Thirty Seconds Until You are Totally Inspired

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post comparing texture in music to planting design.  The other day, I read this quote by one of my favorite landscape architects in the world, London-based Tom Stuart-Smith, which also compares music to the garden.  Like everything he does, the quote is simple, yet briming in shimmering detail.  Enjoy!

"I rarely listen to music while I’m working since I cannot concentrate.  But instead, some musical phrase takes up permanent residence in a chamber of my ind and accompanies me through the day.  In one very facile respect music is like a garden, with its contrast between form and content.  The formal structure of music is often quite rigid, as with sonota form, which is then contrasted with the embellishment of detail. 

"With Beethoven’s late quartets and piano sonatas, contrast is taken to an extreme: an almost savage starkness and sparse construction is set against passages of eloquent lyricism or gaping silences.  If this music depicts anything, it is a succession of emotional experiences.  Perhaps this is like a garden, with its crescendos and diminuendos, its sudden bursts of energy and silences—all set within an overriding architecture.  Doesn’t the garden at its best become an abstract expression of man’s connection to the world beyond himself?  Like music . . . but just a little less turbulent than Beethoven.” 

Landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith.  Quote originally appeared in Garden Design Journal, September 2004

Garden Designers Roundtable: Horticultural Idols

Plants are a particular passion of mine, but what fascinates me most is the way we design with plants. I’ve dedicated my professional life to the study of how we arrange and compose living plants. Planting design is not just about the plant as a horticultural or ornamental object; instead, it is a window into our culture, our beliefs about beauty, and perhaps most importantly, our relationship with nature.

For several years now, I’ve wrestled with what it means to develop my own style as a designer. I was fortunate enough to spend the better part of a decade working for Oehme, van Sweden & Associates, apprenticing and learning their iconic New American Garden style. Since leaving the firm in 2009, I’ve wondered how to adapt what I learned there and make my own contribution to the development of a uniquely American garden style, one rooted in the patterns of the American landscape.

It was this quest that led me to a study of the great plantsmen, designers who changed the way we think about plants. I teach a class in planting design for George Washington University, and in preparation for a lecture, I sought to select a list of groundbreaking plantsmen. Of course, one could spend an entire year studying all the great planting designers of history, but I wanted to focus on those who have most influenced the current moment. I wanted to share my personal list of ten great plantsmen, a mix of past and current designers whose designs are, in my opinion, the most relevant for today. This list includes both iconic designers of the past, brilliant contemporary plantsmen, and even emerging talent that has not been fully recognized.