[ Lost in the Landscape ]

final thoughts on the getty

The gardens of the Getty Museum for sure are among the most photographed botanical spots in Los Angeles. After the first of my recent Getty notes Cousin Jenny in South Carolina sent me some of the picture she’d taken there on her last trip out in June. I liked them and thought I’d share some with you.

Here’s an abstraction of plants that she did.

And here are some succulents she coveted. Since she lives where it’s wetter than Southern California, growing many succulents outdoors would be a real stunt. We’ve e-mailed back and forth a little about how it’s always the plants that you can’t grow easily that are the ones you often drool over. These are easy plants here where you don’t have to worry about them rotting in the wet ground. But South Carolina? A little trickier.

And she also was interested in some of the hardscape details. The Central Garden has these big boulders cemented into the watercourse that descends into the lower pool. They can help to break the force of running water during our occasional storms. But, hey, they look cool.

And here’s her shot of the lower Central Garden with its clipped azaleas. I’ve never seen the plants in bloom but I’m sure it’s quite the sight as this abstract topiary doodle goes from green leaves to rosy red flowers.

“Always changing, never twice the same” is the phrase that the Getty uses on their website to describe the Robert Irwin-designed Central Garden. But anyone who’s at all a half-observant gardener could tell you that that’s a characteristic of any garden that isn’t made out of astroturf and concrete.

In this garden the azaleas bloom and the plane trees drop their leaves, but it really isn’t the place you go to see the subtle shifts of a season. Most of the other plantings are heavily managed. To me it’s more about human-managed change than about the seasons and cycles of life and regeneration. Things are as carefully staged as the store windows at Bloomingdale’s. Once a plant starts looking scrappy, it’s outta there like summer’s deck shoes. It’s a beautiful garden, for sure, but it’s trying to do different things than many other gardens.

People often talk about how a typical visitor arrives at the Getty. You park you car down on the flats, in a garage or more remote lot, depending on the volume of visitors. Then you have the option the walk up the hill about a mile or take the tram. (I’ve never seen anyone on foot.) The architect, Richard Meier intended the visit to be a special pilgrimage. Ascending slowly up the hill, your visit takes you from the common world to the shining acropolis on the hill.

That hillside that you ascend has been replanted with the head-high native plants that populate the nearby area. Once you get to the top, most of the plantings shift to more “decorative” plants from around the world. To me it could easily be interpreted that the local vegetation isn’t worthy of a place like the Getty, just as most of the “culture” contained in the museum walls comes from distant times and distant places.

But the Getty, despite being established to enshrine ancient to early modern artworks, has an active photography program, and they also show a number of established living artists, even some from Southern California. While most of these artists get their showings mainly outside of their main galleries, there’s the occasional breach of the hallowed walls. For instance, last weekend, a video piece by Southern Californian Bill Viola was running in the North Gallery alongside European sculpture that was centuries older.

And, similarly, while most of the plantings at the Getty come from places beyond Southern California, I was pleased to see that the plantings of trees right at the front entrance was made up of local sycamores. With their beautifully cut leaves and wonderfully mottled trunks, these trees can stand up to anything else that was planted on the grounds. It’s a statement of local pride, just like showing the work of some of our great local artists. Good going, Getty!

August 30 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design | Tags: hardscape • J. Paul Getty Museum • Jenny • native plants | 1 Comment »

some hardcape ideas to borrow

As promised here are some random notes on hardscape details at the Getty Museum that I found pretty cool.

The travertine tiles that make up most of the outdoor paving are laid out in a fairly random pattern…except for this checkerboard spot near the front entrance. I liked how the little pocket of order suddenly dissolves into randomness.

And here large tiles contrast with smaller ones. By including a number of smaller, darker tiles at the edge of the transition, you notice the difference in scale more than if the were uniformly the same color.

I liked the spikes of walkway interrupting the green plane of the lawn. Even on a smaller scale this could be fun in a location where you could view it from above.

Okay, this next detail is probably beyond the scope of your average DIYer, but I liked the contrast of smooth and raw, machined and natural. In this case the saw-cut stone by the walkway contrasts beautifully with its rougher edges.

And this one, too, might be a little unrealistic for my back yard, but I really liked it. This is a big pedestal that was built for a Henry Moore’s sculpture, Bronze Form. The base is a wide slab that’s been travertine-tiled. A water source on top provides a shallow sheet of water, maybe about a quarter-inch deep, that crosses the top of the base and disappears into a groove at the edge. I thought of it something like a sideways fountain, with water going horizontally instead of straight up…

August 29 2008 | Categories: landscape design | Tags: hardscape • J. Paul Getty Museum • travertine • water features | No Comments »

some plant ideas to borrow

Last weekend’s Los Angeles trip included a short stop by the Getty Museum in Brentwood.

I’d posted earlier about their exhibit featuring botanical illustrations by Maria Sibylla Merian that continues through the end of August. It was a compact, intense show with artwork by Merian and her contemporaries, along with examples of some of the earliest illustrated botanical books.


Unfortunately it was one of those thou-shalt-not-photograph exhibitions, so I had to be content with snapping these two for-sale prints in the kiosk outside the galleries. Merian was interested in plants, but even more so in the critters that live in them. Here you see various creepy crawlies cavorting with the plant life.

When visiting a place like the Getty it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer unapproachableness of everything you see—the Acropolis-like site, the billion-plus dollar construction budget, the irreplaceable artworks. But looking around the grounds there are all sorts of cool details that would be at home in a back yard planting or patio project.

Here are some of the plantings that I thought were cool. Some were in the Robert Irwin-designed Central Garden, others were around the museum grounds that were designed by the landscape architectural firm of Olin Partnership. (The best piece I’ve run across on the Web about the less famous garden plantings was in, of all places, The Australian Humanities Review.)

Many of the shady plantings underneath the planting of London plane trees use light-colored foliage to make the plants pop in the shade. It’s a technique that you read about a lot—but it works wonders. Here’s a nice combination of light-color succulents.


Again in the shade, here are some plants with green-and-white variegated foliage, including a New Zealand flax.


And the last of these shade pictures, a planting featuring a chartreuse-leaved oxalis species. John thought it looked a little anemic, but I thought it was pretty cool.


Out of the shade, a planting of contrasting foliage colors can be a great accent. Here the planting avoids green altogether, and combines plants predominating with red and yellow tones, including the “Sticks of Fire” clone of the evil pencil tree.


In a garden with a large number of different plants it helps to have zones with less contrast. Here a long, curving row of pink crape myrtles were blooming over an extended bed of variegated society garlic blooming with their lavender-pink flowers.


Mass plantings don’t have to go into rows or grids. Here’s my favorite planting on the entire property, a seemingly random arrangement of golden barrel cactus. The arrangement is informal, but it’s as much a product of human intervention as something that’s overtly geometrical. The Robert Irwin-designed Central Garden draws most of the visitors, but this area is the most spectacular to my eyes.


If you have a billion-dollar view most people decide to chop down all the plants between you and the view. Here, the almost-transparent, unobtrusive, but still dramatic spent flower stalks of these variegated century plants (Agave americana ‘Marginata’) actually helps complete the view, giving focus to what would be a run-of-the-mill spectacular view of the West Side of L.A. The actual flowers on these sculptural inflorescences died months ago, and the stalks are actually black and not green. But they’re cool as all get out—So why not leave them be?


Plantings soften a lot of the hard geometrical edges. Here some prostrate rosemary cascades over the hard edge of the travertine wall.


And here, the baby’s tears growing between the rough travertine squares softens the transition from human hard-edged geometry to the softer forms of the vining Boston ivy.

Next post I’ll share some of my favorite details from the hardscape around the Getty.

August 28 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: foliage plants • J. Paul Getty Museum • plant combinations • shade • shade plants | No Comments »

roadside flora

We’ve just returned from a couple of days in L.A. The drive up and back isn’t one of the great scenic routes on earth, and for the most part it’s not particularly interesting botanically.

The plantings of trees along I-5 and the 405 over 150 miles mostly draw from tried and true California plant staples like palms and eucalyptus, with stands of Italian cypress and occasional pines concentrated in the more residential areas. They’re attractive enough and generally drought-tolerant choices, but the rhythm of palm, palm, eucalyptus, palm, cypress, palm, eucalyptus, palm gets a little repetitious over the course of two and a half hours (if traffic is moving).

A new kind of tree has been appearing over the last half dozen years, however. With the recent growth of cell phones, there’s been an explosion in how many cell towers you see—More bars in more places translates into more cell towers in more places. The providers have occasionally tried to hide the towers by trying to make them pass as trees—usually with pretty comical results.

To keep myself amused on the trip I shot a few photos of roadside trees. See if you can spot the cell towers in the grid below. (Answers are at the end of this post, but I don’t think you’ll need the answer key.)

Give up? The cell towers are the far right in the top row (fake palm), the first in the third row (fake…er…what is that supposed to be? a redwood? roadside in Southern California?) and far right in the third row (plain vanilla cell tower). At least the cell tower trees are drought-tolerant.

August 25 2008 | Categories: landscape design • places | Tags: cell phones • cell towers • drought-tolerant landscaping • Interstate 405 • Interstate 5 • Los Angeles • Orange County • roadside plantings • trees | 1 Comment »

two plants talking

Here’s a picture from the weekend of a couple of plants interacting aesthetically, a dark rose clone of naked lady, Amaryllis belladonna, with Mexican feathergrass, Nassella tenuissima (better known as Stipa tenuissima). I particularly liked the lines on the petals of the lilies echoing the wispy lines described by the stems of grass…

August 21 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Amaryllis belladonna • Mexican feather grass • Mexican feathergrass • naked ladies • Nassella tenuissima • plant combinations • Stipa tenuissima | No Comments »

brown is in

Maybe I was inspired by the garden designs of Piet Oudolf. Maybe I was inspired by my recent trip to see things turning brown in Los Peñasquitos Preserve. Or maybe I’m just a little busy and/or slacker-ey in the doldrums of summer.

Whatever the reason, I’ve decided to let the flowering heads on a lot of plants do their natural thing and turn brown, to see what they look like. These are all experiments that I might develop into something a little more finished looking at some point. And all this is taking place in the front yard, where appearance is everything. What will the neighbors say? Hopefully they have a similar sense of adventure.

The plant on the top of this picture is a spiraea I bought fifteen years ago. This is before I started my plant database, and the label is long gone. I’m still working on researching the species. Even the California native Spiraea douglassii likes a little bit of water, but this one in the front yard gets very little in the summer. It’s even survived six weeks or more with no irrigation. It doesn’t look the prettiest that way, but it survives.

Here it is contrasted against the almost-white foliage of common dusty miller, Senecio bicolor subsp. cineraria, a plant usually sold as an annual. But it’s hung on for well over five years in this tough spot. Looks pretty good most of the year, too.

Another plant with light-colored foliage is Santolina chamaecyparissus, also called lavender cotton, ground cypress, and a few other things. I like the swoop-ey rhythm of the dried flower heads and stalks. This is one of those plants I really hate in bloom. The yellow against the gray foliage for two weeks in early summer is unfortunate. And the flowers smell creepy, too—something between bad medicine and paint remover. At least the plant stays a nice mound of grayish foliage most of the year.

And the last plant in this little gallery is some basic lavender, contrasted against the brown-red foliage and seed heads of red feather grass, Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’. Some people dead-head their lavender, both to lengthen bloom-time and to keep the plants tidier. I like the pointillist bits of lavender with the gray-green foliage and the brown of the dead flowering heads.

I’m not positive that deadheading the spent flowers off the lavender does much to keep the plant blooming: It looks good winter through about now, and then starts to slow down as my watering slows down. The santolina blooms once a year, deadheaded or not. And the spiraea…well, the thing that would perk it up the most would be some more water and not vigilant removing of its spent blooms. Poor plant. It had the sad fortune of ending up in my yard as its adoptive home. San Diego isn’t surf and fun and sunshine all the time…

August 20 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: deadheading • drought-tolerant landscaping • dusty miller • lavender • Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum' • Santolina chamaecyparissus • Senecio bicolor • spiraea | 2 Comments »

mending wall

I don’t mind many garden chores—watering, pruning, tidying, planting—but other tasks are so unpleasant I can put them off for days or years. Dealing with hardscape is one of those unpleasantries, particularly when it’s laborious maintenance and not a crative act. And that was the story of much of the last two weekends.

My neighborhood dates to the very early 1950s, and it was the first in San Diego where a developer cut and filled a hillside to install a subdivision. Some lots—particularly on the fill side of the street—are flat from the front curb to the back fence. But many others—and mine is one of them—slope emphatically. I haven’t hired a surveyor to scope it out, but I’ve figured that the front and back of the property differ something over twelve feet in elevation over 120 linear feet. An additional slope behind the house elevates the folks behind us another six to eight feet.

In Mending Wall Robert Frost dealt with the arbitrary social spaces that some walls define. But without the series of little retaining walls on my lot the walls serve to keep some of gravity’s effects in check the whole hillside would end up on top of the neighbors down below.

Unfortunately, one of those walls had been listing considerably, partly with the help of a nasty pencil tree euphorbia and some errant ivy roots. My solution: Why not try using the hydraulic and bumper jacks that we’ve had sitting in the garage to see if we couldn’t get the wall to standing back at 90 degrees? Then it’d be a pretty simple matter to pour concrete at the base of either side of the wall to stabilize it for the next quarter-century.

The hydraulic jack helping to push the wall back up.

The bumper jack used for this project.

It’s common to call someone a jack of all trades (no pun intended), and it’s usually meant as a compliment. But my work on this project made me think of the “…and master of none” part of the phrase that most people don’t think about. Yes, I did manage to get the wall back to upright. Yes I did manage to do it with the jacks. And yes, pouring concrete around the base of the wall has kept it firmly upright.

But I did however end up having to replace a small section of the wall, and that’s where the master of none part comes into play. You will notice I have no photographs of that patched wall. Trust me. It’s ugly.

Since no one will believe anything these days until they’ve seen a photograph of it, however, maybe you won’t realize how ugly the patch really is and continue to think that I’m this resourceful gardener who’ll tackle anything and do it with spectacular results.

If you’ll believe that, let me give you a cutting of this cute little pencil tree euphorbia that’s guaranteed to stay a cute little well-mannered plant…

August 19 2008 | Categories: landscape design • my garden | Tags: hardscape • Robert Frost • walls | 5 Comments »

figs!

Figs are among my favorite fruits, but they’re also among the fruits that are usually sad, unripe disappointments when you get them from a store. To help make up for that deficit we put in a ‘Brown Turkey’ fig tree over ten years ago.

Figs excel in the warm parts of the Mediterranean where they originate, but given cool summers they can sulk and not do particularly well. ‘Brown Turkey’ and ‘Osborn Prolific’ were a couple of the varieties listed as doing well with less heat. Here in coastal San Diego ‘Brown Turkey’ has turned out to be a great choice. The plant is bearing now, providing us—and some of the neighborhood birds—with tasty brown-purple-black fruit.

Last season’s crop ended being a puny one, so John chopped the tree back by a third. Figs produce two crops—an early one on last year’s wood and a larger, later one on this year’s. Pruning the tree sacrificed most of the first crop. But this summer has made up for what few figs we’ve had so far this year.

Another factor with its crop could be its watering schedule. Where the tree was placed—in the tough love bed behind the studio—it gets plenty of sun, but sometimes only gets summer water every three to four weeks. Figs are listed as being drought tolerant once established, but at the same time they’re listed as enjoying being watered. The plant definitely perks up after a good drenching so we know that could be part of the story. But it’s nice that there’s a plant that will provide at least something edible without too many gallons of the lower Colorado River poured on it!

August 18 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Brown Turkey fig • figs • fruits | 4 Comments »

chairs: style vs. comfort

Here are notes that on a small handful of chairs that we’ve tested. Most are in the style-fetish school of modern furniture design. With the exception of the first model, all are chairs that we’ve tested at the bizarrely-named retailer, Design Within Reach. (“Within reach?” Oh really?) Most, however, can be had a number of places, bricks-and-mortar and online.

Looking at our experiences I think you’ll get to see why it’s always a three-bears, “this one’s too large/small” experience for us whenever we go shopping for anything we have to share. Wish us luck. Maybe someday we’ll find seating we can agree to want to spend the money on. And looking at some of these prices, you might feel compelled to microchip your lawn furniture.

Seat	Price	Comfort: Me (5’ 10” 160#)	Comfort: John (6’ 9” and big-boned)	Notes on Comfort	Style Notes
Anonymous Home Depot chair purchased several years ago Comfy Cheap Chair	about $12	B-	A-	Nice molded back. Good for a taller/larger person; basically tolerable for me	C: Nothing fabulous, but is a simple, fairly neutral modern design
Bellini Chair Mario Bellinia	$130	A-	D+	Form-fitting and very comfortable for a smaller-to average person; not sturdy for heavier sitters	B+: It’s almost the plastic version of the classic Mario Bellini “cab chair,” updated from—and curvier than—the 1970s model
Hudson Side Chair Hudson Side Chair	$640/$1315	A-	B	Another tailored chair for an average-sized person; can make a larger person feel huge; steadier than the above seat; may get hot in the sun, but being aluminum will dissipate heat quickly	A-: A clean, versatile design by Philippe Starck, available in brushed or polished aluminum, also comes with arms—for more $$$; a good indoor/outdoor model—we have a couple counter-height ones of these in the kitchen
Silver Collection Armchair (from Design Within Reach) Silver Collection Armchair	$1000	D+	B	Extremely deep seat screams out for a back cushion for all but the tallest sitters; promotes poor posture for us average size persons	B-: A fairly undistinguished though fairly clean modern design; I thought the finial-looking feet to be pretty dorky
Bubble Club Armchair Bubble Club Armchair	$680	F	C-	I’ve been test-sitting this chair for years, hoping it’ll miraculously become an even tolerable fit; absurdly deep seat, not even comfy for someone 6’ 9”	A: Another Starck design, I really dig the looks of this, even with it’s echoes of pre-modern styles I don’t usually swoon over; the fairly massive front contrasts amusingly with the hollow back; the design makes me smile, but the fit makes me wince
Aero Chair Aero Chair	$160	D-	F	We both detest chairs with no lumbar support, and this has that fatal flaw; even I found it a tad wobbly	B-: Simple, serviceable design for when you want something that doesn’t scream attention to itself; DWR recommends taking this chair in whenever it rains to preserve the finish; Uncomfortable and high maintenance! At least it stacks and weighs next to nothing
Ronde Armchair Ronde Armchair	$100	C-	D	It looks more comfortable than it actually is; the armrests are great unless you want to put your arms on them; John found it flimsy and confining	B: Light and attractive. Another lightweight stacking chair

August 17 2008 | Categories: landscape design • rambles | Tags: garden furniture • seating • shopping | 2 Comments »

for a good cause

I’ve donated one of my photographs to an auction to benefit Yosemite Renaissance, the organization that now oversees the Artist-In-Residence program at Yosemite National Park. The piece below is from when I was in the park during 1997-98 as part of the program.

James SOE NYUN. Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir from O-Shaughnessy Dam, Yosemite National Park, 1997/2007 (from the Blue Daylight Series). Archival pigment print [ click to enlarge ]

The auctions is a great opportunity to add to or start your art collection and help out a deserving organization at the same time. The residency program is currently on hiatus as they work to upgrade a cabin that will be used by artists. The organization is counting on this auction to help with that effort.

All auction artwork will be viewable (if it’s not there already) at the auction page off the main Yosemite Renaissance home page, where you can also place bids online. Or if you prefer to view and bid on the work in person, they’ll be on exhibit at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Valley Wednesday and Thursday, August 27-28. Reception and the live auction will be on Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m.

August 16 2008 | Categories: art • photography | Tags: auctions • James SOE NYUN • Yosemite • Yosemite Renaissance | No Comments »