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Archive for the ‘garden visits’ Category

Grounds for Sculpture

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Last Sunday I met up with a group of my peers from APLDNJ for a summer social and private tour of Grounds for Sculpture. I hadn’t been in a few years, so enough time had passed for me to see it with ‘new’ eyes. The day was blazing, the company was stimulating and as always the sculpture park was a mix of high and low, weird and wonderful and outside the box thinking.

Over 250 large and small scale sculptures are on the grounds, many in their own ‘garden’ spaces. What has always fascinated me about the park is the way plants, landscape forms and elements are used. They are an integral part of the experience.

Picea abies 'Pendula'

Two Picea abies ‘Pendula’ form a living arch that frames the view of a highly polished steel sculpture just beyond it on a walkway.

Undulating walk

One of two walkways with Corten supported turf ‘waves’.

Gabion Wall

This gabion wall supports a suspended bridge. It could have simply been filled with rip rap, but instead it is a sculptural wall that forms the backdrop of an amphitheater.

Red Maple Allee

Nowhere in the park are plants used in a more arresting way than this allee of red maples. They were dug and planted as young trees in groups that had already formed. They are pruned up so their trunks form a living fence and the effect is highly sculptural.

Courtyard

The stone and steel sculptural piece in the foreground is entitled Grupo and is by Pat Musick.

Water Feature

Courtyards

I kept on thinking about Luis Barragan in this series of courtyards.

J. Seward Johnson, the park’s visionary philanthropist is also a sculptor and his work is throughout the park. He creates vignettes of life-sized characters doing things. The most famous are recreations of paintings by the French impressionist painters in 3-D. I find them hilarious…none more than this one of Monet’s Woman with a Parasol on a hill of grasses and plastic poppies…yes plastic.

Fake Poppies et al.

And because this is a sculpture park I’ll show you my favorite non-plant piece (Hearts Desire by Gloria Vanderbilt) which is new to the park since I was last there and was in the ‘Garden of the Subconscious’–a meandering space formed with weeping pines and spruces.

Kewpie dolls in Hell (not it's real name)

Go if you can, it’s worth the trip.

Tags: garden visits, Inspiration and Influence, New Jersey
Posted in Garden Styles, New Jersey, garden visits, plants, sculpture | 8 Comments »

To Buffa10 with Love–Part 1

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Tags: Buffa10, Garden Styles
Posted in Garden Styles, Travel, cottage gardens, garden visits | 13 Comments »

Artiface and Artifacts

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Last Saturday, fellow designer Jane Derickson and I headed to the rolling hills of western New Jersey to visit gardens. Over the years I have visited many, many gardens and it’s rare that one sticks with me because its vision and individuality.

Entrance to the greenhouse gardens

It was the first of several gardens we visited and it made the others pale in comparison. Perhaps, for me, it was because it was a design oriented garden rather than a plant centric garden. Yes, there were interesting plants used in compelling ways, but more than that there was a cohesive designer’s vision.

View from the kitchen

Andrea Fillipone and William Welch, who together make up Tendenze Design, have created something remarkable on 10 acres in Pottersville. Theirs is a garden laced with so many historic and geographic stylistic references that with a more heavy hand it would not hold together on its own. Everything, down to the placement of the smallest pamphlet on a side table seems considered.

Side entrance to the main house

Not only is it a fully realized visual statement, but the totality of the space both inside and out has a dreamlike quality that continually evokes a different time and place–but not anywhere specific. Each garden area has its own identity and its own look within the formal context. Vignettes abound since Tendenze is also the location of the owners antiques business.

Pair of chairs in the greenhouse 'emporium'

In the main house

Color is used in bold swaths and often in shades of blue or buff. Blue fences and plants are juxtaposed with tan gravel and stone–even the farm truck (one that I covet) is blue. Periodically, this soothing palette is punctuated with acid yellow.

Blue and tan

Alchemilla and Nepeta

The gardens themselves are formally laid out with some axis’ skewed so that the central axial point isn’t revealed until you reach it while others allow a long view. Structures are geometric and add gravity to an already very serious vision.

Garden Shed

Outbuildings

If there was something the garden lacked, it was a sense of play and whimsy. If there is such a thing as being too serious–this garden borders on being too serious–but in this case, serious is a great thing.

Grand axis through the potager to the greenhouses

The potager

Tags: garden visits, Inspiration and Influence
Posted in Garden Conservancy, Garden Styles, garden visits | 9 Comments »

What’s better than a Birthday present?

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

The Garden Conservancy‘s Open Days Directory of course! Mine arrived this past Saturday and was the immediate cause for me to stop what I was doing and explore which gardens I want to visit this year. I have been visiting gardens on Open Days for almost 15 years now.

Garden Conservancy Open Days

Each day away on the back roads following the yellow conservancy signs to the next garden is an adventure. The gardens I visit on these days are always surprising and never dull. Sometimes I even walk away with a design idea or two or three. I always get great photographs to share.

The Open Days gardens have been chosen because it is special in some way and offers visitors the best of American regional gardens. Some are designed by landscape designers and architects, others are the work of passionate and talented amateurs. Here are some images of just a few of the many gardens I’ve visited on Open Days in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

Tags: Garden Styles, Inspiration and Influence
Posted in Garden Conservancy, garden visits | 4 Comments »

Field Trip: Wave Hill

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I didn’t set out to go to Wave Hill on Saturday, but it was a better day for ending up there. I was surprised that on a glorious fall day there weren’t more people in this remarkable garden. Each time I visit Wave Hill my experience is different. I think that’s part of its magic.

In the woodland garden

My two hour plus stroll with a friend revealed autumn’s long shadows and their impact on the garden’s classical structure. The plantings at Wave Hill are just as exuberant and dramatic as the structures and were in their end of season show–remarkable.

Sumacs

Views of the Hudson River are everywhere–some loom large, others peak through from different areas of the garden.

A small view of the Hudson across the dry garden

I felt myself wanting to look at a plan of the garden’s bones, but not so much that I wanted to go inside and seek one out. In these October days garden lovers in four season climates feel the warmth slowly seeping away and winter approaching. We want to enjoy the last of the warmth on our backs and faces, we don’t want to go in, even though we know that much of what we grow needs the cold to be able to give us such joy again next spring.

The Marco Polo Stufano Conservatory

View from the main pergola back to the lawn

The Dry Garden

Path

Low late sun

Tags: garden visits, Inspiration and Influence
Posted in Landscape Design, autumn, garden visits, plants | 3 Comments »

Field Trip: Montrose Gardens

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Close to twenty years ago, as a serious home gardener, I discovered mail order plants–from a paper catalog with a paper order form that you had to send in by mail. Some of the first plants delivered to my front door were from Montrose Nursery. Although no longer a nursery, the good news is that you can still visit the gardens which were part of the Garden Writer’s Association symposium tours last week. This garden, for me, was the highlight.

The famous Montrose blues and yellows

Now a Garden Conservancy preservation project, Montrose did not disappoint. Varied plantings in different gardens areas and rooms surround and enhance a property with charming outbuildings and woodland views. Its sense of place blew me away. There is no mistaking that this is a southern garden.

Garden path to outbuilding

Planted sugar cane pots and cauldrons

Blowsy, mature and abundant, these gardens tell the story of more than 30 years of a singular gardening vision. According to the garden’s pamphlet, Nancy and Craufurd Goodwin purchased the property in 1977 and expanded what a 19th century North Carolina governor, William Alexander Graham and his wife Susan, had started. Here are some images of the gardens–they don’t begin to do this treasure justice.

Gravel path with millstone and urn

Dew kissed succulents in the urn from above

Path in a series of themed garden rooms

Two unplanted outbuildings beautiful in their simplicity

Great landscape design incorporates rhythm and repetition to convey ideas and create mood. Rich and saturated hues of burgundy with pops of yellow and orange were found throughout Montrose. To me, this discovery wasn’t immediately apparent but I was drawn to it every time I saw it. Each of the photos below are from different areas of the gardens–outbuildings, the garden rooms, and next to the house.

An outbuild with an obscured, once functional door

An outbuilding with an obscured, once functional door

A pocket garden behind an outbuilding

A garden adjacent the house

An urn in the garden rooms

There are so many things to look at and absorb in the gardens that I could have spent several hours there instead of the 45 minutes the tour allowed. I will go back some day. I suspect there will be many blog posts from others who were on the GWA tour about the plants and wonderment found here, so I will limit mine to these. Go if you ever have the opportunity.

Tags: Inspiration and Influence
Posted in Garden Design, Landscape Design, garden visits, inspiration | 11 Comments »

A Gathering of Garden Writers

Friday, September 25th, 2009

I’m at my first Garden Writer’s Association symposium in Raleigh, NC. I decided to attend just to see what it was like and well, it’s different than I expected. Also, the Raleigh location and the planned garden visits were places I wanted to see…more about that in a minute.

First and foremost these writers and garden communicators are welcoming and I’ve met some people who I previously only knew through their books or on-line via blogs, zines and social media. Second, about 95% of them are crazed with plant lust.

Here’s some images of places and plants from the first couple of days. Like my trip to Portland this past July, it’s going to take a while to filter everything so it works for me.

It's the south...it's a bottle tree

This bottle tree and the lovely ecclesiastical birdhouse in the next image are from Helen Yoest’s wildlife garden. On a suburban lot, she has created a haven for birds, butterflies, and other small creatures including a box turtle.

Church birdhouse

Another highlight of the first few days was a visit to Duke Gardens. A teaching garden that was once part of the Duke estate, there was exquisite stonework and interesting plant combinations in a terrace originally designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman.

Bold combo at the Duke terrace garden

Exotica at Duke Gardens

Lyrical curve on curve at Duke Gardens

Tags: Travel
Posted in Travel, garden visits, inspiration | 5 Comments »

Portland | Distilled

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

New and unknown destinations of all kinds always fuel my creative process, but I need time to put all of what I experience in perspective. When something is new it swirls around in my head and is exciting–like a new love affair. As with any relationship, the test of time filters what is going to be longer lasting than that first heart stopping crush.

It’s been a month since my trip to Portland, Oregon to attend the APLD International Landscape Design Conference and it has taken me that long to process some of what I experienced there…so here goes…

One of my favorite quotes carved into stone at the Ecotrust Building

Much has been written about Portland as being the greenest and most sustainable city in the United States and evidence of that commitment to a healthy planet is everywhere. Portland’s citizens embrace an active outdoor lifestyle and even in the most urban core of the city, it is impossible to ignore the natural world that surrounds it and its influence on city life.

Outdoor Portland

The landscape designers in Portland might protest, but the gardens I visited, for all of their genus loci, seemed rooted in a similar philosophy to other types of ‘natural’ gardens like those from the 18th century created by landscape gardeners like Capability Brown. In those long ago and greatly celebrated gardens, the idea as I understand it, was to evoke an idealized vision of the natural landscape.

The water features below are extremely different stylistically. All were inspired by the natural world and all were man made. Each interpretaion is unique and evokes a respect for and awe of nature. For me, a month later, this is the lingering idea..a river runs through it.

The koi pond at the Portland Japanese Garden

The lower pond at the Portland Japanese Garden

Lawerence Halprin's iconic Ira Keller Frountain

Lawrence Halprin's iconic Ira Keller Frountain

Snake pond at Michael Schultz and Will Goodman's garden

Postscript: I thought originally that my next blog post about my trip would be ‘Portland | Underfoot’ since there were so many interesting paving ideas there. I’ve decided instead to publish that as an album on my Facebook Studio page instead.

Tags: Inspiration and Influence, Landscape Design, Portland
Posted in Landscape Design, Travel, environment, garden visits, inspiration | 8 Comments »

Portland | Contained

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

While standing in the gardens at Sakura Ridge last week, Vanessa Nagel, asked me if I could Twitter one thing about my Portland experience, what would it be? Not needing any thought, I replied, “The diversity of ideas.” I think she was pleased with that assessment.

There were so many ideas, in fact, that it will take me time to absorb them and even longer to write about them. Although I am not a shutterbug, during design conferences I take hundreds of pictures for future reference. Some will influence my work and some won’t, but it’s too soon to see how what I brought back from the 2009 APLD International Design Conference will work their way through my creative funnel.

The easiest way for me to begin to think about all of the garden elements, landscape design, and general creative gusto I found and recorded in and around Portland is to put them into broad based themes that I can reference later. One of the conference speakers, Cairene MacDonald, from Third Hand Works, spoke eloquently about creating systems that work specifically for the individual. So in that spirit, I’ve decided to continue my organization of groundplane and paving details as Portland Underfoot ( a title of a previous blog post) and of pots and contained plantings as Portland Contained.

Here are some highlights of Portland Contained…

Photo credits/links: Top row 1-3: 1- Dig Garden Shop; 2-3 Schultz-Goodman residence, Michael Schultz. Middle Row 4-6: 4- Shultz-Goodman residence, Michael Schultz; 5-10th @ Hoyt, KLA Landscape Architecture; 6-Susan LaTourette, Creativescaping. Bottom row 7-9: 7-Cistus Nursery; 8-Schultz-Goodman residence, Michael Schultz; 9-Center for Architecture, designer unknown.

Tags: inspiration, Portland, Travel
Posted in Oregon, containers, garden visits, inspiration | 6 Comments »