DryStoneGarden

Indian Paintbrush

As a year-end housekeeping task I’ve been going through all the photos I took this year, and I thought I’d post some of the ones that never made it onto the blog. It’s not exactly the year in review, but it does cover some of the things we did this year.

Playa Ligui, Baja

About a dozen photos are below. Read the rest of this entry »

Around the time I went to Stern Grove, Andrea Cochran gave a talk at UC Berkeley. She’s another one of the west coast landscape architects with interesting stonework in her projects. She mostly spoke about the projects in the recent book Andrea Cochran: Landscapes, but with a lot more photos, including construction photos and some before photos of the projects. I was most interested in the stonework at two of her projects up in the Napa area.

I smile every time I look at photos of the riprap at the base of the wall in this landscape. It’s as if the stonemasons never cleaned up after the project or as if they were building a breakwater for a flood that has yet happen. It’s landscape humor, whether or not the designer actually meant it to be. But it also works visually; breakwaters and seawalls are always striking, and most mountain headwalls have talus heaped at their base, so it’s a familiar form to have the clean face of the wall above the jumble of the riprap. She said that she added the riprap because the walls were too strong visually, that their line was dominating the landscape and she needed something to soften the effect. It’s not often that adding stone will soften a landscape.

The other interesting stone element from her book and presentation is a pyramid made from construction rubble. After excavating for a building on the site, they had literally tons of rock to get rid of and the landscape needed something to fill the view across the reflecting pool, so she channeled Michael Heizer and had the rubble stacked into a pyramid. She said everyone was skeptical until it was built. Like the riprap, a bold design move.

Both projects won ASLA awards, with more photos and info about the projects, titled Walden Studios and Stone Edge Farms, at the ASLA website. There’s also a recent interview with her on the ASLA blog, covering a lot of the other topics she talked about at the slideshow.

There’s a video about her here.

View from the Stage, click to enlarge

‘I wanted it to have the feeling of being in one of the great Greek amphitheaters,’ Lawrence Halprin

Last month I went to Stern Grove and took some photos. I’d been there during concerts, but I wanted to check it out without all the crowds. It didn’t disappoint. It’s a great space, with awesome stonework, and worth visiting even when there isn’t a concert happening. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone there, but an impressive number of people passed through the space, even though it was a rainy Sunday morning. I’d always thought of it as a theatre, but it also works quite nicely as a park.

View from the West

The Grove has been a park and concert space since the 1930’s, but the stonework is all from about 5 years ago when Lawrence Halprin led a big renovation. Before the renovation it was just a natural amphitheater, and everyone would slowly slide downhill while they listened to music. Halprin terraced the slope and turned it into a proper Greek theater. My first impression of him when I started to learn about his work was that he tended to just make things up, but the design at the Grove is actually quite true to the style of the Greeks, with appropriate stonework and other detailing. Even the plan, which is rather free-form, is in keeping with the old Greeks’ appreciation for natural topography. From what I can tell, amphitheaters close to the center of the Greek empire tended to have a more regular form, while the ones built towards the fringes tended to be more irregular. Which makes the irregular form of this Greek amphitheater in San Francisco, 6500 miles from Greece, perfectly aligned with that tradition. One theater in particular, Thorikos, has a plan that reminds me of Stern Grove. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was the second birthday of DryStoneGarden. Posting has been somewhat slower this year, but still pretty steady, and the post total is now over 200. We’ll see if it hits 300 by the third birthday. Thanks to all who read and comment.

Last December I admired the aspens at Tilden, here and here, after they’d dropped their leaves. I told myself I should stop and check out their fall color this year, and I did actually follow through, stopping in several times to walk the garden while the aspens were coloring. They were nice, not quite like I saw in the mountains on my way back from Bishop but I give them extra points for doing it near the coast. In general, this doesn’t seem to have been one of our best years for color. I think the early storms knocked off a lot of the leaves as soon as they changed.

September

The aspens were definitely nice, though, and are of course great after they drop their leaves. I’m a fan of local natives, but it’s also great to see mountain species down here in the Bay Area. I’m lucky that my commute takes me past Tilden so regularly.

This Week

The aspens have been bare for a while now. Willows and spicebush are two of the main species coloring and dropping leaves there. In my own garden, the spicebush still has most of its leaves and even a couple of flowers and buds. I’m only five miles away, but in a less frosty microclimate.

Wildcat Creek

There’s one vine maple turned red. All the other fall color is yellow.

Vine Maple, Acer cirnatum

And along with fall color, November means that manzanita season is approaching. A few had token blooms, but this one was starting up its full bloom.

Parry Manzanita Starting Up

Townmouse recently mentioned the 2010 Fall Color Project that Dave at the Home Garden is hosting. He’s collecting and posting links to blogs around the country that are showing off their fall color. Click through to the kickoff post or to his front page to start with the most recent collection.

Trachycarpus fortunei on the left, Brahea edulis on the right

Our client at the cracked pot garden recently went through her garden ID’ing all of the plants, a task which was harder than you might think because it was originally planted by a horticulturalist with a love for variety. There are six kinds of lavender, for instance, and both Julia Phelps and Dark Star Ceanothus, two of the most similar forms of Ceanothus. The plant list for the garden is about as long as the list for my entire planting career, or at least it feels that way. Anyways, in the process, we were trying to ID the palms in the garden, a new horticultural task for me. I’ve never planted a palm and don’t know them well, though I’m starting to appreciate them; they might be my favorite element in this particular garden. They look great with the mix of foliage, and in particular with a couple of California natives, the mounding forms of Fremontodendron and Ceanothus.

Brahea edulis

I really like the combination of the Brahea edulis with the low, mounding form of Fremontodendron, F. californicum decumbens. Both plants have a prehistoric look to them.

Blue Mediterranean Fan Palm, Chamaerops humilis cerifera

Another nice native with non-native combo, the Blue Mediterranean Fan Palm against the the dark green foliage of ceanothus behind it.

Trachycarpus wagnerianus?

According to the original plant list, one of the Trachcyarpus specimens is T. wagnerianus, the (relatively) dwarf species of windmill palm. I think this is the one. It’s smaller in size than the others and it’s sited where I would expect to find the dwarf planted, but I don’t know enough about palms to be sure.

I also don’t know what this one in a container is, something dwarf and slow. It looks good against the Chondropetalum behind it. Quite a few other plants were figured. Among others, we ID’ed the aster-family shrub I showed in April. It’s a Shrub Aster, Felicia fruticosa, a good plant to know. It’s quite the show-stopper when it blooms.