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

Paper snowflake

Canna leaf with insect damage

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?

Jenny

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.

Begonia Black Fang

Thanks for sharing your pictures, Jenny!

Succulent Abstrations

Succulents at the Getty Center

Boulders in Getty Center watercourse

Getty Center Central Garden overview

“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!