COUNTDOWN TO CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW (3)

Maquette of "I Dream, I Seek My Garden."

Here is the third in my presentation of gardens I've enjoyed at Chelsea past.

I Dream, I Seek My Garden

was brought to life by a Malaysian, Linda Davies

in 2008

, with the help of Chinese artist, Shao Fan.

Davies said her aim was to introduce modern Chinese gardens to the western world. Backed by KT Wong Charitable Trust, her father’s organization dedicated to promoting cultural understanding and Anglo-Chinese relations, Davies commissioned the acclaimed Shao F

an to make her vision a reality.

Designer Sarah Eberle assisted Shao Fan as project manager.

The garden they came up with was designed to seem like it was recently discovered, excavated from an abandoned archaeological site in modern England. The top level is an English meadow which opens out to a hidden Chinese temple garden below. Step into the multi-layered garden, and you are transported to the Song dynasty era where colors are cold and sober. The deliberate ruin is set in a sunken arena deep in the ground and is part landscape, part building and part garden. Within its weathered earthen walls are mossy rocks and venerable artifacts. A semi-dilapitated but magnificent Chinese pavilion stands as a centrepiece in the heart of the garden, the wooden pavilion sinking into the soil to represent the increasing disappearance of traditional Chinese culture. The cultural symbolism of the plants is of paramount importance, notably the pine, bamboo and plum. These are known as the “three friends of winter”, as the first two are evergreen, while the plum flowers bloom only at the end of winter.  The garden is closed off from the outside world by very high walls, which in the traditional Chinese gardens serve the very practical purpose of conferring privacy.

“China’s oldest architecture has survived, but it has been far harder to preserve the gardens. This garden is a way to bridge the present with the China of hundreds of years ago. I’m trying to find a way back to our traditions of art and culture, and for the Western world to have a glimpse of it,” said

Shao Fan

.

ALLÉE

As you enter the Conservatory Garden at 105th and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, NYC, through the Vanderbilt gates, the view you behold is of the Italian Garden.  At the center of this spectacular view is a vast lawn bordered by clipped yews, a central fountain and tiered hedges incorporated into the natural hillside.  Directly adjacent to the lawn on both the north and south sides, flanking the yews that border the lawn are two luxurious allées of crabapples. 

An allée was a feature of the French formal garden (circa 1700’s). It is a walkway lined with trees or tall shrubs, sometimes considered a promenade or an extension of a view. It either ended in a terminal feature or seemingly continued to oblivion. However, it’s origin may be found in ancient Roman landscapes as it was commonplace to build a road or promenade lined on both sides with trees.

The crabapples in the Conservatory Garden flanking the lawn usually reach their peak bloom in late April, but due to the early warm weather, the blooms were forced this past week. One side is pink, the other white. These mature crabapples were transported down the Hudson River on barges for the original opening of the garden in 1937, rather than the renovation done in the mid eighties by Lynden Miller.

These mature crabapples have magnificent structure, their vase shape creates not only an allée, but also a canopy, a false ceiling as you walk or sit underneath it. The allée is dreamy, restful and engaging… and for a week when the crabapples are in bloom, the petals gently drop, dancing their way down, as snowflakes, down upon the yews and bluestone paving below… dappled spots of sunlight filter through the canopy and rest on the groundplane…an enchanting vision all told.

The nearby lilacs (also early in their bloom) in the adjoined English garden have added to this sensory delight and perfumed the air.

A magnificent garden, a “dessert” for the senses anytime of year that you visit. This is a public garden, which attracts visitors of all ages, in the tradition of the great European public spaces.

GARDENS AS SCULPTURE

On a trip to the New Museum several months back I encountered the sculpture of Urs Fisher. 

The physicality of these pseudo-organic large objects and voids I passed thru evoked images of a surreal garden with these masses of space representing the hanging limbs of trees, shrubs, man-cured hedges or topiary as positive spaces to the negative i passed through.

One begins to notice that Installation art is going some way towards re-integrating sculpture with its surroundings as sculptors have for years taking an interest in garden design.

Perhaps this finds its suggestion in japanese garden design with an emphasis on abstract compositional harmonies, rusticity,  borrowed views and  assymetrical configuration of design elements.  patterns and textures play their part as well.. a Shinto shrine exists as a space in nature.

However, It could be argued that "traditional" sculpture is considered three-dimensional, yet landscape design or gardens are more complex in that they have a fourth dimension... time. 

Perhaps there is a category, somewhere in-between the two disciples, where you place installation art, experimental gardens, etc., where  they truly merge?

Herbert Bayer

was perhaps one of the first to merge multiple visual disciplines.

The Marble Garden, 1955.  Slabs of unpolished white marble, found in a nearby quarry are arranged on a 38' square platform with interesting spacial relationships created due to shadows, shifting wind patterns and a fountain jet of water in the center. 

Bayer's influence is evidenced in successive modernists such as Ernst Cramer's "Poet's Garden".  Within a decade after this garden was exhibited at the 1959 garden Exposition in Zurich Switzerland it had a profound effect, maybe a "tipping point" on landscape designers and architects who then began incorporating landforms + earth sculptures into their body of work.

COUNTDOWN TO CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW (2)

This serene garden was designed by Tom Stuart-Smith for Laurent-perrier in 2008.  Tom will be designing the 2010 show garden as well.

Designed as a contemplative space with a dreamy and slightly surreal character, it is a garden based on the idea of juxtaposing opposites. The layout of the garden is made by overlaying a number of separate patterns. A grove of 30-year-old hornbeams pruned to appear like rounded ‘clouds’ seem to float above a criss-crossing net of Flemish brick paths.

An undulating tapestry of predominantly green herbaceous plants including 

Rodgersia

, 

Molinia

, 

Epimedium

, 

Asarum

, 

Hosta

 ‘Devon Green’ and 

Astrantia 

is designed to calm, with an emphasis on form and texture, rather than colour. Zinc tanks brimming with water (and appearing to overflow) are placed throughout the garden and offer a visual link to the large zinc-panelled rear wall. Its beautiful patina and cool blue-grey color providing the perfect backdrop to the contemplative setting.

The garden was in part a reaction against the traditional ‘Chelsea garden’ with its eye-catching features and assumptions about how people will experience a space. It was also about atmosphere and mood, setting an intentional contrast between the alluring beauty of the exterior with its white peonies, and the more melancholic middle part of the garden.

Tom Stuart-Smith on his garden....

COUNTDOWN TO CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW (1)

Created by one of my favorite designers, this show garden was exhibited at Chelsea in 2008. Enjoy!

With monastic simplicity as her theme, Arabella Lennox Boyd's design for The Daily Telegraph garden is a contrast of vertical and horizontal elements; of planting and water; of hard and soft. Quiet beauty and minimalism.  Her inspiration came from the zen garden of raked gravel at the temple of

Roan-ji in Kyoto Japan

.  There's also the echo of the traditional yin-yang symbol in the "s" shaped central pathway and balanced placement of rocks.

Dry Garden @ Roan-ji

Two thirds of the site has been flooded by water,  The garden is dominated by a rectangular shallow, stone-edged, pool of water which fills the centre of the garden, and is softened by planting on two sides.  The surface is broken by rocks and a serpentine path of slate paving. They are crossed by twisting ribbons of white waterlilies (Nymphaea alba), which links the front of the garden to the planting at the back, and leads the eye towards a bamboo thicket.

A narrow strip of  tiered yew hedging runs alongside the pool.  At the rear of the site, the garden diffuses into the green shade of a large Caucasion Wingnut tree. Pterocarya fraxinifolia. It's appreciates moisture, produces long green catkins and pendulous strings of fruit later in the season, has handsome pinnnated leaves. 

Large green leaves (including Gunnera), grey leaves, vertical bamboo and iris, rounded shrubs and roses create a rhythm.   At the rear of the garden, under the large Pterocarya fraxinifolia,  Arabella has set a mirror behind a grove of bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea and P. sulphurea f. viridis) which provides a bright, flickery shimmer that echoes the play of light on water.

The pool is edged in loose slate chippings sandwiched beween 2 strips of purbec limestone, hand hammered to create a dimpled surface.

DAN KILEY

Watching the solemn, harrowing and star-studded movie, Judgment at Nuremburg recently (a fictionalized account of the Nuremberg Trials), brought to mind Dan Kiley.

He was born in Boston Mass in 1912. From the age of 20 to 26 he worked in the office of Warren Manning who had worked in the office of Olmsted.  (Fletcher Steele had also worked in the office of Manning).  Quite a lineage!

During WWII (1942-45) Kiley served with the Army Corps of Engineers, where he became the chief designer/architect for the Nuremberg Trials Courtroom, which gave him an opportunity to visit European Gardens. 

While there he visited the work of André Le Nôtre at Sceaux Chantilly, Versailles, and Vaux-le-Vicomte,.  One could certainly see how the formality and geometric layout shaped his future Classical Modernist style.  The geometric layout of allees, bosques, water, paths, orchards, and lawns characterize Dan Kiley’s design – obvious examples being the Miller Garden, US Airforce Academy, Lincoln Center etc.

Back to Nuremburg….According to Nazi War Crimes by Michael Salter, “Kiley’s task was to incorporate novel presentation devices AND facilities into the very structure of the redesigned Palace of Justice at Nuremburg to enable the OSS trial evidence, particularly film and large charts.  These modifications had to be incorporated in a way that diminished the formality and aura of the courtroom.” (The US government hired Hollywood’s finest to create these films: director John Ford, producers Budd Schulberg and George Stevens.)

Kiley surveying construction

According to Joseph Disponzio in Daniel Urban Kiley, The Early Gardens, “ A typical courtroom configuration would locate the bench at the far end of a rectangular hall facing the adjudicating parties and the audience. Kiley altered the standard arrangement of a courtroom in a simple yet dramatic way.  He shifted the international panel of judges ninety degrees to one side, and placed the Nazi defendants facing them.  The victims, their representatives, and the world were seated, as if in a theatre, to witness the trial.  A film screen to show Nazi “crimes against humanity” (and charts) was placed on the wall behind the traditional bench location. 

Images of the actual War Crimes room

Judgement at Nuremburg film clip

Bob Holden in the Independent speaks of Kiley as “an architect of space, dealing with ground as form, trees as sculpture, and shrubs, vines, groundcover and water jets as textures and shapes that articulate the surface of his forms. His is not garden design in the established English manner.  His effects were grand, noble and rigorous.”

One could begin to suggest that Nuremburg was instrumental in the development of this influential designer.

ENGLISH LANDSCAPE

I will be attending the Chelsea Flower Show in late May.  The “Great Spring Show” (as it was once labeled), has become an annual pilgrimmage for my family.  As a precursor to this show and as a way to share my enthusiasm for it, I will frequently be writing posts about context, history of the show and providing past designs of show gardens from recent years. Enjoy.

A very young and spry (then) Princess Elizabeth at the Chelsea Flower Show (circa 1949)

CURB APPEAL

As a follow-up to my

last post (on kitsch)

and not as ubiquitous as the pink flamingo, "tonga man" here and the accompanying floral arrangement were found at the top of Mount Ellen, Sugarbush Ski resort.  No doubt one could consider this as great "curb appeal" adjacent to the maintenance "house" as seen while riding a chairlift two thousand feet up on the slopes. 

If curb appeal is defined as ... the attractiveness or the welcoming factor of a landscape, then this was surely a success.  Notice the attention to detail in creating a sinuous curve (Burle-Marx inspired) to the terraced plantings! Also have to appreciate the toucan wind chime in this white-out.  Really a fun site to behold!

After complimenting the designer, he proudly proclaimed to me (tongue-in-cheek) on my 4th run down the hill "that he knew about horticulture and these "plants" could survive the Zone 3 temperatures... he had had great success with them in British Columbia!"

ENGRAVINGS OF REYNOLDS STONE

While pouring through some books at the Argosy book store in Mid-Manhattan, I came across a book of landscape engravings by Reynolds Stone. 

Alan Reynolds Stone 1900 – 1979 was a noted English engraver, designer and painter. Much of his work was done in the field of printing and publishing, as a designer of typefaces and book jackets.  Among his body of work is the famous clock logo of the London Times, the Grand entrance to the V&A Museum, the memorial to Sir Winston Churchill and others in Westminister Abbey. 

If you haven’t been to the UK, you’ve surely seen his work as the Royal coat of arms which is on everyone of his countryman’s passport.  His sense of design has been described as having  a “timeless rightness about them: formality without bombast; balance and composure.”

“He sketched and painted outdoors, loving every detail of the Dorset countryside, its mosses and wild flowers and weeds and streams; he would have been content never to leave his garden, and resisted London and the modern world.” (London Times)

Creating an engraving from one of his paintings.

His family had

created a site

several years ago to publicize his legacy.  A forty-five minute presentation

“A life in graven letters”

by his son can be witnessed at this site. 

(This post is for

Kurt

.) 

BLOOD + SOIL

Blood and Soil further examined from

my previous post

….

The search for national identity gained momentum, at least in Europe, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Germany this search also led to a closer look at nature. The goal was to find particular natural settings that could help to distinguish German nature and landscapes from the natural environments of other nations and thus be identified as “truly” Germanic. According to

Johann Gottfried von Herder

(1744–1803), a “nation is called a people because it is first of all through nature.” Ideologically this meant that a people then can be called a nation when it can be derived from nature.

Similarly,

Alexander von Humboldt

(1769–1859) influenced later concepts of natural garden design. In his Ideas for a Physiognomy of Plants (Ideen zu einer Physiognomik der Gewächse), published in 1806, Humboldt referred to “patriotic plant characters” (“vaterländische Pflanzengestalten”) and addressed the decisive impact exercised by the vegetation of a country on the development of individual cultures. According to Humboldt, “the knowledge of the natural character of different regions of the earth [is] most intimately connected with the history of the human race and with its culture.” “The character of a people, gloomy or happy mood of humankind,”  According to Humbolt the outer appearance of plants, their physiognomy, gained considerable importance; he assumed that it could influence even the character of a people.

Eugene Gradmann wrote a book on Homeland Protection and Landscape Cultivation (Heimatschutz und Landschaftspf lege) in 1910. The idea of protecting native plants took on a nationalistic theme. Lange and Schultze-Naumburg emphasized the need for a garden to be rooted in a particular place and to demonstrate an understanding of the region in which it was set. Wilhelm Bolsche, also a founder member of Homeland Protect League, wrote a book with a title drawn from Goethe Die and Become! (1913) (Stirb und Werde!). He called private gardens to be treated as biospheres dedicated to the preservation of the native fauna and flora, so that they could be saved from extinction.

According to research done at Dumbarton Oaks, Willy Lange’s (1864– 1941) was professor of garden design in Berlin and one of the most significant garden theorists in early twentieth-century Germany. In his publications Lange claimed that “the German nature garden was the highest form of garden art and proof that Germany would be the cultural bearer of humankind in the field of garden art. In 1905 he stated: “The highest development of garden design is consequently based on the scientific

Weltanschauung

of our times and is reflected in the artistic nature garden.”   Some years later he said about natural garden design: “History will call this new stage of garden style, which is firmly based on its precursors, the stage of the German garden style. Germany has chosen to lend its name to this style in the history of gardens and to become once again ‘an improver of the world”. 

The Blood + Soil theory was that true Aryan race, the German/Nordic peasant races were ‘rooted in the soil’, superior and those foreign were inferior.  Lange also wrote that the “highest form of garden culture was only attainable by the German/Nordic races”. Therefore only German plants should be used in gardens.  Much like the Nazi’s believed that any nomadic or homeless race – Gypsies or Jews (the prime focus of the Holocaust) were inferior, plants from other countries should be rejected or destroyed.

Many “garden architects” as they were referred to, left Germany during the National Socialist reign. Alwin Seifert, a chief architect of the autobahn, (another postulated example of Germany’s superiority) banned all foreign plants from the planting of the autobahn.

In opposition to these precepts was Karl Foerster (1874-1970), German nurseryman, plant breeder and writer, who created his own garden in Potsdam-Bornim which dates back to 1912. Many are familiar with his name due to the popularity of Feather reed grass/ Calamagrostis acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' (among 350 other species) which he introduced and named.

He promoted the design of artistic low-maintenance gardens by offering appropriate hardy plants.  The garden is famous for its combination of architectural and naturalistic garden styles and its sunken garden. Foerster and his circle (landscape architect Herta Hammerbacher and Hermann Mattern with whom he founded a design studio in 1928) would embrace “world gardens” and even wrote a book on them.

During the Nazi era, Foerster took the risk and employed numerous Jewish friends in his operation and resisted the Nazi demand to primarily propagate and sell native German, pure plants. After the war, the soviet military administration puts claim on Foersters nursery, which was now managed under tight Soviet rule and remained the only perennial supplier for East Germany. Today the garden is managed by Foerster’s daughter Marianne Foerster and is part of the UNSECO World Heritage Site Potsdam-Sanssouci.