avoid, or embrace the inevitable?
Today I want to talk about a couple things that seem inevitable: Garden plants will die; and, concrete hardscape will develop cracks.
Strategy 1: You could try avoidance, developing ways to get around those facts.
You may have heard of the recent garden at the Chelsea Garden Show designed by James May of Britain’s Top Gear automotive program. The plants (and insects) were all made of plastic modeling paste. It was totally artificial. A garden that will never experience death—but neither will it ever experience life. (And what would you call a “garden” like this? Landscape or hardscape?)
If you want to avoid cracks in concrete walkways or patio covers, you could avoid concrete altogether. For instance, you could employ alternate materials like decomposed granite or one of the attractive alternative paving systems highlighted over at Steve Snedeker’s Landscaping and Gardening Blog.
Or you could embrace what’s going to happen anyway.
Some plants look attractive after they’ve passed on for good or just for the season. To the left are some plants at Piet Oudolf’s Chicago Lurie Garden as they appeared this past February. Picking structurally interesting plants like those can keep things looking good, even in the presence of things in the garden that may be dying. This is a big and rich topic that I’ve touched on occasionally in my posts, and I’m sure to return to in the in the future in more detail.
And how do you embrace cracked concrete? I was over at Pruned, where this brilliant winner from the 2009 American Society of Landscape Architects Awards was highlighted. The project by CMG Landscape Architecture of San Francisco played up the natural tendency of concrete to crack, as well as the tendency of plants to colonize those cracks.
(Photo: Tom Fox)
The recipe:
Take one piece of cracked pavement.
Apply a jackhammer to widen the cracks. (Photo: Kevin Conger)
Amend the soil, and then place plants of your choosing in the enlarged cracks. (Photo: Tom Fox)
Total project cost, with homeowner labor: $500. The final results are surprising, and so is the final cost, particularly when you consider it’s a project involving professional landscape architects.
June 05 2009 05:53 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: CMG Landscape Architecture • concrete • fake plants • hardscape • James May • plastic
tina on 05 Jun 2009 at 8:52 am #
That looks pretty cool! At our other house we have tons of cracks and I think this would work there. Here I am diligent about getting plants out of cracks and hoping to avoid more cracks. It is frustrating. This is an idea I never would’ve thought of.
Steve on 05 Jun 2009 at 11:30 am #
Wow, James, now there is an alternative worth thinking about. Hey, thanks for referring me and for taking what I say more seriously than I probably do, lol. Just kidding. I actually love adapting to the inevitable and there is much to be said for inserting some funkiness into droll spaces like that. I admire that process and that person’s most interesting take.
ryan on 06 Jun 2009 at 4:45 pm #
The CMG project caught my eye, too. It’s interesting and pretty cool — love the poppy– but I have some reservations. It doesn’t seem like it solves any of the real issues of concrete — lack of drainage and high embedded energy. A lot of people use recycled concrete as if it were flagstone and then plant between the cracks to get a nicer effect than the CMG project in my opinion and because they are usually redoing the subsurface, too, they can get better water infiltration. The CMG planting would be better if it had the irregular geometry of a crazy-pattern flagstone patio instead of straight lines. But, I guess it wouldn’t be in the modernist, embrace-your-materials tradition, and it would take a more labor. I might be biased by having some friends at CMG and worrying that they get a little more praise than is healthy.
I do like the idea of embracing the inevitable. Time is the most implacable foe, followed by gravity and water.
Town Mouse on 06 Jun 2009 at 8:06 pm #
Unfortunately, the oxalis that’s trying to make a home in the cracks in my concrete will spread aggressively into the rest of the garden if I don’t pull it right away. Thyme and other low-growing herbs have not done well without extra water where I live. I’m always amazed how these things look in the photos, and always wonder whether it’s just me that it doesn’t quite work out that way for me…
lostlandscape on 07 Jun 2009 at 6:24 pm #
Tina, most of our concrete is actually in pretty good shape, but some of it was poured with seams. That’s where the plants colonize and where I spend too much time keeping after them. Tedious!
Steve, glad to make the link. I guess I can end up taking anything seriously…looking for the BIG MEANING in everything. But Big MEANINGs can be fun too.
Ryan, I think what got me about this project was the basic concept, practicality be damned. I can see that there’d be compaction and drainage issues. And how do you water something like this without watering the concrete? (I suppose drip in the cracks could work…) I’d also probably end up designing things differently. It’s surprising how “cottage garden” the results look, even through they’re coming out of some other tradition.
Town Mouse, I’m convinced that when the humans are gone it’ll be oxalis vs the cockroaches. How do you kill the stuff? Hate it. I could see this project working well with some of the rock-growing dudleyas. They might actually like all that reflected heat coming off the concrete. The project doesn’t look particularly low-water as planted.
ryan on 08 Jun 2009 at 3:33 pm #
I just wrote a post about this garden. The name started to seem really insensitive to me as I saw it on more and more blogs, and it seems to reflect some bigger things about the ASLA and the powerhouse firms that design our public space. I liked your post, and even as I crit the project I do find it thought provoking. So don’t think I’m flaming you. I’m really responding more to the landscape architecture blogs and landscape architecture community which seems to lack some important perspective on this project and to be out of touch with the urban areas where they do a lot work.
lostlandscape on 08 Jun 2009 at 6:20 pm #
Ryan, I really appreciate your comments. No, I don’t consider it flaming at all. It’s good, healthy discussion about an imperfect project, and I liked reading what you had to say over at your blog. One thing that grabbed me about this project out of all the residential “winners” was how small and attainable it was. Almost always these programs recognize residential projects that I’ll never have a chance of living in the middle of.
[ Lost in the Landscape ] » reclaimed from concrete on 09 Jun 2009 at 5:38 am #
[…] Two posts ago I mentioned the Crack Garden, a winner in this year’s ASLA awards program that made me think in a new way about dealing with too much concrete. Ryan over at Dry Stone Garden has some different thoughts on the project that are worth a read. […]
Bird on 12 Jun 2009 at 8:15 am #
Oh, that stupid plasticine garden! I hate Top Gear and everything it stands for, and no matter how witty and clever their artificial garden parody might be, it just says something about our attitude to gardening and nature in general that makes me nauseous. Your idea for breaking up concrete and doing something a little more interesting has, however, made my day.
lostlandscape on 12 Jun 2009 at 9:32 am #
Bird, I was surprised nobody else picked up on the plastic garden. To me it’s a stunt–mildly clever, but not even that well done. I’m sure there were a few gardens at the show that were worth a visit, but this is the only one that got any press.