andy reflects on the Daily Telegraph, …..'The way I dealt with Sarah's death was by having goals  -  positive things to work towards, that are more about the future than the past, or even the present,' he says.  'This garden has been one of the tools I've used to help me along.”

“I had the germ of the idea when I was on holiday with the children (after Sarah’s death) in Italy last summer, every day looking out at a dry landscape of evergreen oaks and lavender.”

'I never normally design anything so quickly. But I had this idea of screens so I made a scale model and a few walls, which I slid around, and got down to check the views. This design is all about the views.  

It's a metaphor for life. You have choices in the garden  - two different ways to go. Depending upon which path you take  - the direct path or the winding path  - you has different experiences along the way.  

As you journey through life, the screens open up and allow glimpses of what you might have experienced if you'd taken another path, but you end up at the same destination."

As a visitor walks around the edge of the garden they also discover ever-changing views.  Three runs of Cor-ten steel subdivide and frame the garden.  Three edifices of Purbeck stone walling add to the suggestion of an enclosed courtyard, while maintaining a sense of openness and space. The contemporary gravel garden has open clearings of sparsely planted gravel, which provide places to pause on a journey that culminates in a courtyard at the rear.  A stately Cork Oak (that he searched extensively to find) and the sound of running water combine to create a contemplative retreat. 

 Let Andy take you on a tour of his garden.

Find plant information here:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01645/telegraph-garden-g_1645484a.

CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW

Queen Mary (in white) viewing the Chelsea show

As written in past years, I have an annual pilgrimage during the third week of May "across the Pond" to the Chelsea Flower Show in London. Here is a bit of context and history about what is referred to as "the Great Spring show.

England had been compared to a garden since at least the time of Shakespeare. This metaphor took on particular significance in the Victorian Era as it infiltrated visual, literary, and everyday culture in England.  The garden came to represent two things for the English in the Victorian era: home in the face of a massive Empire, and stability in the face of industrialization and a perceived disintegration of society.

English citizens were spread across the globe, (see past post on Rudyard Kipling) and began to seek a symbol that would unify those at home, and that would serve as a memory of home for those in their colonies.  This image was particularly significant during the Victorian Era as England expanded her empire and influence across the globe.  

The English landscape garden is considered by some cultural historians England's most compelling contribution to the visual arts. During the eighteenth century, as England struggled to develop a national identity, the landscape garden was a continual source of pride to landowners, artists, poets and gardeners alike. Botanical Gardens were established in most major towns and many royal estates were opened to the public.

London Bobby (policeman) admiring floral displays

 Women in 1940's reading the show's catalog

It is in the next generation, between the wars, that the English become routinely described--by themselves and by other Europeans--as "a nation of gardeners."  This extended to middle- and lower-middle-class suburbanites, whose terraced and semi-detached houses and gardens offered certain elements in common with the grander country houses of the elitist classes.

The show, which ultimately grew out of this “religious zeal” was organized by the Royal Horticultural Society and has been a staple of the British social and cultural scene for nearly 150 years. This annual spring festival is held for five days each May and features designed gardens, a large variety of exotic plants and all the accoutrements, trappings and revelry of a great fair. The event is held on the grounds of London's Royal Hospital, and it is perhaps the most celebrated show of it’s kind.

Crowds in 1950 swarming the show

“In 1862, London's Royal Horticultural Society held its first Great Spring Show. The show was held in Kensington and featured an array of exotic plant species from around the world. Each year until 1888, the RHS continued with this annual event, gradually building up a loyal audience. In 1913 they decided to use the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, which had hosted several successful rose exhibitions. The show at the Royal Hospital became known as the Chelsea Flower Show, though it is still officially named the Great Spring Show. From 1913 through 1916, the fair enjoyed unprecedented success. By 1917, World War I had devastated much of the region, and the fair was canceled for two years. In the 1920s, London's royal family began to visit the fair each year, starting a new tradition that continues to this day. Also during this time, the Chelsea tea parties began. These parties take place during the show and are a major draw for Britain's social and political leaders. The show was canceled again for several years during World War II. In 1947, though crops and supplies were limited, the Chelsea Flower Show was held as scheduled, and it became a symbol of the country's strength and determination to rebuild. By 1979, the show was so popular that crowds began to overwhelm the limited space. Throughout the next few years, ticket limits were set and attendance was restricted to help prevent injuries to attendees. Despite ticket limits, crowds continued to overwhelm the show until 1993, when parts of the show were relocated to other venues. Today, more than 150,000 visitors attend the show each year. All attendees must purchase tickets in advance, and the show holds an annual preview day specifically for the royal family and other honored guests. The BBC shows much of the event on television each year, to allow those who can't get tickets to take part in the experience. The Chelsea Flower Show is considered a place to spot the latest trends in floral and horticultural design, and it is eagerly attended by industry professionals and garden enthusiasts from around the world.”

1

previous five images of celebrities from bigpictures.com

1 -reprinted from RHS Show catalog

LANDSCAPE EDGES

Edges in landscape are everywhere,.. overly common, yet at times incidental.  Each landscape space offers different programming, functions or physical characteristics. At the boundary of each space is an edge...these are the transitional spaces from one landscape or space to the next (i.e.: the entrance into a city park, the bridge to a connecting highway, the riparian zone linking biota).

Landscape edges are transitional linear places where one space or landscape becomes part of another. Often neglected in design, edges are considered primary structural components of landscapes because of their integration and social functions.1  They offer not only physical change, but emotional and psychological transitions as well.

Edges can be where the picturesque meets the pastoral, built meets unbuilt, city meets country. Woodlands edges, wetlands, beach fronts are considered strong edges, and can also be referred to as "ecotones" - physical transition zones between two ecological systems.  These edges and corridors strongly influence landscape biodiversity, and in many situations when designing them -- the suggestion is that the "lightest hand" is the hand that designs best.

 Delphi Theatre/ toursofathens.com

Some edges are purely physical (a building meeting terra firma) while others are visual and symbolic (earth or sea meeting sky). Some edges are abrupt while others are smoothly drawn out and richly complex (i.e.: a woodland edge, a waterfront).

New Jersey Meadowlands/flicker.com

As an urban dweller, I am most cognizant of the juxtaposition between two systems that are forced to co-exist within a city- the built form and the natural form.  John Motloch, speaks of the "dynamic nature of natural systems versus the static nature of architecture." Natural systems are point-in-time expressions of ongoing environmental processes: site and living organisms continually experience change.  Conversely, architecture consists of relatively static elements.  Architecture changes little over time. Buildings do change expression - from transparent, to reflective, to opaque - from day to night. Plant materials, on the other hand are living organisms and mature over time.  Even senility in the landscape can be one of the most sensual aspects of landscape design."2

Within these edges are "thresholds"*, uniquely centered entities within the linear form of an edge.  The Collins English Dictionary defines threshold as “the starting point of an experience, event or venture; a psychological point at which something would happen or would cease to happen, or stimuli would take effect.” 

These thresholds provide tremendous opportunities for designers to create gateways within them and experiential transitions within that journey.  "A gateway denotes a threshold, a place of passage, a garden gate that opens and closes, a bridge point of entry into a city, a harbor of access to some hinterland. A gateway can have many forms, a literal gate, an avenue of trees, an entrance into a building... yet they all have the same function --to mark the point where a path crosses a boundary and help maintain the boundary.  All of them are 'things' - not merely holes or gaps, but solid entities.  In every case, the crucial feeling this solid thing must create is the feeling of transition."3

Central Park, lookout point as a threshold

Saarinen's Gateway Arch.  

St. Louis on the edge of the Mississippi River is known as the "Gateway to the West"

Edges are also topographic.  Perhaps simple and smooth with gradients and rhythmic sequences or textural and rugged, spurred, ditched and jagged, natural or built with sub-spaces or steps.  Of particular note on a grand scale is the Isthmus of Panama - a narrow strip of land where geological tectonic plates meet, the landscape changes often and dramatically.  It became a major inspiration for Frederick Law Olmsted in developing an aesthetic for public parks as he crossed it in 1863.

1. Form and Fabric in Landscape Architecture; Catherine Dee.

2. Introduction to Landscape Design; John Motloch

3. A Pattern Language: Alexander/Ishikawa/Silverstein.

OBLITERATED LANDSCAPE

In sorrowful images and video the world watches a landscape obliterated, the health and well being of Japan and its citizens in peril. 

The images above were acquired by the German Optical RapidEye and radar TerraSAR-X satellites. They show Torinoumi on the eastern coast of Japan before the disaster on 5 September 2010 and after the tsunami on 12 March 2011. The German Aerospace Center, DLR, is responding to the disaster through its Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information, ZKI, to provide information for the International Charter. Credits: RapidEye AG, DLR, Google Earth. Map produced by ZKI

The map above shows a comparison of RapidEye pre-disaster data acquired on 5 September 2010 and post-disaster data acquired on 12 March 2011. The images focus on the city of Soma and the surrounding region, which was badly affected by the tsunami. Credits: RapidEye AG, DLR, Google Earth. Map produced by ZKI

One thought that resonated for me as I am bombarded with this imagery of an altered landscape are films I watched years ago as a teenager.

The atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in 1945. As Japan rebuilt itself afterwards as a nation it carried the scars of the past war. Japanese filmmaker Ishiro Honda and Toho embodied the nation’s psyche and culture within the Godzilla (monster/sci-fi) genre of films. The original Gojira, (Godzilla) was a very serious, dark film created in 1952.  (The re-edited Americanized version in 1954 still held a cautionary tale, but others that followed seemed to lose the original message.) This film spoke to the potential casualties of playing with nuclear fission, the havoc that could be wrought, an allegory for the anxiety held by a country and a foreboding message to future generations.  The film ends with a thoughtful massage and prayer.  So, again.

OLMSTED LEGACY

Born in Hartford, Connecticut and raised by his father, unable to attend Yale College because his eyesight had weakened due to sumac poisoning, Frederick Law Olmsted sailed off to China where he returned a year later with scurvy.  After recovering, he set out his hand at farming on Staten Island, failing miserably to profit from his land holdings.  Next he embarked for England and Wales with his brother whereupon they encountered magnificent estates, parks and rural scenery.  Such was the indication of things to come.  Most influential in his journeys were Joseph Paxton’s design for Birkenhead.

Paxton sought to bring the grandeur of the aristocratic garden to the working people of Birkenhead. The park was a declaration of civic pride to nearby Liverpool and an attempt to tempt wealthy taxpayers to either build or purchase homes in Birkenhead. It is widely believed to be the first civic park in Britain, but more importantly within this context it provide the inspiration and template for Olmsted (and Calvert Vaux's) work.  Olmsted wrote "

"five minutes of admiration, and a few more spent studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty, and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this People’s Garden"."

 Illustration and photograph of  Birkenhead Park (youyesterday.com/flicker.com)

“Olmsted was much impressed with the meandering footpaths and open meadows spangled with rocks and scattered trees. He wondered how cleverly "art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty." And wonder of wonders, this was not just a sanctum for some noble lord but a park open to the public, a park for people of all stations in life. In all the cities of democratic America, he had to admit, there was nothing quite like it. Not yet, anyway.” National Geographic Magazine, March 2005.

Illustration of Central Park/Bethesda Terrace and fountain

Much has been written on Olmsted’s intriguing life, including the most recent bestseller “A Clearing in the Distance”by Witold Rybczynski.  Thanks to the efforts of the Olmsted Legacy a film that was initially screened last year at select locations will now be coming to public television.

The Olmsted Legacy, with its name slightly tweaked to "Olmsted and America's Urban Parks" was aired appropriately on PBS for Earth Day, April 20th.

WILLIAM GILPIN AND THE PICTURESQUE

An aesthetic revolution that occurred in Britain in the eighteenth century revolved around several main theories, but the most important theory that applied to landscape was that of “the Picturesque”, most often associated with the writings of William Gilpin.

Originally an ordained minister in the Church of England, he began writing these popular treatises as a means to raise funds for his school. 

The picturesque emphasized roughness over smoothness, boldness over elegance, and variety over uniformity. These concepts were initially influential in painting and then to landscape design.

Gilpin’s defining ideas influenced friends such as Horace Walpole and the royal family, including King George.  While the wealthy could afford to indulge themselves with the Grand Tour (the traditional travel of Europe undertaken by upper-class European society), appreciating and purchasing great paintings and ultimately contracting landscape designers such as Lancelot “Capability” Brown and Humphrey Repton, Gilpin was instrumental in influencing the rising upper-middle, the minor gentry and tradesmen.  By leading tours through the countryside and publishing aquatint landscape prints he created an aristocratic taste level among the rest of the public.

anonymous engraving, Ackerman's Repository of Arts, The Strand 1809

 Edward Austen (Jane's brother) on the Grand Tour unknown creator, the Jane Austen trust

His concept of "the Picturesque," which first appeared in the Essay on Prints as an additional concept to "sublime" and "beautiful," was intended to formulate an appreciation for landscape in the paintings of Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorrain.  

Essay II: On Picturesque Travel is a manual for appreciating travel and sketching the landscape as a way to preserve the beauty in one’s mind.

Lorrain: The Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, 1660

Meanwhile, Jane Austin’s novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,

Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Emma) used the picturesque as a backdrop. While a fan of her writings illuminated his concepts to a larger audience, although at time it has been suggested that she satirized him. 

Throughout each of these novels the landscape holds a defining and center-stage role.   Her heroines are brought up in well-established homes and were receptive to the matters and opinions of current taste. Her novels reflect the social and landscape history of England.  

Her novels assimilate and promote the ideals of Gilpin, yet also satirize them.  In one of Gilpin’s publications he provided instructions for the groupings of cows in a pasture – “to unite three and remove the fourth.” Many landscape painters followed suit.  But, in Pride and Prejudice, one character refuses to join in a stroll with the teasing observation, "You are charmingly group'd, and...The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth."

William Gilpin illustrations of how to group cows Bodelian Library In Sense and Sensibility, one character is dismayed that another is apparently ignorant on picturesque theory and promptly instructs him… “ I shall call the hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged: and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the sift medium of a hazy atmosphere. It unites beauty and utility – and I dare say it is a picturesque one too.”   When Elinor Dashwood teases her sister about her passion for “dead leaves” she responds by reminding Elinor that it is her appreciation of the picturesque.

Humphrey Repton, General View of Longleat, Stapelton Collection

Thomas Cole (Hudson River School), The Garden of Eden 1828  wikimedia commons

FOUNTAINS

Once upon a time it became the fancy for many of the ruling class in Europe to include concealed fountains, controllable at a distance in their ornamental gardens.  Seats became flooded, grottoes became showers, trees sprouted a shower of water, water jets would spring up under ladies dresses and statues would spray passing visitors from their body parts… including (the statues’) private parts. These amusing “joke fountains” were used to provide entertainment for the visitors and guests at significant estates and castles.

Water had originally been used in Rome within sculpture as a way to animate these allegorical figures. This evolved as fountains created in medieval times (overflows from spring-heads) were in the shape of an animal heads spouting water. (Windsor Castle had a stone fountain on its grounds in the mid 1200’s). A popular feature of the Italian Renaissance garden (including

Villa d’Este

) was these hidden fountains, which could be turned on to drench unsuspecting visitors.

Among the fountains of

Peterhoff Palace

, one of Russia’s most famous tourist attractions a joke fountain was constructed -- one which sprays passers-by who step on a particular paving stone. The Palace is sometimes referred to as the Russian Versailles, built and primarily designed by Peter the Great, beginning in 1714. Peter had visited the Garden of Versailles and had been so impressed by the fountains there that he was inspired to make the fountains in the same cascading style.  Subsequent Russian rulers and regimes had augmented it up until the Second World War when the German Army essentially destroyed it. Thankfully, restoration work began immediately after the war, and continues today where it has become a UNESCO World heritage site.

The Bench Fountain - walking on the cobblestones initiates the spray of water

images: flicker.com

The water for the Peterhoff fountains is drawn from springs and aqueducts at a higher elevation, thereby creating the technological achievement of eliminating the need for pumps by the use of a gravity fed system!  All the fountains run simultaneously. As a contrast… there were so many fountains at Versailles that it was impossible to have them all running at once; when Louis XIV made his promenades, his fountain-tenders turned on the fountains ahead of him and turned off those behind him. “Louis built an enormous pumping station, the Machine de Marly, with fourteen water wheels and 253 pumps to raise the water three hundred feet from the River Seine, and even attempted to divert the River Éire to provide water for his fountains, but the water supply was never enough.”1

Young Princess Victoria, who was to become Queen of England, was particularly fond of the artificial willow tree at

Chatsworth

Gardens, originally created by William Cavendish in 1693. Cavendish hired Grillet, a pupil of

Andre LeNotre

to design it.  It was composed of 8,000 pieces of copper and brass and had 800 jets of water hidden in the branches and leaves. Supposedly, it would spurt into life squirting water from every branch and leaf over the unsuspecting passer-by. To be soaked to the skin in the early 1700s was generally no laughing matter, as fine clothes were very expensive and not usually washable.

Spouting Willow 

image:www.linklux.com/rosemaryvereyfavourites.htm

Was that anyway to treat your guests?

1.

Robert W. Berger, The Chateau of Louis XIV, University Park, PA. 1985, and Gerald van der Kemp, Versailles, New York, 1978

HERBERT BAYER

''I believe that the artist must achieve creative control over the whole of his environment.''- New York Times, October 21, 1984

Herbert Bayer was intimately involved in the celebrated Bauhaus school in Germany in the 1920s and 30s: first as a student, and then as one of its directors. He emigrated to the United States in 1938. As an advocate of Bauhaus principles he produced works which expressed the needs of an industrial age, the positive collaboration between business and art, mirroring the advanced tendencies of the avant-garde.

typography by Herbert Bayer, entrance to Bauhaus    image: Wikipedia

The Bauhaus was based on the principles of the 19th-century English designer William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement that spoke of art meeting the needs of society and that no distinction should be made between fine arts and practical crafts. It was also dependent on the more forward-looking principles that modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influences of the modern industrial world and that good designs must pass the test of both aesthetic standards and sound engineering. This Bauhaus style, could also be described as the absence of ornament and ostentatious facades and by a harmony between function and the artistic and technical means employed.

For over 60 years Bayer created pioneering works in painting, sculpture, environmental works, industrial design, typography, architecture, photography, and applied design.  He was truly what can be referred to as “a renaissance man,” one of the few "total artists" of the twentieth century. 

"Metamophosis"1936 photographic montage (image: metmuseum.org)

Marble Garden, 1955 - Aspen Meadows Hotel

In this experimental garden, Bayer introduced modernist imagery into the environment for perhaps the first time. Slabs and blocks of white marble were sourced from a nearby abandoned quarry for this thirty-eight foot square experimental garden that begins to suggests the notion that all gardens are nothing more than three dimensional sculpture. The "Grass Mound" (1955), came to inspire a whole generation of earthworks artists and initiated the ground for ecological design and restoration projects of today.

Sketches for earthworks by Bayer...

Installed in 1982, the "Earthworks" was hyped for its fusion of art and infrastructure, making the installation a powerful precedent for landscape designers, architects, engineers and artists.  A series of sculpted spaces that feel both ancient and modern, the Earthworks’ pure forms of geometry -- cones, circles, lines and berms—are built into the alluvial delta at the mouth of Mill Creek Canyon. Grass and concrete, a wood bridge and steps: these are the materials at work, joined by the natural forces of Mill Creek itself.  According to Landscape Architecture magazine, "the city of Kent, Washington,  through its Arts Commission and Parks and Recreation Department, commissioned this project as a solution to urban stormwater runoff and its resultant soil erosion problems. The environmental artwork was a means of enlivening the plans for a proposed stormwater detention basin and creating an unusual entrance to an existing public park. The city's goals were to control flooding, to restore fish runs, and to create an aesthetically pleasing facility that would contribute to enhancing the park."

Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks 1982 (image: landscapemodeling.org)

previous images: flicker.com

Photo by John Hoge and Nancy Leahy

"Layered Landscape" 1944 gouache on paper (image: aspen journal)

In his commercial graphic design work, he was an advocate of social responsibility in design – products or services that promote positive ideas and behaviors while promoting the company. In 1941, the Container Corporation which produced 90 percent to 95 percent of its cardboard from wastepaper hired Bayer to oversee a series of posters promoting the companies ability to recycle products on a grand scale, linking corporate responsibility with the environment.  

Subsequently, Bayer also oversaw another series of posters linking entitled "Great Ideas of Western Man".

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life."--Theodore Roosevelt. 

From the series Great Ideas of Western Man. 1959 Herbert Bayer 

“In a response to the Earth Day of 1970, the Container Corporation announced a design competition for a trademark for recycling in the spirit of Bayer. The competition was won by a student at the University of Southern California presenting the symbol at the Design Conference in Aspen (Figure 7).87 Now universally known, its history goes back to the Bauhaus ideal for living in harmony with the natural world.”

-Environmental History, Peter Anker  April 2007

original design for recycling (image" wikipedia)