Friday, February 21, 2014

Dem Bones ... The Importance of Scale and Style in Hardscape Construction

I've yet to be involved in a project where the home and the landscape are designed at the same time (does that even happen anymore?). Generally, I'm given a completed plan view of a house perched on abstract topography. This is my opportunity to get the bones of the landscape right the first time around.

What do I mean by that? Most of our installation projects consist of improving existing landscapes. Often this involves adjusting the scale and style of the hardscape components of the landscape (things like patios and walkways), to compliment the scale and style of the home; details that should have been considered the first time around.

I'm astonished at the amount of effort and creativity in home design that promptly stops at the outside edge of the home, but you certainly won't find me complaining. Every undersized 4' x 8' patio paired with a 4000 sq. foot house is just another project in waiting.

Here's the plan I originally received for a job we're currently working on.

Deliciously blank.











Later the architect gave me an updated plan showing the driveway sweep and proposed entrance walkway (floating rectangles that somehow resolve the 5 foot elevation difference between the driveway and the front door).







This thumbnail sketch of my counter proposal for the entrance walkway reveals a less direct route to the front door. This is where I am trying to set the cadence and tone for the entire landscape, taking cues from the architecture and style of the home. (Read: creating the illusion that the home and landscape were actually designed in thoughtful tandem.)







Home construction delays put this project so far out that I'd nearly forgotten about it, but following a break in the cold weather, the entrance walkway was finally installed last month.




There's quite a bit of work yet to do (for example, covenant restrictions require all vertical surfaces to be natural stone, cultured stone or stucco), but it's gratifying to see a harmonious setting for this magnificent home finally begin to materialize.

Updates to follow (more hardscape and then here come the plants!) ...


Thursday, February 13, 2014

10 Mile Interchange Hellstrip


Fitter, happier
Am I the only one who finds this repeating motif on the new(ish) Ten Mile Interchange just a bit creepy?

Aside from the undertones of Orwellian Maoist thought control, The Ten Mile Road Interchange in Meridian, Idaho represents a subtle change in public works projects around Ada County. Gone are the days of shoulder to shoulder asphalt and concrete. Honest to goodness, live plant material and permeable surfaces are beginning to be incorporated into new design.

But, as I was often reminded as a child, they don't give you a medal for good intentions, so let's perform some taxpayer deconstruction of the project.

PLANTS


Behold, an Idaho winter: a washed out/monochromatic sky meets a washed out/monochromatic planting bed.

What? I'm not being fair because it's February? While it is true that last summer there was a lovely succession of color here, compliments of Echinacea purpurea, Coreopsis verticillata, Perovskia atriplicifolia, Gaillardia, and Leucanthemum x superbum, they are all now distant herbaceous memories from a half forgotten warm season.





Winter "structure" is mostly provided now by the skeletons of miniature Berberis, the carcasses of winter kill Lavendula, prematurely trimmed ornamental grasses, and the much maligned Yucca filamentosa.

(Incidentally, I swear I will punch the next person who tells me that "there's a reason they call them YUCKas". I mean, cut them a little slack, they are the only plants in this bed providing any real color for five months of the year!)



I think lavender is great and I probably overuse it in my designs, but what is there not to like? It's mildly drought tolerant, the bees love it, it smells terrific and it blooms for months.

There are plenty of varieties of  lavender that are dependably hardy in our area, but I'll be surprised if even half the lavender in these beds wake up in the spring. They really don't catch a break between the basalt "mulch" heat sink in the summer and snow plows and drunk drivers in the winter.

Which leads us to...


MULCH/HARDSCAPE

Un-shaded asphalt surfaces can reach temperatures as high as 160 degrees. A planting bed surrounded on all sides by asphalt and concrete receives a tremendous amount of this as reflective heat. What is the logic of using dark, basalt mulch in the beds to further heat up the poor plants?

Crushed basalt is also a nightmare to maintain.




Another observation: the median beds are elevated, surrounded by slope faced curbs. Perhaps a better approach would have been to match the planting grade with that of the road and install curb cuts for passive rain harvesting?

IRRIGATION


The purple cap on the popup gives us the heads up that non-potable water is being used. In many areas of the country that means reclaimed, grey water with potential problems associated with salt build up. Not here. Snow melt is what built Boise and our urban forest and I'm so pleased to see it being used in place of domestic water.

As a card carrying member of the "green industry" I'm expected to hate broadcast sprayers and embrace drip lines and micro-irrigation, but too often micro-irrigation = dead plants. This is partially due to incorrect installation (single emitters rather than grid installation), but also because our soil has lousy capillary action resulting in uneven distribution of water and poor root development.


CONCLUSION

There's a lot to like about this project- for about 8 months of the year anyway. Swapping out even half of the standard army-green Yucca filamentosa with a variegated form (Yucca filamentosa 'Bright Edge' or 'Color Guard'), or the bluish Yucca rostrata would give this planting a lot more punch during our indeterminable "gray season".

The damaged lavender along the edges of the median strip should probably be replaced with a tougher, semi-evergreen perennial that can take the heat and drive-over damage; maybe Penstemon pinifolius or Arenaria 'Wallowa Mountains'?

Since I'm feeling generous, I'll say that the crushed basalt "mulch" is slightly better than paving over a garden bed.  I'd really like to see an organic mulch installed (or at least light colored, porous sandstone if you must have rock). I'm sure the crushed basalt was installed out of an assumption that an organic mulch would blow out onto the street and the rock would stay put. You can see how well that's working.




Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Yucca rostrata in Turf

photo credit: Ocean Blue
Here's a little advice: if you see a garden you like, take a picture of it today because it might be gone tomorrow. This was the case with a terrific xeriscape installed along lower Fairview Avenue in Boise five or six years ago.

Framed by two specimen sized Yucca rostrata, the unknown landscaper nailed it with a beautiful composition that wasn't quite riotous cottage garden style nor an uptight, rectilinear, modernist's garden- but rather a pitch perfect hybrid of the two. Hesperalo parvifolia, Agastache, Muhlenbergia and a half dozen other plant varieties I can't remember were combined with three triangulated, lichen covered boulders. Before I was able to take a photo (those were, after all, the days before decent cell phone cameras) all but the Yucca rostrata had been ripped out.

In it's place, someone decided to plant turf, and because the new business was an artsy, graphic design firm, a token Cor-ten weathered planter was installed with a crisp line of Equisetum.

I blame the turf indirectly on the Japanese architect, Tadao Ando and his preoccupation with horizontal planes. Many (most?) of his buildings sit at right angles to a plane of water or turf grass.


Photo courtesy of the Clark Institute
Photo credit:  Tomas Riehle 2004


Clean, calming, serene? Sure. Sustainable? Maybe in Kentucky. Never the less, this informs the aesthetic sensibilities of a great number of people I know personally in the creative fields. These are decent people who recycle, bike to work and support their local farmer (and landscaper) but can't let go of their favorite monoculture.

But back to the landscape and the Yucca rostrata...

Here's how the makeover looked a year or so after the turf/Cor-ten was installed in place of the xeriscape.

Photo credit: Google street view September 2011

I was pretty convinced that the Yucca rostrata would be dead by year's end. After all, the irrigation needs of turf grass and yuccas don't typically parallel. I'm pleased to report I was dead wrong.


Both have grown at least two feet in the last two and a half years.

 



No sign of my other prediction: string trimmer damage to the trunk.

While I wish the original xeriscape had been left in place, I'm pleased the specimen size Yucca rostrata are doing so well. I'll be employing Yucca rostrata in several installations in 2014.