[ Lost in the Landscape ]

lurie garden in february

I’m not sure what I was expect­ing out of Chicago’s Lurie Gar­den in the mid­dle of February.

The core of the gar­den is a space con­cen­trat­ing on peren­ni­als planted by Piet Oudolf, and the win­ter gar­den was defined by what peren­ni­als do in the win­ter. Even though Oudolf has selected plants that main­tain strong pro­files into the win­ter, the gar­den looks like it’s seen bet­ter days. But really, that’s the out­look that the designer brings to the gar­den: Things change. Plants grow, bloom, die back. (Oudolf’s book Design­ing with Plants, after all, even has a chap­ter called “Death.” What feel-good gar­den book would even dare to acknowl­edge such a thing?)

The path through the heart of the gar­den was off-limits—I guess they were wor­ried about peo­ple slip­ping and falling on the frozen walk­ways. Still, you can expe­ri­ence the garden’s perime­ter with the Chicago sky­line behind it. There you see the died back remains of last year’s growth: tall, dark spires of fox­glove rel­a­tives (prob­a­bly Dig­i­talis fer­rug­inea or parv­i­flora); light brown clumps of var­i­ous grasses; del­i­cate, expres­sive cur­tains of bur­net (San­guisorba offi­cianalis alba).

No gar­dener can begin to know every plant on earth, so I’m depend­ing on my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion on the garden’s ter­rific plant list that you can find online and on what I know from Oudolf’s books to be some of his favorite plants. (Actu­ally, the Plant Life of the Lurie Gar­den pages have not only plant lists, but pho­tos and cul­tural tips on most of the plants in the gar­den. It got to be one of the most impres­sive online guides to a garden.)

Although prob­a­bly most famous in the gar­den com­mu­nity for the peren­nial plant­i­ngs, the Lurie Gar­den was actu­ally over­seen by Kathryn Gustafson (with other mem­bers of her firm, Gustafson, Guthrie, Nicholand) with input from artist/set designer Robert Israel. Gustafson con­tributed the over­all land­scape design, while Israel is cred­ited with the “con­cep­tual review,” sig­nalling that this is a gar­den of ideas as much as it is a gar­den of plantings.

The cen­tral gar­den fea­tures two sec­tions, a “light plate” and a “dark plate,” rep­re­sent­ing tec­tonic geo­log­i­cal forces. (Kustafson’s office is in Port­land, Israel is based in Los Ange­les. Both are loca­tions where peo­ple think more about geo­log­i­cal move­ment than they do here in Chicago.) Pro­tect­ing the gar­den on two sides is this giant arma­ture that will mature into a hedge that rep­re­sents Chicago as the city of “broad shoul­ders,” as made famous in Carl Sandburg’s 1916 poem, “Chicago.”

With Oudolf’s plants now retreat­ing into the ground or only defined by ghosts of them­selves, it’s Gustafson’s con­tri­bu­tion that you notice most in the mid­dle of win­ter. The curi­ous struc­ture of dark steel with dark metal cables looks like a zoo pen con­tain­ing tightly planted alter­nat­ing blocks of dif­fer­ent arborvi­tae vari­eties and decid­u­ous horn­beam and Euro­pean beech. One of the decid­u­ous trees is inter­est­ing in that it that holds on to its leaves through the win­ter. As the year pro­gresses, I can see the decid­u­ous plants leaf­ing out at dif­fer­ent times, reduc­ing the con­trast between the ever­greens and the broadleaf trees.

The effect of the caged green­ery is an odd effect, for sure. Any clipped hedge talks about the con­trol of nature, and to put nature in a cage like this, like a botan­i­cal zoo, rein­forces that almost vio­lent act. It’s not a “pretty” effect, and I’m not sure I love it. But it catches my inter­est and rein­forces this as a gar­den of ideas.

In the end I guess my reac­tion to the Lurie Gar­den in Feb­ru­ary is sim­i­lar to what I feel when I hold a dor­mant bulb. I can appre­ci­ate the thing in its cur­rent state, but it’s the hope and knowl­edge of what it can do that really keeps me inter­ested. It’s not really fair to try to give it a fair read in the mid­dle of win­ter. Too bad I won’t be back every cou­ple of months to check on its progress.

If star­ing at died-down peren­ni­als and caged shrub­bery isn’t your cup of java, all you need to do to cross the street to the Art Insti­tute of Chicago. There you’ll find all sorts of amaz­ing art­work cel­e­brat­ing warm, green land­scapes, includ­ing this lily pond by Monet…

…and this Tahit­ian land­scape by Gaughin.

Paint­ings and so much of what humans do is all about per­ma­nence and things not chang­ing. We pur­pose­fully make things that resist change, whether it’s paint that doesn’t fade or Twinkies that will prob­a­bly remain as edi­ble in three decades as they are today. The gar­den across the street cel­e­brates what does change.

Give the gar­den just a few months. The peren­ni­als will be spec­tac­u­lar once spring gets going. And the “hedge” will fill in over the next decade and read more like a hedge than a zoo exhibit.

When you’re vis­it­ing the Lurie Gar­den you’ll be just a few dozen steps from Frank Gehry’s brawny new shell for pops con­certs on a lawn cov­ered by this lat­tice trel­lis structure.

And then there’s this sculp­ture by Anish Kapoor titled “The Cloud Gate”–which the locals have dubbed “the bean.” It’s major fun to walk around its con­cave and con­vex sur­faces that give you this cool, dis­torted reflec­tion of the skyline.

With its con­vex exte­rior and con­cave inte­rior, this is art­work that will make you look fat, a fact that this self-portrait can attest to…

I’m not sure whether it was inten­tional, but the Gehry band­shell and the Kapoor sculp­ture and the shoul­der hedge of the gar­den all fea­ture steel–a mate­r­ial that makes pos­si­ble the sky­line that rises around them. Chicago with­out steel? Unthinkable.

And now, Chicago with­out the Lurie Gar­den, the Gehry band­shell and the Kapoor Cloud Gate? Unthink­able, as well.

February 27 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: Anish Kapoor • architecture • Art Institute of Chicago • Chicago • Frank Gehry • hedges • Lurie Garden • Millennium Park • Piet Oudolf • steel | 5 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 »