Landscaping addresses the out of doors. It’s true purpose, dating back literally thousands of years, is to provide an interpretive canvas of beauty and form to allow a human to appreciate the combination of Nature and man’s own work. In my experience, landscaping occurs in two precincts:
1.In the towns and social structures we circulate in. Cities have gloried in gorgeous landscapes from Babylon and before that, to Central Park in New York City. It seems Mankind consistently desires something objective and pleasing amid the social whirl. The fountains of Rome and the fabulously whimsical park of Barcelona designed by Antonio Gaudi prove this utter need in a faultlessly direct manner. Chinese Gardens predate European constructions by, literally, thousands of years, providing a canal city likeZuchou whose Vienna-like canals and garden were constructed some 2,500 years ago. This town was constructed with the express purpose of being that “Garden City”.
We look at cities like Toronto, Canada and wonder what they can accomplish in all the cold winter weather and, yet, we see huge efforts by Canadians to please the eye. This plaza was designed as a wave-like sound scape, a computer-interpreted visual representation of music for those strolling there towards events in their downtown Music Center.
Got Gaudi?
This is landscaping at it’s highest development – a unique brand of expression occupying enormous swaths of our social infrastructure whose purpose is simply nothing more than to please the eye and to provide a pleasant and sometimes- interesting place to meet and enjoy life. This simplicity of experience cannot be overstated. In all our modern angst over events political and personal, there remains these monuments to our common need to enjoy ourselves and experience the positive aspects of growing nature and of man’s innate creativity.
The designers and the installers of landscapes believe in this notion. From city planning on the most massive scale, to a homeowner who wants to enjoy his home far from the madding crowd, landscaping provides a release of the troubled mind – its purpose from the get go. I must also admit that it becomes most obvious that our “modern angst” is nothing new. Pleasure has always served as the antidote to pain. The fabulous cathedrals of Europe were constructed during The Plague and during endless warfare. They gave people hope in a vicious world. The dialogue of landscaping is still working on this antipodal level.
2. The Home
Among the first celebrations of a culture who reach a certain level of prosperity has always been the construction of gardens and natural wonders of landscaping. Recent developments have made far more common a more local urge – to decorate our homes. The American Prosperity of the last Century has made a virtual “Every home a castle”, in strict economic terms. It has developed home ownership into a massive project – from gardening to landscaping – by paying far more attention to how we present ourselves (Front Yard Landscaping, driveways and the likes) to how we relax, out in the back yard. Patios, gazebos, garden structures, night lighting, waterfalls and swimming pools have changed the once-utilitarian abodes from a place to sleep to something more. It has also unleashed the creative juices of landscape and garden designers who have provided absolutely breath-taking scenes of utterly private beauty and sometimes strangeness.
Illuminating the night, we find our spaces expanded outdoors, providing virtual “rooms” which proscribe our patios and outdoor environments, and adding depth and mystery to the foregrounds.
The introduction of water is always a thrill as so many folks have opted to see and listen to the pleasant and encompassing sounds of water in their back yards.
Landscaping is succeeding at its primary goal. More and more people are aware of the healthful impact of a rested and relaxed mind, to say nothing of the microclimatic changes a small patch of land can yield around a house. Counter-designed landscapes providing abundant exchanges of healthy gases and moisture are a side benfit and among the more surprising effects that the study of plants and their impact on human beings can yield.
Landscaping is a total field. The elements in any landscape – at their best – include a myriad of trades and diverse levels of expertise, from electrical issues and plumbing to issues involving soil and bacteriology. For a member of the community devoted to providing all this to a client, I have to say that is has always been a learning journey, from the very start to every single day that passes yet. The thrilling accomplishments of those devoted to the landscaping field can take the breath away – and they mean to do just that.
OK. How many readers know of this artist? I’m thinking not many, which is almost too bad.
Me likey Laurie.
Besides, this is my blog. I’m issuing orders in here. No gardening today. Take a few and relax with this odd bird.
She’s still performing, actually. It turns out she was in Tel Aviv this past Summer, touring with Lou Reed. Laurie Anderson was the Underground’s Underground Queen during the 80′s and 90′s. Sometimes obscure, always challenging, she was a performance artist in New York City, operating very much in the background of popular music – a place she essentially stayed for, well, pretty much ever. But she has attracted a wide range of co-performers, from William Burroughs to David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Brian Eno.
I always saw a love of music and beauty in her work, intermixed with challenging modern images. She is lyrical as she can be, melodic to the max, with just a few bumps along the road. Unconventional, gorgeous to look at as a young artist with no cares and extremely talented, Laurie Anderson will delight and make you think at the same time.
When music all seems to be boxed up in prepared ways, it’s refreshing to see naked talent, playing around on the edges of propriety and convention. We need people like Laurie Anderson, whether we like it – or know it – or not. Here’s “Gravity’s Angel”:
I have found the design and installation of patios to be one of the more challenging and rewarding aspects of landscaping. Designed to provide privacy, intimacy and beauty, there are few more delightful presences in a landscape than a well-conceived patio. Few items in any landscape carry such personal impact and complexity. When one considers the amount of time homeowners might find themselves spending outdoors – and, let’s be clear – many of these folks have literally never faced that choice before, it becomes a “dream landscape” for their very home and life and therefore more than a bit special. Many of these folks are newly-retired or will be, many are younger folks than that, but who have dreamed of a garden and wondrous patio and back yard. But the majority I have worked with – with some billionaire exceptions – are “just folks” who have achieved much.
I always depend on some feedback in design, is what I am saying. Asking clients what they really want is the shortest line to satisfaction. Interpretation is huge, also, so I always try and mine the wealth of ideas of the person paying the bill. In the end, once a design is close to completed, there is another factor as well………. I literally plan, sometimes, for them to discover something they had no dream might happen. There are these very cool projects where client gratitude can literally be off the charts. Truly, even those installing these landscapes often look at them when they’re done and go: “Wow!”
The elements to consider at the beginnings are vast. Structure, shape, color, texture – all come under intense scrutiny and all are way too available. People, including myself, often get confused simply owing to the increasingly wide variety of suface choices.
SURFACES
(click images to enlarge)
Wildly different surfaces can constitute a floor of a patio and these bring a strange and now-exotic range of choices. One can now choose from plain poured-in-place cement, to a more extravagantly-colored finish like the mottled and primitive-looking color of the patio above. A furthur example of a great Stamped Concrete surface, colored and textured by professionals:
Or one can have fresh cement sprinkled with “seeding” and exposed rock color in a cool monolithic sort of presence called “exposed aggregate”, as in the picture below.
One can opt for brick pavers, sandstone and other fabulously gorgeous stones acting as the floor – complete with riotous and hidden secrets from everyone’s private back yards, such as your very own personal swamp!
Here is some stone, cut and fit like a puzzle yet nice and flat and congruent with the overall theme.
Or the secret supply of “Infinity”, with this bizarre pool designed to simply disappear and the court yard around it:
From extravagant to purely functional, so many different things are possible. Circles inside of squares!
Placid, rough-hewn “tumbled pavers” supply an antiqued look to a freshly-paved patio.
Fed from a walkway encircling this grand home, this patio is sufficiently enclosed to feel nice and private yet wide open to a mountain view at the same time, to the West. In a sense, it is possible to “have it all”, from relatively small rocks spewing the trickling sound of water to vast magnificence during the day.
It has a rather “Big Brother” set of boulders at the other end of the patio.
And a look from above, the patio situated to the lower right in this picture, behind the wall -
All patios can be instructive as we take items from each which we find appealing to ourselves. These hold much intellectual and intuitive curiosity as we begin selecting our own particular wish lists. This is all good -
Now and then I get a hankering for blooms. Especially now as I sit and see the advent of real Winter outside, I am already hurting for my apparently-constant need to see blooms on flowers, trees and shrubs. One of my greatest pleasures in landscaping has always been watching plants develop successfully, especially in some of the more insane climates I have had to deal with, rife as they have been with either sun problems (both too much and too little) or soil dilemma’s the size of – well – Nevada.
The Rhododendron was the plant that launched my career, to be truthful. Seeing it gave me the electric sense of what was possible in moving Nature around just a little for optimal Eye Candy.
(click on images to enlarge. Twice for some for the real close look)
Let’s face it. It doe not take a rocket surgeon to know what is drop dead gorgeous.
Blooms are that rarest element of all our endeavors in landscaping – we feature them for sheer pleasure for us humans. Say what you want about cement patios and ponds, waterfalls and fire pits – a person can feel more than successful with a few plants and maybe some hanging baskets as long as they bloom and do so for long enough to wake up and know they’ll be faithfully and resplendently waiting for another sniff and picture. All we as landscapers and gardeners do is enable them.
No matter how plain weird they may be:
My personal tastes have moved with me within those climates. In Nevada, I happened into Natives which utterly blew my mind. Penstemons became a passion.
Evening Primrose satisfied like few other plants, bursting out at night as they do, then disappearing by lunch
I got to where I would mass them together, just to produce a semi-riot of color
Just because I could.
No one complained. Not a one.
I miss blooms. I miss the roses of Summer already.
I miss the shrub roses I have planted like they were as common as grass
We use blooms to surprise us and please us. Sometimes it works like nobody’s business.
Many of these folks are newly-retired or will be, many are younger folks than that, but who have dreamed of a garden and wondrous patio and back yard. But the majority I have worked with – with some billionaire exceptions – are “just folks” who have achieved much.
