The importance of natives

A friend of mine just shared this article with me, and it pretty well sums up why I care about plants:

Just Because It'll Grow in Your Yard Doesn't Mean You Should Plant It, by Lisa Novik. 


Photo from If Nature Could Talk

Hedge Cubes

A simple yet effective use of plant manipulation in Paris.  I don't mind a clipped hedge like this, despite my previous rants.  If you're going to force a plant into a particular shape, make it count! 

Photo and more info from Historical Gardens.

VT Cairns

Stacking stones is part of our common heritage, and people to this day seem to get a kick out of taming rock.

In Vermont last week, I came across several formations by the river.  Hurricane Irene gifted the banks with a large assortment of quarried marble, from which people had fashioned a fire pit, thrones and miscellaneous collections.  I added to it some of my own pieces as well.  Later that day, my mother and I saw this simply built bench at a local nursery, which looked very similar to those down by the river. 

U.S. Botanical Garden

I was sent to Washington, D.C. last week for a work conference, and squeezed in a quick hour at the Botanical Garden on the mall on my last day.

As soon as I walked into the misty glass house, my blood pressure dropped and my olfactory senses perked up.  Slowly meandering through the exhibits of Jungle, Desert, Rare Orchids and Medicinal Plants, I made notes of plants I already knew, and those I'd like to get to know better. 

Outside, the gardens celebrated the wild, with paths leading through native plantings, bioswales and creative paving. 

Piet Oudolf

Until I am able to pull my thoughts together on why his designs are so right, here is some more info on Piet Oudolf.

LA by FLO Jr, 1930

Olmstead's sons' plan for open space in LA is lovely even in 2D, I can't imagine how beautiful it would have been in reality.  The intriguing story as to why this never came to be could be made into another Chinatown, exciting landscape architects and urban planners everywhere.

In book-form for now, Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region, by Greg Hise and William Deverell, is summarized here.

Arroyo Secco Parkway Plan

In my searches for beautiful site plans, I found this on the LA Times blog.   The lettering, the sections, the meandering treeline -- it's a beautiful piece of civic art.

Design Theory

My Design Theory class has me making small models out of anything I can find, as long as it is white.  I keep returning to working with paper, and paper just seems to want to look like Richard Serra sculptures.  Who am I to tell the paper what to do?

All images from Gagosian Gallery.  Found via even*cleveland.

Model

Sorry for the radio silence this week, but I am just emerging from the attic where I was building this scale model of a school for my landscape architecture class.   Now that I've gotten all of the crazy glue off of my fingers,  it's time to get back to living things!  A bug post is coming up later today.