Evergreen Hedges and more

Dear Med. Listers,

Thanks very much for the help with my evergreen hedge project. It's moving
along slowly as volunteer projects sometimes go. I'm leaning strongly in
favor of a rosemary hedge - one of the uprights sheared at 4 feet or so. I
think it would work very well.

There has been an interesting discussion on another list in which I
participate - a landscape architecture list. Someone raised the question,
"What is a garden?" I'm including some responses, just to stir everyone up.

Warning: this is long.

Steve french

> 
>> I'll let others describe what a "garden" is, but I have heard "landscaping"
>> described as "the green caulking between buildings".  It may get you a few
>> laughs.
>> 
> 
> or landscaping as "the foundation spinach around buildings"


 Landscape design solves problems. (Sometimes we are accused of inventing
> problems to solve, but that is another issue.) Garden planting is like icing
> on the cake or a painting on the wall. It is decoration. Or it might be a
> kitchen, herb or rose garden with a specific purpose. It is a garden center
> inventory or botanical collection in space.
> 
> Good landscape design will go through the process of inventory, analysis,
> etc. to determine the issues, consider alternative solutions and arrive at
> the most logical and practical design that meets (solves) the needs
> (problems) of the land, client and pocketbook. This is accomplished with a
> variety of materials, tools and abilities at your disposal, such as grading,
> pavements, overhead and underground structures, etc. Unfortunately, most
> small garden design clients do not see the analysis or early part of design,
> they simply see the planting plan as the final product and assume it is
> similar to a garden center inventory in plan view masquerading as a planting
> design.
> 
> Just my 2 cents.




> Here is a dialog I had just last week with some email colleagues in the
> City of Boulder.  It may be a bit too fiery for the general list, but
> perhaps it is something you could use.  We have been dealing with a five
> year drought here in Colorado, which is dry anyway.  So the Boulder City
> Council wants to legislate more "xeriscaping."  So I was commenting on
> it as a landscape architect to city staff members in the planning
> department who are drafting the ordinance.
> 
> [Begin Parts I, II, III]:
> Here is Part I:
> 
> Just a thought, [person's name]:  so many people say "zeroscape" I
> wonder what other words can be used to redirect the jokes and/or the
> general ignorance.  Many people really, genuinely, think that
> "zeroscape" is the right word, even when they think positively about
> what it represents.  I'm sure you are familiar with others who deride
> the concept with their "clever" misuse of the word.
> 
> I don't see that we all need forever to continue to adhere to the
> Denver Water Board's "nifty" invention of this problematic word, when it
> causes so frequent misuses and mistranslations.
> 
> I wonder if we can just say something simple like xeric vegetation,
> since that is what it is really about.  To me "xeriscaping" is just a
> deeper cleave into the word "landscape."   Landscape is obviously not
> about vegetation alone, but everything seen in a view or a place that
> "landscap-ING" already butchers and trivializes.
> 
> "Landscaping" the verb seems acceptably to refer to the act of building
> a landscape.  What I am trying to work around here is the noun
> "landscapING" or "zeroscapING," which is how I hear it most of the time.
> As a noun it seems to encounter trouble, since it is ostensibly
> referring to the whole of a landscape, and yet people seem compelled to
> use it interchangeably for the word "plants," "vegetation," or for those
> inextricably bound to the nomenclature of industrial-production
> nurseries, "plant material," which has its own unfortunate issues.  And
> I won't go down the road of "green" industry, which seems anything but,
> and is one of my favorite oxymorons.
> 
> [unpublished response]
> 
> Here is Part II:
> 
> I like this [second person's name].  But I ponder more.  Stop me before
> I ponderest too much.
> 
> My observations, and I usually keep these to myself - - probably I
> still should, are that "horticulture"  is the science of the culture of
> plants (not the landscape), and "industry," is all about making money
> from plant breeding/sales, and "CSU" is lusting after industry's money
> rather than fawning after sustainability or the landscape.  I also like
> to think of GMO and CSU as interchangeable acronyms, but I mostly am
> humoring myself.
> 
> [CSU = Colorado State University]
> 
> Seriously, I have to say that horticulture is not at all concerned with
> the landscape, it is concerned with plants, as individuals.  I see
> horticulture is like taking care of the animals in a zoo.  Horticulture
> is like plants as pets, cultivated for the finest of reasons, including
> food, but also this year's "latest fashion."
> 
> Whether plants need lots of water or little water, whether compost is
> good for them or not, whether chemicals are good for them or not, they
> are interesting creatures that require acculturation to the place where
> they find themselves now.  So horticulture is important, but it isn't
> interchangeable with "the landscape" or god forbid, "landscaping,"
> unless one is referring to plants but saying the confusion-word
> "landscaping" instead.  Maybe a plant's genes came from that plant right
> over there, that fell as a seed right here (ecological succession), or
> maybe its genes are the outcome of global, industrial veg-o-matic
> processes and it has no idea where it came from or how they got here
> (horticulture).
> 
> I also like the word "gardening" for many of the applications that
> "landscaping" has evolved to fill.  Might there be an avenue there?
> What you also get "gardening" is a nice noun:  garden.  Garden is a nice
> noun because it is a clear term used for eons to describe what
> "landscaping" never quite succeeds at describing.  A garden is a place;
> landscaping is placeless, designless, "green" sauce that is ladled in
> between buildings and streets after those are designed and built.
> 
> Digression:  I sense that "landscaping" evolved from "landscape
> gardening" which arose when the English "landscape gardeners" obtained
> that name from the design philosophy they invented where they integrated
> the design of estate (30 acres plus) gardens with "the landscape" beyond
> the garden wall.  So landscape gardens were not about plants only, but
> about the landscape beyond, celebrating its noteworthy English character
> (also invented, and that is another story).
> 
> To be sustainable in terms of "landscaping," the noun (to use America's
> word), we can learn from the landscape gardeners by thinking of
> borrowing from the surrounding landscape.  But we soon find ourselves
> doing what we don't think of as sustainable here, because we are
> borrowing from too far outside our wall (England) when we are situated
> in a different landscape (Colorado).  But the Colorado landscape isn't
> well suited for heavy urban foot traffic because the arid climate
> produces fragile and sparse vegetation patterns.  We are, though,
> talking about a city, and a city is people, and people are part of the
> sustainability equation, including how they feel, think, and move.  So
> something else is needed, yet our best answer so far is irrigated turf
> or paving.  There isn't much else of which I have any awareness.  So we
> have a little identity crisis here - - and this is what is tickling the
> Council - - because we aren't sure we can "look and act sustainable"
> when we continue to need to use the English Sauce in the absence of
> viable substitutes.
> 
> What the new "Xeriscape" (shoot me!) standards suggest is that there is
> a "Magic Number" (so Moderne, so Industrial) that quantifies how much is
> too much turf and how much is okay.  I suggest that it risks being
> arbitrary since each site and each set of users and each Time those
> decisions are asking to be made, for a given place, are always different
> and not well suited to conforming to arbitrary "standards."   I also
> know that standards are authoritarian in ways that monotonize outcomes.
> I know that other organizations all over the place have developed
> standards, but I like to consider these cautiously, since they may have
> copy-catted them from someone else in order to hurry up and get
> something in their code so their councils can look cool.  So the danger
> is ending up like everyone who copy-catted New York's 1920's zoning
> code, or FHA zoning codes - - the same urban landscape everywhere, by
> code.  I don't know if that is what is needed or not.
> 
> I wonder about LEED-like points that lead to a certification or some
> other goody obtainable through development review.  I don't know how
> that would pertain to a park development, which doesn't need a density
> bonus, or how a road project might comply.  I wonder about outcome
> incentives or performance incentives, like water budgets for sites that
> let the proponent choose how to get there.  If they choose a thirsty
> plant, they have to give up something else.  If they can re-cycle water,
> go for it.  Maybe a site water budget is predicated on some city-wide or
> region-wide measure (a standard!) that is based on a large scale
> analysis of how much water comes into Boulder and how much has to go
> out, and how important each use is to people in between those.  Parks
> are possibly more important than side yards and corporate lawns.
> 
> But then, what is a park...?  I'm working on that, too.
> 
> This to me is all long term stuff, and I know that Council wants
> Action(!) at this point, so take it all with a grain of saltgrass.
> 
> [unpublished response]
> 
> Part III:
> and one more word merchant thing...
> 
> Not that there is anything about this that any of us had anything to do
> with, but what was wrong with "pavement" that we had to invent
> "hardscape?"
> 
> "Footpaths:"  "pedestrian circulation system"  oh, the agony!
> "Naturalistic:"  natural to whom?
> 
> [End of all Parts]
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