[ Lost in the Landscape ]

what a good idea!

My neigh­bors catty-corner across the street have been in the throes of a gonzo whole-house remodel. The project is finally near­ing its con­clu­sion, with some of the land­scap­ing and hard­scape ele­ments finally being installed.

Right by the front door is this detail that I thought was drop-dead bril­liant: The tall papyrus rises from behind the half-wall, and your atten­tion focuses on the feath­ery tops of the plants. But then there’s this cutout in the wall, far below the tops of the plants, so that look­ing through you notice the geom­e­try of the stems that have been iso­lated from the rest of the plant. It was like a Cezanne still life or an early cubist paint­ing where mul­ti­ple views of the same object coex­ist in the same plane: the exu­ber­ant tops of the papyrus, and the geo­met­ri­cal upright lines formed by the stems, two sep­a­rate but inter­act­ing views of the same subject.

I really like what the neigh­bors have done with their house, but this was the one thing I liked most of all. When I talked to Jackie and told him how incred­i­bly impressed I was with the detail he looked a lit­tle puz­zled. Turns out the papyrus was just put there for the time being, and that the hole in the wall was going to turn into some sort of low water fea­ture that would only be vis­i­ble from the back side of the wall. My con­cep­tual take on what he was plan­ning was just an acci­dent of cir­cum­stances, and that the fin­ished project would be quite different.

Well, then!

I guess that means I can steal the idea, refine it and call it my own for the next project I do. Why not con­struct a solid wall with cutouts that show you inter­est­ing archi­tec­tural details of the plants on the other side? So many plants have both amaz­ing branch struc­ture and strik­ing foliage. Why not high­light each fea­ture by sep­a­rat­ing the views?

And if you beat me to using this idea, be sure to put me in the credit line. As you can see the idea was mine, all mine…

October 23 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: hardscape • papyrus • walls | 2 Comments »