When a house sits comfortably in its time and its surroundings we call it agreeable but how often is this taken into account when a building goes up? The obvious time to consider the harmonious arrangement of house and garden is right at the beginning when it is still possible to consider dwelling and landscape together. We often talk of the genius of the place or the genius loci as being a voice to be listened to. More often, however it seems, as though the builders have made a clearing just big enough to accommodate a house and then, almost as an afterthought, called a landscaper in to disguise the more obvious discord. This leads to inappropriate planting such as a conifer at each corner of the building and foundation planting in general. While there may be evidence to prove that the rural American ideal of property ownership is enclosed land with a whatever kind of dwelling on it, the suburban scene with the double garage to the sidewalk is different. Here the ideal appears to be to demonstrate one's wealth with a house that occupies as much of the land as possible.
Richard Meir, a post modernist architect, said of the house he designed in 1969 that it was clad in white to best express the difference between the man made and the natural. I do not, personally, see this as being a difference in need of expression in such a blatant way but there does seem to be an overarching ambition amongst architects and developers to prove to nature exactly who is in control. It is often after someone moves into this sore thumb of a house that they realize just how much it sticks out and then comes the more sensible, yet virtually impossible, task of trying to make it look like it belongs. There is much talk of using plants to anchor a house to ground it and so on. People and their dwelling places are as much a part of nature as trees and animals are, not better or worse, and certainly not in battle for control! Yet this complicity is rarely expressed, we see only conflict.
Historically a dwelling has always been a means to shelter and protect oneself and ones family from the elements and harmful forces, including alien humans and imagined demons. We know more about the real dangers today than we ever did and we have tamed some of the traditional ones and invented new enemies to replace them. Today as always the majority of evil forces are imaginary but often we use them to justify our point of view.
When, in seventeenth century England, an architect designed a house for a wealthy patron he designed the grounds too. The most common device to connect house and grounds was a single axis, which ran through the house out through the garden and surrounding parkland to the boundary of the property often seen as the horizon. At the other extreme is the traditional Japanese house with its courtyard garden enclosed on three sides by the house, any barrier between the two being subtly overcome by providing a practical and symbolic link. Each location has a different and unique genius loci we don't need to copy but some care is needed before we go too far down the wrong road.
In the hilly country ranges to the north of Montreal there is a lot of development to accommodate the need to escape from the city; new houses built on virgin land. A wonderful opportunity for an amiable liaison but which more often resembles rape. Today we hear a lot about the Chinese art of geomancy known as Feng Shui, it is an ancient system of placement to enhance good fortune and minimize bad. When you see a so-called prestige home erected atop a mound in hastily cleared woodland, with its foundations driving the whole thing skyward, common sense tells you how uncomfortable it looks. Frank Lloyd Wright would agree with the Feng Shui, he said, You should never build a house on the top of a hill, and it doesn't come any simpler than that. I realize the practical concerns regarding ice and snow but my plea is for a broader view that would take in beauty as well as function. If you are ever in the position of having to design a garden around this prestige home, which may also be painted turquoise your bad fortune is indeed assured.
It may not be your aim to integrate house and landscape, its an ego thing, and if this is the case you should be bold enough to make that statement fully. When a castle was built the plan was to accentuate the fortification and the power of whoever owned the castle and there was no attempt to harmonize because it was to be a demonstration of power not amiability A temple of white marble is demanding your attention. When a house is built on a hill and then surrounded by huge boulders I think we are getting close to this same statement. I would suggest that a demonstration of culture or at least good taste might be more appropriate in this the twenty-first century. If you sort recyclable waste yet build eyesores into the environment you may have missed the point.
This may be a landscape designers point of view, for which I make no apology but if house and landscape (or garden) cannot be planned together then the landscape should be designed first.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Sukiya living
*
To insist that “Sukiya Living” is the correct name for what most would call a Japanese garden seems an odd, almost argumentative stance to take. The term is modernist in tone with its denial of any historical or religious content but can any garden influenced by something with a pedigree as rich as the way Japanese garden be totally secular?
When the ‘California style’ became popular it was within the context of where and when, a context that provided a situation where people had more leisure time, more money and because of the Californian climate the blurring of inside and outside was a workable idea. One influence on this way of living came from Japan with its simplicity of material that allowed for an easy passage from one living space to another obscuring the barriers between house and garden. The borrowing of notions Japanese is evident in the style that Eichler developed, it is evident in the gardens of James Rose and Tommy Church and are indeed totally secular: is this the real sukiya living? Unless we are sticking strictly to an architectural style to provide the meaning for the gardens shown here then they could equally be Californian. When the self taught designer Fujitara Kubota attempted to make traditional Japanese gardens on the American west coast (1927 - 1979) he quickly discovered that although the principles that govern the traditional model were universal their application needed modification because of cultural differences.
*
Traditionally gardens are made at the same time as the house and there is a close collaboration between designer/architect/client/builder a tradition that does not exist in the U.S. There is an attention to detail in a Japanese garden that requires a high level of craftsmanship and once built they need skilled maintenance and none of these qualities existed in the American workforce. So it is my contention that what is being called ‘sukiya living’ is not a traditional Japanese art yet is influenced by a Japanese aesthetic and is indistinguishable from ‘California style’ in all except the use of certain Japanese artifacts.
*
To insist that “Sukiya Living” is the correct name for what most would call a Japanese garden seems an odd, almost argumentative stance to take. The term is modernist in tone with its denial of any historical or religious content but can any garden influenced by something with a pedigree as rich as the way Japanese garden be totally secular?
When the ‘California style’ became popular it was within the context of where and when, a context that provided a situation where people had more leisure time, more money and because of the Californian climate the blurring of inside and outside was a workable idea. One influence on this way of living came from Japan with its simplicity of material that allowed for an easy passage from one living space to another obscuring the barriers between house and garden. The borrowing of notions Japanese is evident in the style that Eichler developed, it is evident in the gardens of James Rose and Tommy Church and are indeed totally secular: is this the real sukiya living? Unless we are sticking strictly to an architectural style to provide the meaning for the gardens shown here then they could equally be Californian. When the self taught designer Fujitara Kubota attempted to make traditional Japanese gardens on the American west coast (1927 - 1979) he quickly discovered that although the principles that govern the traditional model were universal their application needed modification because of cultural differences.
*
Traditionally gardens are made at the same time as the house and there is a close collaboration between designer/architect/client/builder a tradition that does not exist in the U.S. There is an attention to detail in a Japanese garden that requires a high level of craftsmanship and once built they need skilled maintenance and none of these qualities existed in the American workforce. So it is my contention that what is being called ‘sukiya living’ is not a traditional Japanese art yet is influenced by a Japanese aesthetic and is indistinguishable from ‘California style’ in all except the use of certain Japanese artifacts.
Friday, March 10, 2006
What is ‘Good Garden Design’
I can’t imagine how it is possible to discuss the necessity of ‘good design’ if we can’t define what that is, we also have to consider if its negative is ‘bad design’ or ‘no design’. A much easier question to get your head around would be to ask if ‘design’ is essential to the enjoyment of a garden and if so would you recognize its presence or absence. When we introduce the “good the bad and the ugly” we are critiquing under the assumption that there was an attempt at design in the first place and that may not be the case. Gardening and design are not mutually exclusive but they are not the same thing so if someone grows plants she enjoys for their own sake and we set ourselves up to make a judgement about the gardens success it should be from a gardeners/horticultural point of view. On the other hand if someone, pro or not, intentionally designs a space, a different criterion applies and for it to make any sense there should be some standard beyond “I like it so, up yours”; lets call it ‘taste’. In other words we need an example or model so that any garden design can be compared and measured against it. This model could be a set of principles that is seen as exactly what I am suggesting i.e. an example and not as a set of rules.
I think that the components of good design can be itemized, I borrowed these categories from Paul Graham;
Good Design is:-
simple
timeless
solves the right problem
suggestive
often slightly funny
hard
looks easy
uses symmetry
resembles nature
redesign
can copy
often strange
happens in chunks
often daring
I can’t imagine how it is possible to discuss the necessity of ‘good design’ if we can’t define what that is, we also have to consider if its negative is ‘bad design’ or ‘no design’. A much easier question to get your head around would be to ask if ‘design’ is essential to the enjoyment of a garden and if so would you recognize its presence or absence. When we introduce the “good the bad and the ugly” we are critiquing under the assumption that there was an attempt at design in the first place and that may not be the case. Gardening and design are not mutually exclusive but they are not the same thing so if someone grows plants she enjoys for their own sake and we set ourselves up to make a judgement about the gardens success it should be from a gardeners/horticultural point of view. On the other hand if someone, pro or not, intentionally designs a space, a different criterion applies and for it to make any sense there should be some standard beyond “I like it so, up yours”; lets call it ‘taste’. In other words we need an example or model so that any garden design can be compared and measured against it. This model could be a set of principles that is seen as exactly what I am suggesting i.e. an example and not as a set of rules.
I think that the components of good design can be itemized, I borrowed these categories from Paul Graham;
Good Design is:-
simple
timeless
solves the right problem
suggestive
often slightly funny
hard
looks easy
uses symmetry
resembles nature
redesign
can copy
often strange
happens in chunks
often daring
It is impossible to think of gardening today perhaps it is too cold even to be outdoors, An adjustment is needed in my perception, in my view of what the garden is. I have always considered a garden to be a place to be in rather than a view from the window but if the weather makes being outside impossible, and believe me minus 28 is no joke, what can I do but look.
*
My dictionary says that ‘landscape’ is “scenery as seen in a broad view” so perhaps I must look at the view from my window as landscape rather than garden. I must say that it limits what I am able to write about it although I might summon up some bromides about how beautiful it was last summer I could even refer to photographs to remind me. I could, I suppose ruminate on what it will look like next summer but I want to extract something positive out of the frost and the snow, the here and now, if I can.
So landscape it is. The landscape, or at least that part of it I am looking at from my window, is flat as far as my eye can see. There is a line of windblown and leafless maple trees drawing a ragged line between the white of the field and the gray of the sky , the fringe of ice on the window completes the bleak vignette. Today there is a wind blowing in from the west (the left), a visible wind, full of snow clouds drifting like fog. There is a certain poetic beauty to it and a stark reminder of the power the elements posses. When this same view is green and lush, with rod straight rows of corn and soya beans driving an axis from here to a blue sky it is easier to credit nature but would she own up to being responsible for this I wonder?
Nothing in my English years prepared me even though I grew up in a house with no central heating, in fact it had very little heating of any sort. But in England however bad the weather is you know it won’t last long and the same clothing and the same activity will be fitting most of the time. Enforced inactivity is hard, looking out the window at a frozen garden, even when I call it landscape, is frustrating for a gardener, however he is dressed.
What I must do is plant more conifers although they are not indigenous to this iron rich clay soil they could add interest through the long winter. They would need protection from the ice laden wind. I know. I could also build some structures, a pergola or a stone wall to add form beneath the planar blanket of snow, I could even do that today if it weren’t so cold.
*
My dictionary says that ‘landscape’ is “scenery as seen in a broad view” so perhaps I must look at the view from my window as landscape rather than garden. I must say that it limits what I am able to write about it although I might summon up some bromides about how beautiful it was last summer I could even refer to photographs to remind me. I could, I suppose ruminate on what it will look like next summer but I want to extract something positive out of the frost and the snow, the here and now, if I can.
So landscape it is. The landscape, or at least that part of it I am looking at from my window, is flat as far as my eye can see. There is a line of windblown and leafless maple trees drawing a ragged line between the white of the field and the gray of the sky , the fringe of ice on the window completes the bleak vignette. Today there is a wind blowing in from the west (the left), a visible wind, full of snow clouds drifting like fog. There is a certain poetic beauty to it and a stark reminder of the power the elements posses. When this same view is green and lush, with rod straight rows of corn and soya beans driving an axis from here to a blue sky it is easier to credit nature but would she own up to being responsible for this I wonder?
Nothing in my English years prepared me even though I grew up in a house with no central heating, in fact it had very little heating of any sort. But in England however bad the weather is you know it won’t last long and the same clothing and the same activity will be fitting most of the time. Enforced inactivity is hard, looking out the window at a frozen garden, even when I call it landscape, is frustrating for a gardener, however he is dressed.
What I must do is plant more conifers although they are not indigenous to this iron rich clay soil they could add interest through the long winter. They would need protection from the ice laden wind. I know. I could also build some structures, a pergola or a stone wall to add form beneath the planar blanket of snow, I could even do that today if it weren’t so cold.
Events
Lets view the garden as a series of events.
Spring most important..cherry blossom
First fall of snow.
Passion of a love affair compared to the everyday of a marriage.
Conifers and grass and summer bedding static
Fall colour
Winter sharp blue sky.
Can you recall the excitement that a love affair generated, now compare this with the everyday experience of marriage; one is not better than the other its just that with a garden we have the choice. The choice is between periodic events that are charged with passion and a workaday situation that has neither highs nor lows. A mundane garden would be non existent between November and May and have a flat arrangement of grass, conifers and impatients from the middle of May until leaf fall. We aid and abet this style with an insistence on year round interest and colour; I want to go beyond a garden full of colour to something with more heart and perhaps less reliance on flowers.
A good thing about a love affair is the short duration of the intensity , there is no way I could live out my life at that level, the expectation the fruition the memory of all that desperate pleasure . The garden equivalent is a cherry tree in blossom or a particular maple tree that turns golden in fall, it is the deep red of a short lived peony or the daffodils that tell us winter is over. The impermanence of these events serves only to heighten the pleasure.
Some people get married because this is what is expected of them either by tradition or family most of us have a garden just like that and we don’t elope with the smell of a rose, instead we yoke ourselves to a garden like all the others in our street. We have grass that we have a hard time convincing that it is really living in England, shrubs chosen for their resistance to the climate and the gardener and a selection of easy going annuals. Excess grass is mowed off once a week as if it were dust under a vacuum cleaner, weeds are eradicated hedges trimmed and snow cleared all with the same janitorial motivation. There must be more to be had than this loveless relationship and there is.
Lets view the garden as a series of events.
Spring most important..cherry blossom
First fall of snow.
Passion of a love affair compared to the everyday of a marriage.
Conifers and grass and summer bedding static
Fall colour
Winter sharp blue sky.
Can you recall the excitement that a love affair generated, now compare this with the everyday experience of marriage; one is not better than the other its just that with a garden we have the choice. The choice is between periodic events that are charged with passion and a workaday situation that has neither highs nor lows. A mundane garden would be non existent between November and May and have a flat arrangement of grass, conifers and impatients from the middle of May until leaf fall. We aid and abet this style with an insistence on year round interest and colour; I want to go beyond a garden full of colour to something with more heart and perhaps less reliance on flowers.
A good thing about a love affair is the short duration of the intensity , there is no way I could live out my life at that level, the expectation the fruition the memory of all that desperate pleasure . The garden equivalent is a cherry tree in blossom or a particular maple tree that turns golden in fall, it is the deep red of a short lived peony or the daffodils that tell us winter is over. The impermanence of these events serves only to heighten the pleasure.
Some people get married because this is what is expected of them either by tradition or family most of us have a garden just like that and we don’t elope with the smell of a rose, instead we yoke ourselves to a garden like all the others in our street. We have grass that we have a hard time convincing that it is really living in England, shrubs chosen for their resistance to the climate and the gardener and a selection of easy going annuals. Excess grass is mowed off once a week as if it were dust under a vacuum cleaner, weeds are eradicated hedges trimmed and snow cleared all with the same janitorial motivation. There must be more to be had than this loveless relationship and there is.
Natural gardening
If we are giving the Japanese a special place in garden design it must be connected with an approach to art in general, including gardens. I don’t think that gardens around the world can be considered art in quite the same way and it is probably the attitude towards nature, more than anything else that explains it. Art is not nature and neither is a garden, what establishes a Japanese garden as unique is the way nature has been represented by the garden maker.
Nature as friend vs nature as foe.
The notion of ‘enclosure’ is common to the western garden, that perhaps began with the Persian paradise, and the Japanese garden but the reason for the hedge or fence is different. Until quite recently we in the west saw nature as a threat and so the barrier was to keep it out, western stories of nature are rife with wild beasts that lurk in the forest or in the mountains, even the trees themselves contain spirits that we are not too sure of. This fear of the wild takes on a different hue if each rock and tree has a life that is benign and encourages complicity rather than competition. What this means is that instead of attempting to beat nature into submitting to our will, we work with it the way you would bring up a child without using a stick. To cut a long story short the difference is at the cultural level and the way people view their place in the world. If one group of people see natural phenomena as the enemy, evil even, and another group sees rocks and water etc. as a friend and they both set out to ‘perfect nature’ the result will be different.
Arcadia or Paradise lost
The garden of Eden is, according to christian believe, a state of grace that we humans were expelled from, a lost cause rather than something to aspire to. We also have visions of an arcadia that is blissfully free from any human agency, in other words there is nature and then there is us.
If we are giving the Japanese a special place in garden design it must be connected with an approach to art in general, including gardens. I don’t think that gardens around the world can be considered art in quite the same way and it is probably the attitude towards nature, more than anything else that explains it. Art is not nature and neither is a garden, what establishes a Japanese garden as unique is the way nature has been represented by the garden maker.
Nature as friend vs nature as foe.
The notion of ‘enclosure’ is common to the western garden, that perhaps began with the Persian paradise, and the Japanese garden but the reason for the hedge or fence is different. Until quite recently we in the west saw nature as a threat and so the barrier was to keep it out, western stories of nature are rife with wild beasts that lurk in the forest or in the mountains, even the trees themselves contain spirits that we are not too sure of. This fear of the wild takes on a different hue if each rock and tree has a life that is benign and encourages complicity rather than competition. What this means is that instead of attempting to beat nature into submitting to our will, we work with it the way you would bring up a child without using a stick. To cut a long story short the difference is at the cultural level and the way people view their place in the world. If one group of people see natural phenomena as the enemy, evil even, and another group sees rocks and water etc. as a friend and they both set out to ‘perfect nature’ the result will be different.
Arcadia or Paradise lost
The garden of Eden is, according to christian believe, a state of grace that we humans were expelled from, a lost cause rather than something to aspire to. We also have visions of an arcadia that is blissfully free from any human agency, in other words there is nature and then there is us.
What is ‘Good Garden Design’
I can’t imagine how it is possible to discuss the necessity of ‘good design’ if we can’t define what that is, we also have to consider if its negative is ‘bad design’ or ‘no design’. A much easier question to get your head around would be to ask if ‘design’ is essential to the enjoyment of a garden and if so would you recognize its presence or absence. When we introduce the “good the bad and the ugly” we are critiquing under the assumption that there was an attempt at design in the first place and that may not be the case. Gardening and design are not mutually exclusive but they are not the same thing so if someone grows plants she enjoys for their own sake and we set ourselves up to make a judgement about the gardens success it should be from a gardeners/horticultural point of view. On the other hand if someone, pro or not, intentionally designs a space, a different criterion applies and for it to make any sense there should be some standard beyond “I like it so, up yours”; lets call it ‘taste’. In other words we need an example or model so that any garden design can be compared and measured against it. This model could be a set of principles that is seen as exactly what I am suggesting i.e. an example and not as a set of rules.
I think that the components of good design can be itemized, I borrowed these categories from Paul Graham;
Good Design is:-
simple
timeless
solves the right problem
suggestive
often slightly funny
hard
looks easy
uses symmetry
resembles nature
redesign
can copy
often strange
happens in chunks
often daring
I can’t imagine how it is possible to discuss the necessity of ‘good design’ if we can’t define what that is, we also have to consider if its negative is ‘bad design’ or ‘no design’. A much easier question to get your head around would be to ask if ‘design’ is essential to the enjoyment of a garden and if so would you recognize its presence or absence. When we introduce the “good the bad and the ugly” we are critiquing under the assumption that there was an attempt at design in the first place and that may not be the case. Gardening and design are not mutually exclusive but they are not the same thing so if someone grows plants she enjoys for their own sake and we set ourselves up to make a judgement about the gardens success it should be from a gardeners/horticultural point of view. On the other hand if someone, pro or not, intentionally designs a space, a different criterion applies and for it to make any sense there should be some standard beyond “I like it so, up yours”; lets call it ‘taste’. In other words we need an example or model so that any garden design can be compared and measured against it. This model could be a set of principles that is seen as exactly what I am suggesting i.e. an example and not as a set of rules.
I think that the components of good design can be itemized, I borrowed these categories from Paul Graham;
Good Design is:-
simple
timeless
solves the right problem
suggestive
often slightly funny
hard
looks easy
uses symmetry
resembles nature
redesign
can copy
often strange
happens in chunks
often daring
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