Monthly Archives: October 2008

Planting Designs In Landscapes – My Little Anarchy

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In so many of my designs, I subscribe to a sort of anarchy, I admit. I am a craven lover of color and spice in an outdoor environment and many decisions I make regarding a landscape often take place at a nursery and revolve around what is available at the time. This would be bad if there were some limited supply of plants. However, lol, that is not the case. My primary worry is often how to stay within my own budget! I find spending money on others, in this sense, to be absolutely and totally recklessly fun. This fact has gotten me very “chewed out”, by everyone but the fortunate homeowners who I inflict my addiction to pretty plants on.

Obviously, I have some friends out there!!! I exaggerate here, obviously, and even while there is more than a smidgen of truth to it, if I lost money somewhere, it was long before the plant choices. Anyway, so I admit to some impulsiveness while implementing my designs. Please know, however, that the choices do have some basis in experience with installing landscapes by some excellent and even well-known landscape architects. It was these people from whom I learned the basics.

The above picture, for example, was done with seasonal aspects borne in mind. The Fall colors of this design are only beginning in that shot and deepened with pure color – some really dazzling stuff – all red, orange and yellow to the max. Needless to say, the Spring and Summer colors – with my emphasis on perennials – also shone well. I also include Winters in my landscapes. I use evergreen conifers, pines and broadleaf plants as extensively as possible.

So my real bias is towards “splashes” of color, interspersed with more permanent grounding in the sense of solidity, which I believe “anchor plants” supply – shrubs, trees, even ground covers – that maintain a fastened-down look and structural element of permanence. I also use rocks and art features as equally permanent and which supply that same solidity.

Now, there are other ways to achieve a beautiful landscape – far less riotous and anarchistic as some of these examples of mine. Mass Planting, for example, is a concept I actually like very much and which I actually implement when given a large enough area. Here, for example, is mass planting in the form of trees, a grove of Shirotae Cherries we planted, believe it or not, over an underground parking garage:

Every plant and tree shown in the picture below we actually planted ourselves, maybe 2 weeks to one month prior to this picture. Their huge size made it much easier to “mass plant” inasmuch as so few took up so much space. Nevertheless, they still give the desired effect: a permanent and uni-colored structural base to the looser items which were eventually planted below them. This particular area, looked at from the rear like this, was also strictly mass-planted from this angle. The front was somewhat wilder, containing a waterfall and numerous swaths of perennials and grasses.

Below: Here’s a look from the front, just prior to the placement of all the color I am tempting you to imagine, lol. Dam…….I just found I don’t have those pictures on this computer, so use your imagination. It’s sure purty! Trust me! 😉   The waterfall here, by the way, goes two ways. You can see the falls (barely) on either side as they come down the little rise there……enlarge it.

Anyway, I love points of interest and lots of varying color, all the way through the year.

I just think we all want to enjoy it as it develops as much as when it sits still!

Portland Oregon Japanese Garden – Final Thoughts

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There is a rough simplicity to this Japanese Garden which belies its age. The steps seen below could have been installed centuries ago and they do indeed represent what is often seen in the most authentic Japanese Gardens in Japan. There is this primitive element that makes it that much more entrancing – a combination of complexity, human creativity and an admixture in all the elements as well of utter simplicity. The dialog never ends at a good Japanese Garden.

(all pictures enlarge on clicking)

Lines such as these below show the superiority of clean lines in garden design performing a good head-clearing function. Once again, simplicity vies with heavy thought for the most outstanding feature and neither wins the battle. That they can coexist so intrinsically inside of one design is a sign of perfection – or as close as man can get to it. These two entryways to homes plead with us to relax as we enter. Small in size, they are also universal in scope. Simple messages redound, allowing all of our thoughts some pleasant room and a very human and gentle tolerance.

Some of the minor features here appeal to this landscaper and designer. Something as simple as this rock edge, separating a path from the vegetation are done in a very tight and artistic manner and in a unique way.

Indeed, some of the pathways here are fabulously interesting while maintaining that same sense of simplicity spoken of above. These rocks are varied in size, yet they mesh perfectly in a primitive, yet appealing and very artistic way. They are just rocks but obviously something more.

This mix of human and natural make for a true sort of spiritually-enhancing amble along paths and into vistas that take us from our normal daily existence and insert us into a real sense of history. Of course, they also take us into good old fashioned gardening love. I just like the way the Japanese have done these things and I feel that Portland’s Japanese Garden is truly representative of this ancient art.

Here are some looks at a rather primitive-appearing arbor with a massive Wisteria Vine crawling all over it. It offers a vista much along the Chinese lines of Fung Shui, giving us some goodies through the portal leading elegantly and effortlessly to the next great thing. On closer inspection, I think you can see why I so appreciate the sense of “Ancientness” – for lack of a better term – as we look closer at this arbor:

All in all, the construction of this Garden I feel is a sort of Masterpiece. As the lad at the entry was effusive in reminding me: “This garden was rated the 6th best Japanese Garden in the world!” In my travels to Japan and Vancouver – which also has a very cool Japanese Garden – I have seen more than 6. I know there are hundreds. Such a seeming stretch for relevance turns out to me to be quite a statement for the knowledgeable fan. If it is indeed the 6th best in the world, that is huge. I have no trouble admiring the work and I happen to think it is somewhere a bit beyond “world class”.

This one is plain ‘special’.

Here are the remaining pictures from my camera that day. Too bad I am not there now, because the seasons are just now changing – another creative elemental ‘capture’ made by this gorgeous place which has its highlights for every season.

Here is a wall I really liked, an incidental piece but illustrative, in my opinion, of the craftsmanship applied to the smallest details here:

A pond I omitted earlier:

This bit of wildness within the garden is close to the above small pond. It gives the most naturalistic forest sense,  yet I couldn’t help but feel it was a part of the construction:

Yet another waterfall, towards the wilder area mentioned above:

On the periphery of the garden – a blending of human and Nature as the garden gives way to it.

Another look – back – at the human elements. A gorgeous still pond:

I really, really loved this lantern:

And this one too. Imagine their being lit for passage at night.

Pretty hard not to like these: (more random pictures)

My personal favorites!  Thanks, for visiting!

Natural Oregon- Silver Falls

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I decided on a small change of pace and will get back to the Japanese Garden later. The rains have sort of essentially “begun” up here in the North West, which means we have about 70% of our future 6 months spent with days involving at least a little rainfall. Some days……………a LOT of rainfall.  Depending on your perspective, now, this can be refreshing – Lord, the air is truly clear and pretty magnificent, the truth is. It would be hard to find cleaner air anywhere or as full of oxygen and good ole Ozone. But it also makes for some amazing natural spectacles – read waterfalls.

(These pictures enlarge when clicked on. Please do so.)

This one, notice, has a walkway behind the falls. In fact, where this picture is taken approaches that walkway as the railing indicates. It’s something else entirely, walking behind a waterfall like this. In the Summer, it is one of the coolest spots around because the spray is pretty unavoidable. The sheer volume of water and the rushing and monstrous sounds are silencing to the senses and you just sit in a sort of wonder – or, of course, scream in conversation with your companions.

Here is the view from behind the falls. “What?” “Huh?”

And this is what it looks like down below. This is Silver Falls, and this waterfall is just the most famous of a series of 10 other falls in the same park, all cascades deriving from an obvious decrease in geological altitude and all following the same river from the mountains, down towards the Willamette Valley leading to the the Willamette River. It is a stunning sort of discovery, frankly, and it will rivet itself in the mental images and memories of just about everyone who ever visits it. Breathtaking in scope, it has a variety of angles to appreciate it, including the very top. Maybe especially the very top. Here it is:

Not bad, eh?  But this is a hint, not the best yet. This view is alongside it on one of the paths that wind down to the walk beneath the falls. This is the real top:

Dizzy yet?

And this:

I say “Let it rain”, when I see stuff like this and I do make sure I make these trips. They are refreshing, peaceful and awe-inspiring and make life in Oregon sometimes simple genius for the mere fact of living out here. Oh – and this is about an hour outside of Portland, easy to find along some winding country roads which are peaceful in their own right. The numbers of seed grass farms is astounding, en route. It seems to be where Oregon gets its reputation as a real grass seed capital. Huge open fields of green, green grass open up these marvelous vista with Mount Hood often in the view, towering up in its volcanic snow-topped cone like a Mount Fuji – or an ice cream cone for those of us who like food analogies.

My friend Paul and I took all this in one afternoon last year when I got these pictures. I’ll go ahead and show us both with the warning that he is just not too good looking. But the dude sure cooks well! (You know how these ex-footballers are. Paul played college football as a mere 300 pound offensive tackle, lol, being about 6′ 5″ tall (2 meters for you others). And, no, he does not go online, for those who might develop fears for my safety!). Paul also happens to be one of my favorite guys ever. He landscaped with me for a decade, so I know him a little. And, yeah, he is the human equivalent of a backhoe. 😉

Here’s yours truly, with Paul’s able camera assistance, wearing my ever-present Louisville Cardinals hat:

It was a good day. Here are more shots, all of Silver Falls. Oh, that same day we toured closer to Portland. In fact, we traveled up The Gorge (the Columbia River Gorge), a severely sloped valley where the Columbia River passes through whose sheer sides make even more waterfalls, almost all of which are higher and carry as much if not more water than this. They will comprise another post soon. For now, here are some more shots of the absolutely refreshing and stunning Silver Falls, one of my favorite places on Earth:

Feels like a Mohican! This view always reminds me of the movie “The Last Of The Mohicans.”

OK, on, now:

And  bow to Mount Hood: ( a Summer view)’

Portland, Oregon Japanese Garden – The Man Made Parts

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This is a trip through a less naturalistic and more man-made aspect of the Japanese Garden. That is not to say there is no Naturalism. Far from it. It is always that interplay, in fact, that seems to be evoked in any Japanese Garden and it is the gift they supply us as we walk through them.

The trip around the Japanese Garden is a marvel of tightly-controlled randomness, a weird sort of dialectic speaking of the tension of Nature and man coexisting in a common theme – the enhancement of each. Man shows Nature off here. We see the incredible beauty of the Koi, colorful, gorgeous and sinewy, swimming lazily in still water ponds.

We look at the pruned wonder of a Japanese Black Pine tree, its branching looking wild and anarchistic, yet controlled somehow all the same, driven by man’s hand to display features which we once just potentials, now gorgeous like some work of art.

The natural wonders of the plants and animals all arranged in successive steps unfolding in front of us then yields to those constructions which are even more challenging to the eye: the strictly man made constructions.

There are two exceptional garden pieces composed of white granite bits – resembling sand almost, or even water – which pose this stunning sort of stark foreground for a very limited display of natural products. The top picture shows the upright “Shibumi” rock, arresting in its solitude and quite interesting as a natural shape. Its naturalness is sort of undone by its obvious human placement but its antiquity and timelessness represents the natural world without further explanation. The chances are great the rock is a billion years old. Its preciousness is secured by its loneliness as the sole representative of Time itself. The smaller rocks arranged around it represent a nearly social grouping, separated by the raked surface which most represents water, ironically, and the shimmering effects always revealed when touched no matter how lightly. The minimalism of these characteristics speaks unheard volumes in explaining the ripples of Time and Cause and Effect, connected as they are by a human rake and shovel. It proves that tension is evocative.

The garden below is a personal favorite part of the Garden.This one has a different purpose from the tight, tense placidity of the ones above. This one’s purpose is similar in that the foreground of the white granite pebbles gives an almost liquid serenity. The sole raked beam, coursing through it in a curving and sensuous manner gives us that hint of humanity and the grace of artistic human forms, but it does not intrude on the clarity of the vista the entire complex gives. Here we have the openness of a clearing where the distance seems farther than it is. The optical illusion is effective. It is as if the forces aggregated across the still surface pile up in their diversity, and form a nice crowd of potential friends and enemies.

The plants around this garden actually hide it well, which adds to the sense of solitude and discovery when one encounters it. I mean, it’s a huge area.  But who knew??  I absolutely love that idea, as well as the rest of it. It seems we are offered solitude at almost every turn in this delightful garden.

Meanwhile, other man made articles pop out at us from surprising spots as we walk. The Japanese and Chinese both love etching their comments on gorgeous natural stones, arranging them in artistic and very appealing ways.

The commentary is typically minimalistic and in poetics, describing the wonder and mystery of all things. Meanwhile, other rocks are placed simply and starkly, features of their own, giving us a glimpse at the unchanging character of Nature and her Timelessness. They stick out like small explanation points, highlighting Nature’s beauty of form and the randomness of beauty itself, if only we have the ability to see it.

This Garden is so representative of the Japanese Art of Gardening it is actually somewhat astounding in its purity. This was the first of many trips for me to this gorgeous spot. It will definitely be a highlight for visiting friends and family, much the same as the Portland Chinese Garden where I actually played an active role in its construction, as seen and explained in this blog elsewhere.

Nor am I done. Next, I will address yet more man-made aspects of the garden, this time taking a look at the sculptures and artwork, including the constructions of the garden gates and arbors.