[ Lost in the Landscape ]

robie house planters

On my recent Chicago visit I had the chance to stop by Frank Lloyd Wright’s land­mark 1909–1911 Robie House in the Hyde Park neigh­bor­hood. Unfor­tu­nately the foun­da­tion that runs it was in the mid­dle of a major ren­o­va­tion inside. Even through we were on an archi­tec­tural tour the only way to view the inte­rior on this day was stand out­side and peer inside through the stained glass windows.

Ooh… (Look­ing inside, off the sec­ond story porch into the nearly fin­ished space…)

Uhhh… (The ground floor, still in the throes of renovation…)

Once we got that out of our sys­tem we had to con­cen­trate on the exte­rior of the build­ing and the gar­dens. I could think of worse things to have to do.

A pair of side gates opens up to an auto court with a small gar­den on the side. It was win­ter and the plant­i­ngs weren’t any too spec­tac­u­lar this time of year, but the hard­scape details were worth a close look.

The thin, wide bricks of the house and gar­den walls all fea­ture this neat lit­tle detail: The mor­tar between the courses is the typ­i­cal light mor­tar color, but the hor­i­zon­tal spaces between the bricks uses a red-colored mor­tar. The effect is that you notice hor­i­zon­tal bands and not the indi­vid­ual bricks. The house swoops side­ways towards the hori­zon, and the walls do the same, cel­e­brat­ing the ever-expanding hor­i­zon­tal prairie that makes up the Midwest.

Sev­eral of the cor­ners of the porches fea­ture these styl­ized urns. Instead of the chubby Roman mod­els, Wright has designed them to swoop side­ways just like the house and walls do.

And there are sev­eral of these planters that explode with color in the sum­mer. But now…well, not so green. The story goes that Wright designed these planters with­out drainage–something that comes as no sur­prise from an archi­tect who was obsessed with form over func­tion and noto­ri­ous for cre­at­ing houses with leaky roofs and sus­pended ter­races that sagged under their own weight.

As I reviewed the pho­tos from the Robie House, though, there’s one thing that starts to gnaw on me. Though it doesn’t look huge, it’s still some­thing like 9000 square feet if you count the out­door ter­races. All the out­door spaces seemed squeezed in there. Was this a space-intensive urban use of a small lot? Or was it a hundred-year-old McMan­sion? Even if that, it’s pretty cool as McMan­sions go…

February 28 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape • landscape design • photography • places | Tags: architecture • brick • Chicago • concrete • Frank Lloyd Wright • garden walls • planters • Robie House • walls | 8 Comments »

terrazzo planters

Gar­den pots and planters can be made out of almost any­thing that can stand up to sun and mois­ture. Clay, both glazed and unglazed, has been the main mate­r­ial of choice for nat­ural mate­ri­als, and it can assume all kinds of shapes, sizes and col­ors. Plas­tic wins out in the area of man-made mate­ri­als, com­bin­ing lighter weight, extremely mold-ability and options for all sorts of col­ors, usu­ally com­bined with lower cost.

The three big pots I picked for the new plants on the roof deck are made out of a less unusual mate­r­ial: ter­razzo, a con­crete that’s been ground down so that you can see the pol­ished aggre­gate mixed in with the cement matrix. Being made from con­crete, they’re heavy–more so than low-glazed ceramic. But I really like their sur­faces and the mod­ern pro­files of this line from Viet­nam. Here’s a closeup of their sur­face, con­trasted here against the leaves of Euphor­bia cotini­fo­lia:

Ter­razzo planter detail

Con­crete planters are used com­monly in com­mer­cial sit­u­a­tions because of their extreme stur­di­ness, but this ter­razzo fin­ish­ing tech­nique looks to be fairly uncom­mon. (A web search found lots of out­lets in Aus­tralia, but not the U.S.) But for­tu­nately they’re avail­able here in San Diego at Wal­ter Ander­son Nurs­ery. They’re not super-cheap–maybe dou­ble the cost of similarly-size ceramic pots at home stores, but they’re not ridicu­lous, either.

August 13 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: planters • pots • terrazzo | 3 Comments »

let it rust

Picasso and on occa­sion other artists have been cred­ited with the quote that goes some­thing like, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Left: Gar­den at the Getty Cen­ter, Los Ange­les [ source ]

The gar­den designed by Robert Irwin at the Getty Museum in Los Ange­les has both received raves and been the topic of rants. After my vis­its there I’m torn some­where in between. There are things I like about it, and there are things that seem like missed oppor­tu­ni­ties or inap­pro­pri­ate choices.

One of the things I really like is its use of sheets of steel for retain­ing walls. (You can see it in the fore­ground and middle-ground in this picture.)

Each mate­r­ial that you use in a garden–whether it be wood or stone or steel–has its own per­son­al­ity. I par­tic­u­larly like the warm brown color that that steel ages to, as well as the indus­trial vibe that it brings.

While it prob­a­bly doesn’t rise to the Picasso’s level of theft, using sheet steel for retain­ing walls is an idea I’ve incor­po­rated into my own gar­den. Two sides of the raised bed I put in last fall use the material.

My gar­den­ing bud­get is noth­ing like the Getty Museum’s, so instead of inch-thick mate­r­ial I used 11-gauge sheets (just shy of 1/8 inch thick). Also, since steel is heavy stuff, thin­ner sheets don’t require heavy equip­ment and can be han­dled by two peo­ple. I welded inch-and-a-half angle iron to the top edges, both to give it extra rigid­ity to help hold back the soil and to give my scrawny lit­tle sheets some visual heft.

Over eight months the walls have taken on a warm patina and are almost as alive as the plants in the bed.

I don’t con­sider myself to be mainly swayed by prac­ti­cal­ity over aes­thet­ics. Since steel rusts and degrades over time, using it for a retain­ing wall is prob­a­bly a less durable option than using other mate­ri­als. Still, as far as the longevity of the steel is con­cerned, I’m encour­aged by a scrap that I’ve had out­doors for the last ten years. When I cut into it recently the inte­rior was pris­tine and shiny. Only the outer shell showed any signs of rust. Of course, steel that’s in con­stant con­tact with the ground and moisture–like my gar­den retain­ing wall–will degrade quite a bit faster.

We’ll see whether this is a five-year solu­tion or one that will out­live me.

July 20 2008 | Categories: landscape design • my garden | Tags: J. Paul Getty Museum • planters • raised beds • Robert Irwin • rust • steel | 4 Comments »

steel cube planters, part 2

Below are instruc­tions on con­struct­ing the steel planters I dis­cussed in my last post.

For each planter, you’ll need:

• 5 sheets of 12-guage steel, cut per­fectly square (I used pieces 1-foot square)
• dis­pos­able weld­ing sup­plies: either weld­ing wire or steel electrodes

Tools:

• welder
• 90-degree cor­ner clamps (alu­minum Pony clamps work well)
• the usual weld­ing pro­tec­tion: weld­ing shield, gloves, sturdy shoes, long sleeves and long pants

Assem­bly:

1. Clamp the sides together in a way that the final bot­tom piece will be able to slide into the assem­bly at a slight slant.
2. Tack the pieces together using 3 1-inch beads per cor­ner, mak­ing sure to leave room for the bot­tom piece to fit into the planter with­out run­ning into the welds. Also make sure that two adja­cent sides will have their low­est welds a lit­tle higher up to be able to accom­mo­date the slanted bot­tom piece. (You could also use a slightly under-sized bot­tom panel so you could us it with­out slant­ing it, maybe 12 x 11 1/2 or so, depend­ing on how much drainage you want.)
3. Slide the bot­tom piece in at an angle, tilt­ing it a lit­tle bit extra to not make the fit too tight, leav­ing slight gaps for water to drain.
4. Tack weld the bot­tom in sev­eral locations.

That’s basi­cally it. It’s a good idea to clean off the oils from the mill using a degreaser or strong deter­gent. That step will get the rust started. But if you’re anx­ious to get patina quicker, you can use a weak solu­tion of acid. I used a stop-bath strength dilu­tion of acetic acid from one of my old photo dark­room bot­tles, but I’ve heard that vine­gar (basi­cally acetic acid as well) works just fine as well. Be sure to wear gloves and eye pro­tec­tion, and don’t inhale the nasty fumes! The fin­ish won’t be totally rusty, but it’ll give you a good head start to a nice patina.

A lot of peo­ple swear by weak pool acid (aka muri­atic or hydrochlo­ric acid), but you’re get­ting into ter­ri­tory where the mate­ri­als start to get unnec­es­sar­ily pow­er­ful. You might be in a rush to get more patina faster and think that using strong acid is the way to go. But when the acid gets too strong, it actu­ally removes rust, so stay­ing with some­thing weak and safe is the best way to go. If I haven’t deterred you, though, check out the dis­cus­sion at Met­al­geek for a mod­er­ately safe method for the truly impatient.

One lit­tle final finesse con­cerns the use of insu­la­tion. Plants in pots often suf­fer from roots that have to abide wild tem­per­a­ture swings far beyond what they’d expe­ri­ence in the ground. I’ve always felt that metal con­tain­ers, with their spec­tac­u­lar abil­i­ties to trans­mit heat effec­tively, poten­tially could make for some of the most hos­tile root envi­ron­ments. So I decided to insu­late the sides of the pot that would be fac­ing the most intense sun. This heav­ily canted cube in par­tic­u­lar cried out to me for some pro­tec­tion from the extreme heat of the mid­day rays…and I just hap­pened to have some left­over 1/2 sheet insu­la­tion sit­ting around. So, before I planted the cubes, at least one of the sides got a piece of insu­la­tion to mod­er­ate the worst of the sun’s heat­ing effects. Here’s a peek inside:

All this is a grand exper­i­ment. The insu­la­tion may or may not make a dif­fer­ence. I’m sure the cubes will even­tu­ally rust out, though hope­fully not for ten or more years. In hind­sight, prim­ing and paint­ing the inte­ri­ors might have given the planters a bit more life, but the euphor­bias planted in them will even­tu­ally out­grow their homes any­way.  What in a gar­den is forever?

March 25 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: finishing steel • how-to • planters • rust | 2 Comments »

steel cube planters, part 1

This is the result of one of my week­end projects:

It’s one of four steel cubes that I assem­bled to put in the new raised bed. The sides of the bed are made of sheet steel that’s already weath­ered to a rich, warm, rusty patina, so I wanted some pots to put in it that were of the same material.

John vetoed my first avant-garde con­cep­tual ideas for arrange­ments, arrange­ments that worked with com­pet­ing sys­tems of geo­met­ri­cal hier­ar­chies, one of them based in part on some of the ideas behind Bernard Tschumi’s post­mod­ernist and highly con­cep­tual Parc de la Vil­lette in Paris. But below is one that I finally came up with that makes us both happy. It has some of the geo­met­ri­cal ten­sions that I wanted to work with. At the same time, the arrange­ment of the ele­ments is a lit­tle chaotic and whimsical–to the point that none of them sit flat on the ground–a qual­ity that appealed to John.

Each pot is planted with the iden­ti­cal plant mate­r­ial. Euphor­bia lam­bii is placed in the cen­ter, point­ing as per­fectly upright and away from the earth’s core as I could man­age with­out get­ting out the level, an effect that I’m hop­ing will point out how crookedly each planter is placed. Creep­ing thyme will even­tu­ally pro­tect the top of the slanted top plane of pot­ting mix.

This is an overview of two of the other con­tain­ers in the gar­den space, here in the mid­dle– and back­ground, with part of the new step­ping stone pathway:

If you have basic of weld­ing chops and a sup­plier that will pre-cut pieces fairly accu­rately, you can make them your­self in an after­noon. You could also make sim­i­lar con­tain­ers by screw­ing the steel plate to lit­tle pieces of angle iron. Part 2 of this post pro­vides some basic instruc­tions for the welded ver­sion shown here.

March 24 2008 | Categories: landscape design • my garden | Tags: Bernard Tschumi • Euphorbia lambii • Parc de la Villette • planters | 5 Comments »