Wolfgang Oehme: 1930-2011

Wolfgang Oehme, one of the most influential and brilliant plantsman of the last century, passed away today. 

Wolfgang, along with his business partner James van Sweden, created the New American Garden, a strikingly original alternative to the traditional suburban yard. 

Wolfgang was a personal mentor to me and many, many others.  What was even more impressive than his brilliant and evocative plantings was his generosity of spirit and joy in the landscape.  I plan to write a fuller remembrance of Wolfgang soon.  If you knew Wolfgang and want to post a message for him, his official website is collecting those messages.

The Cloud Hedge Experiment

Lust.  The first time I saw a picture of Jacques Wirtz's cloud hedges, I wanted them.  Of course, I often look upon glossy magazines of European gardens and covet one thing or another.  But the overgrown boxwoods that the Wirtz's clipped into iconic cloud-like shapes stayed with me. They were both solid and structural, yet light and whimsical.  Artificial yet organic.  

For years now, I've been thinking about using cloud hedges in a design or my own garden, but to be honest, I haven't been confident I can pull it off.  After all, cloud hedges are more about garden craftsmanship than design acumen.  So I was delighted when I saw Jake Hobson's new book, The Art of Creative Pruning.  I hoped I would find a step by step tutorial on how to create this effect.  The book unfortunately is more of an illustrative coffee table book than it is a how-to manual.  The images themselves are instructive, and Mr. Hobson does give some useful advice for creative pruning.  But I found his advice for creating cloud hedges to be a bit too general: " Rough out the basic forms, following the flow of the plants."  So I went outside and looked at an overgrown yew hedge in my front yard.  I wasn't seeing too much "flow" to work with.

Best New Blog: Black Walnut Dispatch

Black Walnut Dispatch, written by Virginia based gardener and garden designer Mary Gray, is one of the best new garden blogs I’ve come across in a long time.  Full of heart and humor, Mary has already started an impressive number of high quality entries, from mocking oversized outdoor kitchens, to a satirical ode to L.L. Bean catalogues, to a moving manifesto about why we garden.  The writing sizzles.  It is like Garden Rant with a wry sense of humor.  I recently subscribed by email so I won't miss a single post.  Be sure to check out Black Walnut Dispatch.   You will not be disappointed.

"Hot or Not" Hits the Road

This Friday December 2, I will be speaking at the fourth annual "Turning a New Leaf Conference" in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  My talk is entitled "Hot or Not: How Making Sustainable Landscapes Fashionable will Revolutionize the Movement."  The talk was inspired by my original post found here.

Here is the abstract:

The sustainable landscape movement has advanced significantly over the last decade, gaining in acceptance among homeowners and designers. But many remain skeptical of sustainable practices, and there is even evidence of a backlash against using native plants. Has the push to make landscapes more sustainable hit a rut? Is the message being drowned out? How do we reach a broader audience?

The single best way to expand the appeal of sustainable landscapes is to make them fashionable. Until sustainable landscapes are shown to be beautiful, they will never be fully embraced by the American public. This talk will explore how to create a new aesthetic for sustainable landscapes that will make them more desirable. We will examine model projects that are not only ecologically productive, but strikingly original, cutting-edge designs. We will look at how the European garden scene has blended sustainability with an artistic ethos. Most importantly, we will examine strategies that CCLC members can use to create more beautiful, original, and ecologically-rich landscapes.

There's still time to register.  For more on the conference, including other fascinating speakers and discussions, please visit the site's homepage: http://www.chesapeakelandscape.org/2011leaf.htm

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.

Meaning in Landscape Architecture and Gardening

“Just as there are levels of meaning and discourse in language, ranging from laundry lists to business letters, from narrative fiction to lyric poetry, so too are there levels of meaning in landscape. They range from the mundane to the profound whether they are attractive or disheveled, beautiful or not, small or large…Landscapes are made of many diverse phenomena - visual, aural, tactile, olfactory - that may trigger the recall of things from our own personal environmental history, which in turn combine with a world of information from our education and experience. For this reason there is no question in my mind that the art of landscape design - when it is an art - is possibly the most complex and sophisticated art we possess.” 

Laurie Olin from an essay in Meaning in Landscape Architecture & Gardens

Umbellifers: Selections from my Favorite Plant Family

As an admitted plant-aholic, it is pretty easy for me to fall for a plant. I have a bad habit of seeing virtue in almost every green darling. Of all of my plant crushes, one in particular stands out: I am particularly crazed about umbels.

The plant family Apiaceae (also referred to as Umbelliferae) is a family of aromatic, hollow-stem plants most commonly known for their lacey, umbel-shaped flowers. For herb and vegetable gardeners, you are probably quite familiar with many characters in this cast: carrots, parsnips, cilantro, chervil, cumin, dill, fennel, lovage, and parsley. It was the family’s usefulness for cooking that initially attracted me, but it is their striking forms ultimately seduced me.

Umbels often have low basal foliage from which mostly leafless stems arise to support striking disk-shaped flowers. From the side, the flowers look like an umbrella turned inside-out by the wind. A close look at the tiny flower clusters (umbels) is a joy in itself, as radially-symmetrical fractals reveal hundreds of sparkling blooms. Staring into an umbel, I have the same thought as I did when I gazed upon the rose window in Chatres cathedral: how can there be such exultant power in so much delicacy?

Tom Stuart-Smith's 2010 Laurent-Perrier Garden, Chelsea.  Photo by Allan Pollok-Morris

Usually flowers with such intricacy lose their effect from a distance. But seeing umbels from a distance is precisely my favorite vantage point. Think about the frothy and effervescent effect of Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) tossing among a tall grass. Placed in a smaller, garden setting, few plants are as evocative of larger, wild landscapes as umbels. Their spumous blooms channel the ephemeral like few plants are capable of doing.



While I have long loved these plants, I have not gardened with them enough. Seeing Tom Stuart-Smith’s use of Cenolophium denudatum stunning 2010 Laurent-Perrier garden has convinced me of their power in designed landscapes. Stuart-Smith has the rare ability to create plantings with a dreamy, ethereal quality, but I am convinced his use of Baltic Cow Parsley gave this garden its transcendent, fairy-tale like quality.

Here are few seeds I have ordered for next year’s border. I’d love to know if any of you have gardened with them:

The One Plant Pot

Large pots are delight in a garden. Pots are perhaps the purest expression of planting design. Composing a pot is like a chef creating a salad—all of the rules of design get stripped down to their essence. In a larger landscape, the hand of the designer can be lost, but with a pot, the artificial environment is a pure display of horticultural skill.

Earlier in my career, I was obsessed with highly mixed pots. With pots, you can pull off things you never can in a larger landscape. One year, I did a theme pot of nothing but plants I found on the side of the road. It actually turned out ok. Other years, I’ve had fun combining annuals with huge leafed perennials like Tetrapanex. A well designed combination lets you see plants in a new light.

But recently, I’ve been drawn to simpler, single-plant pots. They seem to have more impact in a garden than a fussy, highly mixed pot. I wanted to share a few images of gorgeous, one plant pots from other designers:

When Metaphor Fails

This year, my wife and I made a token attempt to start a garden. We managed to pull ourselves away from the home renovation long enough to carve a perennial border out of a piece of our side yard.

Right now, it looks like a tattered tapestry. Some perennials have established with athletic vigor, while others lie low, perhaps waiting till next year. I’ve seeded the holes in the border with summer annuals, which have quickly taken advantage of their slower to establish neighbors.  The riotous color and size of the annuals have eroded what bit of compositional clarity that initially existed. Weeds run rampant throughout.  Crabgrass, Bermuda grass, and Bindweed dominate the area where we plan to add a stone path and terrace. They control territory like a Mexican drug cartel.  With so little time for the garden, the weeds and I maintain an uneasy détente—they have their territory, and I have mine.

Already I’m making notes about what needs to be changed. Too many filler plants, not enough structural ones. Needs more upright spires. Dot in a few architectural shrubs. Add low, dark-leafed annuals along the edges for contrast. Too many thin, linear masses: re-mass perennials in block-ier, thicker masses. The list grows by the day.

August crushes my idealism. All winter and spring I made pretty pictures of the garden in the soft light of my mind. In May, these images felt almost attainable. But August is the ultimate judge; the glare of the midday sun bears upon me the inescapable force of reality. All prior imaging disappears with the dew. The garden is simply what it is.

Realism is the theme of my summer.  Last month my father went through a complicated open-heart surgery and began a miraculous recovery from a stroke. Seeing him suffer through an intense recovery has also confronted me with a jarring reality. With a recovery like his, nothing goes the way you expect. With every hurdle he overcomes, another battery of complications sprout up. He has faced his recovery with a strength and grace that is indescribable unless witnessed. The man I knew as the sweetest man on earth has proved to be one of the strongest.

Beyond the Border 4: Maintaining Perennials to Last

This is the final post in a series I’ve been doing on how to design perennials and grasses in landscape settings. By landscape settings, I’m referring to non-garden sites, including public parks, commercial and institutional landscapes, or even residential sites larger than a single bed. Throughout this series, I’ve made the claim that herbaceous plants—the most dynamic and expressive plants a designer can use—ought to be used more often in our built landscapes.

My last post talked about how to select plants for these low maintenance sites. This post will focus on the single greatest reason people avoid using perennials and grasses: uncertainty about how they should be maintained. Almost every time I suggest using herbaceous plants in landscape settings, here’s what I hear: perennial plantings are fussy and high maintenance; clients don’t understand them and won’t take care of them; in a year from now, it will all be a weedy mess; use more shrubs or lawn.

It kills me. Some days I wonder if I will spend half my career battling the tyranny of low expectations.

The reason it kills me is because I know from experience how low maintenance perennials and grasses can actually be once established. I know that clients can have a lasting, beautiful, and sustainable planting in a fraction of the time it takes to maintain a lawn.

To understand how to maintain perennials and grasses, one must first understand a few basic concepts:

Native Plants & The Wild Look: An Argument for Design

Marcus de la Fleur's design for a residence using native plants prompts the question: does using natives in wild patterns help or hurt the native plant movement? Image by Marcus de la Fleur

I have a conflicted relationship with wildness.

When I think about the sea of lawns and generic plantings that dominate our built landscapes, when I reflect on how quickly our native woodlands are disappearing, I yearn for more wildness. In many ways, our landscapes are too tidy. Our shrubs are too clipped, our lawns too manicured, our planted spaces too restrained. Despite recent progress with more sustainable gardens, the McLandscape is still the dominant form in our country.

"Yard of the Month"

Just to get a sense of what’s considered beautiful in our country, try this experiment: do a Google image search for the phrase “yard of the month.” The aesthetic is clear: tightly clipped evergreens smashed up against the house, an endless expanse of weedless lawns, and—for landscapes with a special flourish—a floating bed on annuals around the mailbox or a tree.

So in this context, wildness is desirable. How liberating is it to banish lawn altogether from one’s yard? How delightful is a project like the Highline that has an elevated meadow that winds between skyscrapers? How welcome are spontaneous, self-seeding wildflowers in an institutional landscape? Wildness adds an element of drama and dynamism sorely needed in our landscapes.

While I praise wildness on the one hand, I am concerned that it has become the de rigueur of native gardens these days. It is as if a native garden, by definition, must be wild and sprawling. To create a native garden is not only a statement against exotic plants, but it is a statement against traditional garden forms altogether. Almost all of the sustainable landscape techniques, including rain gardens, bioswales, and green roofs—have adopted a wild aesthetic.

So what, you might ask? Don’t we want to import not only native plants to our built landscapes, but the patterns and forms of our native landscapes? Yes, but I want native gardens to embrace a diversity of design styles. I have a couple of problems with a “natural only” look.

An advertisement for native planting, or an argument against it? Rain Garden.  Photo and design by Marcus de la Fleur

First, designing a garden or landscape with a wild look takes quite a bit of effort and planning. There’s a difference between a carefully crafted wild look and sloppy planting design. Too often, sustainable landscapes emphasize plant selection at the expense of overall composition. Plants are not massed, so they don’t have visual impact. Small wildflowers are placed next to towering prairie plants, creating a chaotic scene. Lines, form, and order are banished, so all sense of relationship to existing structures is lost. Herbaceous plants are often placed too far apart. In our effort to imitate nature, we’ve turned our back on the forms and meaning of 4,000 years of garden history.