A Publication of the

Foundation

for Landscape Studies

A Journal of Place Volume v | Number ıı | Spring 2010

Essays: Garden Variety: An Uncommon Offering 2 Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: An Aerial Garden Promenade: Nature and Design along the High Line Paula Deitz: Hugh Johnson: A Visit to Tradescant’s Garden at Saling Hall Kenneth I. Helphand: Gardens and War Reuben M. Rainey: The Garden in the Machine: Nature Returns to the High-Tech Hospital

Place Keeper 18 David and Dan Jones: Louisville’s 21st Century Parks Visionaries

Book Reviews 19 Robin Karson: Unbounded Practice: Women and Landscape Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century By Thaïsa Way Long Island Landscapes and the Women Who Designed Them By Cynthia Zaitzevsky

Exhibitions 21

Awards 22

Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor rich tradition of English offered their own firsthand ance during the twentieth industrial activity in their horticulture to surround the stories, further proving the century; he then discusses plans as compelling mellow antiquity of his author’s thesis that garden- how new research on the reminders of the history of a manor house and its adja- ing is a fundamental and response of the immune sys- particular site, but few have he mission of the found on great estates and cent fourteenth-century self-affirming act of place tem to contact with nature had the kind of commission Foundation for adjacent to manors. Paula church with a garden of making in the face of dehu- has led to attempts to ame- that would allow them to Landscape Studies Deitz writes about a particu- great beauty. manization. In this issue, liorate the sterility of high- turn a derelict piece of is to promote an larly fine manor garden, Other types of gardens Helphand, a board member tech medical facilities. industrial infrastructure into active understand- Saling Hall, which is the cre- besides those on private of the Foundation for Readers will be glad to learn a public garden. The conver- Ting of the meaning of place ation of Hugh Johnson, property provide joy and Landscape Studies, shares that teams of physicians, sion of New York City’s High in human life. The making OBE, a prominent author deep personal satisfaction. some of these stories with staff, patients, psychologists, Line, an elevated railroad of a garden is perhaps the who is widely considered the The kind of gardens that our readers. engineers, architects, and trestle, into an elegantly most direct act of place mak- doyen of wine connoisseur- Kenneth Helphand, profes- Another board member, landscape architects are cur- designed promenade where ing there is, stemming from ship. In addition to produc- sor of landscape architecture Reuben Rainey, a professor rently working together to naturalistic drifts of inter- some basic component ing many books on wines, at the University of Oregon, emeritus in the School of create gardens specifically mingling grasses and plants of our DNA that genetically Johnson is also a prolific calls “defiant” certainly Architecture at the University focused on the needs of vari- set off breathtaking views of links human beings and writer on gardens. Readers of belong in this category. of Virginia, is an author and ous classes of patients, such the surrounding cityscape plant cultivation. We have the column he wrote for Defiant gardens are, accord- filmmaker who has made as those with HIV/AIDS or have made what was once a therefore chosen to focus many years in the Journal of ing to Helphand, ones that what are called healing or children’s diseases. busy freight transportation this issue of Site/Lines on the Royal Horticultural Society have been created under restorative gardens his spe- A previous issue of corridor into a quiet aerial four types of gardens – gar- under the nom de plume improbable circumstances cial area of inquiry. Here Site/Lines was devoted to oasis. The extraordinary dens that meet some of our Tradescant admire the way by oppressed, endangered, he has assembled a body of essays on the postindustrial story of how this unusual most fundamental needs and in which his conversational and incarcerated persons as evidence that proves that landscape. In it we main- new park came into being is desires in quite different voice makes them friendly life-affirming antidotes to patients who are exposed to tained that brownfields – one that I am eager to share. ways. partners in observing horti- the sufferings caused by dis- views of greenery or have abandoned riverfront docks, Personal paradise, survival The word “garden” imme- cultural varieties, composi- crimination, peril, and physical access to gardens capped sanitary landfills, stratagem, therapeutic green diately conjures a picture of tional effects, and seasonal imprisonment. A winner of experience less stress and decommissioned military space, elevated promenade – a plot of land, usually near a alterations of garden scenery. the Foundation for Land- recover more quickly than facilities, and other kinds of these are the kinds of gar- house or cottage, that is used As with his predecessors scape Studies’ 2007 John those whose institutional disused urban lands – have dens we seek to explore here for growing flowers, fruit, or Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Brinckerhoff Jackson Book surroundings are designed become a new frontier for with you. We hope you will vegetables. The term also Sackville-West, Johnson’s Prize, Helphand’s book exclusively to serve medical landscape designers. Some enjoy touring them with us. brings to mind the princely writing is born of personal Defiant Gardens: Making technology. Rainey also practitioners involved with gardens that adorn palace experience. By spending Gardens in Wartime has maintains that gardens in brownfields projects have With good green wishes, grounds and the gardens time with him at Saling Hall, engendered unanticipated hospice settings bring solace incorporated relics of former Deitz came to understand responses from many quar- and a more humane end-of- his genius as a garden ters. Numerous readers have life experience to the dying. maker. Here she shares her He delves first into the ori- appreciation of the way in gin of healing gardens in the Elizabeth Barlow Rogers which he has built upon the Middle Ages and the reasons President for their eventual disappear-

Important Message entirely on gifts from our read- The Foundation for Landscape ers. Please consider contributing On the Cover: Studies is a donor-supported, by check or giving us your The High Line. Photograph by not-for-profit organization, and credit-card information on the Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. the publication of this non- envelope inside this issue of 2 subscription journal depends Site/Lines. Thank you! Garden Variety: the spaces between the slowly rotting ties, and the disused rail back into use, but in what way? One possible answer was light- bed had transformed itself into a meadow of wildflowers. The rail transportation – an elevated subway line like the ones that An Uncommon Offering story of how this piece of abandoned train track became an used to run above Third and Sixth avenues. But soon their elegantly designed public park inspired by that serendipitous first impressions of the place began to rule their thinking. An Aerial Garden Promenade: transformation is one of the most impressive in recent New Hammond says, “Our goal became to make what felt like a very Nature and Design along the High Line York City history. private and privileged experience – almost like entering a n 1980 a train carrying three carloads of frozen turkeys rum- magical world combining wildscape and incredible urban vis- bled along the 1.5-mile-long elevated trestle called the High It begins in 1999 when Robert Hammond, a young man who tas – available to others without destroying that feeling.” He Line into the manufacturing, warehousing, and meatpacking lived in the West Village just below the southern end of the and David began to envision the High Line as an elevated, lin- district located around Gansevoort and Washington streets High Line, found his curiosity piqued by the puzzling piece of ear park. on Manhattan’s Far West Side. It was the last train to run on industrial infrastructure he saw on his daily walks through Ithe High Line. The tracks had been elevated in 1934, after years the neighborhood. Hearing that there was to be a community At the time Hammond was a business consultant versed in of agitation over the frequent accidents at the at-grade pedes- planning board meeting to discuss its future, Hammond Internet marketing, and David was a free-lance writer on sub- trian crossings along Tenth Avenue – or Death Avenue, as it decided to attend. As he listened to testimony that made the jects such as travel, fashion, and food: neither one of them was then called. But containerized shipping had eventually High Line’s removal practically a fait accompli, he began knew much about the workings of government or how to go made the West Side docks obsolete, and interstate trucking to think it a shame that this relic of New York’s past was being about preserving a historic landmark. They started out by con- had caused a severe decline in rail transportation. Half a cen- torn down. Unfortunately, however, only one other person in sulting with members of the Central Park Conservancy and tury after its inception, the useful life of this Hudson Line the room – Joshua David, who lived a few blocks to the north, others who had formed public-private park partnerships. spur was over. Yet its owner, Conrail, did not want to shoulder in Chelsea – Looking for a the cost of taking it down. seemed to precedent for For the next twenty years, as the railroad company made share his an elevated periodic efforts to sell off this unconventional piece of real contrarian park, they estate, the surrounding neighborhoods of Chelsea and the view. After discovered Upper West Village were changing. The blocks of abandoned the meet- the Prome- or marginally occupied buildings were steadily being convert- ing they nade Plantée ed into residential lofts, designers’ studios, architects’ offices, exchanged built on an art galleries, and hip boutiques – a second-generation Soho. If business abandoned they thought about it at all, both the new occupants and pedes- cards, then nineteenth- trians passing through the area wondered what this unusual met again. As century overhead structure could be as it snaked into view and then they talked railway disappeared again into warehouses where there had once been about how to viaduct in second-floor loading docks. Some passersby found the elevated save this the twelfth track on which nothing moved intriguingly enigmatic, but derelict piece of cityscape, they conceived the idea of forming Robert Hammond, left. Joshua David, above. arrondisse- most residents of the Chelsea Historic District to the east of an advocacy organization, which they named Friends of the ment of Tenth Avenue thought of it as a blight on their neighborhood. High Line. Paris. Although useful conceptually, the series of charming Considering it an impediment to development, nearby proper- When the two subsequently obtained permission from the garden spaces that make the 2.8-mile-long Promenade Plantée ty owners formed an association to urge its demolition. railroad to get up on the trestle, they stared in amazement at a decorous stroll alongside the rooftops of Paris did not pro- Because it is thirty feet above street level, practically no one the ghostly sight of the steel rails, rotting ties, and the green- vide exactly the right model. They preferred something that noticed that the High Line was also changing – but in a way ery growing up through the gray ballast in the road bed. They retained a semblance of the abandoned High Line’s nature- quite different from the neighborhoods below. While the rail- were thrilled by the stillness there, and by the breathtaking taking-its-astonishing-course character while at the same time road company and City Hall dithered, time set in motion the vistas of the Hudson River and the surrounding city. They capturing its potential as a free-flowing recreational space. inevitable process of decay combined with revegetation that knew then that they wanted the High Line revived and put Establishing an organizational profile and raising money makes all open-air ruins, even industrial ones, romantic evoca- were obvious first priorities for the Friends of the High tions of the past. Slowly, inexorably, inconspicuously, nature Line, along with building trust among the different interests was reclaiming a small piece of Manhattan. In a short time, a involved – neighbors, real estate developers, City Hall, wide variety of plants had spontaneously seeded themselves in Community Board 4, the Chelsea gallery owners, housing pro- ject residents, and others. Although the administration of

3 Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had authorized the demolition of the From Joel Sternfeld: Walking trestle, Hammond and David’s project had the good fortune to the High Line, 2001. Photograph by be endorsed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg immediately upon Joel Sternfeld. Courtesy of the his taking office. But this critical boost for creative idealists photographer. treading on government turf was only the beginning. David’s role was to sell the idea to all the disparate factions; this Provided with a pass by meant attending an almost endless number of evening meet- the railroad company, ings with local block associations and holding pizza parties for Sternfeld documented the the residents of the nearby housing projects. It also meant site through the changing simply getting out on the street in order to let people know seasons. He only pho- that an organization called Friends of the High Line existed. tographed, however, when “Flyers on lamp poles – you can’t believe how important they the sky was a neutral gray: “I are if you are trying to reach people in a geographically wanted it to be clear in the defined community,” David says. “In the beginning, our voices pictures that if there was simply weren’t being heard. I did heavy, heavy papering of the glory in the High Line, it neighborhood.” wasn’t due to my skill as a Meanwhile, Hammond was engaged in a different sort of photographer,” Sternfeld networking. “I’m a problem solver,” he says. “My biggest talent says. “By not borrowing is getting people together.” His first effort was to build an elec- beauty from the sky, the tronic database by creating an e-mail list of all his friends and High Line itself is what is the friends of those friends. The next was to create a website important in the picture.” that allowed the Friends of the High Line to reach beyond this More often than not, he set initial e-mail list and become a membership organization. up his view camera with the Paula Scher of the graphics firm Pentagram offered to create lens pointing straight down its signature logo and a correspondingly understated graphic the tracks: “This sounds like style for all the publicity material. But Hammond realized that a very obvious decision – to more was needed to convey to the public the vision of the follow a path – but it is not. I High Line that he and David shared. People had to be able to was only ten when I read see what it looked like from above as well as below. Knowing Thoreau. Think of all the other nature writers such as John dark steel rails appear as an elegant linear abstraction etched that a professional landscape photographer, Joel Sternfeld, Muir, Edwin Way Teale, and John Burroughs – they are all upon a white band of snow. lived nearby, he contacted him. observing what they experience as they follow a trail. It was The photographs of the untended garden in Sternfeld’s Although Hammond may not have been aware of it at the such a privilege to be up there all alone. I was aware that there book and the accompanying exhibition at Pace/MacGill in the time, Sternfeld, who is known for his utopian and dystopian are eight million New Yorkers and that I was their representa- fall of 2001 were captivating. David made a point of getting depictions of place, had already displayed an interest in aban- tive and was therefore meant to re-create the experience for other Chelsea gallery owners enthusiastic about saving the doned infrastructure; his book on the Roman Campagna con- them.” High Line; before long, the Friends of the High Line had tains many beautiful images of the first Claudian aqueduct. If nature was the first implicit partner on the High Line’s become a chic cause within the art world. A benefit auction in When Hammond took Sternfeld up on the High Line on yet-to-be named design team, Sternfeld was the second, elo- the summer of 2001 at the Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea a cold day in March 2000, the photographer was immediately quently illustrating how the abandoned railroad trestle had brought in four hundred guests, propelled the young organi- hooked. As the two men stood in the strange quietness and already become a work of art. His book Walking the High Line, zation into the society columns, and raised $200,000. The fol- gazed at its tangle of volunteer vegetation and the crossing published in 2001, is a remarkable collection of photographs lowing year, Martha Stewart, whose offices are in the 1932 and curving lines of the steel tracks, Sternfeld said to Ham- revealing a ribbon of overhead New York where asters, golden Starrett-Lehigh Building, a landmark of modern industrial mond, “Please don’t let anyone else come up here.” Hammond’s rod, Queen Anne’s lace, and long grasses improbably appear architecture occupying a full block just north of the Chelsea idea of commissioning a publicity shot became, for Sternfeld, against a skyline that includes the Empire State Building. And a year-long project. they depict not only the High Line’s loveliness in summer but also its beauty in fall, when the dry grasses form a tapestry of ochre and sienna, and its graphic appeal in winter, when the

4 Market, co-hosted a benefit with the actor Edward Norton. In ideas submitted were a fluorescent funhouse, a log-flume ride, swath of spontaneous vegetation in Sternfeld’s photographs, 2004 the clothing designer Diane von Furstenberg opened her a trellis-wrapped garden, a roller coaster, a mini-Appalachian Oudolf worked with Corner to create the effect of a “combed West Village studio for a cocktail party preceding a benefit Trail, and a landscape representing the three spheres of carpet.” Within the wide meandering walkway – its route more held at Phillips de Pury & Company. Two years later, the pro- Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. of a laissez-faire ramble than a linear promenade – the plank- ceeds from the summer benefit – a dinner held at Cipriani Hammond rented exhibition space at Grand Central at a non- ing splits into narrow raised bars made of the same concrete Wall Street – hit the million-dollar mark. profit rate and mounted a show of the winning schemes. To aggregate; the long, narrow strips of vegetation growing in the But more than money was needed. All politics in New York catch the attention of passersby, there was a continuous video interstices reinforce the sense of linearity that pulls the stroll- is, in the end, community politics: to hold sway, elected offi- presentation of brief clips in which project supporters praised er forward. (See cover photograph.) The concrete aggregate cials and organizations with good causes must have grassroots the most important idea of all: turning the High Line into a matches the volcanic gravel mulch in the planting beds, which support. David, who is a populist by nature, was bent on rally- park. In this context, the notion of converting a piece of stark- could easily pass for the actual ballast once found between the ing the residents of the housing projects, brownstones, and ly industrial architecture – and an elevated one, to boot – into rotting ties of the High Line’s railroad tracks; the design even tenements in the surrounding neighborhood. The High Line a public green space no longer seemed particularly far-fetched. called for some pieces of track to be left in place here and was, after all, intended to be a public park in a part of the city there, a ghostly memory of the rail spur’s former function. The that had a very low ratio of green space relative to its popula- If the ideas competition was chiefly for publicity, the interna- soil and mulch in which the plants grow absorb water, which tion. With singular dedication, he put his personal life on hold tional design competition announced in March 2004 was for drains into a subsurface recycling irrigation system. and spent all his available time attending and organizing real. Of course it generated its own considerable publicity, Explaining how he incorporated Corner’s fundamental meetings with neighborhood block associations and getting especially since the finalists included such international design narrative into a vegetal narrative of his own, Oudolf members of the community to turn out for public hearings. It figures as the architect Zaha Hadid and the artist James says, “More and more, ecology is part of my design approach. soon became apparent that he would have to give up his work Turrell. Hammond was delighted when the jury picked his But not entirely. Ecosystems can be beautiful but not necessar- as a travel writer and make the Friends of the High Line his first choice, the landscape architect James Corner of Field ily so. My approach is a design one; the plants have to have full-time career. As he immersed himself ever more deeply in Operations with architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo complexity and depth. They must make a picture. You have to promoting the park, he realized that getting himself appointed Scofidio of the interdisciplinary firm Diller Scofido + Renfro. have coherence within a free-flowing design. Ecology and a member of Community Board 4 would give the Friends In the booklet they prepared with the Friends of the High aesthetics have to combine. Jim wanted me to translate his additional leverage. Serving on the board meant tending to Line detailing their plan and the philosophy behind it, Corner narrative into my own terms; I had to have a conceptual numerous important, if not directly related, items of business and Scofidio wrote, “Inspired by the melancholic, unruly beau- narrative too.” such as affordable housing and rezoning. His most important ty of this postindustrial ruin where nature has reclaimed a Oudolf ’s narrative can be said to be Neo-Romantic. It harks rewards were mastering the art of consensus building and once-vital piece of urban infrastructure, the new park will be back to the same kind of wildness and mystery that Sternfeld, developing an intimate understanding of the issues that con- an instrument of leisure, a place to reflect about the very cate- along with Hammond and David, experienced when they saw cerned his neighbors. For David the notion of the High Line gories of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ in our time.” the High Line’s overgrown roadbed for the first time. He as a park where all the diverse segments of the community Corner, the leader of the design team, invited the Dutch claims, “I wanted to make my design both sensory and poetic, could come together was even more compelling than its real- garden designer Piet Oudolf, an extraordinarily gifted plants- with an element of memory. People should feel something ization as a notable piece of landscape architecture. man known for composing grasses and perennials in natural- about this place in time.” His particular genius lies in the way Hammond, on the other hand, was committed to the idea istic, meadowlike drifts, to become a collaborator. To evoke the in which he is able to achieve this by creating what he calls a that the new High Line should make a major design state- four-dimensional design – time and seasonality being critical ment; he wanted to see it become something outside the ordi- to both its changing beauty throughout the entire year and its nary park paradigm. Like David, he found it necessary to give evolution over the years. up his consulting work in order to devote himself entirely to this end. In 2003 he decided to have what he calls an interna- With his unerring instinct for the right kind of publicity, tional open-ideas competition, for which he assembled a jury Hammond approached Terrence Riley, then curator of archi- of three well-known architects and two landscape architects. tecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, about the They ended up picking four winners from among 720 entries possibility of a mounting an exhibition of the plan for the sent from thirty-eight countries. Since ideas were being future High Line. To his surprise, Riley immediately agreed to solicited instead of actual planning proposals, whimsy was not exhibit the winning entry of the Field Operations team for in short supply. One winner, Nathalie Rinne of Vienna, pro- posed a 7,920-foot-long swimming pool. Among the other

Planking, tracks, and vegetation, the High Line, 2009. Photograph by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. 5 three months. The exhibition opened in April 2005 and proved groundbreaking. There was, of course, no actual ground to exhibition and participated in meetings as an advisor to the to be so popular that the museum extended its three-month break in this case: only tracks, ballast, and debris to be New York City Department of Parks & Recreation’s capital pro- run until October 31. This was a key moment, Hammond removed. Now that construction of the first phase, referred to jects audit team. When Hammond, who was also at the meet- recalls, when “people’s expectations changed and things really as Section 1, was certain, the Friends of the High Line began to ings, asked Cullina to assist him in interviewing candidates for started to move forward.” negotiate a license agreement with the city that would allow the position of director of horticulture, Cullina convinced him As important as the buzz generated by the exhibition, which them authority over the day-to-day operations of the High that bifurcating responsibility for general maintenance opera- would help the Friends raise several million dollars in private Line when it became a public park. tions and horticulture was not as sensible as having one per- funds, was obtaining the necessary government approvals and son in charge of both. core financial support, without which the project would stall. Raising capital dollars to realize the new High Line was one At this point it dawned on Hammond that Cullina might in This involved political acumen and a good deal of grunt work thing, but taking on the responsibility for funding its ongoing fact be the best candidate for that position. The idea did not at long before and after the exhibition took place. By a stroke of management was another. With the license agreement in the first strike Cullina with the same force, but Hammond did not good luck, Gifford Miller, a college friend of Hammond’s, was works and construction on Section 1 scheduled to be complet- give up. He kept talking with Cullina periodically, trying to the head of the City Council at the time, and he and fellow ed in June 2009, Hammond and David needed to find both a persuade him to leave a job he clearly loved to take on a fledg- council member Christine Quinn scheduled a hearing in July head of operations and an expert horticulturist to oversee the ling park with an uncertain future. “I had a great opportunity 2001. David says, “We had to get everyone we could possibly care of Oudolf ’s planting design. By good fortune, a short time already,” says Cullina, “but as I kept talking with Robert, seeing get to be there. I worked on that for a month. All I did was call earlier Hammond had met Patrick Cullina, then the vice presi- how well he worked out the management license agreement people and get them to promise to come, or to give me letters dent for scientific research, horticulture, and operations at the with the city and what a bright and interested group of people to bring if they weren’t coming. We got letters from all the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Cullina had attended the MoMA were on the board of the Friends, I started to think about it important galleries, all the important block associations. They made a big thump when I laid them down on the table.” Emerging victorious from the hearing, they still needed the City Council’s financial support. Through Miller’s leadership, $15.75 million for the project was voted into the council’s capi- tal budget. Then in 2004 City Hall announced a $43.25 million appropriation in the mayoral budget. It appeared that only five years after David and Hammond had formed the Friends of the High Line, their seemingly impossible dream had become a real project in the minds of both the public and the munici- pal government. There was yet another hurdle to overcome: obtaining a Certificate of Interim Trail Use from the National Surface Transportation Board. Under the terms of a congressional program called “Rails to Trails,” the railroad could donate the High Line to the city for “interim” use as parkland. (Since it is unlikely that railroad companies will reactivate their service on currently unused lines, “interim” is a term that is practi- cally always honored in the breach.) At last, on April 11, 2006, Mayor Bloomberg, deputy commissioner for economic devel- opment Daniel Doctoroff, New York senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, and top philanthropists Diane von Furstenberg and her husband, business mogul Barry Diller, smiled for the camera at what would usually be called a

Strolling on the High Line, 2009. Photograph by Elizabeth Barlow 6 Rogers. seriously. I guess it ultimately comes down to the fact that I’m Relaxing on the High Line. wired to cities as well as to plants – and to the role public Photograph by Elizabeth Barlow parks play in cities more than I am to botanical collections per Rogers. se.” Praising Hammond’s leadership style, he maintains, “Robert has the confidence to allow people to pursue avenues tion equipment is a common of dialogue that are not part of the script.” sight from its elevated per- spective. There are some but I first saw the High Line from above in 2001. Hammond, who not too many café tables, and is a longtime family friend, had kindly made it possible for this confirms the appearance me to get up on the tracks when they were still covered with of the High Line as an urban the same grasses and wildflowers one sees in Sternfeld’s pho- walkway. tographs. And although I had been interested in the project The wide passage running from the time when it was, in Hammond’s words, “just two through what was once the guys with a logo,” I secretly harbored reservations about how it second floor of a warehouse would turn out. Wasn’t the small miracle of spontaneous (now the Chelsea Market) revegetation in the most starkly industrial kind of landscape – where freight trains formerly a humbling reminder of nature’s enduring fecundity – some- stopped next to loading thing precious that would be lost? I wanted other New Yorkers docks is a “gallery” for public to experience the magical views of the city from this unusual art. The inaugural work perspective, but at the same time I feared that design would within this space is Spencer destroy the kind of beauty that provided so much of the High Finch’s The River That Flows Line’s mysterious attraction. Both Ways, seven hundred My walk on the new High Line in the fall of 2009, shortly individually crafted glass after it opened to the public, was a revelation. I was pleased to panels depicting image-by- see how the remnant tracks and the unpatterned concrete image the way in which the planks and minimalist wood benches paralleling them paid tidal exchange of water in the Hudson over a single day makes street level. There is no pronounced sense of arrival. When I homage to the fact that the High Line is still really a line. The the current reverse direction. Working in collaboration with went to see it, I simply climbed the stairs and felt impelled to way in which the new vegetation squeezes up in the narrow the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the walk in one direction or another. In a similar fashion, the strips of soil between the raised bands of concrete and then Friends of the High Line is commissioning other site-specific promenade’s abrupt truncation at Gansevoort Street comes as simply peters out where they dip back down to meet the wider pieces. A recent temporary installation mounted on the chain- a surprise, for here there is nothing more than a glass safety planking of the pedestrian promenade has almost the same air link fence separating the now-open Section One from Section panel to prevent you from dropping off. I wanted to continue of spontaneity as the wildflowers that were there before. The Two, under construction, is Valerie Hegarty’s Autumn on the walking, and that was the designers’ point. The sense of mid- extended lines of the long narrow concrete bands, which are Hudson Valley with Branches. It is a re-imaging of a painting by air suspension signals the fact that from here south the trestle approximately the same width as railroad tracks, accentuate Hudson River School artist Jasper Francis Cropsey as a tat- was amputated back when the whole structure was intended this sense of flow. The slightly separated slats of the long, nar- tered, frayed, and weather-exposed canvas with emerging tree for demolition. The temporary chain link fence that currently row benches do the same. Where adequate soil depth is need- branches – a context-appropriate symbol of the resurgence of marks the end of the promenade at West Twentieth Street, on ed for a grove of birches or a stand of sumac, raised beds are nature amid decay. the other hand, says the reverse. Looking through it one sees contained by thin walls of COR-TEN steel whose rust-colored The overall impression of an uninterrupted walkway is bol- construction under way on Section 2, the stretch running patina harks back to the defunct trestle’s decaying beams. stered by another design decision: the inconspicuousness of north to West Thirtieth Street. Section 3, extending north to At the same time, the High Line’s intensely urban context is the points where stairs or elevators carry one up from the Thirty-fourth Street following the perimeter of the West Side called into the service of its design. Visible along the edges are Rail Yards, is still a dream-in-the-making, as it will require a number of billboards oriented toward the drivers below; additional political negotiations, design development, and their eye-catching high-end advertisements constitute part of funding before it can become a reality. Nevertheless, it is bold- the High Line’s borrowed scenery. It is also obvious that the ly delineated on the map of the High Line, and Hammond High Line is spurring on the continuing transformation of and David speak of it as a challenging inevitability. Chelsea and the northern part of the West Village; construc-

7 Anyone who has made a garden knows that it is always full they have turned the same of surprises, changing from one year to the next. A design straw color as the grasses, may succeed at first, as this one surely does, but time can be but look at how they stand unkind to the gardener’s original intentions. The forces of cli- out – the dry stems are tall mate and nature – rain, wind, species competition, growth pat- with round tips like dots, terns, and many other factors – are forever at work. In terms of subtly punctuating the rest architecture, one stage of arrested deterioration initiates of what you see.” Pointing to another. What is likely to happen here? I called Cullina to see a thin blade of prairie drop- if he would meet me on the High Line. I wanted to observe seed (Sporobolus heterolepis), it through his eyes and discuss his plan for caring for such a he said, “This is an incredi- natural-seeming – though entirely constructed – landscape; bly strong grass. Birds light one, moreover, that exists in a particularly stressful environ- on it, and it supports their ment with nothing to buffer the effects of weather. weight while they eat the It was a beautiful fall day. Since grasses go to seed at this seeds. People up here are fas- time of year, their tops appeared like a feathery haze animated cinated with how much by sunlight and breeze. Without color and species variation the wildlife there is – birds, but- terflies, field mice. Dropseed also holds the dew and the snow – really beautiful at all times of the year. It’s very fragrant, and its fall color is fantastic; stems range from gold to orange and red.” Alongside “the tall mead- ow,” Cullina observed how well certain plants thrive and A former loading spur, now a horticul- vegetation as before. They merely mimic in an impressionistic how successfully they work tural version of the spontaneous vege- sense the wild vegetation that had seeded itself in the old rail compositionally with others tation in the old rail bed. Photograph bed. In fact, within the picturesque illusion of wanton nature, in the same bed. “We are by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. horticultural interest and ecological variation are important tweaking Oudolf ’s planting objectives. The “agri-tecture,” as Corner calls it, of the park’s plan here and there,” he explained, “not so much gardening as design includes a range of ecosystems: mossland, tall meadow, editing.” He told me that he dislikes gardening shows on tele- wetland, woodland thicket, mixed perennial meadow, young vision: according to him, these are just a form of decorating. woodland. Starting with Oudolf ’s planting scheme, Cullina Patrick Cullina on the High Line. meadowlike beds would appear He believes that the best gardeners work in partnership with uses his own knowledge and numerous field trips to the Photograph by Elizabeth Barlow monotonous. Cullina pointed nature and that nature inevitably alters a garden’s original coastal plains, forest trails, and prairie meadows to stimulate Rogers. out some tall spikes, the stems design over time. In contrast to a landscape ideal of static per- his imagination. of a plant whose blooms are fection, Cullina holds that “What we are creating here is an Standing beside what he calls the Chelsea grassland, spent. “That’s prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya), a evolving thing. The North American landscape is constantly in Cullina again paused to point out the effects of Oudolf ’s species that’s both taller and more dramatic than its more motion. You have to work within its dynamic rhythms.” “fourth dimension,” saying, “This is entirely different than it commonly found close relative gayfeather, or blazing star At the same time, he acknowledges the fact that the High was in the summer when the flowers were in a kind of color (Liatris spicata), which is also found on the High Line. Those Line plantings are indeed horticultural species, not volunteer conversation with one another – repeats of blues, yellows, delicate lines are like black swords, they reinforce the verticali- reds leading your eye down the promenade. Now you have a ty of the grasses. And here are some sweet black-eyed susans more nuanced view. But there’s method in this grassy mad- (Rudbeckia subtomentosa),” he continued. “I find their seed ness. Look close, and certain distinctions become more appar- heads more compelling than the flowers. This time of year ent. Over here is a bed that we call the swale. There you see little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) – a cultivar called ‘The Blues.’ Now it has a bluish tint, and then it turns purple. And

8 you can’t underestimate the role of light. Look there at the Hugh Johnson: A Visit to Tradescant’s Garden at Saling Hall his written descriptions was much like walking into a picture purple lovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis) with the late afternoon lthough I only met Hugh Johnson recently, I feel as book with a heightened sense of reality; everything seemed sun picking out the gold highlights, almost like fire. It’s a if I have been in conversation with him for years both familiar and new at the same time. The formal entrance great foil for plants like rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifoli- through his columns and books on wine and gar- court of clipped box and pleached linden trees perfectly com- um), with its dusky white flower cones that sit atop vertical dens, the principal subjects of his prolific writing plemented the low, vine-covered, red brick 1699 house with clusters of bladelike blue-gray leaves.” Pointing to the Hudson career. Johnson’s encyclopedic output on the horti- ornate Dutch gables at either end. From there, I entered the Palisades across the river, he said, “See, these colors echo the culturalA side, covering everything from environmental issues churchyard of Saint James, the fourteenth-century parish fall leaf colors over there.” to the international garden scene, teaches us as much about church that is part of the manor house complex and overlooks If the surprises of nature no longer govern the High Line, phrasing a thought as pruning a tree. In his 1994 piece the gardens. the pleasures of the ever-changing human encounter are in “Chromatics,” he writes: “Without a breath of wind, a drop of I knew that autumn was Hugh Johnson’s favorite season for ample evidence. For all the elegance of the design details and rain or a nip of frost the trees have undressed as quietly as in a the trees and plants that are his passion. In the brick-walled the beauty of the plantings, the park’s social pulse is as com- bedroom, their leaves falling round them like petticoats to lie garden, created in 1698, the apple trees were pruned into para- pelling as the seasonal rhythms of the vegetation: Hammond’s in perfect circles at their feet.“ Who can resist the mind of sols along the grass plats lining either side of the central bor- vision and David’s vision of what they strived so hard to create someone who makes observations of nature so acutely visible? ders; columnar topiaries of Irish juniper punctuated the are seamlessly joined. As we continued our stroll, I noticed a There is comfort and charm, too, in his unflagging interest borders and the shrubberies lining the walls. The verticality of row of doublewide wooden chaise lounges interspersed with in such recurrent themes as the trees brought both pockets of plants along a stretch of the promenade. All were rainfall estimates, woodpeck- height and a deep perspec- occupied. Some people were reading or talking with a friend; ers, and the activity of peel- tive to the view. The box- others were simply lolling in the warm afternoon sun. Where ing birches (a pleasure I once edged herbaceous borders the platform of the promenade drops a level to form a quiet, enjoyed at summer camp in were a veritable autumnal out-of-the way place, I saw a man sitting in solitary repose. “I arts and crafts). In his travel froth of lavender Michael- think that the High Line’s perceived limitations – its scale, pieces, one shares his excite- mas daisies and Verbena length, narrowness – are actually its strengths,” Cullina ment in discovering land- bonariensis, white cosmos, remarked. “Everybody comes face to face with everybody else; scapes as distant as China, blue salvia, white and pink it compels communication. You’ll see strangers having conver- Australia, and New Zealand. Japanese anemones (more on sations with one another and talking with the staff.” But no matter how far afield these later), and the deep- It is this kind of opportunity for impromptu meeting and he ventures, often with other rose Sedum ‘Autumn Joy.’ social spectacle that older promenades such as the Champs dendrologists, he periodical- A central arbor was draped Élysées and the Central Park Mall were intended to provide. ly invites his readers with in grape vines, pinot noir That the same kind of social pleasure is so abundantly evident confidential directness to from Champagne. in this twenty-first-century promenade is perhaps the High return with him to his own Before returning to the Line’s chief mark of success. By creating an aerial public gar- gardens, whether in central house to meet its owners, den, the Friends of the High Line have befriended New York France, Wales, or at his prin- I surveyed the kitchen gar- City in a most spectacular way. – Elizabeth Barlow Rogers cipal residence, Saling Hall den, where red dahlias and in Essex. nasturtiums were woven To see images of the High Line by the author of this essay, click on Last September, I made a through the rows of vegeta- the Gallery tab of the Foundation for Landscape Studies website: pilgrimage to Saling Hall bles, and then briskly walked www.foundationforlandscapestudies.org. with an invitation to lunch to the end of the woodland To view additional photographs, including ones by Joel Sternfeld and with Hugh Johnson and his and the Doric temple that Piet Oudolf as well as images documentating the various phases of wife, Judy. As I arrived early, terminates the long view the construction of the High Line, visit www.friendsofthehighline.org/ he suggested that I begin by with its inscription from galleries/images. taking a walk on my own, a Manilius’ Astronomica, rare privilege. Visiting this “Innumerae veniunt artes” twelve-acre property after having imagined it through

Hugh Johnson at Saling Hall. Photograph by Andrew Lawson. Courtesy of Andrew Lawson Photography. 9 (Innumerable come the arts [or skills]). Cer- Copse of oak trees in the arbore- going, masterfully descriptive, tainly they appeared in profusion at Saling tum. Photograph by Andrew and inclusive of the reader. Hall, from what little I had already seen. Lawson. Courtesy of Andrew Two specific entries from Following lunch outdoors on the terrace, Lawson Photography. the recent collection touch with a delicious dessert made from apples upon aspects of Saling Hall’s grown on the grounds, I asked Johnson how woodland park that give considerable satisfaction to both the his career as a journalist had begun. “I knew autumn visitor and Hugh Johnson himself. “I sometimes I could entertain people with writing,” he think trees and shrubs are the easy part of gardening,” he replied. He garnered confidence at King’s writes in an essay on keeping track of what you’ve planted. College, Cambridge, he said, where his essays “You can see them in winter: there’s no searching around with had been very popular. He then launched fork and fingertips, trying to locate, and then identify, a cluster into a journalism career as a copywriter at of dormant buds.” And in his essay “On Reflection” he Vogue, where he wrote his first article on observes: “Sometimes the reflections on a pond form such a wine for the 1960 Christmas issue – “some- perfect picture that you see nothing else. The upside-down thing,” he says, “the young women on staff image seems in sharper focus than the reality poised over it.” were not doing.” Both of these statements came alive for me as we strolled After Vogue, he went to work at House & through the gardens and park together. Garden in London, but also wrote about Water features are placed throughout the landscape, captur- travel for House & Garden in New York. Then ing reflections of sky and ripples of light that animate walks he became the travel editor of The Sunday along pathways into the woodland. A long moat with water Times, during which period, he says, he trickling in at one end gives the property a medieval quality; a “flung himself around the world” – with a life-defining magazine called The Garden after one founded previously in secluded water garden surrounded by trees with a jet of water moment on a beach in Yugoslavia when his understanding of 1924 by the garden writer and editor William Robinson. splashing against the lower boughs of maples becomes a secret Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility” suddenly Feeling the necessity for a regular editorial diary, Johnson enclave, or “Glade of Melancholy.” Proceeding further one translated for him as the importance of writing from memory cleverly settled on the nom de plume Tradescant, after John comes to the Japanese pond and finally, at the far end, the Red and not from notes. In 1970, after a stint as editor of the fash- Tradescant, the head gardener to the Earl of Salisbury at Sea (named after its once-broken bottom), surrounding an ion magazine Queen, he and Judy purchased Saling Hall, where Hatfield House in the early-seventeenth century, who was island with four birch trees that Johnson compares to a a modern garden had been planted in the late 1930s by the famous for introducing foreign plants into England. (He is romantic version of a temple. And just within the entrance previous owner Isabella Carlyle. This year marks their fortieth buried in the churchyard of St. Mary-at-Lambeth, now the court a rounded duck pond to the left dramatically reflects anniversary there. Garden Museum, on London’s South Bank. No one bears the Saling Hall itself – a view that has become the garden’s logo on Although most people consider flowers the most important name today.) the homepage of its website. One has the impression that element of any garden, trees are Hugh Johnson’s greatest pas- Thus Tradescant’s Diary was born, granting Johnson the these pools and fountains must somehow be linked by under- sion, as the park behind Saling Hall amply demonstrates. opportunity to relate his personal gardening and travel experi- ground springs or brooks that feed one to the other as they Three years after moving there, in 1973, he published his first ences. In retrospect we can see also that his writings chronicle meander around the garden. However, it is pure artifice, bril- book, entitled Encyclopaedia of Trees. In his introduction to the a major evolutionary period in the garden world, a time when liantly conceived, as each one is discrete unto itself. second edition, in 1984, he describes himself quite simply garden visits and interest in horticulture increased consider- In a glen near an old gravel pit left over from a wartime as “a writer who has found in trees a new point of contact with ably. Through his perceptive observations, peppered with encampment, Johnson has planted a sloping Japanese garden creation, a source of wonder and satisfaction which has the unvarnished opinions and surprising but apt metaphors, read- of box clipped into formations he calls cloud hedges, reminis- inestimable advantage of growing almost everywhere.” Now, a ers were introduced at first-hand to critical issues in conserva- cent of a garden at Daitoku-ji in Kyoto. He believes strongly quarter of a century later, he is still planting trees in his tion and preservation, among other emerging topics. in what he refers to as Japanese restraint and self-control in arboretum, revising his encyclopedia once again, and enjoying In 2007, after thirty-two years, the column left The Garden gardening as a counterpoint to the burgeoning herbaceous his labors “more than ever.” and moved for a year to Gardens Illustrated before finding a borders – in the walled garden, say. Once, in cleaning out the In 1975, a troubled Royal Horticultural Society solicited new permanent home in David Wheeler’s quarterly magazine Japanese pond (a chore that also gives him “a glimmer of Johnson to reinvent its 100-year-old Journal, which he accom- Hortus, as well as on the Saling Hall website. Two collections of Kyoto”), he placed a stout bamboo pole in the water to support plished as the new editorial director, transforming it into a the columns have appeared over the years: Hugh Johnson on an overhanging pine branch, an act that spoke to him, he said, Gardening (incorporating columns published between 1975 and “in Japanese, of course.” 1993) and the more recent Hugh Johnson in the Garden (includ- ing columns published between 1994 and 2008). In essence these ensembles represent a rare kind of autobiography: out- 10 Both Trad’s Diary and the garden itself indicate that John- form of a park whose external boundaries seem to disappear Gardens and War son has a special relationship to white Japanese anemones, into a screen of green; as the stroller advances, the landscape hy is it that in the midst of a war one can still which signal for him the end of summer with “elegance and continues to unfold in a series of clearings alternating with find gardens? Wartime gardens are dramatic endurance.” He describes in one entry how “they manoeuvre enclosed passages of dense growth. At the end of the walk, I examples of what I call “defiant gardens” – like butterflies in a breeze outside my study window.” In a later felt as if I had passed through an enchanted forest. gardens created in extreme social, political, reprise, we learn that these same anemones grew so tall that While Johnson cherishes the appearance of a traditional economic, or cultural conditions – and I “their white moons filtered the light falling on my papers.” English landscape, especially his own “miniature park with a decidedW that I wanted to explore this question further. There But sadly, they eventually migrated away – probably seeking Japanese twist,” he constantly champions new styles and plant had been nothing written on gardens and war, however, so more moisture but ending up in another dry place under introductions. For example, in one 2009 diary entry in Hortus, when I first visited the archives of the Imperial War Museum the pleached lindens. He finishes this wistful tale with “If we he rightly praises London’s St. James’s Park for outdoing in London and the United States Holocaust Memorial have to draw a conclusion, it must be that this most seductive Blenheim, Stowe, or Stourhead as a landscaped garden with Museum, I was greeted with a certain amount of skepticism. flower . . . is a flibbertigibbet, one day basking in cultivated magnificent trees and long vistas from the bridge over the Soon, however, I became known as “the garden guy,” and eager ease, the next running off with the tinkers.” lake: “Buckingham Palace is no beauty, but its bulk framed in archivists were providing perceptive hints about places to visit But the trees are Hugh Johnson’s crowning achievement, willows and nudged by a metasequoia closes one memorable and sources to consult for information about my subject. each one lovingly planted and followed as it grows to matu- view, while the wildly romantic domes and pinnacles of The book that resulted, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in rity. “Trees are the best way to express yourself,” he tells me. Whitehall to the east evoke an imperial mirage.” Nevertheless, Wartime (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2006), exam- Walking with him through these plantations in an English in his opinion, “a park is not a museum,” so he chastises the ines gardens of war in the twentieth century – the century of landscaped garden, we encounter several views directed down gardeners there for adhering to John Nash’s original 1820s’ the deadliest wars in human history. I looked at gardens sol- avenues with garden sculptures at their end points, including plan in lieu of selecting modern colors and new plants. diers built inside and behind the trenches in World War I; gar- a copy of a Bacchus from the Bargello and a nine-foot, mono- Although Trad’s Diary is filled with accounts of warm win- dens built in the Warsaw and other ghettos under the Nazis lithic blade of Welsh granite known as the Millennium Stone, ters, England recently suffered a record cold and snowy one. during World War II; gardens in the POW and civilian intern- which is set in a yew-hedged enclosure. As he animatedly Facing it with his usual equanimity and sense of adventure, he ment camps of both world wars; and gardens created by points out trees and tells me their names and origins, what commented in a January letter: “It is colder here than it has Japanese Americans held at U.S. internment camps during appears at first as a blended woodland reveals itself as individ- been for a generation: there’ll be planting opportunities in the World War II. These wartime gardens accentuate the multiple ual lindens, dogwood, English oaks, poplars, California pines, spring.” This attitude underlies his entire philosophy about meanings of gardens – life, home, work, hope, and beauty – infinite varieties of European beeches and Japanese maples in gardens: “To the visitor,” he writes, “a garden is a place; to its that are embodied in all garden creation. Defiant Gardens autumnal color – friends, real- owners it is a process.” Defining this process through knowl- brought to light a history that had never been studied and A view of the front garden leading ly. And towering above, seven- edge and experimentation, and sharing it enthusiastically with many moving stories never before told. from the house to the pond, ty-five-foot tall dawn redwoods others, has been the trajectory of Hugh Johnson’s life. The experience of researching and writing the book was with Lombardy poplars on the right. (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) – Paula Deitz extraordinary, but the reception of the book was far beyond Photograph by Andrew Lawson. and a swamp cypress (Taxodium my expectations. It was well reviewed and received awards Courtesy of Andrew Lawson distichum). Each tree has been Books by Hugh Johnson: from diverse quarters – the American Society of Landscape Photography. carefully placed to retain the Hugh Johnson's Encyclopaedia of Trees, rev. ed. New York: Gallery Books, Architects, the Environmental Design Research Association, 1984. libraries, horticultural societies, and garden writers – testifying to the breadth of interest in gardens and their meaning. It also Principles of Gardening: The Practice of the Gardener’s Art, rev. ed. New inspired several articles about defiant gardens, most often York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. connecting my general thesis to local situations. Philadelphia Hugh Johnson on Gardening. London: Royal Horticultural Society, 1993. Inquirer writer Virginia Smith accompanied her article with Hugh Johnson in the Garden: The Best Garden Diary of Our Time. another about Philadelphia Green, the urban-gardening pro- London: Mitchell Beazley, 2009. gram of the Philadelphia Horticultural Society. In Detroit, the Metro Times reviewer discussed gardens in North Corktown To take a virtual tour of Saling Hall, view a gallery of garden pho- and Heidelberg Street. A Memorial Day interview on NPR with tographs, read Trad’s Diary about its history, plants, and opening Ketzel Levine led to twenty-five additional radio interviews times, visit the website of Saling Hall: www.salinghall.com. around the country, broadcast by stations with an immense collective listenership. I’ve received invitations for over fifty speaking engagements – at universities, libraries, botanic gar- dens, arboreta, professional groups, and conferences – and at

11 nearly every one I’ve attended, an individual has presented me of Jaafar Hamid al Ali, the parks supervisor of Baghdad, whose American internees and then walked the site with other con- with material that reinforces my conclusions concerning “principle is, for every drop of Iraqi blood, we must plant ference attendees. In 2008 the grandchildren of internees defiant gardens and the centrality of the garden experience. something green.” Over thirty of his workers have been killed, who had built Manzanar’s remarkable Merritt Park returned to At the North Carolina Arboretum I met Dr. John Creech, a but he considers them “fallen martyrs” in the struggle to beau- participate in its archeological excavation. renowned horticulturalist and former director of the National tify Baghdad. Since then, the situation in Iraq has improved; When I traveled to Bogota and Medellin, Colombia, where Arboretum, who shared his story with me. During World War in November of 2009 the New York Times reported that nurs- hundreds of persons attended my talks at the library and II Dr. Creech was captured by the Germans in North Africa eries were again doing business and that “gardens remain one botanic garden, the director made a special point of inviting and imprisoned at a POW camp in Poland. There was a of the few flourishes of public ornament on Baghdad’s other- the garden workers. I was moved and surprised by their pro- derelict greenhouse on the camp’s grounds, and a fellow sol- wise brown streets, defiant displays of foliage amid concrete found response to the distant events I described. Then I real- dier convinced the authorities that Dr. Creech should be blast walls and security checkpoints.” In many areas, topiary ized that this audience understood the power of gardens in allowed to refurbish it. He received seeds from the Red Cross has become fashionable. Displays of order and care, the gar- times of war because Colombia has been the scene of civil and grew food that helped sustain the prisoners. Awarded the dens also reinforce the meanings of garden work. As one warfare for forty years. I also met with gardeners in Bogota’s Bronze Star for this effort, Dr. Creech may be the only worker noted, “When you take care of the gardens, you forget squatter settlements, refugees from the violence in the coun- American soldier to be decorated for gardening. Right after the the war.” tryside. Luis Antonio Medina proudly showed us his rooftop war, in 1946, he wrote an article about his experiences for One mother told me that she had sent a copy of the book to garden, replete with plants from his native province of Boyaca; Better Homes and Gardens entitled “I Gardened for my Life.” her daughter who was incarcerated at the Coffee Creek Correc- it serves both as a reminder of his former rural home and a Bill Beardall now lives in North Carolina, but in 1970 he tional Facility in Oregon. She reported that her daughter had place of solace and activity in the city. In Medellin I was asked was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He wrote me that during found the book inspirational and that “other inmates are lined why the kidnappers didn’t even allow their victims a garden, a the war he planted a garden just outside his hooch (a Quonset up to read it after she’s shared passages out loud with them.” rhetorical question that seemed to underscore their cruelty. hut), and he sent me a photograph of it. There he planted My visits to the garden sites I had researched for my book (This was shortly after the rescue of former presidential candi- bananas, watermelons, and periwinkles. “It had a calming were especially powerful for me. I had the opportunity to date Ingrid Betancourt from captivity.) I could only respond affect on me,” Beardall explained, “after a long day of flying speak about ghetto gardens at two conferences in Germany – that the United States had not allowed gardens in Guanta- missions in the I Corps area, to see a little bit of green grow- one on “Jewish Topographies,” the other on “Parks and namo, although some prisoners there managed to create gar- ing by my doorway.” He added, “As small as it was, it was my Gardens and the Jewish Community 1933-1945.” I also returned dens from seeds gathered at mealtime and produce melons, oasis. Many a day or late evening I would sit on my ‘patio,’ to Manzanar to speak about gardens created by Japanese- peppers, and even a miniature lemon tree. (Paradoxically, the drink a ‘cocktail,’ and enjoy the setting of the sun in the west. I United States had allowed could almost block out the medevac choppers going out and Saddam Hussein a garden the sound of the artillery in the distance. I have never forgot- plot.) ten much from that war and never my oasis. . . . Thank you for Particularly satisfying has reminding me that even one small little garden can create a been the opportunity to sense of peace and hope in the midst of a war and a warrior’s meet remarkable individuals heart.” and tell stories that might Tom Denis, a civilian pilot who flew soldiers home from otherwise have been lost. In Iraq, told me about the following ceremony: “The flight atten- my book I had noted that the dants on those trips would bring along a strip of sod from lives of ghetto gardens, like America and would lay it on the threshold of the aircraft entry those of the ghettos them- door. As the servicemen boarded the aircraft for their long- selves and their prisoners, awaited flight back home from war, they were told of this strip were short, but that they had of grass upon which they were about to step. It was American still supplied important soil! The men always smiled and some stepped over it, some respites for those around planted two feet directly on the strip, and others bent down to them who were suffering; the kiss it. Reactions varied, but this small strip of living, growing, brevity of their existence did green grass from America had an overpowering effect on each not lessen their significance. of the men.” Roman Kent, a survivor of I have continued to receive many images of gardens in Iraq the Lodz Ghetto whose expe- and Afghanistan, created by both solders and civilians. In riences I had recounted, December 2006 newspapers reported on the remarkable work Clearing rubble for a garden, Lodz Ghetto. Photograph courtesy 12 of Ghetto Fighter’s Museum, Israel. Archaeological excavation of Merritt is the site the National Poppy impact of gardens on individuals and communities. The book Park, Manzanar, California, built by Collection, and in Britain the has even been the subject of sermons. Japanese-Americans interned dur- red poppy is the symbolic I have asked myself why Defiant Gardens has had this excep- ing WWII. Photograph by Kenneth reminder of soldiers who died tional range of responses – and from such diverse quarters. I Helphand. in wartime. think it is because the book articulates deeply felt emotions Last September Colleen that many people have about gardens and gardening but are attended my talk in Sheehy, the director of the unable to express. It validates an activity that is too often trivi- Connecticut. I asked him to Plains Art Museum, helped to alized, although it in fact has profound meaning for those address the audience and he organize a defiant-gardening who plant, maintain, and even just appreciate gardens. Gardens moved me by saying that yes, symposium in Fargo, North are alive, they are a connection to home, they embody hope, the gardens were short-lived, Dakota, to inaugurate a multi- and they are places of meaningful work and great artistry. but that my book had given year project. A dozen writers, These are commonplace themes, but the meaning of each is them a kind of immortality. artists, landscape architects, magnified in wartime. Surely the response has also been The fact that the book is and public artists spent several intensified by the times we live in: our burgeoning concern for inspiring new projects is days discussing the concept of the environment; the economic crisis; and the fact that we are equally exciting. At Fort defiant gardens, listening to a nation at war. At this histori- Drum, in Jefferson County, talks about Fargo and its histo- Garden of Senor Luis Antonio cal moment, there is a yearn- New York, a defiant-gardens project has been established in ry, and experiencing the dramatic and harsh landscape of the Medina, Bogota, Colombia 2009. ing for optimism and assertive, collaboration with several 4-H clubs, the Cornell Cooperative Northern Plains. We then toured the city looking for sites for Photograph: Kenneth Helphand. positive action, and the defiant Extension, and The Growing Connection (TGC), a grassroots potential defiant-gardens projects that could be proposed – project developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of and, hopefully, constructed – in the near future. In addition, a the United Nations. The project was instigated by Dr. Keith group of students at North Dakota State University, under the Tidball and Dr. Marianne Krasney of the Cornell Initiative for direction of landscape-architecture professor Stevie Famulari, Civic Ecology; its goal is to enhance the resiliency of military came up with their own proposals for defiant gardens in Fargo. families and communities dealing with the deployment cycle Because I have received so many responses from individu- and assist with reunion and reintegration into the community. als that I felt should be shared with a wider audience – about The project is building upon the Defiant Gardens idea that gar- everything from the Civil War to the Gulag – I set up a dens can be sites of assertion and affirmation. It is a demon- website (http://www.defiantgardens.com) to collect and com- stration project that, ideally, will spread to other communities. municate this material. The book and the website have also Similar projects have been instigated elsewhere. A garden become the subject of numerous blogs on the World Wide recently planted at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in East Web, written by garden aficionados, urban activists, therapists, Orange, New Jersey, has produced over one thousand pounds and artists. It is a testament to the depth of the meaning of vegetables, but equally important has been the therapeutic of gardens for individuals as places of work and hope. One effect of gardening upon former soldiers. The Gardening blogger wrote, “What I saw in some of the pictures of these Leave program at Auchincruive, the home of the Scottish soldiers and Holocaust survivors was our will to exist, our abil- Agricultural College, is a horticulture-therapy program for vet- ity to truly grow beauty out of chaos, despair, adversity, and erans with mental health problems, but it is also seen by those pain. . . . Why would growing a garden be an act of defiance? garden is a catalyst for that – particularly in the public who participate in it as a form of gardening R & R. George From the depths of these people’s hearts, as they were taken to arena. May it continue to be, offering us a model for action Collins has lived in a residential home for veterans ever since their most primordial essence in light of heinous devilry, as and inspiration in the face of whatever challenges lie ahead. he was gravely injured by a roadside bomb in Northern Ireland they went into the depth of darkness, as they then looked out – Kenneth I. Helphand in 1971. He says that coming to the garden helps him think from within, they saw clearly the beauty of culture, and the more clearly: “What I really enjoy here is actually doing some refined reflection of nature, as an expression of the depths of To read numerous first-hand accounts of various types of defiant physical work, it helps me mentally. It gets the brain to tick their hearts. The expression of these gardens, the work, the gardens and find an extensive list of resources relating to the subject, over.” There is a symbolic connection as well, for Auchincruive watch, the tending of them, was pure defiance, a need to create visit the Defiant Gardens website: www.defiantgardens.com. beauty from the baseness of unacceptable behavior.” Not sur- prisingly, many bloggers address the defiant-gardens concept in the context of community gardening, guerilla gardening, and school gardens programs. They celebrate gardeners’ resourcefulness, imagination, and creativity as well as the 13 The Garden in the Machine: hospital almost one day earlier than the Nature Returns to the High-Tech Hospital twenty-three with the view of the brick wall. he garden is returning to the hospital. Once politely Also the cost of their medical care was five escorted from its precincts by an entourage of med- hundred dollars less. ical researchers and CEOs, the garden is reappearing Ulrich’s conclusion was cautious, and he as a significant complement to high-tech medicine. did not attempt to explain why the views This reversal of the garden’s fate is not grounded were so effective: “The results imply that Tin new-age nostrums or an intuitive alternative medicine, but hospital design and siting decisions should in the rigor of scientific investigations yielding what is com- take into account the quality of patient win- monly referred to as “evidence-based design.” dow views.” He qualified this statement In 1984 Roger Ulrich, a professor of geography at the by noting such views of nature might not be University of Delaware, published an investigation of the heal- restorative for patients in long-term care ing power of nature in the hospital environment. The study who suffer not so much from anxiety as has become canonical among researchers seeking ways to cre- boredom. In these cases he suggested that a ate more humane and effective spaces for medical treatment. view of a “lively city street” might be more The deceptively simple question it posed – “Can patients’ beneficial. views from their hospital room windows affect their recovery Ulrich was not the first to probe the from surgery?” – leads directly into the challenging terrain effects of views in a medical environment, of neuroscience and the relationship between perception, but his meticulous study was the most stress, and the body’s immune, endocrine, and central nervous convincing one to date and inspired a host systems. The variables in this type of study are exceedingly of subsequent work: the ever-growing body difficult to control, but Ulrich’s methodology was both subtle of research that undergirds evidence-based design. Often How do these gardens Joel Schnaper Garden. The garden’s and comprehensive. drawing heavily upon the methodology of the social sciences, work? Neuroscientist Esther layout emphasizes clarity and ease The study examined the records of forty-six patients who gathering data with interviews, questionnaires, and on-site Sternberg has insightfully dis- of maneuverability to conserve sta- had undergone gall-bladder surgery between 1972 and 1981 observation, this research does not quite gain admission to cussed this question in her mina and encourage patients to in a two-hundred-bed, suburban hospital in Pennsylvania. The the sanctum sanctorum of hard science because it is incapable recent book Healing Spaces: The experience the garden without sample excluded patients under twenty and over sixty-nine, of meeting the exacting demands of convincing replication, Science of Place and Well-Being, assistance. Spaces vary in size to and those who had developed serious complications from the strict control of variables, and precise quantification. Yet it is but much remains to be dis- accommodate large events, smaller surgery or had a history of psychological disturbances. at the gates. Fortunately, recent developments in neuroscience covered. The highly damaging group activities, and private respite. Patients were then divided into pairs, one with a room looking and psychoneuroimmunology – charting the dynamics of the effect of long-term stress on Photograph by Bruce Buck. onto a brick wall, the other with a view of a grove of trees. The brain’s response to its environment through improved visual- the immune system has been criteria for matching were sex, age, smoker or nonsmoker, ization technologies such as PET scans and functional MRI established beyond a doubt by studies dating back to the 1930s obese or normal weight, previous hospitalizations, year of machines – are are beginning to open those gates even wider. and more recently by such scientists as Jan Kiecolt-Glazer, Ron surgery, and floor level. The final sample consisted of records The fortunate result is a new body of evidence with the Glazer, Sheldon Cohen, and Bruce Rabin. Additional research of fifteen female pairs and eight male pairs. Except for the dif- potential to guide the design of more effective and humane has revealed that the stress produced by hospitalization is par- fering views, patients had identical rooms on the same floor, medical facilities; more and more, this evidence is informing ticularly high. It is precipitated by a loss of physical capacities, to which they had been assigned randomly. All were cared for the work of architects and landscape architects, both in the painful medical procedures, and fear and uncertainty. It is by the same nursing staff, although their surgeons differed. United States and abroad, who have been commissioned to compounded by an environment that is often invasive of pri- Ulrich had a nurse with extensive surgical-floor experience design hospitals, Alzheimer’s treatment facilities, day-care cen- vacy, noisy, confusing, and lacking in emotional support. review the records of all forty-six patients without knowledge ters for the elderly, hospices, and outpatient clinics. The return Depression, high blood pressure, and the release of potent, of which view they had experienced. The nurse focused on of the garden to the medical environment is now beginning stress-induced hormones often result. three essentials: how much strong pain medication the to be recognized by a growing number of medical specialists Building upon these discoveries, a host of additional patients consumed; how much they complained to nurses; and as a valuable complement to the remarkable achievements researchers such as Stephen Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, how soon they were released from the hospital. The records of high-tech medicine. Gordon Orians, Clare Cooper-Marcus, and Marni Barnes have spoke clearly. The twenty-three patients with the tree view more recently explored the positive effects of exposure to required less pain medication, complained less, and left the nature on human health and well-being, often with special attention to the immune system and its interrelationship with the endocrine and central nervous systems. We now have con-

14 vincing evidence that sustained contact with growing things – more creative thinking about medical procedures. types of palliative care, rest, diet, and herbal medicine. whether tending a plant in one’s room, strolling through a fra- This type of garden is most frequently referred to as “heal- Gardens were an important part of these establishments. grant garden, or simply gazing out one’s window at parklike ing” or “restorative.” Exposure to gardens and other forms of Often sited in courtyards, they generally consisted of grassed scenery – can aid the positive functioning of the immune sys- nature can “heal” in the sense that they work in concert with areas containing abundant shade trees and borders of medici- tem by relieving stress. various forms of medical care to foster recovery from illness nal plants, and they were seen as places for meditation and Circulation systems, floor plans, color schemes, access to (as views did in Ulrich’s study, for example). Gardens can also repose. Saint Bernard (1090–1153) provides a vivid description natural light, and other architectural features also affect a “heal” in the more psychological sense: “to make whole”; to of the hospice garden in his monastery in Clairvaux, France. patient’s sense of well-being. Yet why, in particular, is exposure engender feelings of calm, mental balance, and acceptance of Such a sensuous garden could well grace the precincts of a to nature so beneficial? Some researchers frankly admit they one’s situation. In some contexts, gardens heal but they do not twenty-first-century medical facility: do not know the precise workings of this encounter. Others “cure.” A garden cannot “cure” a patient’s terminal disease, but Within this enclosure, many and various trees, prolific with regard it as primarily a learned response, resulting from cul- he or she will often benefit from the sense of psychological every sort of fruit, make a veritable grove, which lying next tural conditioning. Still others claim it to be an innate genetic wholeness and tranquility nurtured by experiencing a garden. to the cells of those who are ill, lightens with no little predisposition, a powerful attraction and deep attachment to Why did healing gardens all but vanish from medical facili- solace the infirmities of the brethren. . . . The sick man sits all living things that is an essential part of being human. ties where once they were regarded as extremely important? upon the green lawn . . . shaded from the heat of the day . . . They point to a growing number of studies in psychoneuro- This story is long and complex, and a few highlights must for the comfort of his pain all kinds of grass are fragrant in immunology that strongly suggest exposure to nature not suffice. The narrative most relevant to Europe and the his nostrils. The choir of painted birds caresses his ears only affects our bodies on an organ-systems level but on a cel- Americas begins with the Christian hospices of the European with sweet modulation . . . while the air smiles with bright lular and molecular level as well, with all of this occurring Middle Ages. Sam Bass Warner has pointed out that from the serenity, the earth breathes with fruitfulness, and the below the threshold of consciousness. Whether this healing tenth through the fourteenth centuries these institutions of invalid himself with eyes, ears, and nostrils, drinks in the effect results from nature, nurture, or a bit of both awaits varying size, staffed by monks or secular clergy, offered assis- delights of colors, songs, and perfumes.” precise explanation, but what is established beyond a doubt is, tance to the poor, widows, orphans, and the elderly in local for whatever reason, exposure to nature is potent medicine. communities or to travelers along pilgrimage routes. Their By the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century a new type Numerous case studies of a wide range of medical facilities by main mission was charity and hospitality, not medical treat- of facility, the pavilion hospital, had developed in Europe and Elizabeth Brawley, Nancy Gerlach-Springs, Sam Bass Warner, ment. The medical practice they did offer was still based on altered the form of healing gardens. Informed by new develop- Jr., and others have shown just how powerful and transforma- the ancient theory of the four humors and consisted of various ments in medical theory, the pavilion hospital was designed tive that medicine can be, to promote hygiene. Infection still killed a large percentage of especially when adminis- patients, but new hygienic protocols lowered the mortality tered by gardens. rates substantially. These protocols were based on the theory Such gardens may vary in that all disease was caused by “miasmas,” or odors produced by design to fit their particular decaying matter, such as corpses, wounds, garbage, and human medical contexts, but they and animal waste. To counter the destructive effect of mias- all have several functions in mas, hospitals should be thoroughly clean, sunlit, cross-venti- common: they relieve the lated, and accessible to gardens. Physicians believed sunlight stress of patients, families, purified miasmas, while the leaves of trees filtered them from and staff in the medical the air. environment and they also The typical hospital plan consisted of low-rise pavilions nurture social activities that provided with large windows for sun exposure and long counter the ill effects of iso- hallways for cross ventilation. Beds were widely spaced and lation experienced by so located near the window bays. Healing gardens were either many patients. Their positive enclosed in courtyards or surrounding the entire hospital, influences on staff have the with flowerbeds and spacious added benefit of creating Joel Schnaper Garden. Accommo- lawns studded with trees that a working environment con- dating varying medical protocols created a campuslike setting. ducive to fewer errors and and individual levels of comfort, the (This type of plan, with its garden provides a progression of more intimate scale and expo- protective settings from full shade sure to extensive healing to dappled sun to full sun. Lattice gardens, is re-emerging in the columns and vine-covered trellises frame views and spaces. Photo- graph by Bruce Buck. 15 twenty-first century as an important option for medical facility measures, exposure to views, engaging sculpture and paint- they often became disoriented or developed severe reactions to design – especially where larger sites are available. Health-care ings, light-filled atria, and less sterile room furnishings, all varying degrees of light and shade. planners also champion its ability to reduce energy consump- emblematic of a new holistic or integrative medicine. For the hospital administrators, on the other hand, the gar- tion.) Almost all of these recent healing gardens are a blend of den at the time was a leap of faith. While fully supportive The most profound shift in hospital design resulted from science and art, created not only by architects and landscape of the project and the use of an underutilized outdoor space, the discoveries of nineteenth-century biologists, led by Louis architects using evidence-based design data, but also with the hospital lacked the means to develop the rooftop. Kamp Pasteur and Robert Koch, who developed the germ theory of input from specialists, staff, and patients. They are a great designed the garden pro bono. Funds for it were raised disease. Infection by microorganisms – the bane of all medical design challenge, demanding a precise understanding of the through private donations and it was named in memory of a facilities, having turned many into death traps – could now be specific needs of their users, the nature of their ailments, and landscape architect who had died of AIDS. Built incremen- dealt with decisively. Surgeons and nurses adopted antiseptic the concerns of their caregivers – as well as an awareness that tally with available funds by volunteers, the garden required a practices and advocated the design of facilities that were easy these needs can and often will change over time. A melodious, design strategy for simple construction, including using inex- to sanitize, thanks to the use of tile and chrome. More and sparkling fountain may delight children recovering from pensive materials and modular more, patients were isolated in single rooms to avoid conta- orthopedic surgery but cause incontinence for elderly resi- elements easy to assemble with Joel Schnaper Garden. With clear gion. The rapid rise of specialization following German mod- dents of an adult day-care facility. An intricate paving pattern unskilled labor. views across the garden, staff can els also meant that a patient was often shuttled from physician appropriate for a private residential garden will confuse Given these challenges, relax while also keeping an overview to physician over long distances in large, centralized, high-rise dementia sufferers and cause them to fall. It simply will not do Kamp’s design emphasized pal- of groups and activities. Seasonal medical complexes designed for efficiency and economy. to translate an uncritical general knowledge of the pleasures liative care under the close color is emphasized in close-up and At the same time, deeply influenced by specialized laborato- of the garden into a medical setting. The risk of violating that supervision of nurses. Some overhead displays. Photograph by ry scientists who were not clinicians, doctors embraced the crucial principle of medical ethics, “Do no harm,” is too great. residents could only view the Bruce Buck. erroneous notion that the human immune system was unaf- The fifteen-year history of the Joel Schnaper Garden, an fected by the patient’s perception of the medical environment. award-winning hospice garden for HIV/AIDS patients, illus- The gardens and grounds of the old pavilion hospital were trates the complexity of creating a healing garden. The garden now deemed irrelevant to treatment, and therefore seen as dis- is sited on the rooftop of the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health pensable, costly frills. Only mental hospitals continued to Care Center, a large, 630-bed hospital on Fifth Avenue in employ gardens, using them as therapeutic workspaces or New York City. Deliberately located near the AIDS unit serving places of repose for agitated patients. 156 “residents,” as the hospital prefers to designate them, the These new, high-rise, high-tech facilities offered vastly garden is also open to patients from other sections. Land- improved medical care, but at a cost. Those easy-to-clean scape architect David Kamp, who designed the facility in 1994, materials amplified noise. Being shuffled from one specialist recalls, “The Schnaper Garden was a response to an emerging to another down long and confusing corridors often created and largely unknown illness. That uncertainty led to a design anxiety. Single rooms exacerbated feelings of isolation. that employed simple basic principles of flexibility, opportuni- Contact with one’s physician was often too brief to allow for a ty, and choice. Those principles have served the garden well meaningful discussion of one’s concerns. “Sterile” in an aes- over the years.” thetic sense was the predominant character of patient rooms Kamp did not rely on published, evidence-based design and waiting areas, as if surgical facilities had become the norm guidelines, which were scarce at the time; instead, he trusted for the entire hospital – which, in a sense, they had. in careful consultation with those who would use the garden In brief, the high-tech, twentieth-century medical environ- and his own ability as an experienced landscape architect. He ment became more stressful for staff and patients alike. How- knew his first task was to consult with physicians and nurses ever, recent research on the interrelationship of the immune, to understand the effects of AIDS medications on patients, endocrine, and central nervous systems and how they are especially the negative side effects, as well as the progressive affected by the environment has opened a new era in design. nature of the disease and its treatment protocols. He also Now the formerly exiled garden has begun to reappear along talked with the residents whenever possible to elicit their with a host of other architectural features such as soothing ideas for the garden. The staff saw a need for immediacy. Most color schemes, simpler circulation systems, sound-abatement residents were gravely ill, often with just weeks to live, and their conditions changed daily. They were extremely weak and their vision was often impaired, heightening a sense of isola- tion and vulnerability. Depending upon their medications,

16 garden from their rooms, but those with enough stamina to other symbolic objects. One resident named the flowers in his more costly evidence-based design features from their bud- use it were afforded a welcoming bench at the entry, a fragrant room after his former women friends. Another remarked in an gets? A recent study, “The Business Case for Better Build- plant, and a clear view of the rest of the garden to invite explo- interview, “I find my peace out here. It means a lot to me.” He ings,” published in the journal Frontiers of Health Services ration. Kamp realized that the garden needed not only to be then proceeded to recite a long poem he had written about the Management, argues persuasively that such a policy would be safe but also to be perceived as safe if it were to offer a sense of power of the garden to cure his bouts of depression. Another ill-advised economically. The authors, who include two hospi- calm and respite. The abundant chairs were light enough to be resident, from a farm background, said of working in the gar- tal CEOs, an economist, and an architect, argue that the easily moved to form different groupings, but heavy enough to den, “It makes me feel like I’m at home.” inclusion of inevitably more expensive yet more humane and provide support. Floor tiles were smooth to allow for wheel The hospital administration was so impressed with the gar- energy-efficient design features, including healing gardens, chairs, IV poles, and walkers. A highly legible floor stencil in a den’s therapeutic benefits that when the roof membrane had will almost pay for themselves in a year and, in the long term, floral pattern formed a path to guide the visually impaired to be replaced in 2005 they approved the construction of a new result in a more cost-efficient, prosperous hospital than one into the garden and back to its entry. Raised planters of vary- garden built of much more expensive and durable materials, that does not incorporate these advances. Greater patient satis- ing heights made it possible for patients using wheelchairs designed to last twenty-five years. (The staff of the AIDS unit faction, fewer medical errors, greater staff continuity, energy and walkers to touch and help care for the plants. noted that while the garden was out of commission during cost savings, more rapid turnover of beds, and a host of other The garden was divided into a series of distinctive spaces or reconstruction, resident morale dropped and behavioral prob- factors will account for this. rooms connected with a very clear circulation system. All of lems increased.) The new garden retains many of the design Some highly sophisticated and successful hospitals in the these rooms were visible from any point in the garden, allow- features of the old, but has a larger musical-performance area United States, such as Scripps Memorial Hospital, San Diego; ing full surveillance by the nurses. Each of these rooms offered and more pavilions for various activities. The garden will con- St. Michael Health Center, Texarkana, Texas; Gonda Build- different degrees of light and shade, ranging from full sun to tinue to evolve as treatment for HIV/AIDS continues to devel- ing of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; Lucy Packard deep shade provided by vine-covered pavilions or lightweight op. Equally important, it is now used by far more people in the Children’s Hospital, Palo Alto, California; and Methodist tent structures. The lush planting palette emphasized texture, hospital and offers a variety of new programs. A major key to Hospital, Indianapolis, have incorporated more expensive, evi- color, and fragrance to stimulate the senses. It also served as a its success was Kamp’s acute sensitivity to the changing needs dence-based features in their designs to their economic soothing counterpoint to the sterile hospital interior. Kamp of residents and staff over time and the flexibility of his design benefit. St. Michael Health Center has no less than seventeen consulted with the hospital maintenance staff and was careful to accommodate them. different gardens for meditation, play, outdoor dining, and to heed their concerns in his choice of materials and plants. All healing-garden types demand the same comprehensive meetings; they are a key element in the quality of its care and He was acutely aware of the need for proper upkeep if the gar- grasp of context and careful attention to detail. A garden in a its ability to attract patients. den was to survive. children’s hospital may contain specialized play equipment, At present, despite the economic problems of the past two Over the next eight years more was discovered about the such as slides of different degrees of difficulty to challenge the years, there is an increase in hospital construction fueled by treatment for AIDS and new medications prolonged life. children and foster recovery from orthopedic surgery. Or a overcrowded emergency rooms, a shortage of hospital beds, an As residents possessed more strength and stamina and could playhouse façade may be covered in a multitude of different aging population, and diminished capital investment in new be more active in the garden, Kamp modified the space to kinds of locks to develop digital acuity after neurosurgery. and replacement hospitals in the 1990s. This presents an enor- address the new situation, utilizing its built-in flexibility. He Gardens for dementia sufferers are among the most chal- mous opportunity to design more humane hospitals and other added an area for growing vegetables and herbs to assist lenging to design, and there is still much to be learned about types of facilities based on the findings of evidence-based the program of the newly hired horticultural therapist. He what is and is not effective. Research has established that such design; gardens are a crucial part of this potential renaissance. added new furniture and arranged it to provide for sponta- gardens can be beneficial, providing space for exercise, quiet- Esther Sternberg aptly sums up the challenge, “Understanding neous socializing by small or larger groups and programmed ing a patient’s agitation, and in some cases evoking memories and reducing stress in the hospital environment is to twenty- activities such as crafts and card games. An area for musical that support a patient’s identity. At the same time, walk sys- first-century medical care what understanding germ theory performances allowed residents to plan their own activities, tems must be simple and entrances clearly marked, so that and reducing infection was to nineteenth-century care.” The introducing a much-needed sense of empowerment. patients will not become confused. Gardens must be as spa- professionalism and compassion of those who staff our hospi- This increased activity complemented the residents’ med- cious as the site permits and the walls as transparent as possi- tals will always be the most important elements of outstanding ical treatment substantially, raised their morale, resulted in ble to avoid feelings of claustrophobia. Shadows cast by plants health care. Yet this care deserves an environment in which fewer behavior problems, and helped create a strong commu- on walkways can be frightening, since they are often perceived it can flourish. We know how to create that environment now, nity of mutual support. Residents began to take plants inside as deep holes. The entire garden must be highly visible from and future research can only make it better. The healing gar- their rooms and create small shelf gardens, which they often the interior of the building to allow for surveillance by staff. den was once understood as being a crucial part of that med- decorated with Biblical figures, playful cartoon characters, or Now that we know gardens do belong in hospitals, can we ical environment; may it become so again in the near future. afford to put them there and keep them there? In today’s dire – Reuben M. Rainey situation of upwardly spiraling medical costs, will a hospital administration faced with tight budgets for renovations or new construction be constrained to strike gardens and other

17 Place Keeper visionary protégé, helped of the new organization, he felt he had to bring into being a series of ground himself more thoroughly in land- outlying parks in the greater management skills and environmental stud- Boston area – a second ring ies. He therefore enrolled in the Yale David and Dan Jones: beyond his mentor’s famed Forestry School, graduating with a master’s Louisville’s 21st Century Parks Visionaries Emerald Necklace – Dan degree in 2006. While he was away, David arks are for the most part owned and operated by gov- Jones wants to create a began to spearhead a campaign to acquire ernment agencies and funded with tax dollars. Over greenway that is as bold in and eventually put in the public domain the last twenty-five years, however, federal, state, and concept as the original more land around Floyd’s Fork. municipal parks have come to rely on partnerships Olmsted parks plan. He sees As a child growing up in Louisville, Dan with the private sector, many of which have adopted this green corridor not only had played in Olmsted’s Cherokee Park and Pnames containing the word “conservancy.” Conservancies like as a major metropolitan park as a Yale undergraduate he had learned the pioneering Central Park Conservancy are dedicated to the but also as a means of shap- about the famous landscape architect’s role restoration and improvement of historic parks. They prepare ing Louisville’s continued in creating metropolitan parks throughout master plans, raise funds to restore deteriorated landscapes expansion. America. When he returned to Louisville, he and structures, and provide operational assistance to ensure Visions are born of knew that he needed a comprehensive plan upkeep. Because so much of America’s great nineteenth-centu- visions, and Dan Jones’s was that would graphically express his vision for ry park heritage has been poorly maintained over the years sparked by a meeting in the Floyd’s Fork Greenway Project; without and because parks are particularly vulnerable in times of gov- 2002 with Bridgid Sullivan, one, there would be no way to gain commu- ernment agency budget-cutting, this conservation mission the former Louisville Metro nity support and further gifts from the frequently spells a park’s salvation from ruin. Parks director, and William Louisville philanthropists that his father had Conservancies are visionary organizations, but as a rule Juckett, the chairman of the tapped already. One of his first tasks upon their visions aim toward preservation rather than de novo Louisville Olmsted Parks taking up the reins of 21st Century Parks innovation. Working primarily to bring back the beauty of the Conservancy. Because the Dan Jones and David Jones was to hire Wallace, Roberts & Todd (WRT), the Philadelphia- past and make possible higher standards of upkeep, these Joneses’ family foundation based urban-design, landscape-architecture, and environmen- groups wonder how the great nineteenth-century park makers had recently been involved in creating Fairmont Falls Park and tal-planning firm, to prepare such a plan. accomplished so much in relatively short periods of time, lay- had earlier donated the land to the city for Thurman Hutchins The WRT plan, a schematic blueprint, shows how the ing out not just single parks but entire urban park systems. Park on River Road, Sullivan and Juckett wanted David and Floyd’s Fork Greenway will be both a habitat-rich ecosystem Reckoning the politics, bureaucracy, and high cost that would Dan to help them identify other areas suitable for parkland and a recreational facility. Forested areas alongside the stream impede such an achievement today, they lament, “We could acquisition. Juckett’s challenge was this: “How can we today get and elsewhere will remain in their current state of semiwilder- never do anything like this now!” people fifty or a hundred years from now to look back on what ness. At several points along the stream, there will be canoe It therefore comes as a welcome surprise that the citizens of we did the way we look at our Olmsted legacy?” The fact that launches. A hiking trail will run beside it, and there will be Louisville, Kentucky, have created an organization called another Louisville philanthropist, orthopedic surgeon Steve equestrian trails through this riparian corridor, as well as in Louisville 21st Century Parks. The founder and CEO of the Henry, had established the Future Fund for the purpose of other scenic parts of the park. The Kentucky terrain here new organization is Dan Jones, the scion of a prominent buying and land banking farms and other parcels in the area is hilly, and the Fork runs through parallel ridges that will be Louisville family. Assisting him in the all-important area of around Floyd’s Fork helped direct the group’s sights to this crowned with observation towers to provide visitors with fundraising is his father, David Jones, the cofounder of edge of the city. At the time Dan Jones was working in his scenic views of the surrounding landscape. Altogether over Humana, one of the nation’s largest health-benefits compa- father’s real-estate firm, which he had joined following a 80 percent of the new park will be preserved natural areas: nies. The Joneses are strong supporters of the Louisville Parks career in teaching. After hiring Dan Church, a local landscape restored and managed woodlands, wetlands, and meadows. Conservancy, which raises private dollars to help restore the architect, to survey and assess the potential of the Floyd’s Fork Dan makes it emphatically clear, however, that it will also be a city’s three large heritage parks connected by landscaped park- area as a park, he said to his father, “Dad, I think we can do people’s park with plenty of opportunities for sports, recre- ways – a system laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, the father this.” In October 2004 father and son founded a nonprofit ation, and events. An eighty-two-acre great lawn will host of park-based city planning. At the same time, they are engi- organization named 21st Century Parks. large-scale gatherings, and there will be playing fields as well neering the purchase of some four thousand acres of partially As Dan found that more and more of his time was being as a tree-lined promenade. The plan calls for two to four rural lands embracing Floyd’s Fork, a twenty-seven-mile-long spent organizing meetings with people in the office of smaller community parks within the greenway, a neighbor- stream running along the southern and eastern edges of Louisville’s longtime pro-parks mayor, Jerry Abrams, and the hood children’s playground, a walking track, and dedicated the city. In much the same way that Charles Eliot, Olmsted’s staff of the Future Fund, he decided that he wanted to dedicate areas for dogs and car parking. all of his energy to the project. He already held a Ph.D. in his- tory; however, to prepare himself for a full-time career as CEO 18 The hiking and bridle trails alongside Floyd’s Fork are to be Books part of a more-than-thirty-mile system of trails linking the various sections of the new greenway. In addition, there will be a continuous scenic roadway running through the park. “Con- nectivity” is a word that Dan often uses in describing the plan. Unbounded Practice: Women Beatrix Farrand. Two recent Shipman, Marian Coffin, and achievements but also For him, the term includes the suburban area outside the and Landscape Architecture volumes on women land- Martha Brookes Hutcheson, because, unlike their prede- park’s boundaries, as well the sixteen “rooms” – discrete envi- in the Early Twentieth scape architects continue all of whom have received cessors, they had had access ronments with such names as Cedar Maze, Island Valley, Gar- Century this important trajectory. previous critical attention. to professional education. den Walk, and Marsh Meadow – that comprise the greenway By Thaïsa Way Both examine the careers of Way then goes on to examine (Interestingly, neither itself. An important part of the new park’s connectivity is its Charlottesville: University of Farrand, Ellen Shipman, and the professional contribu- Flanders or Cautley attended inclusion of an eighteen-mile stretch of a one-hundred-mile, Virginia Press, 2009 other early twentieth-century tions of several younger programs established solely city-encircling, recreational roadway called the Louisville Loop. women practitioners and, practitioners who entered for women; Flanders Thanks to $26 million from local philanthropists, of which Long Island Landscapes and more interestingly, illumi- the field slightly later. received a bachelor’s degree $12.5 million has come from the Joneses’ family foundation, the Women Who Designed nate the understudied work In profiles of Annette Hoyt in landscape architecture over forty separately acquired parcels of land, totalling 3,800 Them of the next generation of Flanders (1887-1946) and from the University of acres, have been acquired to date. In addition, $38 million By Cynthia Zaitzevsky women landscape architects, Marjorie Sewell Cautley Illinois; Cautley graduated in federal funds is going to the project, thanks to the efforts New York & London: many of whom hit their artis- (1891-1954), arguably the from Cornell.) of Senator Mitch McConnell. Ten million dollars of the cur- W.W. Norton, 2009 tic stride during the transi- strongest designers in this Way covers three women’s rent $25 million capital campaign will be earmarked for future tional decade of the 1930s. second group, she provides training grounds that had land acquisition. Dan is quick to say that having his father In recent considerable been founded early in the at his side is his biggest asset. Because of his civic and corpo- decades, schol- insight into century. The earliest of these, rate connections in Louisville, as well as his generosity arship on the accom- Lowthorpe School of to many causes championed by others, David Jones, who has American plishments of Landscape Architecture for now retired from the day-to-day leadership of Humana, women land- women in the Women, opened in 1901, one can say, “Everybody I have called on has made a gift.” Besides scape practi- richly inven- year after Harvard initiated such established Louisville families as the Browns and the tioners has tive decade its professional-degree pro- Binghams, the contributors include John Schnatter, the illuminated that followed gram, and it offered a cur- founder of Papa John’s Pizza, who recently donated $3 million. their impor- the stock riculum that mirrored the Mayor Jerry Abrams has pledged an additional $1.5 million in tant contribu- market crash cultural strictures women city funds. tions to the of 1929. landscape architects would Evoking the name of Olmsted for all manner of park ideas profession, not During the gradually transcend has become commonplace, but Dan Jones can do this with only enlarging 1930s, as pri- during the period. Initially more credibility than most. He sees Olmsted first and fore- our under- vate fortunes Lowthorpe’s program most as an edge planner, someone who foresaw how parks like standing of shrank and focused primarily on horti- Central Park in New York City or Cherokee, Iroquois, and history but also helping to Unbounded Practice: grand estate jobs disap- cultural and agricultural Shawnee and their connecting parkways in Louisville, which protect their significant Women and Landscape peared, both male and subjects closely related to the were on the urban fringe when they were built, would shape designs. Harvard University’s Architecture in the Early female landscape architects domestic sphere. One early future growth. He maintains, “Working on lands located well reckless 1999 plan to con- Twentieth Century, by Thaïsa turned increasingly toward catalog outlined a range of beyond the edge of the city, Olmsted created a ring of parks struct a library under the Way of the University of suburban commissions and jobs for prospective students and parkways that remains one of Louisville’s most remark- gardens of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, focuses on projects in the public sphere. that included the care and able assets. Urban planners today are focused on revitalizing for example, would likely women engaged in land- Way makes the case that so maintenance of rose and the core. We need to focus both on the edges and the core. It is have prevailed had it not scape architecture, horticul- many women found profes- flower gardens; the supervi- important now to anticipate future suburban growth and how been for the leverage provid- ture, civic reform, education, sional work during the peri- sion of greenhouses and you drive that development. Olmsted knew that green infra- ed by scholarly books on mentorship, publishing, and od not only as a consequence window boxes (!); hybridiza- structure comes first as a means of guiding growth.” Neither planning (urban, regional, of their female forebears’ tion; work with school father nor son feel that their Olmstedian vision for the twenty- and suburban). Among the gardens; the design and first century in Louisville is implausible. They are well on their early landscape practitioners planting of small estates and way to proving the point. – Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Way profiles are Farrand,

19 village parks; and general vil- during this period were the Gropius in conjunction with gardens, which included the Soil Conservation Service. parisons with male practi- lage improvement work. A Pennsylvania School of the Houses and Housing exhi- Classic Modern Garden at After the war, some found tioners such as Warren H. decade later, the description Horticulture for Women in bition at the Museum of the 1934 Century of Progress jobs with the Federal Manning, of whose deep of potential jobs had been Ambler, Pennsylvania, Modern Art. The Cambridge exhibition in Chicago, makes Housing Authority, North involvement in these realms slightly expanded to include founded in 1910, and the School was closed in 1942, one long for an entire book American Aviation she seems unaware. Indeed, the solving of “simple prob- Cambridge School of after having become a part of on this neglected practition- Incorporated, and the U.S. many early-twentieth-cen- lems involved in play- Architecture and Landscape Smith College in 1938; at this er. The author also insight- Navy. Frances Loring helped tury male landscape grounds.” Women, in other Architecture for Women, juncture, Harvard, which fully analyses Cautley’s design an airfield on Long architects were leaders in words, still had an extremely founded in 1916 as an alter- lacked students during public-housing landscape Island. One graduate, Maud community reform. limited role in the rapidly native to Harvard’s program, World War II, finally permit- and planting designs for Oak Sargent, assisted with the By the very nature of her developing urban environ- which was limited to men. ted women to enroll in its Croft (Ridgewood, New East River Drive in Manhat- topic, Cynthia Zaitzevsky, in ment and on jobs that The Pennsylvania institution architecture and landscape- Jersey), Radburn (Fairlawn, tan and the approaches to Long Island Landscapes and involved the supervision of emphasized horticulture and architecture programs. The New Jersey), and Sunnyside the Battery and Lincoln tun- the Women Who Designed male construction crews. farm and estate manage- Ambler program merged (Queens, New York) – bril- nels. However a severe back- Them, takes a ground-level By 1924, however, ment, but also offered with Temple University in liant achievements that were lash against women arose view that contrasts with Lowthorpe students were courses in beekeeping and 1958, where a new Depart- followed by Cautley’s ner- during the 1950s as men Way’s wide-angle approach, participating in the national canning. Although the ment of Horticulture offered vous breakdown in 1947. Way returned from the war. The but in the end she delivers Landscape Exchange Cambridge School placed degrees to both men and notes that the landscape numbers of females in the an equally broad perspective Problems program. Led by more emphasis on design women. architect’s husband commit- profession shrank. on the collective impact of Stanley H. White, landscape- than the Ambler program, its Way makes a convincing ted her to a mental institu- I disagree with one of the practitioners she studies. architect brother of E. B. coursework, too, was initially case that women were a par- tion from which she was Way’s theses – that women Zaitzevsky’s rigorous White, the coeducational limited to domestic and ticularly strong force in “paroled” (Cautley’s word) were primary catalysts in methodology is apparent on program drew students from landscape architecture. In shaping American landscape only after five years. On the evolution of landscape every page of this book, educational institutions fact, the word “domestic” was architecture in the 1930s and release, Cautley earned a gardening into the modern which was an outgrowth of all over the country. And by temporarily inserted into the 1940s, bringing superb taste Master of Fine Arts degree profession of landscape an earlier publication, Long 1940 House & Garden had school’s name. and considerable intelli- from the University of architecture. That transition Island Country Houses and written admiringly of By 1930, however, the gence to planning, planting, Pennsylvania (and divorced began in the mid-nineteenth Their Architects (1997), also Lowthorpe’s courses in geol- Cambridge School curricu- and architectural design. her husband). Unfortunately, century with H. W. S. Cleve- published by Norton. Scant ogy, topography, road mak- lum included a lecture titled Strong feminist perspectives her illness recurred and she land, Robert Morris Cope- research had been done on ing, drainage, and the social “Modern Trends in Archi- influenced the design of was never again able to land, and Frederick Law many of the sites included in responsibilities of the pro- tecture, Decoration and public-housing projects and resume her active practice. Olmsted, all of whom were the new volume, and the fession, and Josef Albers was Garden Design,” given by parks of all sizes, which During World War II, driven by Reform-era zeal for author has clearly scoured giving guest lectures there Jean Jacques Haffner, the included such amenities as opportunities in public ser- improving society. Reform repositories of every sort to on the relations of form and director of Harvard School playgrounds, recreational vice opened up substantially impulses shaped the careers analyze them. space. In 1945, Lowthorpe of Architecture, and Fletcher facilities, and arboreta – fea- for American women in of the next generation of Zaitzevsky organizes her merged with Rhode Island Steele. In 1940, students tures that encouraged, as landscape architecture. landscape architects – both text around the lives and School of Design and began heard guest lectures by Way writes of Marjorie Cambridge School graduates men and women – many of Long Island work of eighteen accepting men; by then it Cynthia Wiley and Ilse Frank Sewell Cautley’s work, “an worked in Emergency whom were also devoted women landscape architects, had matriculated three hun- altogether more active rela- Housing and served in the to landscape conservation, a dred women practitioners. tionship to the land and topic that Way does not dis- The other two primary community than was com- cuss. In her emphatic exam- training grounds for women mon at the time.” Way’s dis- ples of women’s dedication cussion of Flanders’s sleek to civic betterment, at times Way sets up strained com-

20 six of whom are discussed in similar formative influence. Pendleton designed Still vibrant and innovative Exhibition considerable depth. The Payson graduated from Place in Locust Valley for design solutions. Nonethe- remaining twelve – the sec- Lowthorpe in 1917 and Paul D. Cravath, president of less, readers will find ond generation – are immediately secured a job the Metropolitan Opera themselves drawn into the grouped in two chapters of working for Ellen Shipman, Association. Photographs of landscapes Zaitzevsky dis- Romantic Gardens: Nature, derived from the common six women each. This who mentored scores of this stylish landscape were cusses. The book features Art, and Landscape Design aesthetics and ideals found straightforward organization young women designers. published in the Architec- many excellent photographs The Morgan Library in literature, art, and land- is a boon for historians, who After a year abroad, she tural League of New York’s reproduced as full-page and Museum scape design between 1700 will find Zaitzevsky’s book a returned to Shipman’s prac- Year Book and Country Life in images, and these have a May 21-September 5, 2010 and 1900. In exploring one valuable reference tool. Here, tice, leaving in 1927 to America. One particularly compelling effect on the of Romanticism’s principal as in Way’s book, Flanders start her own New York City evocative shot shows a grassy imagination. (Unfortunately This two-gallery exhibition, tenets, humanity’s new and Cautley emerge as firm. Over the course of a path and tranquil pool sur- Way’s very interesting and planned by the Morgan attitude toward nature, superlative designers, but fourteen-year independent rounded by a rich layering well-researched illustration Library and Museum in part- “Romantic Gardens” looks at there are others discussed career, Payson designed of shrubs. Such compelling program is frequently com- nership with the Foundation how this international ethos whose highly original land- about seventy projects, four- designs abound in Long promised by muddy repro- for Landscape Studies over was variously expressed in scape work remains largely teen of which were on Long Island Landscapes. ductions.) the course of three years, England, France, Germany, unknown today. For exam- Island. The best-documented Zaitzevsky uses the terms Beatrix Farrand once told traces the seeds of the and America. ple, the talents of Louise (and earliest) of these was a “garden” and “landscape” a reporter that her “profes- Romantic movement from Key works on display Payson (1894–1977), a Low- residential landscape for her almost interchangeably sional point of view . . . [was] the beginning of the eigh- include two of Humphry thorpe graduate and Ship- cousin Charles S. Payson in throughout her text, despite no different from that of any teenth century, when Repton’s “Red Books,” a man associate until she Manhassett. The practition- the fact that these words typ- man’s and I am thankful and Alexander Pope issued his luminous Constable water- opened her own practice in er’s deft plan for that project ically connote different cate- proud to say that the men of famous imperative “Consult color of a view near 1927, and the abilities of her divides approximately one gories and scales of design. my profession treat me as the Genius of the Place in Petworth, a first edition of classmate Isabella Pendleton hundred acres into several She also tends to focus her one of themselves. I have put All,” to its full flowering dur- Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1891–1965), are revealed in intimate gardens, walks, an discussions on the areas of myself through the same ing the first half of the nine- romantic novel, Julie, ou, La Zaitzevsky’s well-illustrated orchard, and a large meadow. the designed landscape that training and look for the teenth century. Drawing on Nouvelle Héloïse, Caspar narrative. The somewhat-bet- Isabella Pendleton, who are gardens – ornamental, same rewards. I no more the Morgan’s holdings of David Friedrich’s “Moonlit ter-known Alice Recknagel kept her maiden name, had boundaried spaces – and says expect special consideration manuscripts, drawings, Ireys (1911–2000), who stud- the means to open her own little about the remaining because of my sex than any watercolors, and rare books – Monuments des Anciennes ied at the Cambridge School, New York City office in 1922, acres, which we can see from women painter, or woman supplemented by key texts Amours, engraving by Jean-Gabriel also is the subject of several apparently having skipped the accompanying plans sculptor, or woman anything and prints in a private col- Mérigot, Promenade ou itinéraire des pages of well-deserved analy- an apprenticeship. From were carefully laid out. I else ought to.” Surely Coffin, lection – the exhibition jardins d’Ermenonville. Courtesy of sis. there, she designed projects, wanted to know what lay Flanders, Cautley, Payson, demonstrates the synergy Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. Zaitzevksy surmises that nearly all of them residen- beyond the walls and hedges Pendleton, and other strong- Payson was probably most tial, in her hometown of that defined the garden willed and creative women of influenced by Annie Oakes Cincinnati; in Princeton, spaces and how these areas the period felt similarly, or Huntington. Huntington, a New Jersey; on Long Island related to the gardens. their work would not have close friend of Payson’s aunt, in New York; and in the state Design at the landscape scale achieved the soaring heights worked as a tutor at the of Connecticut. In 1927 represents a greater chal- of artistic expression it did. Arnold Arboretum and pub- lenge than that posed by the – Robin Karson lished Studies of Trees in Italianate formal gardens Winter in 1902. Notably which typically dominated almost every professional areas near the house; land- woman seems to have had a scapes often led to more

21 Awards

Landscape,” 2010 David R. Coffin 2010 John Brinckerhoff and how the policy came the sea, gardens have sus- Prince Publication Grant Jackson Book Prize into being that yet-to-be set- tained life, provided beauty, Pückler- The 2010 David R. Coffin The 2010 John Brinckerhoff tled lands within the federal and greatly enriched human Muskau’s Publication Grants have Jackson Book Prizes have domain would be held in culture. Professor Hunt’s Andeutungen been awarded to the follow- been awarded to the follow- trust for the common approach is typological. The über Land- ing: ing: benefit. With the help of gardens he discusses – all of schaftsgärt- photographs, diagrams, and which are distinguished by nerei (Hints David Contasta and Bill Hubbard, Jr. maps, Hubbard shows how their predominantly small on Landscape Carol Franklin American Boundaries: The this uncharted land was then scale – fall into the cate- Gardening), Metropolitan Paradise: The Nation, the States, the surveyed and divided into gories of private versus pub- William Struggle for Nature in the Rectangular Survey mile-square sections (640 lic, useful versus beautiful, Cullen Bry- City; Philadelphia's The University of Chicago acres) forming a national and open space within the ant’s Pictur- Wissahickon Valley 1620-2020 Press, 2008 grid beginning in Ohio and context of a densely built esque America, Publisher: St. Joseph’s extending across the conti- environment. In The Venetian American Boundaries: The and Frederick University Press nent. He then outlines the City Garden: Place, Typology, Nation, the States, the Law Olmsted settlement pattern of the and Perception, he discusses Rectangular Survey is the first and Calvert Jack Williams country as the 640-acre sec- both the social aspects and book to chart the growth of Vaux’s origi- Easy Off, Easy On: Emerging tions were subdivided into the design of nearly one the United States using the nal pen-and- Landscapes 320-, 160-, 80-, and 40-acre hundred city gardens, boundary as a political and ink drawing Publisher: University of parcels and sold to indi- squares, courtyards, public cultural focus. The author of “Greens- Virginia vidual farmers and home- parks, and temporary gar- explains how the original ward,” the steaders. dens. These range from thirteen colonies and subse- plan that was Caren Yglesias landscapes created two hun- quently each state came to the winning entry in the Designs for various garden follies, The Complete House and John Dixon Hunt dred years ago to the con- define its borders and design competition for G. Van Laar, Magazijn van tuin-sier- Grounds: Learning from The Venetian City Garden: temporary Paradise Garden assume its current shape. In Central Park. aaden. Courtesy of Elizabeth Barlow Andrew Jackson Downing's Place, Typology, and designed by Gustafson addition, he explores how The catalog for the exhi- Rogers. Domestic Architecture Perception Porter for the 2008 Biennale. the country’s national bition, which was prepared Publisher: The Center for Birkhäuser Verlag, 2009 boundaries were determined by co-curators Elizabeth offering a range of programs, American Places at Columbia In Venice, a city where the Barlow Rogers, John Bidwell, including a curatorial talk College Chicago land has been claimed from and Elizabeth Eustis, con- with the exhibition co-cura- tains a book-length essay tors, a conversation about along with illustrations and Romanticism in a 21st-cen- descriptions of the approxi- tury context, a concert inter- mately one hundred objects spersed with readings of on display. select literary works in the In conjunction with the exhibition, a family program, exhibition, the Morgan is films, and docent tours. For further information, go to www.themorgan.org or call 212-685-0008, ext. 560.

22 Contributors

Thaïsa Way Special Recognition ogy, and religious studies. force in defining the disci- Paula Deitz is editor of The duces books and exhibitions Unbounded Practice: Women Michel Conan Conceived, organized, edited, pline of landscape studies. Hudson Review, a magazine about American landscape and Landscape Architecture Volumes XXI–XXXI, and in part written by Professor Hunt has writ- of literature and the arts history. Her most recent in the Early Twentieth Dumbarton Oaks Conan, they form an endur- ten that in his work he seeks published in New York City. book is A Genius for Place: Century Colloquiums on the History ing contribution to our to articulate the theoretical As a cultural critic, she American Landscapes of the University of Virginia, 2009 of Landscape Architecture understanding of the signifi- basis of gardening and writes about art, architecture, Country Place Era (Library of Dumbarton Oaks Research cance, complexity, and rich- to formulate a philosophy and landscape design for American Landscape History In Unbounded Practice: Library and Collections and ness of meaning to be found through which we can newspapers and magazines with the University of Women and Landscape Archi- Spacemaker Press in this important branch of understand its psychological here and abroad. Of Gardens, Massachusetts Press, 2007). tecture in the Early Twentieth academic inquiry. and spiritual roots. In 1981 a collection of her essays, She is also the author of Century, Thaïsa Way narrates The Foundation for he founded the international will be published this year in Fletcher Steele, Landscape the role of women during Landscape Studies offers Foundation for Landscape quarterly Journal of Garden the Penn Studies in Land- Architect (Library of American the years in which landscape special recognition to social Studies Lifetime History (now published scape Architecture series Landscape History, 2003), architecture came of age scientist Michel Conan for Achievement Award as Studies in the History of (University of Pennsylvania The Muses of Gwinn as a recognized profession. his extraordinary contribu- John Dixon Hunt Gardens & Designed Land- Press). (Sagapress/Abrams, 1996), Through the history and tion to landscape scholar- scapes). During his tenure and coeditor of Pioneers of analysis of the work of such ship during his decade-long The Foundation for from 1988 to 1991 as director Kenneth I. Helphand is American Landscape Design practitioners as Beatrix directorship of the Garden Landscape Studies honors of the program in Garden Knight Professor of (McGraw-Hill, 2000). Jones Farrand, Marian and Landscape Studies pro- the eminent garden histori- and Landscape at Dumbar- Landscape Architecture at Cruger Coffin, Annette Hoyt gram at Dumbarton Oaks. an John Dixon Hunt, profes- ton Oaks, Harvard Univer- the University of Oregon. Reuben M. Rainey, Ph.D., is Flanders, Ellen Biddle Breadth of knowledge, sor emeritus, University of sity, he oversaw symposia His Defiant Gardens: Making William Stone Weedon Shipman, Martha Brookes expansiveness of intellect, a Pennsylvania, for his signifi- and published speakers’ Gardens in Wartime (Trinity Professor Emeritus in the Hutcheson, and Marjorie critical eye, linguistic cant contribution to the papers in the Dumbarton University Press, 2006) School of Architecture at the Sewell Cautley, the author prowess, and mentorship are development of landscape Oaks Colloquium on the received the Foundation for University of Virginia. He is has made a valuable contri- evident in the eleven vol- and garden history over the History of Landscape Landscape Studies’ John a former chair of the bution to a hitherto little- umes of the Dumbarton past forty years. As a teacher, Architecture series. In 1998, Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Department of Landscape known and underappreciated Oaks Colloquium on the scholar, editor, and author of while serving as the chair- Prize. Helphand is a Fellow Architecture and the author area of landscape studies. History of Landscape numerous books and articles man of the University of of the American Society of of a wide range of studies on Architecture series published covering such subjects as Pennsylvania’s Department Landscape Architects, former nineteenth- and twentieth- during his tenure. A perma- Italian, Dutch, French, of Landscape Architecture, editor of Landscape Journal, century American landscape nent record of the annual English, and modernist gar- he initiated the publication and Chair of the Senior architecture. His most recent symposia, these richly illus- dens as well as the use of of the Penn Studies in Land- Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks. book, coauthored with J. C. trated anthologies contain poetics and reception theory scape Architecture, a book Miller, is Modern Public contributions drawn from within the context of his series devoted to the highest Robin Karson is the founder Gardens: Robert Royston and the diverse fields of anthro- field, he has been a prime standard of landscape-histo- and executive director of the Suburban Park (William pology, architecture, land- ry scholarship. For his pro- the Library of American Stout Publishers, 2006). He is scape architecture, history, tean accomplishments as Landscape History, a not-for- also coexecutive producer of philosophy, botany, archeol- well as for his role as mentor profit organization that pro- GardenStory, a ten-episode to other landscape histori- documentary for public tele- ans, he is without peer. vision.

23 Foundation e ok Y10024 NY York, New West 81st Street 7

for Volume v, Number ii Spring 2010 LandscapeStudies

Publisher: Foundation for Landscape Studies Board of Directors: Vincent Buonanno Kenneth I. Helphand Robin Karson Nancy Newcomb Therese O’Malley John A. Pinto Reuben M. Rainey Frederic Rich, Chairman Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Margaret Sullivan

Editor: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Associate Editor: Alice Truax Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan Copy-editor: Margaret Oppenheimer Designer: Skeggs Design Contributors: Paula Deitz Kenneth I. Helphand Robin Karson Reuben M. Rainey

For more information about the Foundation for Landscape Studies, visit www.foundationfor landscapestudies.org., or contact [email protected]