It's funny, there are a lot of sharp architects out there who, despite exquisite sensitivity to matters of form and function, couldn't describe a tree to save their lives. I will admit that I am completely ignorant to matters of mullions and scuppers, but I also don't care. In other words, I would defer to the architect in matters of structural and interior details, but in practice and casual conversation, architects often have opinions (whether explicit - "that pine tree thingy is blocking views" or implicit - rendering a carefully thought out planting plan with generic trees) on the expression and execution of planting
I'm hoping that this blog will forge a shared language for planting and ecology that is free of buzzwords and horticultural jargon. To kick things off, I'll be posting some things in the coming week that, though beautiful (in my opinion), reduce living media to a graphic motif.
Hopefully, these will be paired with images or comments that will help reveal deeper culturalor biological underpinnings.
Early 21st C. design pedagogy and practice privilege the blurring of landscape architecture, building architecture, and urbanism. While the integration of environmental and built systems holds great promise for designers, the generalist impulse can obscure the value of specialization and experience, especially when working in the medium of living systems. This blog seeks to demystify landscape architecture, working not to reinforce differences in title, but foster mutual understanding.
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Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera) and Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos x inermis) seem so retro; the image latter has been weirdly co-opted by nature-twee/shabby chic circles. But as trees in space they still hold up pretty well for me.
I can't say the same for the 1990s/early aughts love affair with River Birch (Betula nigra). Lots of things from the 90s still seem perfectly reasonable (Mudhoney, tapas), but Betula nigra still smacks a little bit of a manicured ecological aesthetic that somehow rubs me the wrong way. Who knows.
Color. It took a while for me to begin to see and understand color in the landscape. Part of it was a bias against "garden-y" landscapes, which seemed somehow inferior - less urgent, less important, harder to conceptualize - to the BIG infrastructural projects that are still the current aspirational territory (and rightfully so, I think!) of landscape architects. But while LAs were forging ahead with Landscape Urbanism, this very same vanguard tried to ditch the aesthetic language of old school gardeners. Sure, we whip out abstract diagrams of seasonal colors, and diagrams that are beautiful to my eye are lauded for their clarity and analytical prowess. But the subtlety of observation that requires the eye of your mom's garden club or a 19th Century dandy seems bourgeois, quaint, small-minded.
(Spirea japonica)
I dunno, there's just something that smacks a little bit of a double standard; maybe it's just because architecture was so devoid of color for so long and that landscape gardening and horticultural cultivation saw it as a focus, albeit an inward looking one. What needs to happen to make color in the landscape something to be celebrated as much as a great graphic eye?