Intermingling and the Aesthetics of Ecology

Is intermingling really more ecological? Or just the stylized look of ecology?

This summer the Highline had its four year anniversary. Perhaps the greatest testament to its massive success is the extent to which the strategy of “intermingling” plants—as opposed to solid massings of single species—has been accepted as a new ecological best practice. The traditional horticultural practice of massing plants together in solid blocks is now seen as static and old school. Mixing plants into carefully woven tapestries is the expression of the ecological zeitgeist.  Almost all of the world’s planting avant-garde (Oudolf, Kingsbury, Sarah Price, James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett, Cassian Schmidt, Dan Pearson, Roy Diblik) have projects that celebrate this mixed style.

Noel Kingsbury and Piet Oudolf’s latest book, Planting: A New Perspective, is a celebration of rise of a more intermingled style. Kingsbury has long been an advocate of this mixed planting style, but this latest book positions intermingling as a part of a new international movement. Intermingling is seen not only as a new design trend, but as a way of creating better ecological function. In a recent article in the journal Topos, Kingsbury writes:

Creating intermingling plant combinations, whether aesthetically driven or strictly functional, creates an ecology. In a conventional horticultural planting, plants are discouraged from interacting, but when they do, ecology starts to take over. "Trends in Planting Design." Topos, 83, 2013

Statements like these raise several questions in my mind: is intermingling really more ecological? Or is it just an aesthetic that imitates ecology? And what about function? Does intermingling plants result in more stable, lower maintenance plantings? Or does it require more intensive gardening to maintain it? 

My own experiments with intermingling have been eye-opening. I wanted to record a few of my own thoughts about intermingling and also hear your reactions to this rising trend.

Design Trend: Collage

Why Landscape Architects are Getting Beyond the Grid.

A spate of recent landscape architecture projects are loosening up the traditional orthogonal geometry that has dominated both traditional and modern design and instead embracing a more layered, intentionally incongruous approach to space-making.  

These projects use design strategies closely related to collage and montage.  For much of the past century, strength in design was assumed to be a result of closely adhering to a single geometric framework. Classical design relied on axial arrangements; modern design relied on the grid.  The result has been over a century of primarily orthogonal geometries underlying landscape architectural projects.

But a new trend is emerging that breaks the grid and embraces incongruity.

GROUNDED DESIGN 2.0

While I still feel like a complete blogging newbie, Grounded Design is now over three years old.  Since blog years are like dog years (a year on the internet = at least seven years in reality, right?), I am feeling a bit reflective about all the great interactions that have happened here.  I may not blog with the frequency of my first six months (17 posts in one month--was I on amphetamines?), I still feel a fire in my belly when it comes to creating honest, content-focused posts that fosters dialogue. 

So it is with a sense of renewed commitment that I announce Grounded Design 2.0.  Ok,ok so maybe I just updated a dreadfully outdated banner and a few fonts. But I want to use the much needed graphic update to symbolize a revived charge to engage in more relevant content, cutting-edge design, and deeper immersion into where we connect with our landscapes.

So here is to you: thank you for reading, engaging, and sharing your own trials and tribulations. The interaction with so many talented designers, gardeners, and thinkers has stretched me in so many wonderful ways.  As I dig deeper into the process of writing a book and in engaging with some of the top minds in our field, I want to promise more of myself through this journey.  I look forward to sharing my adventures with you.

With the deepest gratitude,

Thomas

Fab Late Season Annuals

My favorite selections from a year of experimentation

The wet spring and early summer has been a blessing and curse in the border this year.  Moist-loving perennials like Mondarda and Eupatorium have swelled to gigantic proportions, growing several feet higher than they've grown in the past two years. All the while, my drier-loving perennials have melted with fungus and mildew.  I've just finished ripping out several dozen fungus-covered Perovskia and Agastache ‘Black Adder’.  It’s funny, because if you asked me last year what kind of plants would be on my list of “plants of the future”—that is, climate change worthy plants--I probably would have listed those two.  But one wet season and they are gone.

I have long complained that summers in Washington, D.C. area are essentially subtropical.  While perennial gardeners in cooler climates like Maine, England, and the Netherlands enjoy spectacular bonanzas of July and August blooms, we humidity-bound gardeners watch all but the most thuggish of our perennials flop and generally poop out.  Of course, it is entirely possible to have a beautiful late season perennial garden in the mid-Atlantic; it is just hard to have both a beautiful early season and late season perennial garden here—particularly for space-challenged gardens.  Our growing season is so stretched out (with a thirty degree temperature differential); what looks good in May most definitely does not look good in August and vice versa.    

So this year, I've invested heavily in annuals and tropicals to pump up the late season border.  I can’t tell if my foray into annuals and tropical is a strategic master-stroke or a sign that I have slipped too deep into horticultural self-indulgence. Whatever my diagnosis, I've learned quite a bit this year about combining these plants in perennial garden—including quite a few missteps (such as giant Colocasias shading out half a dozen sun-loving plants).  But there have been enough happy accidents that I thought I’d share a few of the better moments.  I've seeded almost two dozen different plants this year and tried a range of different tropicals. Here are my favorites:

Mulch Addiction

The United States of Mulch.  Why do we use too much mulch?  What is the alternative?

One of the idiosyncrasies of the built American landscape is our fascination with mulch.  It’s in our yards and gardens; it is in the parking lots of our fast food chains and grocery stores; and it is in our airports and along our highways.  We spread it everywhere.  We spread it thickly.

Our use of mulch is so ubiquitous and so frequent, it is easy to forget how unusual this habit is.  Traveling through Europe or Asia, however, the contrast is clear.  In most other countries, it is the plants themselves that occupy the most space; here, however, mulch is often even more visually dominant than the plants themselves.   I remember a friend from Europe asking me once, “Why are Americans so proud of their mulch?”  At the time, it had not really occurred to me that we use mulch more than other parts of the world, but slowly I too began to see that he was right.  What is curious to me is that our mulch addiction is not limited to socioeconomic class or status.  The liberal use of mulch is as prevalent on wealthy estates as it is on strip malls and tract housing.  And it has little to do with training.  Thick blankets of mulch are specified by landscape architects as often as maintenance crews.  

Where do we get this peculiar habit?  Perhaps part of the issue is that mulch is abundant and cheap.  We’ve always had lots of trees.  Mulch is a byproduct of the large timber industry, making it relatively affordable.  Perhaps our use of mulch is a result of the fact that our landscapes regenerate so quickly.  A recent blog by Noel Kingsbury remarked on how quickly the American woodland regenerates compared to English forests. It’s true: if you leave a piece of cleared land alone almost anywhere east of the Mississippi River, it will likely revert to an invasive-choked woodland within a decade.  Below our lawns and suburbs, there is a feral landscape just waiting for its chance.  Perhaps we mulch (and mow) to keep the beast at bay.  

Pleasure Garden

Thoughts about our garden.

“We desire,” the Emporer dictated, “that in the garden there should be all kinds of plants.”  Charlemagne the Great

I do a lot of writing about gardens, but our own personal garden has never been the subject of this blog.  Our garden is always a backdrop to my thinking about gardens and gardening—a sort of character in my story whose face is never revealed.  There are many reasons for this: first, our garden is just in the process of being established; I’m a terrible photographer and our garden is surrounded on three sides by unattractive roads and on one side by our unattractive house; and mostly because the act of gardening feels profoundly personal to me.  It was designed for us, for our own pleasure, so the idea of opening for public consumption is a bit terrifying to me.

BEFORE: The garden area when we bought the house.

But I love other blogs that openly share their own gardens.  James Golden’s View from Federal Twist is a brilliant blog about two wonderful gardens.  That James bears his own soul through the garden is a source of endless inspiration to me.  I’m just not that brave.  And Scott Weber’s Rhone Street Garden is another fantastic blog.  Scott transforms his small garden into and endless expanse through the lens of his camera.  Through his images, I see and enjoy Scott’s garden much in the way he probably does.  

Nasella tenuissima and Salvia 'Caradonna'

Noel Kingsbury: The Ghost in the Machine

Thoughts on Noel Kingsbury's contribution and a review of his latest book with Piet Oudolf

Noel Kingsbury is the great chronicler of contemporary planting design.  Kingsbury has been involved in over twenty books spanning the last two decades, most of them focusing on the topic of design inspired by nature and ecology.  Few garden writers are as prolific or as influential.  Garden writers tend to be an anonymous sort. In an industry still dominated by the soft pornography of photographs, garden writing offers little more than annotating captions. But Kingsbury has transcended the role.

In terms of the contemporary planting avant-garde, Noel is this generation’s Gertrude Stein: the thought leader that holds together a generation of loosely-affiliated, but intellectually-kindred designers, plantsmen, and nurserymen—all working in within the “new style” of naturalistic plantings.  Like Stein, entrée into the Kingsbury salon is a kind of validation in itself.  To draw the attention of Kingsbury is to have your work remembered by (planting) art history.   The Kingsbury “salon” includes international celebrities like Piet Oudolf and Dan Pearson.  But it also includes little known thinkers of central Europe, thinkers such as German Professor Richard Hansen; landscape architect Urs Walser; and Dr. Walter Korb of the Bavarian Institute.  The former group gives the Kingsbury posse cachet and international celebrity; the latter gives it intellectual credibility and authenticity.  Kingsbury’s blandly titled 2004 essay, “Contemporary Overview of Naturalistic Planting Design,” included in the book Dynamic Landscape, remains one of the finest summaries of the “new style” and its practitioners ever written.   It proves that Kingsbury remains the central voice in an increasingly international movement.

Gardening After the Apocalypse

The very nature of nature is changing. What then about our gardens?

Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage at Dungeness. Photo by Michael Peters

I’m no doomsday watcher. I scoffed at Y2K, ignored the Mayan calendar, and can’t even bother to keep a Homeland Security-endorsed emergency supply list. But lately it has become increasingly hard to ignore the fact that something is stirring in the waters.

First, there are the climate-related problems: the continuing drought in the Midwest; hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy; and the fact that 13 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 15 years. Zone maps are changing, species invasions are increasing, and extinctions are rising. I don’t care whether you believe climate change is man-made or just some temporary blip; there simply is no normal anymore. Gardeners more attuned to seasonal changes are the first to notice a difference. In my own garden last year, I noticed several bugs I have never seen before; I lost several perennials because the winter was not cool enough; and my daffodils started to emerge in December.

Throw in some global political instability (the American fiscal cliff, the European debt crisis) and there’s only one reasonable conclusion one can make about the future: the only certainty is a whole lot more uncertainty.

Ok, ok, so maybe the sky is not falling yet, but it is reasonable to say that the threats we hear about in the news lately are particularly ominous. Perhaps more catastrophic in nature. Globalization has linked us in many wonderful ways, but it has also exposed the fragility of world systems. Thus, a single financial firm (Bear Stearns) declares bankruptcy, and the global economy collapses. A water shortage along the Mississippi River causes food prices to skyrocket in China. Volatility breeds volatility.

It’s with this context in mind that I think about gardening. What does it mean to garden in an era when the threats we face are apocalyptic? The very nature of nature is changing. What then about our gardens?

Or to put the question more pointedly: Do we continue to grow marigolds even as the emergency sirens blare?

Interview with Travis Beck

I recently caught up with author and landscape architect, Travis Beck, whose recent book Principles of Ecological Landscape Design was just released last week.  I was lucky enough to read an advance copy over Christmas.  The content blew me away.  The book will be an indispensable text for designers interested in ecological planting.  After reading the book, I was interested in following up with Travis with a few questions.

What prompted you to write this book?

I've been interested for a long time in how to design landscapes modeled on natural systems. I kept looking for the book that would answer all of my questions. Eventually I realized that if I wanted to really think this through, I would have to write a book myself.    

Winter and Spring 2013 Talks

I have the pleasure of talking with different groups about landscape architecture, garden design, and sustainable design.   This winter and spring, I have a number of talks and lectures lined up throughout the eastern U.S.  Most of these talks are open to the public.  Click the links below to find out more information or register.  And see who else is speaking at some of these events—there are some great rosters here. 

February 6, 7:00pm  Annapolis Horticulture Society, Annapolis, Maryland.  St. Anne's Parish Hall.  199 Duke of Gloucester Street, Annapolis, MD 21401.  SOLD OUT.

February 13, 10:00am, 2013, Winter Symposium "A Natural Love Affair,"  The Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden  Richmond, Virginia.  Massey Conference Center, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.  Michael Dirr, Alan Weakly, and Holly Schimizu also speaking at this event.  SOLD OUT.  Email registrar to be added to the waiting list.  

March 21, 7:00pm, Landscape Designer's Group, Bethesda, Maryland.  Bethesda/Chevy Chase (BCC) Regional Service Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, MD 20814, Conference Room “A”.  Space is limited, so if you plan to attend, please register at programs@landscapedesignersgroup.com.

April 20, 10:00 am.  Garden and Landscape Symposium, Phipps Conservatory and Botanic Gardens, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  

May 2013.  Hahn Horticulture Garden Spring Seminar Series, Blacksburg, Virginia.  

The Most Important Landscape Book Since McHarg's Design with Nature

I rarely write book reviews, but I am making an exception for a remarkable new book.

Principles of Ecological Landscape Design, written by Travis Beck and published by Island Press, is the first attempt to write a comprehensive text addressing how ecology can and should inform the design of landscapes and gardens.  This may be the most important landscape book since Ian McHarg’s groundbreaking work, Design with Nature, pioneered the concept of ecological planning.

Most ecologically-based designers rely on a handful of truisms to guide their designs: use natives; right plant, right place; consider biodiversity.   But when it comes to actually selecting plants, one quickly realizes that eco-slogans provide few answers to complex questions.  How many different species should we include, and in what proportions?  Do you mass plants, or mix them?  And how should different species be mixed?  What happens when the plants start to compete with each other?  How do you maintain a designed community to encourage the right outcomes?  How do we measure success?

Travis Beck’s book delivers answers.  The book’s scope is sprawling.  Each chapter could itself be its on book.  It covers biogeography and plant selection, assembling plant communities, competition and coexistence, designing ecosystems, materials cycling and soil ecology, plant-animal interactions, biodiversity and stability, disturbance and succession, landscape ecology, and global change.  But this very broadness of scope is the book’s strength.  Beck gives us a survey of the last fifty years of ecological research and boils it down in an accessible language for the designer.

This book could be the defining textbook for ecological planting.  As more landscape architects and designers seek information about how to design sustainable landscapes, Beck’s book will be an invaluable resource.  If you are a designer and are interested in getting beyond greenwashing, Beck’s book provides principles, strategies, and detailed instructions.   

I will be including an interview with Travis in an upcoming post.  Stay tuned!