Water Daily

The new revolutionaries: Landscape architects reinvent urban parks

Frederick Law Olmsted

Name one landscape architect. Any one will do. No, I’m not talking about the guy who does your landscaping — I’m looking for genuine, bona fide landscape architects, the ones who analyze, plan, design, manage, and nurture natural and built environments.

What was that? “Frederick Law Olmsted?” You mean the grandfather of landscape architecture, the man who built Central Park? Good. Now name a landscape architect who hasn’t been dead for more than a hundred years.

Hello? Can you tell me who designed the High Line, the most famous urban park in the country right now? You can’t. That’s what I thought. Well, for future reference, it’s James Corner — but that, right there, is my point:

The present generation of landscape architects is doing truly groundbreaking work, building parks like the High Line in places nobody expects them. If Olmsted is a classical composer of yore, James Corner and his contemporaries are like Lady Gaga. They’re like Bob Dylan plugging in. They’re the electric guitar after years and years of classical music. BUT YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF THESE PEOPLE!

And so, on Olmsted’s 190^th birthday (April 26 — prepare your celebratory picnic baskets!), I decided it’s time to show these landscape architects a little love.

But first, allow me to geek out about Olmsted for a quick sec. I can’t help it. I wrote and produced Olmsted and America’s Urban Parks, a documentary about the guy. Plus, to understand the revolutionaries working today, you have to understand where they came from.

Central Park, New York City. (Photo by asterix611.)

People still, after all these years, love Olmsted’s parks. Just check out Central Park on a sunny day. Or Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Or the Emerald Necklace that winds through the neighborhoods of Boston. Or the park systems in Louisville and Buffalo. The man carried out over 500 commissions to design urban parks, parkways, park systems, residential communities, college campuses, government buildings, and country estates. His sons, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and John Charles Olmsted (who was technically Olmsted’s nephew) designed thousands more, including major city plans for Baltimore and Seattle.

Olmsted landscapes are practically trademarked — rolling hills, open meadows, patches of thick woodlands, wide, winding paths. Olmsted didn’t want you to notice the design — and, unless you’re looking for it, you don’t. The man even hated flowers because they call too much attention to themselves. You’re supposed to lose yourself in Olmsted’s parks — the paths were designed so that you’d never come upon a right angle and have to ask yourself, “Which way?”

The High Line, New York City. (Photo by David Berkowitz.)

Turns out that tired, overworked city dwellers really appreciated this — which is why it’s still hard to find a blanket spot in Sheep Meadow on a Sunday in June. But for all the reverence Olmsted still earns from the public, he set the bar so high that many landscape architects resent him. In an interviewed filmed for the documentary, urban studies expert Withold Rybczynski told us:

It’s a little bit like being a composer right after Mozart or Beethoven. People just want more Mozart or Beethoven. They’re not interested in Joe Smith — you know, they’ve been exposed to something, and they just want more of it … I mean he’s bigger than Mozart, because he doesn’t just do great parks, he also sort of invents the whole profession. It’s as if Mozart invented musical composing, which of course he didn’t.

In a literal sense, landscape architects today can’t live up to Olmsted’s legacy. There just isn’t enough space. When Olmsted and Calvert Vaux built 843-acre Central Park, which starts on 59^th Street, they built it on farmland. At the time, Manhattan’s development stopped at 23^rd Street. Today, we’re building parks on abandoned, elevated railroad tracks and old brownfield sites, and we have to do more with less — the majority of urban parks built in the last decade are fewer than 15 acres.

But today’s urban parks are changing the way people interact with cities, just as Olmsted’s were.

Citygarden, St. Louis. (Photo by dishfunctional.)

Nobody looks at Citygarden in St. Louis — equal parts sculpture garden, botanic garden, and city park — and comments on how natural it is. Designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, based in Charlottesville, Va., Citygarden pays homage to the cultural and natural histories of the city in its own way. The 550-foot long arching wall made of locally quarried rock may have been too conspicuous for Olmsted, but it echoes the bends and bluffs of both the Mississippi River and the city’s famed Gateway Arch.

Civic Space park in Phoenix, designed by a team at the Fortune-500 design firm AECOM, has a splash pad and a field of LED-lit columns which come alive nightly in a light show meant to mimic the lightening of an Arizona summer. The park also has a crazy wormhole sculpture suspended in air called Her Secret is Patience. It was designed and built by Janet Echelman of painted, galvanized steel and cables, polyester twine netting, and changing, computer-controlled colored lights. It is meant to make the patterns of the desert winds visible to the human eye.

Civic Space Park, Phoenix. (Photo by RightBrainPhotography.)

The new design for Chicago’s Navy Pier— another project of James Corner Field Operations — has an indoor “crystal garden” with hanging “vegetable pods” straight out of Avatar. The pier, originally designed by Daniel Burnham in 1909, was meant to connect the citizens of Chicago with Lake Michigan. Corner’s floating pool at the end of the pier will do this quite literally.

And suddenly, urban parks are cool again, and not in the way they’ve always been (It’s springtime, let’s have lunch in the park!) but in a way that makes the act of actually designing them look really impressive and hip.

But the more this new guard of landscape architects tries to distance themselves from Olmsted, the more, in the end, they resemble him.

The thing is, Olmsted was creating landscapes in the 19^th century, but his work is as relevant today as it ever was. That’s what made him so visionary: He was an innovator who looked ahead. Here’s the future he saw for New York in 1859:

The time will come when New York will be built up, when all the grading and filling will be done, and when the picturesquely-varied, rocky formations of the Island will have been converted into foundations for rows of monotonous straight streets, and piles of erect, angular buildings. There will be no suggestion left of its present varied surface, with the single exception of the Park.

Eschleman’s sculpture in Civic Space Park may not be floating in all its Technicolor glory in the year 2170. But the resourcefulness that today’s crop of landscape architects has inspired will be indispensable in the future, as the amount of open space in cities continues to decline. Then, all the landscape architects will be complaining about James Corner.

Article taken from Grist by Rebecca Messner. Rebecca is assistant editor of Urbanite and producer of Olmsted and America’s Urban Parks, a documentary on the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Follow her on Twitter at @beccamess.

Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’, Siberian bugloss

The Perennial Plant Association has named Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ as the 2012 Perennial Plant of the Year. The Perennial Plant of the Year program helps consumers select plants that perennial industry experts find to be outstanding and easily grown. Each year a perennial is selected that is suitable for a wide range of clinmate types, low maintenance, and exhibits multi-seasonal interest.

Siberian bugloss, brunnera, heartleaf brunnera, and false forget-me-not are common names for this perennial. It grows 12 to 15 inches tall and will spread  to 20 inches. This multi-seasonal selection has blue flowers in the spring and frosty silver leaves with green veins, which provide color throughout the growing season.

Hardiness: USDA Zones 3 to 8

Light: Plants thrive in shade but will tolerate morning sun if soil conditions remain moist.

Soil: This perennial performs best in shady ares with good moisture, retentive soils.

Unique Qualities; From mid to late spring, blue forget-me-not blossoms are held in clusters several inches above the brilliant frosty leaves. Rough leaf texture makes this perennial less palatable to browsing deer.

Uses: Jack Frost brunnera may be used along the front of a shade border, is excellent in a container, or can be combined with other ground cover perennials such as hostas, ferns, and epimediums.

For more information, Perennial Plant Association www.perennialplant.org

Try these natural pet remedies to keep your pet healthy and happy all year.

 

Echinacea (Echinacea spp.) is a beautiful, stately plant that no garden should be without. In most parts of the United States, it’s easy to grow from seeds or root divisions. In my practice, I used echinacea to support and enhance the immune system. While most sources say echinacea’s roots contain the most potent medicine, I had good success using aerial parts (leaves and flowers), mixed with some root when I wanted a more potent dosage.

Aloe (Aloe vera) is another plant I think every garden should have, even though you will most likely need to bring it indoors during the winter. There is simply no better topical healing agent than fresh aloe juice for cuts, abrasions and especially burns. To use, just break off a leaf and squeeze the juice on the affected area of the skin.

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) looks and acts like an invasive weed—it’s very easy to grow, but you’ll need to keep it under control. Motherwort is a powerful medicinal for heart conditions, especially those associated with anxiety and tension. I use either the fresh or dried aerial parts.

Catnip (Nepeta cataria) and valerian (Valeriana officinalis) are relaxing and sedating to all critters, but cats are especially susceptible to their effects. (For cats, the calming and sedative actions come after the intense initial euphoria.) These plants are easy to grow, unless your neighborhood happens to have one or two voracious plant-eating cats roaming the area. In that case, you may either position chicken wire screens over the plants for protection or grow these herbs indoors in pots to keep them safe.

Oat (Avena sativa) is one of my favorite nervous system tonics. It’s palatable for almost all animals, it’s beneficial to the nervous system and it’s easy to grow. When we plant oats, we harvest the still-green oat heads (when the seeds are “milky”) for herbal use, and then we till the rest of the plant under as mulch.

Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) is another beautiful, easy-to-grow addition to any garden. The herb can help your pet relax, and also can help treat inflammation and gastric upset. Harvest the aerial parts and use them as a tea for your pet, or chop up the flowers and sprinkle over your pet’s food.

Taken from The Herb Companion Feb/March 2012,  Article by Randy Kidd, D.V.M. 2000
See complete article at: http://bit.ly/zu6Kew

Improve the structure and water-holding capacity of soil with leaf mold.

Instead of carting leaves to the curb, recycle them the way nature does, by turning them into an invaluable soil builder. Leaf mold greatly improves the structure and water-holding capacity of soil. It also creates the perfect conditions for the community of beneficial organisms that dwell in your soil, and it’s great in potting mix.

 There’s really no excuse not to make leaf mold. It’s free, easy-to-make, and readily available. If you don’t have enough leaves in your own yard, trade raking duty with your neighbors in exchange for theirs. Before you use leaves that have fallen on your neighbors’ lawns, be sure to ask them if the grass has recently been sprayed with synthetic chemicals. If so, don’t use the leaves. Grass clippings with chemical residues can get mixed in with the leaves and contaminate them, says William Brinton, Ph.D., director of the Woods End Research Laboratory, in Maine. Still, Dr. Brinton explains, chemical contamination is not a significant concern with leaf mold because its lengthy decomposition time allows for chemicals to break down as well. Do not use leaves that have been raked into the street for municipal pickup, because they may contain lots of sand, fuel, or oil residues.

Article by Willi Evans Galloway from Organic Gardening

Birds of every kind – songbirds, raptors, and shorebirds – fly from their winter homes in the south to their summer breeding grounds in places as far north as the Arctic in the spring, and then back south in the fall. Along the way they encounter many perils including bright lights and tall buildings, cats and toxic lawns.

Fortunately, people can help ensure a safer journey for migrating birds. Backyards and parks, often key stopover points for many species, can become bird-friendly rest stops with a few simple steps. Audubon urges people to take the following actions:

1) Reduce or eliminate pesticide and herbicide use. Using fewer chemicals in your yard and home helps keep wildlife, pets and people healthy.

2) Plant native plants. Natives provide birds with food in the form of fruit and seeds, and are also home to tasty invertebrates like bugs and spiders.

3) Keep cats inside. Keeping cats indoors ensures that birds outdoors stay safe and cats benefit too; indoor cats live much longer than cats that go outside.

4) Prevent window collisions. Make sure birds can see (and avoid) your windows by putting up screens, closing drapes and blinds when you leave the house, or stick multiple decals on the glass (decals need to be spaced closely together to be effective – no more than two to four inches apart).

5) Provide cover in your backyard. Leave snags for nesting places and stack downed tree limbs to create a brush pile, which is a great source of cover for birds during bad weather.

6) Help birds stay on course. Close your blinds at night and turn off lights you aren’t using. Some birds use constellations to guide them on their annual migrations, and bright lights can disrupt them.

7) Create or protect water sources in your yard. Birds need water to drink and bathe in, just like we do. Be sure to change the water two to three times per week when mosquitoes are breeding.

8) Landscape for birds. Use lots of layers, including understory, ground cover, shrubs, and trees. Multiple levels of plants let birds use different layers for different purposes,

9) Extend a bird safety net beyond your backyard. Contact your local Audubon Chapter to learn about opportunities to create healthy habitat in parks, beaches and other places in your community.

10) Take the Audubon At Home Healthy Yard Pledge! When you take the Pledge, you commit to conserving water, planting native species, removing invasive plants, reducing pesticide use, protecting water quality, and keeping birds safe in your yard.

For more information visit AudubonAtHome.org