a palm garden takes shape

I’m sure I’m not the first to have noticed the irony: The main approach to Los Ange­les County Museum of Art takes you through the BP Grand Entrance. The back way in takes you through the La Brea Tar Pits.

When I took the pho­tos on the last day of July crude oil was still gush­ing into the Gulf of Mex­ico, and the irony was heavy like the odor of tar com­ing from the fenced-off pits where archae­ol­o­gists were work­ing behind the museum on extract­ing crit­ters and plants that got caught in the ances­tral goo.

Here, junior’s ball has some­how made it over the fence around one of the pits. You could maybe res­cue it with a stick…or you could wade through the tar and hope that you don’t get caught, only to be dis­cov­ered by archae­ol­o­gists a few mil­len­nia down the road.

We arrived at the museum an hour before it opened, via the back entrance, so we had a chance to spend some time with Robert Irwin’s Palm Gar­den Instal­la­tion. I posted [ before ] on the ear­lier stages of the gar­den, and it’s still not com­plete. But by now you can really make out many more of the ele­ments of what the final gar­den will look like.

There are many palm species used in the gar­den. A num­ber of them are planted in a lawn, inside planter boxes that mimic the wooden planter boxes the trees were grown in. But unlike the wooden tem­po­rary planters, these per­ma­nent homes are made out of thick steel plate–the “it” mate­r­ial of the moment for well-financed mod­ern gardens.

A closer look at the planter box…

In a back cor­ner you could see a col­lec­tion of palms in pots, and in this photo you can get a bet­ter idea of the kind of planter box the steel ones are meant to suggest.

Another look at some of the palms in tran­si­tion… In this instal­la­tion some of the plants are rotated out accord­ing tot he sea­son. I’m not sure whether these are headed in or out.

LACMA was about to open a new facil­ity, the Resnick Pavil­lion designed by Renzo Piano. As the build­ing nears com­ple­tion more ele­ments of the Palm Gar­den Instal­la­tion are being planted. In addi­tion to palms it includes sev­eral of the non-palm species. These are some spec­tac­u­larly var­ie­gated agaves plants of a fur­craea, pos­si­bly Fur­craea foetida ‘Mediopicta’–Thanks for the cor­rec­tion, Loree!

The way the plants have been shaped, with the low­est leaves removed, made them look like var­ie­gated New Zealand flax (phormi­ums) until you got close to them. It’s not a bad look. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see if these agaves fur­craeas are kept pruned this way or whether they’ll be allowed to grow into the rosettes that agave fur­craea grow­ers are used to see­ing. This is in no way a nat­u­ral­is­tic gar­den, so my guess is that the agaves plants will be kept this shape. Besides, how do you mow around them with­out run­ning over the leaves?

Detail: Fur­craea foetida, I think

Another detail of the var­ie­gated furcraeas


Another of the non-palm species: this cycad devel­op­ing this really cool cone. It’s prob­a­bly some­thing like three to four feet long.

A bench and real palms out­side the Resnick pavilion…

The sin­gle most dra­matic ges­ture is the place­ment of this palm with a thickly bul­bous trunk that’s been planted in a tight open­ing that leads two sto­ries down into a park­ing garage. The effect is like star­ing down into a North Dakota Min­ute­man mis­sile silo. It’s more than a tad unset­tling, and asserts that garden-making can be about more than design­ing pleas­ant, unchal­leng­ing spaces.

Say “Los Ange­les” to some­one and ask them what comes to mind. Palm trees would prob­a­bly be one of the first things the per­son might bring up, even though the city’s offi­cial tree is the coral tree is and the offi­cial flower the bird of par­adise. “Cars” would prob­a­bly be another. Here palms and cars come together, with a short arcade of the trees lin­ing the dri­ve­way down into the park­ing garage.

I’m not any­thing remotely resem­bling a palm expert, so I can’t tell you what species this is. But I can show you that it has amaz­ingly sculp­tural trunks.

Look­ing up into the fronds gives you the sen­sa­tion clos­est what you get from many of the art­works Robert Irwin did before he designed gar­dens. The fronds fil­ter the light in inter­est­ing ways, and two or more lay­ers make things darker than just a sin­gle layer. If you stand in the dri­ve­way and look straight up the neg­a­tive space of the sky reads like a bright zigzag between the del­i­cate lay­ers of palm.

If you’d like to com­pare the effect of the palm fronds to an ear­lier Irwin piece, here’s a cor­ner of his Run­ning Vio­let V Forms, a piece that I walk around and under at least twice a week. In this 1980s piece pan­els of violet-colored mesh turn light or dark, depend­ing on the num­ber of lay­ers, and the mesh turns opaque or trans­par­ent depend­ing on how the light is strik­ing it. The mesh inter­acts with views of the euca­lyp­tus grove where it’s placed. I’ve loved this piece ever since the day it went up. You can read my love story with this piece [ here ].

Artists often com­plain that big muse­ums don’t pay enough atten­tion to local artists in their scram­ble to show off big-name artists from the other coast or another coun­try. This sum­mer day LACMA had sev­eral gal­leries devoted to the the pho­tographs of Cathy Opie, and work of other local artists could be found the walls of sev­eral of the gal­leries. But I didn’t iden­tify any plant species used in this gar­den that came from within a thousand-mile radius.

Word is that Robert Irwin is design­ing yet another gar­den, this one for a new fed­eral cour­t­house here in San Diego. Wouldn’t it be great if he could use some of our Cal­i­for­nia species in the project? What about some of our del­i­cately trans­par­ent plants like deer weed or broom bac­cha­ris? Or what about some of the many plants that undergo stun­ning trans­for­ma­tions as the sea­sons change? To see an impor­tant new, high pro­file gar­den com­prised of local natives would be such an amaz­ing opportunity.

September 07 2010 06:30 am | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • • • •

9 Responses to “a palm garden takes shape”

  1. Loree / danger garden on 07 Sep 2010 at 4:50 pm #

    James please for­give me for this, after all you saw them in per­son and you know your plants…but might those spec­tac­u­larly var­ie­gated Agaves actu­ally be Fur­craea? There are a cou­ple on the front steps of LACMA so it wouldn’t be with­out prece­dent for them. They are gor­geous what ever they are! And thank you so much for all the won­der­ful pic­tures, we just got to see the very begin­nings of this instal­la­tion and this makes me want to return, soon!

  2. lostlandscape on 07 Sep 2010 at 6:02 pm #

    Loree, thanks for the cor­rec­tion. Yes, even though they’re in the agave fam­ily they really do look like Fur­craea foetida. I’ve fixed my post­ing. I knew I could rely you on all iden­ti­ties of all things spiky and dangerous-looking!

  3. Wendy on 08 Sep 2010 at 6:20 pm #

    wow, what an inter­est­ing dis­play of trees — I love that cone. 3–4 feet?!

    The irony of the oil/tar kills me.

  4. ricki - sprig to twig on 12 Sep 2010 at 6:55 pm #

    When I lived in LA, and then San Diego, I had yet to be bit­ten by the gar­den­ing bug…imagine what I missed! You are now pulling back the cur­tain. Thanks!

  5. Colleen on 16 Sep 2010 at 11:52 am #

    When I think of LA (I don’t even see the palm trees any­more!) I think of first class art–appreciate you shar­ing it with those of us far­ther afield. I miss that now that I’ve moved away; took it for granted when I was younger. I remem­ber the con­tro­versy over the aza­leas and other plants in the getty gar­den after it was installed. I agree, James, that it would be won­der­ful to see one of these top notch pub­lic gar­den spaces fea­ture some of California’s won­der­ful native flora. The good news is–LA con­tin­ues to fund art that com­pels us and thank good­ness for con­tro­ver­sial art and gar­den design!

  6. Arleen Webster/Camissonia's Corner on 19 Sep 2010 at 2:37 pm #

    Pretty amaz­ing. I haven’t been to LACMA in years, so it was nice to see your post about the hap­pen­ings there. The palm trees cer­tainly do add a won­der­ful sculp­tural, almost “pre­his­toric” ele­ment to the grounds. And BP? you’ve got to be kidding!

  7. Town Mouse on 20 Sep 2010 at 6:49 pm #

    Amaz­ing pho­tos! That looks like an inspir­ing gar­den to see. Then again, those pot­ted palms did remind me of the time when I had the palm in my front gar­den removed — know­ing full well that the guy would sell it as “field grown”. Well, removal was free, so I’m not complaining.

  8. Christine on 27 Sep 2010 at 2:13 pm #

    The design looks inter­est­ing, but I have to admit that the pat­tern on the trunks and the cone are what really caught my eye. I agree with you about using more natives in large pub­lic gar­dens. When are folks going to get over roses and lawn, any­way? (Hope­fully I’m not draw­ing anger here in speak­ing my mind!) Plants native to your neck of the woods are espe­cially fas­ci­nat­ing, too!

  9. Barry on 16 Oct 2010 at 5:37 pm #

    The palm trunks in ques­tion with the dia­mond shaped knobs are edi­ble date palms.

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