Learning from the Big Guys, Pt. 5

Warms the soul, sparks the imagination.

Visiting places that have spent a great deal of money on their grounds is a perfect opportunity to see up close the best and the worst of landscape planning, and to continue learning from the big guys. 

At one very chic, eco-conscious and rustically contemporary (is that a style? it is now) Napa Valley resort lives this charming concrete fire pit. This hearth is the heart of the outdoor "foyer" at the spa area; it is in the middle of a pathway, with no seating around it, so I'm guessing its purpose is not so much for literally warming oneself as for symbolizing the inner warmth the spa services nurture and awaken. I have a minor quibble with this — lowercase 'q' — because frankly, I enjoy sitting around a fire, and can't do that here without perching somewhat awkwardly on the narrow edge of the wall. (A typical depth for a seatwall would be about eighteen inches, to fit most posteriors comfortably; this is about six inches deep.) On the other hand, this might be intentional, to subtly discourage über-relaxed and probably slightly tipsy guests from sitting too close to an open flame. 

What catches me more are a couple of aesthetic issues. I will grant up front that these may have been conscious choices; however, even if they were, I don't agree with them. First, in this clean and contemporary resort there are lots of straight lines, which the fire pit's square shape complements perfectly. The circular fire burner, however, has no precedent that I can see. Granted, the resort's logo is circular, but this is not carried into the architecture or landscape. What's more, the circle-within-a-square feels busy and disruptive, not calming, to me. A square burner would have been better, and more in keeping with the overall geometry of the place. Funny how such a little detail can have such a big effect.

Section view of a likely form
for the concrete fire pit.

Second, I noticed the horizontal seam about six inches above the pavement, about twelve inches below the top of the wall. This pit is solid concrete, which would have been poured into a "form" comprised of an inner wall and outer wall. Most likely, each wall was constructed of one 2x12 board stacked on top of another to achieve a height of about eighteen inches above the concrete pavement (as shown in my little sketch). The seam probably resulted where the concrete oozed between the boards, as very heavy sludge is wont to do.

Now, forming concrete is a talent I certainly do not possess. But the location of this seam annoys me. Could it have been a conscious design decision? There are other raised planters on the property with the same seam, but other than that I don't see any other precedent for dividing surfaces into 2/3 - 1/3 sections like this. And even if there were precedents, what does it mean? If it were an artistic statement, it should at least be intelligible. So I'm going to guess no, this wasn't an aesthetic choice. I'll guess it was a result of (a) going with the easiest solution to build; or (b) miscommunication between the landscape designer, who didn't specify how the forms should be built, and the builder, who didn't realize the aesthetic consequences of their methods.

One way to center the seam

If I were the designer, I like to think, I would have realized a seam would be inevitable (because there would need to be at least two rows of boards), and would have specified that the seam be centered on the wall. Yes, this probably would have meant using three rows of boards: a 2x12 top board ripped to be 9" tall (so the seam would be halfway down the 18" face), a 2x12 in the middle, and a 2x3 or 2x6 on the bottom.

This level of detail makes the construction much more complex in the short term. So does custom-fabricating a square burner. But in the long term — and we designers are paid for long-term, big-picture thinking — I think it would be worth it if no guest (not even a nit-picky designer) ever looked at this otherwise wonderful resort's fire pit or planters and thought, "Huh. That's weird."

Learning from the Big Guys, Pt. 4

(By the way, I had nothing whatsoever to do with this combination of 'St. Josephs Coat' rose, unspecified iris, and Cerastium tomentosum… I saw it last week in a Los Altos front yard, and it just makes me happy.)

I've written before about learning from the big guys, but sometimes we can learn from the little guys, too — particularly when they make mistakes that, although not big in an absolute sense, are relatively huge.

I met recently with a Palo Alto homebuilder of considerable repute, who had endured what he deemed a "terrible" experience with a garden designer who also is a licensed landscape contractor. Hoping to learn from her missteps, I pressed him on what had gone so wrong. It boiled down to essentially three sins:

One, she didn't take direction. "We would make changes to the plan," the builder said, "and the same things would show up in the next revision." To me, it sounded like a rookie mistake: confusing your own interests with the client's. I'm not saying the client's ideas are always right; but their interests are.

Two, the designer's ideas were weak. Perhaps she threw them together hastily, perhaps she went with her first thought instead of developing more concepts and challenging her own limits. Perhaps she wasn't paid enough to put adequate time toward concept development. I don't know. I wasn't there. But none of those is a good excuse for faulty logic or cookie-cutter designs.

Third, she overstepped her role. Assigned to develop a pathway, she reconfigured the front porch as well. (This upset the architect considerably.) Given a budget and scope of work by the builder, she "added value" with elements that were integral to the design yet unaffordable. As a contractor herself, the builder said, she should have been able to provide creative alternatives without losing sight of costs.

In fairness, I got only one side of the story. But it's a great cautionary tale regardless. Landscape designers are not fine artists, accountable only to ourselves; we are commercial artists, accountable to our clients (and often serving many clients with a single work). Our creativity is meaningless if we lose sight of its object. And while we're certainly entitled — obliged, even — to stand up for our ideas, we mustn't forget that we do not have to live with our own work.

Having a good idea isn't enough: we must have the right good idea.

Learning from the Big Guys, End-Of-Year Edition

Some of my best landscape design inspirations come from simply walking around in the world. It's also a fantastic education, and you can't beat the price. Here are a few of the lessons I've learned this year — for worse and for better.

The good: at NapaStyle, Yountville The bad: Carlsbad office park The just plain stupid: San Mateo mall

Handle your water. Water in the landscape can be a wonderful element to either enliven or calm a space. Unfortunately, from poorly designed irrigation that applies more water to the pavement than the lawn, to poorly conceived drainage that creates safety hazards, there's no shortage of examples of ways we all can handle our water better. My "Worst of the Wettest" award goes to the fountain at an outdoor shopping center in San Mateo. The open, parklike setting is so sunny, so warm, so lush, so… so stupid to create a ramp right up to the water's sparkling edge, then post a "No Water Contact Allowed" sign.

I just hope the tequila was worth it This used to be a Black Oak Why bother? Hedgehogs on parade

Make the right cut. When you put plants in a landscape you're entering into a bit of a contract. They'll provide shade and process carbon dioxide, and you'll give them food, water and a bit of tender loving care every now and then. Unfortunately, too many gardeners — homeowners and municipal landscapers alike — forget the "tender loving care" part, and we wind up with pruning abominations like these. My "Cruelest Cut" award goes to whomever decided California Gray Rush should be pruned into little hedgehogs every winter. (Hint: it's not actually a grass. Let it grow.) It's not fair to the plants, and it's not fair to those of us who have to look at them.

Sculpture at building entry in SF At UCSF Mission Bay, paving acts as carpet Look up! No, up! Where's the magnifying glass?

Lead the way. An entire industry has evolved around "wayfinding" — the art of helping people navigate through complex environments, particularly in urban settings. Personally, I really enjoy when this can be achieved implicitly, with landmarks such as sculpture or variations in paving materials rather than explicit signs. Sometimes, though, signs simply are the best medium for communicating what lives where. But they're pretty useless if they're so tall, and the lettering so small, as to be unreadable. My "Losing Sight of the Destination" award goes to the City of Palo Alto, which installed such signs at major intersections along University and California avenues. Good thing no one goes there anymore.

Emerging from the earth… … vs. dropped from the sky.

Rock out. Boulders in the landscape are timeless sentinels, a great way to define spaces and make any area feel more natural. They look their best when they seem to be emerging from the earth — I typically specify they be buried to about 1/3 of their height. And bigger is better, perhaps because it seems impossible that such mass could have been placed by man. I was thrilled to see these ginormous specimens going in at the Hewlett-Packard campus at 1501 Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. Too bad some of them didn't go in quite far enough. The groundcover plantings may yet grow up to hide the "taper" at the rocks' bases, so no awards here — yet. But I'm watching.

It's not all bad out there, though. A couple of winners deserve mention:

Acer freemanii 'Autumn Blaze' Leucadendron species Muhlenbergia filipes

Go into the light. Especially in the winter when the sun is low and weak, we have lots of opportunities to create stunning effects with plants that either reflect the light or refract it. Palo Alto has been putting in lots of Freeman maples lately, and their color is some of the most brilliant I've seen. Up in San Francisco, this set of Leucadendron from Flora Grubb Gardens positively glows in the late afternoons, as do the massings of Pennisetum and Muhlenbergia grasses at Solage resort in Calistoga. Awards all around for designing with a "light" touch.

How to get air and water to these roots? Cut a pervious strip into the asphalt Better still, cut in a lot!

Put down roots. It's not new this year, but I think I'll give my best in show award to the repaved parking lot at Town and Country Village, which has held up extremely well for a few years now. The best part? The permeable "slots" cut into the asphalt, set with interlocking pavers whose gravel-filled gaps allow air and water to reach the roots of the heritage Valley Oak trees that give the property so much character. It's an incredibly simple, yet creative, solution that I haven't seen anywhere else. I'll be "root"ing for its success.

When your eyes are open, it's remarkable how much you can learn from the big guys. Please let me know if you have any lessons to share. And thanks for giving me some of your time this year… here's to continuing our education in 2011!

Learning from the Big Guys, Pt. 7

It's been an incredibly busy year so far, leaving me with lots of thoughts swirling around in my head but precious little time to put them in writing. But my daily travels take me past a few examples of poor landscape planning, and I'm never too busy to learn from the big guys. Today we examine some examples of what happens when the age-old rule "right plant, right place" is broken.

It's a great idea to plant tall trees on the south and west sides of a building. They help shade the structure and reduce heating costs, especially in a sun-drenched climate like Palo Alto. It's also a great idea to use native species such as the coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. What's not such a great idea is planting a tree that wants to be 100 feet tall beneath eaves that are 40 feet high. Something has to give here, and I'm betting it won't be the building. Anyone want to make odds on how many days before this poorly-planned tree is removed?

 The Palo Alto JCC is a wonderful example of modern urban infill. It's got intimate courtyards and simple but effective stands of plantings that make it a great space for people. Unfortunately, the designers consistently underestimated the demands of the Center's vehicular traffic, specifically the turning radii cars and trucks would need. Perhaps the planners were simply optimistic that the center would attract fuel-efficient small cars rather than large trucks or SUVs; however, even the average minivan (of which the family-oriented Center attracts plenty) is challenged by turns that are too sharp and lanes that are too narrow. As a result, a couple of walls in the parking garage have been damaged by car bumpers, and curbs have had to be cut or removed and reconfigured. Orange safety cones are proliferating, and overall the traffic areas are looking like a patchwork of temporary fixes — except they're not temporary.

Outside, the entry driveway circles around a center median that is not contained by a raised curb. On the one hand, this is useful because it allows the median to receive stormwater from the surrounding pavement, an effective environmental strategy (the Center earned LEED Silver certification). On the other hand, the absence of a curb means that vehicles can — and do — cut the turn and drive through the planter. This means more orange cones, and a chronically muddy mess that always seems to hold standing water. It's too compacted to sustain plants, and they'd probably get driven over anyhow. The lesson here? Turns require far larger radii than we may think: at least 15-20' inside radius for a passenger car, more for service vehicles such as delivery trucks, and a correspondingly large outside radius so the front outside corner of the vehicle's bumper can sweep through the turn without hitting tangential walls or parked cars or people. If you've absolutely got to have a tight turn without a curb, at least don't put plants inside the curve — use paving stones or some other material that can take the abuse.

Speaking of cars and people, it's always useful to remember that people get into and out of vehicles, and enjoy a bit of clear space in which to do so. This isn't exactly a "big guy," but it is a useful reminder that heavily armed plants such as Agaves — as well as spiny Berberis, Pyracantha and roses, and even sharp-foliaged plants such as Mahonia and Picea (spruce) — make great barriers but usually aren't great selections for a space where people or pets will be passing close by. On the other hand, though, I'd wager this tree hasn't suffered a door ding or the indignity of dog pee in years, so maybe this planting strategy is genius after all — "right plant, right place" doesn't always mean what we think. 

Learning from the Big Guys, Pt. 3

In the previous installment of this series, I wrote about spacing plants appropriately (or not). Courtesy of my commercial neighbors in Palo Alto, here's an example with a smaller species, where tight spacing feels entirely appropriate. Betula nigra, or river birch, is one of my favorite trees — its exfoliating cinnamon bark is visually arresting, and its canopy provides delightful dappled shade. In this cluster, the trees within each trio are planted about 14 feet on center, and the trios are about 19 feet apart. This grove would be a wonderful spot for a bench, fountain, or other lingering point. The biggest downside would be the tree roots: birches are notorious for surface rooting, which can heave a flagstone patio or invade a lawn. Placing a feature inside this grove would be a short-term proposition; and planting these trees close to a hard edge could compromise the hardscaping.

This brings me to another point: when reference books talk about surface rooting — or any characteristic, for that matter — they're not just using up ink. No matter how good your intentions, you will not be the exception to the printed rule. For instance, if a tree is reported susceptible to verticillium wilt, and your soil has verticillium fungus, that's not a good tree for you. If a tree is said to grow 40 feet wide, you'll have a hard time keeping it at 20. And if a tree is said to root close to the surface, that's not a good choice next to a lawn, or next to hardscaping. Here's a Fraxinus (ash) that quite owns the lawn around it. It's a big tree, not a bad choice for screening the parking lot from the building, but definitely incompatible with turf. Can you imagine trying to mow around this without scalping the roots? If you were the maintenance crew, wouldn't you stop trying?

So, given that Fraxinus roots do this, would you use the same species as a street tree in a 4' wide planting strip? Perhaps it'll be fine, since the roots surface in an effort to find water and the sidewalk offers none. Me, I wouldn't take the chance. And given that this is in Palo Alto, whose choice of Liquidambar as street trees I curse every autumn (usually after twisting an ankle on one of the ubiquitous seedpods), I don't have high expectations.

But I'll keep watch… and learn from the big guys.

Learning from the Big Guys, Pt. 1

I never really take off my designer's hat, and so I'm always seeing examples of good and not-so-good designs. Two of my favorite places to look for both are corporate campuses and public works: not only do they have to satisfy technical requirements far beyond anything I'll have to deal with in a home garden, they also have the budget to do it right (not perfect, just right). If one of these megaprojects is successful, I steal what ideas I can, to scale to the residential scope and budget. And if one is failing, I feel like I've struck gold - because I can learn from their expensive mistakes without spending a dime of my clients' money.

Prolonged rainy spells are great for pointing out problems in grading and drainage. Here's an example of what I consider a failure at the newly redesigned Caltrain station at California Avenue in Palo Alto: you can see the raised concrete planter has a drain outlet at its base. But where does that water have to go to drain away? Across a path (a wheelchair ramp, to be precise). This is, at best, an inconvenience for those of us whose shoes get wet walking through it. But at worst, it's a safety hazard no matter whether you're walking or wheeling. To compound the danger, this is below grade, where the perpetually cool and shady conditions encourage the growth of slippery algae on the wet concrete.

To my eye, all this risk could have been prevented by simply including a drain at the base of the wall, or perhaps tying in the wall outlet to the slot drain beneath the walk. Either would have been a relatively cheap solution compared to the potential costs of the problem. I hope we never find out.

When you're designing your landscape, remember: water will always find its way downhill. I'll let you know if the City decides to address that little fact here.

Learning from the Big Guys, Pt. 2

Some of the knowledge we lose living in urban and suburban areas is how plants naturally grow. As in, how BIG. As a result, we put big shrubs in the garden where little shrubs should go (I tend to make this mistake with Viburnum); and place trees too close to structures or crowd them together.

In this example at a Peninsula elementary school, two redwoods and one Atlas cedar have been triangulated about 8 - 12 feet on center. Now, this would make a nice grove of small ornamental trees such as cherry or crabapple. Or a compact windbreak of columnar specimens such as cottonwood or 'Fastigiata' hornbeam. But come on! These are long-lived forest giants, wanting to spread 50 feet or more. Even if they were to grow this close together in nature, they would probably be successive generations, never really competing with each other for light, water, nutrients and space.

As this trio matures, they will create a maintenance headache for the Arborist who has to keep their limbs pruned clear of each other (with probably unattractive results). Even so, they probably will struggle along together, limp into midlife, and never achieve the cool grove I bet their planters intended.

The lesson here: work with, not against, Mother Nature. She always wins.