Monthly Archives: October 2011

Landscape Grasses – Constant Modifications

Posted on by
5

Grasses

I’m recycling this post and adding some pertinent pictures because of an amazing couple of weeks – maybe month – of people asking questions about grasses.

Every year it seems we read about yet another incredibly attractive grass species. We watch as these hybridized and developed new and altered species express all that the clump grasses – and even lawn grasses – do to make themselves so appealing. Hybridized lawn grasses are in a constant search for a turf grass which won’t require using so much water to stay green and very substantial progress has been and is being made. But they are for another time. This is the Landscape Grass realm.

Landscape Grasses

(click any image to enlarge)

HPIM1263

Comfortable small clumps such as these gorgeous small grasses shown here at the Portland Chinese Garden influence a walk, softening the impact of transitional areas and making them every bit as important to attend as the larger plants and views beyond them. Our attention begins at where we walk and it is plain to see these borders are a welcoming type.

Other grasses are hugely different – and serve different effects. The grasses below frame a Junior High School sign. As they develop, they nearly overwhelm it with silky seed fronds  and the inherent yellow tints of the leaves themselves.

Bernheim Spring 136

 

 

And, reaching larger dimensions, no grass discussion ever seems complete with mention of the Pampas Grasses we have all come to enjoy so much. Set here amid a rather stunning “All Grass” landscape design, complete with at least 3 different species comprising the entirety of this massed landscape planting, we see the effectiveness of form and structure as well as the simple beauty of the plants themselves.

Bernheim Spring 082

Smaller grasses are equally effective when massed, as could be expected. Reliable, tough grasses survive and thrive in our landscapes requiring little outside of the odd yearly “haircut”. They are neither water or maintenance hogs, seemingly impervious to many of the diseases and problems in more delicate species. Full sun? No problem? Part sun?  Take us there. Not great soil? Yum! This is an easy plant to come to like!

Some are just plain pretty all on their own, too:

 

Bernheim Spring 084

 

 

And they are even nicer in numbers –  in a grouping, changing the hard lines of cement planters and streets to a softer, less angular existence.

PortlandLouisville 049

These landscape grasses can come in some startlingly understated form, small, wispy, wind-affected silk flags coming out of the ground around us. Put together they make a stunning mass of unique and surprising color.

PortlandLouisville 016

This is my “Blond Bed”.  😉

PortlandLouisville 021

Famous for their beautiful electric pink seed fronds, these “Muhley Grasses” at the entry to Yew Dell Gardens in Louisville, Kentucky, show another amazing possibility in the use of grass for color as well as form.

BernheimYewDell 075

Easy-to-maintain, hardy and somewhat drought-tolerant, grasses of all kinds are making a monster inroad into the thinking of landscape designers. The newer varieties of these beauties are tending towards more color, more variegation, more amazing seed colors, silkier textures and just generally yet more applications within landscapes. Many of these grasses have been used even in the distant past, yet the newer stuff just keeps coming with wonderful new cultivars of impressive beauty and form.

I say keep it up.

True Mud – Part 4 – The Final Answer

Posted on by
Reply

Among other events, stories like the ones prior to this represent the entire Love/Hate relationship landscapers have with the weather. Of course we have general problems also with Nature as well as the assigned time pressures of construction in general. Ironically, this last tale is an easy one but no less epic. It represented my first real encounter with the wonders of a miracle cure for all which ails the wet and miserable:  washed sand.

The picture above is the finished look – 7 years after the project was completed – of a project in North Vancouver, BC which was also a government-sponsored housing Co-op. It shows about 1/3 of the length of the “Fire Lane” – a 20′ wide course which would be used only in the event of fires and which, of course, was also used regularly (in reality) for purposes of moving in and out. The concrete material in the foreground is called “Turfstone” and is used where there is a desire to feature a lawn but to still be able to drive a 40 ton fire truck on top of it without sinking up to the gunwales. Interestingly, at least for this project, the determining qualification in testing the Turfstone and brick was a matter of the Fire Department bringing in a 40 ton truck and driving on the suckers. None of that fancy Uranium business for these guys! We passed.

Here is a look backwards at pretty much what the other photo was gazing at. The Turfstone bit is around the corner to the left on the way out of the development. As we can see, this is one long stretch of brick, mixed with cement features as well as some asphalt as we’ll see soon. It also goes to the right – Eastward – for an equally long stretch. This picture is taken at the halfway point, where the path makes a 90 degree turn. All-in-all, the brick and Turfstone elements stretched about a quarter mile. It was the second-largest brick project I ever did, including doing 55 different driveways at a development in Reno. This one was huge.

So – where’s the mud?

Well, the mud greeted us, the truth is. We began this job in pretty much the dead of Winter, with consistent and daily rainfall of one sort or another. Not only that, but the buildings shown here were in the very early framing stages, while the other buildings – where we began – were more or less done; certainly enough for us to get underway.  I regret to mention all the photographic record I have from this project are ‘after completion’. I say this because of the missing humor and “perplex-ment” value because the beginnings were a most curious and bizarre process.

(As a brief “aside”, I also mention the nearby buildings undergoing the primitive framing stage of development as background to an event I also never experienced again. I had a flat tire on a Bobcat we were renting. The guy came up, changed the tire and took the flat back to his shop for repair, leaving us movin’ on with a newly fixed tire. The guy called me later. OK, it was funny: “Hey, Steve, you guys did something I never saw the likes of! You had 138 nails in that daggone tire.”  ……..who……..me???  😉     True story!

This cloudy “after shot” shows where we encountered a most unpleasant and hardly-“ready” hole in the ground about the approximate size of Texas.

This calm, domestic little scene was once a gaping wound, 50 feet circular and 16-20 feet deep, a remnant of a misplaced excavator who dug the underground parking excavation – supposedly under the buildings – some 50 feet in the wrong direction. It also extended some 20 feet smack into the area where the pavement was slated to go. Ignored and filled with rainwater from the origins of the project, we encountered it in its full gory glory. Typically, the contractors we work for supply a graded edifice for us to adjust slightly – it’s always a part of the deal. But this time, we faced a situation so gross, it was to laugh. Naturally, I told the contractor to, ahem, “Fill the hole!”. He replied by asking me to. It was an “extra”, of course – they had elements of civilized behavior after all. But, for the life of me, this impediment was unique. It was a gosh darn swimming hole, for Pete Sakes. The problem was, they wanted it paved over within 2 weeks!

I called a few experts, all of whom agreed on a solution: washed sand. I had the father of a friend who worked for the BC Highways as an engineer confirm this as a good effort, so I started calling sand suppliers. The next day, I began greeting trucks and pups (extra trailers) in a long line of eventually something like 36 truckloads of sand. They would dump the sand in a pile and I would take the Bobcat, push the stuff and dispense with it in about 5 minutes, pushing the sand onto increasingly stable land-reclamation.

Definition of “washed sand”:  Washed sand is surface mined, screened and washed to remove silt and clay, then allowed to drain. It is typically alight buff color, almost off-white.

Washed sand is a finely graded sand and can be used for fill, to topdress golf course greens, and as a base for laying brick and pavers.

The sand would be oozy and pure liquid at first contact with the water. As we raised the level oh so gradually, the moisture was always there but another load on top would reveal an amazing stability. Inching our way upwards – with sand floating at the outer reaches of the expanding pile – the water could be seen spilling out in monstrous amounts as the level rose, back into the forest where we had cut a small creek to handle it earlier to get to a decline not too far away.

At about the 25 truckload level, we were still 6 feet below where we would eventually rise to and I found myself tipping a bit too frisky, shooting down on top of the stuff, and I panicked. It was here that I had the amazing sense of “Eureka – this is going to work!” Cascading downwards, slipped off into the “abyss”, I actually found myself supported – not sinking. In fact, as I tried the white knuckle experience of seeing water from a shielded area joining me – and as my guys were trying to get me chained up to a backhoe to yard me out – I reversed the machine and I actually found myself climbing back out. It did require the chain, however, as my tires began digging into the sand but I got pulled out easy enough. When this minor episode finished, I got out of the cab and stood up, smiling. Oh, and shaking a little. It was a true epiphany concerning eventual success. What shocked me most, to be honest, was how easy it was and I’m being serious. This stuff was a wonder.

We filled it in a day.

Within 3 days of beginning the “fill” we were running a big heavy “double drum roller”, complete with vibrations over the entire area as if it had always been there. The sheer volume of water and its 100% saturation of the lower levels of the sand provided an incredible compaction, just all on its own.

Here is a look at a small part of that area, completed:

Since that event, I have had occasion to call for washed sand in dealing with mud and water on many occasions. For purposes of pure traction in slime, washed sand, piled up sufficiently to travel on, makes an incredibly easy and practical solution where things seem impossible. Add that, later, as things dry up, the sand is an excellent drainage-enhancing soil amendment when disbursed around while getting back to grade, it shines even more so.

True Mud – Part Troix! – A Note On Landscaping As A Career

Posted on by
3

In the spirit of continuity, I’m opting for yet another tale of mud and woe describing the constant battle against this unforeseen mistake of Creation which has comprised probably 40% of my landscaping career.

But this post takes a more philosophical slant, which I feel is in order before I describe yet another unfairly vicious attack of the Mud Monster – tales of which I have many, many.  I herein hope to provide us all with the various caveats which place us in life’s ultimately “most miserable moments at work”, but which become secondary in a completely illogical and weird twist on human perceptions. If this turns out to not be believable, I cannot blame anyone for that assumption. All I have is what I own.

Note: A Picture of Portland’s Waterfront Park, below, which does not at all resemble the terrain which it consisted of at first.

Good Lord, ha ha, far, far from it:

A Spiritual Aside

Let me insert at this time something which has gone unspoken. As much as I have detested rainy days which stretched for months – and who would not? – and as grueling as some of those work days were, there remains an optimism in someone who works with dirt and landscape planning and installation which tends to factor in at a spiritual level. Sure, you’ll hear men complaining endlessly about it all. And certainly it motivates many of them towards other employment. This is inarguable as it can be.

But, as a very qualified expert on these matters, I can assure anyone that the fruits and pleasures as the goals become increasingly apparent are resplendent with the sense of accomplishment. I can think of very few trades or practices outside of waging war where so much is arrayed against so few. Is this “over the top”? – I honestly don’t think so. Believe me, the “felt experience” at the working end of a shovel – the constancy of donning rain gear and the extreme interest in the technological  improvements in such apparatii – the grimness of those early, sometimes pre-Sunrise hour mornings when the temperature is barely above freezing – when one faces 8 hours of climbing dreadful inclines in torrential or semi-torrential, all day rain, packing rocks, plants or sod – these things are the litany of drear. One’s heart can sink as he opens his house door, prepared for work, and the rain cascades down, drenching one as he negotiates the walk from his house to his truck.

What, in all this, can be remotely considered good?

The only answer I have is the stubborn insistence that, aside from becoming fully invested in a career which produces such regular disappointing climatic events and which apparently allows so few alternatives, we have the Final Product as goal and the penultimate reward. That we labor for someone else is nearly secondary, but even that relationship has a promise which is pretty ‘off the charts’ as well, in terms of pure respect and the appreciation of what, indeed, gets accomplished.

But Wait! It Gets Worse!  😉

Each rainy, miserable and simply awful day is counteracted by the amazing relief of actually seeing it all the way through. We plod home, drenched and sore, our muscles aching from the typically hard landscaping tasks which were exponentially made worse by a persistent rainfall. As we sweated inside our modern, up-to-date rain gear, we had the completely dreadful realization, 3 hours into the work, that we were getting as wet as we would have gotten has we eschewed the rain protection!

This is true: I had guys working for me in Vancouver who would walk to the job without rain protection and who worked entire days without even bothering with it. As ‘The Dude’ from The Big Lebowski might say: “Moisture abides”. 😉

OK – Enough Already……..Then there is this 

In North America, where we have abundant rain, we so often also feature milder Winter temperatures. In one of the worst-ever Winters for rain in Vancouver, BC, I recall not missing a single day of work. Not a one. There was also very close to 100% attendance at work for those of us on those crews.

Where we have abundant rain, we also feature incredibly productive plantings. It is our onus – implementing the plans proscribed by designers – to present them in the best possible foregrounds and backdrops. One learns, in short, to use the rain as an asset. We can indeed attain this, ironically,  for purposes of, say, compaction under hard surfaces which require a 12% moisture level for the ultimate in compaction. Needless to say, pretty much the last thing we face worrying about is to remember to “water the new plants”. The assurances of planting success are beneficial in a strictly business sense as well. In Reno, many landscapers were regular “re-visitors” to nurseries, bringing in plants which were obviously under-watered and who had croaked as a result. I can honestly say I have gone for years without returning one dead plant. I’ve had nursery owners who were actually relieved I showed up with one and I’m being serious. “I thought we’d never see you again! Heck, I know all about (so-and-so’s) family after all his visits returning dead trees!”

“Let’s get lunch!”

Where we have abundant rain, the air is so ozone- and oxygen-rich it cannot be described accurately. One can go to work sick and come home well, with air this pure, and I am not exaggerating. Our endorphins, always a factor for those who work outdoors, ramp upwards, creating pleasure where – supposedly – none should exist. The truly grimmest moments in climatic disgust can produce nearly ineffable moments of clarity and repose. One feels a rare pleasure in his existence at  incredibly unlikely times. I am being completely serious here: The Mystery of Life merely deepens as we assess with our conscious mind any remote intelligence which could inform us as to why on Earth we are not totally and irrevocably miserable.

I admit working for a living can perform all these spiritual tasks for anyone. Anyone at all. Working, for Americans, provides imminent self-worth – a prize for anyone – and rightfully so.

But I can aver right now that the physical rewards of maintaining strength, using it, contributing in an open atmosphere about solving problems, acting proactively in doing just that are but a few of the incredibly strange rewards one can grab while landscaping “where no man dares to trod”.

Next, I describe the effects of approaching a hole in the ground, 50 feet by 30 feet in circumference, a full 20 feet deep – completely filled with long-sitting and somewhat rancid water – and hearing a man advise us that he needs a brick pavement structure on top of this area by the end of the week.

True Mud – Part Dieux

Posted on by
2

Once again, I have to speak to the fact that “Mud moves me”.

Mud, in fact, has been such an outrageous truism of my work, the actual process involved in installing landscapes required an entirely new adaptive vocabulary.

We now speak of “Spackling” an area with the back sides of shovels on those areas which are too soft to actually walk on without leaving 6 inch deep mud prints – or worse, losing a boot. Spackling means beating the mud into the condition of smoothness that can eventually receive the back mulch or the turf/sod to be put on top of it. It is a completely necessary step.

We also sometimes grab plywood or pallets and walk on them en route to various duties, finding our overall terrain “spackled” simply by weight and a flat surface.

(Teufel Nursery’s “Mud Buggy”. LOL, high tech meets the mud.)

“Percolation” refers to water leaving the mud – obviously downwards. Where it will not “percolate” – where some natural or man-made structure prohibits draining – there we will see piping and methods of collection and disbursement. We would, for example, “spackle” an area of loose, rutted, slimy mud, walking backwards and working our way out, so that over time, it will “percolate” away and be quite solid after a short period of time.

Here is an excellent rendition of using plywood for grading and support at the same time.

The down side of this is that we seldom have any of that precious commodity – Time. Thus, we are beset with yet deeper problems, having to work on top of this stuff and finish the project within the always-ticking periodic framework agreed to. The picture below is an innocent enough look at a project which was one of my 10 most incredible mud events.

Looked at above, it seems straightforward enough. This picture is taken about 7 years after the actual installation and said installation was absurdly hard, made more so by an uncooperative supervisor – which happens.

The entire courtyard was completed except for the grassy area and walkways, at the time it became more problematic than normal. We had installed the big Catalpa Tree and all the plantings surrounding this courtyard quite successfully, adding terrific topsoil and plantings. What we were faced with was sodding. Following sod, we would then be able to install the borders for the limestone pathways and install the paths themselves.

Christmas was approaching. As the rain increased, daily – it was a hugely wet Winter – and the Holidays closed in, even acquiring the sod itself was facing problems. Meanwhile, the contractor was finishing everywhere except for where all “the dam mud” was. We decided we had to make a move, ordered up the sod from an initially reluctant but eventually quite happy supplier (income can be hard to come by just before Christmas).

The day began by receiving 16 pallets of sod – 8,000 square feet, more or less. Of course, even finding a place to stash all the sod was difficult because the outlying streets were narrow. Offloading the sod became as much a chore itself as the laying would prove to be as we found ourselves directing traffic and even dealing with police who fielded complaints.

Then it began snowing. 😉

I am reminded of a quote I once read by William Glasser and its relevance to our theme today redounds mightily in my little head, much as it did that day, when everything seemed so impossible and so ineffably hopeless:  “It is almost impossible for anyone, even the most ineffective among us, to continue to choose misery after becoming aware that it is a choice.” 

My point? It will show up soon.

We had raided the local Juvenile Detention Facility – a minimum security place – of kids 16 or so who the powers there were looking to keep busy, preferably with hard work. Well, we had that.  🙂

They had asked if we could pay whatever minimal figure it was they wanted these boys to have – as I recall it was about $1.75 or so, lol.  There was no way we were going to pay that. In private, with these go-getters, we secretly mentioned we’d be paying them 5 times that but we needed them to work in impossible conditions and work real hard. I felt like Charlie Sheen – WINNING!!!  It was hilarious watching their eyes light up in this muddy conspiracy, which got even more out of control when we mentioned we’d be buying lunch as well from McDonalds. Man, some folks are just easy.

So there we were……….16 – 2 ton pallets of wet sod, heavier than a car with 4 of us and our 5 – 16 year old 135 pound kids, already wetter than hell in 34 degree weather. Intermittent rain and snow finally gave way to pure snow with flakes the size of Texas as the self-made tunes broke out like Christmas caroling in Hell. As I recall, I began the music part of the festival with some strictly Elvis Christmas work, and the boys sang with me at first, eventually bursting out into more serious tuneage as we slugged and mugged our way through the worst weather I have ever encountered during a landscape project.

Making Matters Worse!! Thank You! Thank You!  😉

Oh – I nearly forgot one small, teensy, weensy item. As we entered the site that morning, I stepped into what appeared to be a disturbed soil area and sank 3 feet in near-water. It was stunning – I was totally shocked at the appearance of “quicksand” in such an urban environment, and that’s a pretty monstrous understatement.  When I asked the supervisor what was up, he mentioned he had forgotten about running conduit and wiring for the electrically-fed lamp posts around the courtyard and that he had completed that process the prior day (we weren’t there) with a backhoe and some grumpy electricians.

What it did, of course, was make a circle – 2 feet wide and 3 feet deep – around the entire interior of the courtyard of the most thin mud imaginable. Stepping into it was to simply disappear, lol. What a day! Lordy, I got madder than I’d been in recent years – it was an incredible mistake on his part and what he was doing was asking me to work on, in spite of the ‘quicksand’. Of course, he was also asking me to bail him out, was the truth of the matter. When we realized this, it made the entire episode somehow more tolerable, so we, ahem………get this………..”Held our mud”. Ha!

Off we go, sod in hand, a slurry of kids reeling under the weight of even just one clay-packed roll of sod, weighing in at least 40-50 pounds apiece and walking a moving bridge I supplied with strategically-placed plywood and, then, later, using the pallets we acquired as we exhausted the sod stacked on each. The famous Gene Kelly tune “Singing In The Rain” made an appearance, once the snow briefly stopped and the rain intensified, lol. It was total anarchy. Lunch consisted of wet people staying wet and shivering, then returning to the chore as fast as possible, simply to stay warm.

Finally the snow began coming in such an amazing heavy fall, and with these huge flakes, the place quieted down and it became almost cathedral-like in the silence and awesome weird sensuality amid the apparent impossibility of our quest. Our camaraderie was off the charts as we all – to a man, or boy – fought against currents devised to destroy motivation and energy. But we got even. We got better. As our relentlessness persisted, we began seeing green behind us, adapting ‘in situ” to the evolving problems of mud seeping through the spaces in pallets by moving them more often. The green behind us began expanding and that gorgeous space alone became a motivator of fabulous property.

Late in the day – and, yes, it was dark now – we finished. Our ten hours of effort paid off and we looked back on our accomplishment with a shared pride so rare I am not sure I’ve ever felt the likes again. My debt to the kids who joined us as well as to my normal crew showed me the depths of a gratitude that only a team working in such impossible conditions could provide. It felt like some sort of Medal Ceremony was in order.

And, by the way, it looked beautiful.

We finished the day and we finished the sod and by the time we were done, we saw 3 full inches of snow on the ground behind us with a covering settling in which would make that look small. We paid the kids their cash, had some good laughs and arranged for them to be back the next day for a huge clean-up and for some more work. Mario and I adored the guys – they were funner than fun.

The next day, the project supervisor who very purposefully missed the prior day showed up and his reaction was a total classic. To call it shocked would be a complete understatement. The soil supplier and the sod supplier both showed up as well as we had the kids undertake the “dreadful task” – ha ha! I’m a liar! – of cleaning the streets off with fire hoses from a hydrant.

“Steve, Good Lord, man, it’s a miracle! I can’t believe you did that!” Of course, this was the same guy who the day before said, “Shut up and get the dam job done.”

So there’s another good mud story.