Landscaping has become what it once could be. I happen to think it came in at least 3 waves of popularity over the past 100 years- and I understand I am discounting the designers of Babylon, Alexandria and also the Medieval Times. As well, I discount the Bourbon Kings and that fabulous flowering of Chinese, Japanese and Islamic Gardening simply because of what I want to more directly address. I do know that fabulous gardens have always been a human achievement from the organization of the first urban collectives. I also suspect the simple cultivated beauty of flowers actually inspired the beginnings of it all and that those may well have been naturally-occurring owing to their secondary agricultural benefits. Bees don’t go for ugly flowers – they like them hot! Marigolds can keep all sorts of slugs and pests away and even Thistles can deter a deer from munching on a garden’s food supply during those times they were not eaten by hungry lions and tigers and stuff. It’s busy out there and even Troglodyte such as myself and friends will use whatever works. I played softball with a few, so I know them. We are practical.

(left click on all images to enlarge)

At the turn of the Twentieth  Century, American cities were experiencing some severe growth issues, calling for increasing amounts of planning. Frederick Olmstead, among others, became much sought-after by far-seeing cities such as Montreal, Baltimore and Louisville. Naturally, Central Park also beckoned from New York City. Urban planning and the hosting of prideful Expositions, Fairs and even World’s Fairs became a currency of not only a city’s proud self-advertisement but also of a method of installing grids and logical street layouts to suit the individual needs of those towns. What came with these plans and people were a further development of a virtual field – urban planning and, by necessity, the study of Parks and Landscaping. There was an explosion of beautification, the installations of fountains and city parks and a sense of community pride vested in a pleasantness which only large scale landscaping and planning could provide. Interesting figures dotted the landscape from Antonio Gaudi in Spain and Europe to the grand figures of Olmstead, Samuel Parsons and others here in the United States. It led to many things but most importantly it led to an overall appreciation of the plants used and the overall concept of landscape design.

The next development for the US was the expansion of the middle class. This occurred after World War 2 when the US became an economic superpower and the economy lifted so many people into the middle class. Suddenly homes were available – self-owned homes,  in increasingly large size and variety. This was the second development in landscaping and the one into which I and my current contemporaries were thrown. This element is what I not only grew up in but where I ran businesses and dealt with design. This would be the era we are currently emerging from, in my little analysis of the “Earth As Steve Thinks It”.

I believe we are in a third phase of maturity of the landscaping game, one more of quality and one more of creativity. The passe’ works of the past – decorating front yards to give a minimum of acceptability and of making back yards either basic or else ignoring them – have changed. I honestly believe “statements” are what are next with front yard landscaping and that “Quality of Life” issues will prevail for our back yards. I have watched as my own Baby Boomer Generation matured, asking for bells and whistles in landscaping out back in a more general sense. Secret water features and wondrous constructions now dot the rear yard landscape in a hidden but incredibly creative manifestation of both the landscaper and the homeowner’s sense of style. Entertaining includes not just others, but oneself. This movement into what was once the preserve of royalty has come nearly full circle in the construction of fabulously inclusive private areas where one’s life is enhanced and made more joyous in conjunction with nature and with an artist’s touch.

The challenge for landscape designers and installers now is to – first – understand this development.

Granted, the economy is not what it was at present and this will curtail some of the more elaborate constructions for many of us. It will also lead some to do what I have often observed to be some of the most breathtakingly beautiful work in all of landscaping – doing their own place, with their own labor. But be this as it may, the development of landscaping as a tool for living a fuller life maintains and will not go away. As an ideal, it has many aspirants – plenty of people wishing for it as a priority. When you consider it generally takes from $14,000 – $18,000 to redo a bathroom, imagine what that amount could do in a landscape. Believe me – a lot!

The tools for all this upgrading have developed according to the demands of a voracious commercial market, lending items once considered very exotic – such as brick pavers, basalt columns, water features, fountains and bubble rocks of an amazing variety, iron works, carpentry and maybe especially lighting – to now be regular yard features. The framing of a “nightscape” can be achieved with uplit trees and walls, providing a virtual outdoor room on those gorgeous Spring and Summer nights when going inside just seems so reductive. The soft splash of water can pacify any rear yard so that one can read a book in solitude or just take a nap with the gurgling or splashing sounds of water accompanying it all.

Fire pits can warm an evening around a gas fed grate, providing another element in another season, making the outdoors still more effective as a place to hang out. Blooms, trees, aromas, color, night lighting – the possibilities are endless. Even food of a delicious home-grown sort can enliven and enrich our lives in the everyday sense. Herb and aroma  gardens which are inexpensive and which smell like Heaven itself can pervade at atmosphere and make one want to stop while passing by – or waft through an open window. The sensuality of landscaping involves every single sense and can be driven to that end by a studious installation. 360 degrees of fun is the result.

Rebellious, awkward, purposefully funny – there are design themes which also raise the awareness of all who observe them. Kitsch themes such as this picture I mined from Phlip’s Garden Blog (click the link to visit) represents the prior sentence as well as does the entire post he delivers on this marvelous and eccentric piece of Los Angeles landscaping. Please treat yourself to my favorite blogger in the world:

The world is opening to an almost introspective style of representation. The limits are our own but I like what I am seeing and I believe it is a challenge to us all. We can create marvelous things in our very own back yards.

Or our dentist’s office!

Or you can just do some plant art. Anywhere, any time.

Our operators are awaiting your call……….

Wow! What a treat. Below from The University of Connecticut’s Waterbury Campus:

The designs of those who build these things come from a creativity one can only guess at in its artistic purity, apparent freedom and in their sometimes overal simple immensity. “Mind-boggling” comes to mind as we tour the most outlandish and absolutely breath-taking water-art sculptures, sitting as so many do in the public squares of our major cities. From the work of Lawrence Halprin in Portland, Oregon -

My great good friend, Steve, gets to sit at the bottom of Halprin’s Ira Keller Fountain in the face of the seeming vastness of the fountain while it crashes down, so nearby:

These gorgeous civic fountains are now becoming less formal and more amenable to “audience participation” these days – a welcome respite from an overly-litigious society in general, which I welcome wholeheartedly:

Here is Halprin’s stunning blend of  “The Natural” and “The Modern” work at the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC, shown here at night -

Some History

Fountains were initially creations which were fed from aqueducts – the original plumbing apparatus, dating back at least 2,500 years. Often, these aqueducts would send water downwards, creating the pressure which allowed the newly-minted fountains in Greece, for initial historical example, to spurt water out for public and private consumption. Fountains and public water sources, fed by the rivers, lakes and streams in the mountains, began appearing around 260 BC in Ancient Greece. The notion of “siphoning” became pioneered and created works which could allow water to run or not run, depending on opening and closing a valve.

In the end, aqueducts would literally terminate in city centers or plaza’s where the resulting pressure and large quantities of water supplied could be more fully appreciated by attaching art work and form to the terminus.

The Trevi Fountain, in fact, Rome’s famous “Fountain Of Love” featured by Hollywood so many times, was just this sort of product.

(Picture credit here to Tour Of Rome, along with the quote below, capsulizing better than I could, a brief history of its construction.)

“There had been a source of water at this site for over a thousand years, although it was not until 1485 that Pope Nicholas V commissioned Gianlorenzo Bernini to create the fountain, but the project had to be abandoned when Pope Urban VIII died in 1644. Then in 1732, Niccolò Salvi was employed by Pope Clement XII to continue with the work, with the result being the Baroque masterpiece that completely dominates the little square today.”

For me, it is the mixture of “chthonic” elements – fit for the Gods alone – which assemble in the primordial primitive juxtaposition of the  jagged rocks which also seem  to be emitted by and to be so “at one” with the building behind. Like our own consciousness, we see a remarkable blend of the absolutely most Elemental mixed with the modern human and more mundane elements of muscle, posture and expressions. A fountain like this hits our perceptions in mental regions usually reserved for art. But then, who said fountains are not art?

Another personality who found the Lunatic Fringe of Modern Fountains is a Japanese designer named Isamu Noguchi. Below is his what is arguably his most famous work – his famous “Nine Floating Fountains”, constructed for the Osaka World’s Fair in 1970.

Here it is in daylight, obviously on a windy day -

And below is the night-time look for which it has become so famous:

But Mr. Noguchi was not done. He obviously loved the impractical and the utterly whimsical – and he was a master at it:

He also had a definite sense of humor!

We owe debts of gratitude on an unimaginable scale to the artists who have taken our technologies and our appreciation for Water Art to absolutely absurd but-always-interesting lengths.

Some of them have driven cities and countries to drink! Take Mr. Vaillancourt’s concrete irritation to the city of San Fransisco’s more “proper” sensibilities as an example. “Please”, many said, “take it!”.

Some folks just need a sense of humor!

Can’t we all be friends?

Fountains are very nearly a “First Love” for me. It would not take much to get me all the way there, either.

Can I get some Love for the Paris Stravinsky Fountain???

No???

My best friend Steve settles in, hard by the Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Oregon, during their wonderful visit there a couple years back. The Keller Fountain offers a full body experience which can be especially refreshing on hot Summer days. Fountains such as this were designed to enjoy up close and personal, a wonderful civic experience amid the workaday world and the hubub therein.

Public edifices are like smiles – no one forces you use them. They are a response to an urge to appreciate ourselves and therefore make absolutely no real rational or intellectual sense. Like anything which is beautiful, the wonder is implicit as we adore what we see. I believe beauty lights us up inside by its contagious nature. I think that’s why God invented beautiful men and women. I mean, you can have too much mud, let’s face it.

(enlarge pictures by clicking)

Below, we catch a stunning work of man in this constructed waterfall and a couple of huge lakes on the Papa John’s Pizza campus in Louisville. It’s a wonderful place to walk, with a landscape just completely enriching to experience. The scale is pretty much off the charts – an installer’s Paradise, with tiny little projects abounding.

Catching the corporate Paradise urge, enlivening our outdoors with splendid works of architectural and constructed resemblances of Nature Herself, we go to Seattle and visit the amazing waterfall built by my friends at Teufel Nurseries for the Microsoft Campus. This one needs to be seen to fully appreciate.

I’m a huge urban fountain fan. I love seeing a bustling population all buzzing around these “human flypaper” structures. Humans are plain drawn to water – it’s a trait we probably manifested back when we were fish – (I’ll ask a couple of my older friends to verify) – our children seem to believe water is magical, even when contaminated with mud. It’s just that cool!

So what we get with these designs are not just the wonder of water itself, acting on us in all of water’s ineffably strange and subtle manners, but we also get to grade the structures made to support it all. This one below generally gets an “A”.

I guess it deserves it.

This one below – The Magic Fountain – is in Barcelona – just another of the many reasons I need to see that town. The lighting alone on this stunning public fountain is absolutely Galactic Class:

Breath-taking, really, isn’t it?

Fun-loving civic projects – both publicly and privately-funded provide more grist for the Beauty Mill. For the vast majority of us, a puddle can be a world in and of itself. When placed in the hands of ambitious designers, they take on another entire realm of Wonder, such as this Singapore Fountain, the largest in the World:

It just doesn’t stop. Fun, vibrantly colorful, aided by lighting and engineering trickery, we look at such things and laugh. Their reason to exist is so tentative, yet so enabling for us all to catch our Souls as they smile.

With an excellent Bluegrass/Gospel garage band behind me, my contribution to pictorial self-love below. Strains of plaintive Hank Williams (Sr.) tunes and gospels such as “I Saw The Light” poured out of these geezers like nobody’s business, occupying my friend Jason and myself no end as their sincerity blasted out like manna from Heaven. Yes, that is a barbecue stain on my sweatshirt.

Owensboro has long been known at least regionally as a center of excellent barbecue work. The Old Hickory Restaurant and the Moonlite Barbecue Restaurant have existed for decades, run by families who’ve had 3 and 4 generations plying their barbecue expertise to a grateful public. The surrounding farms of Owensboro have always supplied endless amounts of products, forming  the ingredients of the famous Burgoo, from the corn and onions to the Mutton, pork and chicken which form the 2 and 3 meat recipes of this incredible dish. Below, competitors prepare the soup for judging and for the public. It is Sunday morning now – I’m home and my stomach is still distended from all the “Judging” we did.

As can be readily seen, this is no average soup-making.

The levels of production were truly off the charts. Below is the prep for the finished barbecued chicken, a major draw. It turned out – which I did not know – there was a specific time for a literal “finishing” of the process, after which the cooking part of the event would shut down. Chicken seemed to be the criterion, although there was ample pork and mutton being barbecued. Nevertheless, people such as ourselves gnoshed our way through and up until the magical 3 PM Chicken Deadline. We tried the Burgoo’s of the 2 past champions and were able to clearly declare a winner – which was filling and way cool. Room was left for further competitive devours, but it was becoming a close thing in my belly, frankly.

The Owensboro Fog of pure hickory smoke was alive and nearly overwhelming for those of us who got up close and personal to the teams doing their work. Needless to say, I still reek and the inside of my nose remembers the event in vivid detail.

Easily the most impressive part, as we toured the hard work of these teams, was the professionalism and coordination as they turned 30 whole chickens at a time using what looked like fence panels, rotating them over the large burning hickory chunks below. The temporary setups all seemed rather easy to assemble and break down, burning away in the middle of the street when completed, surrounding the local county Courthouse.

At the end – after 3 – the tear down commenced and was equally fascinating.

The thick layer of sand laid in as they built the walls of their cavernous pits protected the city street below as the hickory flamed out above it. Within two hours, the wood had burned down to ashes, a Bobcat came in and scooped the remainder of the affair into a truck or two and there was no trace of the event, outside of the lingering smell, a not-unpleasant smoky odor which will probably remain for a century or so. I mean, THAT was some smoke!

I brought home the First and Second Place chicken, lol. I wonder if I have the fortitude to attack it this early?

Oh, inasmuch as the entire event is so close by the Smothers Riverpark, I took my friend Jason around to check it out. It is doing very nicely indeed.

NOT in the park, but well worth a picture, was this cluster of Irises we encountered on our walk in. Something looking this good deserves a gratuitous inclusion, just for looking so ridiculously pretty.