[ Lost in the Landscape ]

snowflakes and insects

Snowflakes? What does this San Diego guy know about snowflakes?

Maybe a couple things—at least if we’re talking about the cut paper kind.

I’m sure it was an elementary school project at some point, folding sheets of paper, then cutting through the different layers with scissors, and then finally unfolding the paper to reveal an intricate paper-lace snowflake. I thought it was magic the way one nick with the scissors, cutting through multiple layers of paper at once, multiplied into many identical little removals all over the snowflake. And I still kinda think the process is magic.

I was reminded of those paper snowflakes when I saw this gorgeous photo Jenny sent me of a canna leaf that had been munched by some garden beastie. It looked like the leaf was still developing when the bug burrowed a hole from the outside towards the stem. When the leaf unfurled, the insect damage unfurled along with it, creating these uniform, rhythmic little cuts in the leaf.

Pretty artistic insect, no?

November 21 2008 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: cannas • insects • Jenny • snowflakes | 4 Comments »

ooh, scary!

In keeping with my dark purple and black themes of some recent posts (like this one), here are a couple pictures Jenny shared with me of some of her plants. This first one is a bromeliad with incredibly striped, almost reptilian leaves. The pumpkin pot is a fun touch for the our current season.

I’m glad it’s a plant, because if I encountered an animal that looked like this I might start walking the opposite direction. Real fast.

This one, Begonia Black Fang, is a little cuddlier, even literally fuzzy. Dark-colored plants can get lost in the landscaping if you’re not careful, but combined with other interesting plants, like here, they can be great up-close specimens.

Thanks for sharing your pictures, Jenny!

October 22 2008 | Categories: gardening | Tags: Begonia Black Fang • begonias • black • bromeliads • Jenny • pots | 1 Comment »

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 »