Battery Bosque by mobile phone

Although construction has virtually cut off direct access to the Piet Oudolf-designed Battery Bosque from the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan, you can still get to it from either end, most pleasingly via the Gardens of Remembrance (also designed by Oudolf), a contiguous walking parkway that extends the New Perennial-style plantings around the Battery waterfront. Finding myself downtown with time to spare a few days ago, I stopped by to see how the plantings are doing after a summer and fall of unusually severe weather.

Rather well, it appears. Here are some pics I took with my mobile phone camera.

Trycirtis - Toad Lily

Chasmanthium latifolium

Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 'October Skies'

Amsonia hubrichtii

Salvia uliginosa

Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Rosea' with Trycirtis

Trycirtis - Toad Lily

Sesleria autumnalis and Hydrangea quercifolia

Symphyotrichum again, with switch grass and much construction in the background

Silphium terebinthinaceum, Eryngium yuccafolium, Symphyotrichum

View along Gardens of Remembrance toward towers of Jersey City, World Trade Center site off to the right

The Bosque and Gardens continue to be well maintained and a credit to the care of the Battery Conservancy and its staff. The construction is unfortunate but necessary, I suppose, and once it's complete the Bosque will regain the openness it originally had. I continue to be amazed that herbaceous perennials can maintain form and structure so well in this exposed coastal environment.

Grass Days

"It is a rather small garden, so it is amazing the depth
he achieved."- Amalia Robredo on Piet Oudolf's garden.

Before my recent trip to Argentina, I contacted a Uruguayan garden designer, Amalia Robredo, out of the blue, to see if she could help me identify gardens to visit. Though she is Argentinian, Amalia now lives in the area of Punta del Este, an affluent ocean resort area in Uruguay, where she is doing pioneering work in use of native plants to design sustainable, naturalistic gardens. These are large gardens, mainly of 5 hectares and larger. I was a little amazed when she responded to my email with interest and a desire to help, and after a little questioning, even enthusiasm.

The search for gardens to visit in Argentina didn't pan out, but my accidental visit to the Patagonian steppe in San Carlos de Bariloche (see previous post) led to string of emails with Amalia touching on her memories of visiting family in the steppe every summer as she was growing up, the nature of steppe flora, and the challenges of embarking on the practice of naturalistic and sustainable garden design using primarily native plants, particularly in South America where garden culture has been firmly wedded to European, belle epoch models - use of native flora is not widely appreciated there - and to her visits with Noel Kingsbury to Piet Oudolf in the Netherlands and to Hermanshoff in Germany were she met the garden's director Cassian Schmidt and learned of his research on prairies, steppes, and other habitats.

As Amalia explained to me, "I have been using prairies and meadows for the last five years in my designs; they prove to be a strong aesthetic element, sustainable, eco-enriching habitats... I've been researching the native flora along with the University in Montevideo, and doing follow-up on grasses and forbs to see if they have an aesthetic quality that lasts, so they can be introduced into nurseries in order to use them in our designs." Amalia has been helped in this by Noel Kingsbury, who worked with her to develop a more academic approach to plant selection and propagation to support her design work. (I first read of her in his blog.) He also introduced her to Piet Oudolf.

Following is a selection of photographs Amalia took on her October 2007 visit to the Oudolf garden and home. Amalia's photos illustrate Piet Oudolf's use of contrasting formal and naturalistic elements in his garden. "I believe it is important to have something formal or at least something that shows human intervention within wild gardens. They show the intention of that wildness. Piet Oudolf achieved this in a marvelous way in his own garden." Her Oudolf garden photographs show his "theatrical hedges," and his use of "formal shapes within the garden to achieve depth." Amalia also refers to his "use of a carefully selected community of plants for color, texture and seasonal interest" and "repetition of plants to achieve unity of design." This visit took place during the Grass Days in October, when the autumn grasses predominate.

(Please click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Note the play of textures, how Oudolf's now famous "wavy" hedges
"hold the looseness of the design," to use Amalia's words.

The garden appears to be contained by the tall hedge. Is the apparent
height of the hedge, compared to the people
in the distance, an illusion?

The large cylindrical hedge in the foreground, and the horizontal
hedges in the distance contribute tremendous depth to the garden.

In contrast, a sense of intimacy.

Another example of visual manipulation of depth.

Layered vertical planes, foreground and background, the light caught
by the "tails" of persicaria contrasted with almost black hedges behind.

More vertical and horizontal planes. The blurred background of
grasses enhances the structural perennials in the foreground.

Addition of a human being gives a much better sense of scale.

In advising me on how I could achieve a similar effect in my garden, Amalia said, "The thing is to grab the concept: something formal that holds the looseness of the rest of the design, the human intervention vs. the wild planting. It is not about copying the actual design but the concept behind it. What I mean is, instead of a hedge you already are doing stone walls; the concept is the same."

all photos copyright Estudio Amalia Robredo
www.amaliarobredo.com

Garden Diary: The Front Garden

The "front" of our house on Federal Twist - the facade facing the road - is actually the back. It presents a simple wall to visitors. The real front of the house is at the back, where an unbroken wall of floor to ceiling windows gives onto the main garden, and surrounding it, the woods.


The choice of where the front garden would be was predetermined by a barren gravel circle at the front entrance. The house is about 165 feet from the road, with open woods in between, so screening wasn't absolutely necessary, but added privacy was desirable since none of the windows are covered. Even more important, I wanted to create a focal point and add visual interest. The photo above is the front garden, still in progress, this past summer. The second photo shows the original front "garden" when we purchased the house in fall of 2004.

The house is a simple, shed-like structure, at least viewed from the side facing the road. The only notable front views out are from the kitchen window and sliding doors in the dining room. The original view out was onto a circular graveled area about 28 feet in diameter, with a mostly dead crab apple, a couple of scraggly burning bushes (Euonymous alatus), a line of arborvitae, and two Sedum spectabile 'Autumn Joy' eaten to the ground by deer. To the side were two rotting, frequently amputated Japanese cherries.

Looking out toward the road, the view of the woods was not without interest but also not particularly notable. We needed something to look at from inside the house, to provide additional screening in place of window and door coverings, and to make the facade facing the road more welcoming - something that would screen our uncovered expanses of glass, providing privacy, while signaling a greeting to visitors and giving clear direction to the house entry, which was hidden at the far end of a dark porch.

After we cleared most of the area, the first plant to go in was a large Ravenna grass (Saccharum ravennae), which I split in two - a discard of our friend Roberta, who found it overwhelming in her small Lambertville garden (I had put it there). This was in May of 2005. You'll have to click on the photo to see the two grasses in the wide expanse of gravel.
In the top photo you can see how, once the grass matured, its fountain-like shape and large size made it a welcoming gesture to anyone turning into the drive.

Planting continued through that summer of 2005, and by August was essentially finished. I used several Miscanthus (Gracillimus, Yaku Jima, Adagio), Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum 'Gateway'), Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Firetail', catmint (Nepeta m. 'Walkers Low'), Sedum 'Matrona', Bluestocking monarda (Monarda d. 'Blaustrumpf'), a small lilac (personal request from Phil), Pennisetum a. 'Moudry', a few Japanese Blood Grasses (Imperator cylindrica rubrum), Aster laterifolius 'Lady in Black', Lychnis coronaria, purple smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple'), and an inkberry holly (Ilex glabra) to anchor one corner. I scattered seed of Verbena bonariensis and bronze fennel, and I kept two of the arborvitae, the legacy Sedum 'Autumn Joy', and self-seeded Eupatorium rugosum (a really invasive thug I'm now trying to eliminate). The first year planting looks scraggly but by the next spring it had filled out well, as you can see in the next three photos taken in late June 2006.


In 11 months, the Miscanthus, Joe Pye Weed, and Saccarum had grown into substantial islands of graceful foliage and the Nepeta 'Walkers Low', just passing its early prolific bloom, had relaxed into the contours of its surroundings like an old hand.

All of this was working on the large scale, creating a new space and transforming the house on Federal Twist into a place with a little more mystery than before.


On the smaller scale, details of flower and foliage shape and texture began to add interest - monarda busy with bees and butterflies ...


Purple smoke bush graced by the magenta of Lychnis coronaria ...


and the smoke bush again, with cat mint and Sedum 'Matrona' against a hedge of burning bush.

Under the gravel is clay, same as everywhere else at Federal Twist. Unlike the main garden at the back, this one is raised above the surrounding grade, so drainage is much better. Though it makes a very heavy planting medium, the clay is rich and, after only two years, it looks like some of the grasses will need to be divided next year.

To finish, a couple of views from this past summer ...