One Man’s Vision Saturday, Nov 26 2011 

Julie's Pond and Landscapes and Projects and Trees acairfearann 20:16

or why we spent the day dropping a sixty foot ash into the pond and then hauling it back out, a task made somewhat fraught by its attempt to swing over into a key laurel bush, jam on the bank, and otherwise hang up.

Why did we take the ash out?  Well, for one it was rooted in the stone wall of the bank; two that it was shading a perfectly lovely black oak; and three…it looked bad.  While the two, much larger, trees (a black cherry and a maple) stood back from the curve of the bank; and the black birch leans far out over the water in a graceful manner; the ash was a perfectly straight pole that broke the curve and stood too close to the cherry disrupting the picture.  It also had a bad top and was thoroughly surplus.  That the long term aim is also for the area to be oak/hickory with a laurel/ilex understory also factored in happily.

Some landscapes aren’t managed by man, parts of the North American north for example, though there a sense of pathos is often created in a piece of artwork (as opposed to the actual experience of being there, when it tends to be an unwanted intrusion) by the careful placement of a man-made structure in the foreground.  Connecticut, however, is much like Europe or Great Britain…man shapes and reshapes the landscape.  Current thought is that even before the colonists, the Native Americans extensively managed the area through the use of fire and hunting patterns. 

Landscape design often deliberately attempts to create something that looks natural, even when it isn’t.  Or that emphasizes certain natural elements and uses man-made elements to draw the eye.  To do this well is fiendishly difficult.  The pond on a lesser scale reflects the same sort of picturesque, shaped landscape that was a signature feature of the movement in the nineteenth century that was best realized in North America under Olmsted’s creations of Central Park, the Boston Fens, Mont-Royal in Montreal and other places.  That it happens that such places can be ecologically as well as aesthetically pleasing makes it even better.  The pond has played host to several groups of migrating wood ducks, teals and mallards, as well as the ever present wood-peckers, the innumberable amphibians, turkeys, deer and many others.  It has healthy , if small, populations of partridge berry, pippiwessa, ilex, laurel, highbush blueberry, three or four fern types, and hopefully will have trilliums, Indian cucumber, native sweet flag and cardinal flower.  By taking the ash out, the dominate feature of that bank (oak/hickory) will hopefully be given emphasis…it is what would primarily occur there anyway, but without any distractions.  The trick is figuring out what counts as a distraction and what is integral, either ecologically or aesthetically.

 

Sightlines Tuesday, Nov 15 2011 

Landscapes and Projects acairfearann 16:37

A house is, ideally, placed in its landscape.  There are a number of aspects to this which can go beyond the straightforward engineering to conform with zoning or health regulations.  For most of us a landscape may be more properly considered as a streetscape where the house’s position is dominated by its relationship to the neighboring structures.  This is can call for some remarkably innovative ideas: creating a cell tower that appears to be a church steeple in an historic district or an ultra modern building in a 17th century street which utilizes elements from the 17th century designs but is emphatically modern.  In the streetscape the lot is generally ornamentation, functioning like the paint and trim to express both individuality and the house’s relationship, or lack of relationship, with its neighbours.  It is absolutely critical to the house; but it is part of the house and is best described as an outside room.   

However, if the lot size is large enough the focus is shifted towards the landscape as an entity.  (It should also occur with the creation of subdivisions, though these are rarely done with an eye to design.)  While it is a rare property that does not pay some attention to its neighbors, either in the form of completely blocking the view or by using them as part of the view, a large landscape is more than an outside ‘room’.  Rather it is character and structure equal to the house in complexity and importance. 

Landscape design is a formidable topic, but one goal of the designer is to balance stopping the eye and encouraging the idea that there is something beyond that would be interesting.  Over time, because landscapes are comprised of things that grow, these views can be obscured.

This change in the landscape can be quite profound, I mentioned in the post on WWE washing windows that the far hills were fields in that photograph.  Today they are trees with a sprinkling of houses, most only visible at night.  The immediate landscape has also changed, the property’s own fields have grown into woods, and in particular, the clear definition of hedgerows, stone walls, and the promise of something beyond the next field has been obscured.  We are slowly working on restoring the hedgerows.   There are two reasons for this work: the first is aesthetic, restoring the concept of a larger visual space that ties the house not only to the far view from the top of the hill, but also to the more intimate view of the pond, stone walls, fields and woods.  The second is environmental: the removal of invasive species and the encouragement of quality young maple, oak, hickory as hedgerow trees and native shrubs, mostly apple, vibrunum, dogwood, sassafras, etc.

It is slow going, mostly done by hand since stonewalls and stock wire do evil things to chainsaws, but we will get there!

 

On investments Saturday, Sep 17 2011 

Landscapes and Trees and Uncategorized acairfearann 12:44

One might argue that an excellent training seminar for investment bankers would be studying trees.  I am currently, and have been for more than a decade, working on a sugar maple grove above Julie’s Pond.  When I started thinning saplings, they were so dense you could not have ridden a horse through the area and all were about an inch in diameter and fifteen to twenty feet in height.  Today, one section is almost thinned as far as I dare (considering the young trees stand beneath 100 foot giants that periodically fall in an uncontrolled fashion).  Those left measure 4-6 inches in diameter and are heading to forty and more feet.  No whippy saplings, but solid trees. 

This has been an exercise in close observation, which tree is growing well and why.  Sometimes, there are hard choices: two quality trees that are simply too close together, you flip a coin and hope.  It has also been a lesson on time and patience.  Had the thinning started twenty years earlier, they would be that much larger; had it not started, they would still be scrawny poles.  What takes a decade in nature, will take a decade.  To try to force the growth would result in poor quality, to have not done the work would also result in poor quality.  In a century, God willing, those skinny saplings will be the giants.

 

Gardening in time Saturday, Sep 3 2011 

gardening and Landscapes acairfearann 17:48

Gardens are generally classified by types of formality (cottage vs parterres), cultural (French, Italian, English), use (vegetable, perennial, cutting) and so forth.  Yet, gardening (as opposed to gardens) divides itself by time.  There is, of course, the relentless seasonal clock.  This yearly cycle’s implacability is both a frustration and comfort.  The seasonal change is often a relief for the garden.  Winter, at least in New England, cleans the garden; fall and spring clean-up is as vital to its health as division, planting or trimming.  It means that the evil looking squash bed will soon be swept away, and maybe next year will be better.  The seasons guarantee a constantly changing landscape, always something new to look at.

But time is also a much larger construct in gardening.  A garden can be a seasonal, decadal or generational construct.  A vegetable garden or cutting garden can be created for a season, from bare earth to bare earth in less than a year.   It doesn’t have to, of course; it can have a permanence in the use of borders or perennial herbs, horseradish, rhubarb, wormwood, thyme, tarragon…so forth.  A perennial garden needs a decade at least, it changes yearly as plants expand or die, but the best results are about five years in on a plan.  The master gardener is one who can continue to plan within the existing garden, they don’t need to start fresh every few years.  But then there is the landscape gardener.  They work with, and must have the patience and vision for, shrubs and trees.  The results of what they plan will usually  not be seen by them, but they know it any way.  Here the master is one who not only can work in the existing structure, but whose plan is pleasing at all stages of its growth.  While a perennial bed can look odd in its spring that lasts but a few weeks, a landscape’s spring lasts for decades, it must always work, even if its ultimate triumph is a century in formation.  Ideally, all gardens (landscapes) should incorporate the three senses of time, from the vivid flash of the impatiens to the oak’s centuries. 

If only!

 

Water, water everywhere! Monday, Aug 15 2011 

Landscapes acairfearann 21:43

It has been raining here, a welcome bit of weather on the whole.  But sustained rain events do tend to illustrate one of the often overlooked points of the landscape, that is to say the shaped environment within which the house sits.  Namely, that it is engineered. 

The house sits on the crest of the hill, and so water would not seem to be an issue, and certainly it is not one in the catastrophic sense that one finds in the river valleys.  Hilltops tend to be somewhat difficult to flood.  However, anyone who spends time in the region’s woods learns that bog, streams, and other damp bits can happily perch on hilltops.  (a stellar example of one such bog will undoubtedly be the subject of posts here)  Therefore, if one wishes to build a house, one is advised to consider what the water wants to do. 

In general modern house lots don’t worry too much about major drainage, generally we have already done unto the water in the area and the wetlands don’t exist.  Or if wetlands do exist, you usually aren’t permitted to build there.  But Esperanza’s lot wasn’t fiddled with before the current house was built, so the original design is still extant.  Basically, it is a two-pronged approach: divert as much as possible: two massive tile drains to the east of the house drain the slighly higher (but wetter!) ground to the north and east. Secondly, accept that the water will be there: the foundation and basement are designed to allow water to flow through the north wall built of loose fieldstone, into open channels running the length of the basement and out the south end.  One of the tile drains, the house’s roof and the basement all drain into a set of cisterns that were previously used for utility water. 

You do have to accept a somewhat soggy basement at times (and yes it Is soggy than it ought to be currently but that is a different topic).  However, if the cisterns were cleaned out, grey water would be readily available.  Sensible that.

 

Plant a Sugar Maple Tuesday, Aug 2 2011 

Landscapes acairfearann 11:45

I write this looking across a July hayfield at the old hedgerows.  We had a good winter, after a year of drought, but last year’s damage is apparent.  Many of the maples are already the olive green of late summer and many show crown die-back. 

The sugar maples planted two centuries ago are dying, by the thousand.  As New England as the stone walls they line, these giants were planted along the roads and walls as multi-purpose trees.  They produced shade, but they also produced maple syrup.  Planting them along the road made accessing the buckets very easy and in southern New England where every inch of land was cleared for agricultural use, devoting an entire hillside to a sugar bush made no economic sense.  The space by the walls and roads, however, was there for the taking.   But unlike the northern sugar bushes these lines were not interplanted with young trees on a fifty year cycle.  Maple syrup was never a major commercial product, and the roadside trees produced more than enough for local consumption. 

Thousands of sugar maples were planted between 1760-1830. These even aged (in general a line was planted all of a piece) stands are stressed by the combination of development, pollution, road paving and widening, and the stress of not being in a forest situation (paradoxically the forest competition means the sugar maple, a forest tree par excellence, is generally better balanced root to crown and so more tolerant of extreme weather fluctuations such as drought when it is in the woods.  Many of the hedgerow maples are quite literally to big for their own good).

We will see the death of these giants, but we could give new giants to our children’s children.  Plant a sugar maple. (if in northeast N. America that is!)

 

Waste lands Sunday, Jul 31 2011 

Landscapes acairfearann 12:30

Waste: from the latin ‘vastus’; meaning barren, abandoned, uncultivated

Technically, road sides are waste lands in the sense that they are abandoned by man; though, paradoxically, no other piece of land is passed by more people.  And yet, in late July there are few things more casually joyous than what can happen to them.  Consider the symphony of orange ditch lilies, white Queen Anne’s lace, smoke-blue chicory, dusky-rose Joe- Pye weed, gold grass underlaid by green, and the trees silver in the wind against the blue sky.   The hand of man lies carelessly and heavily on the roadside, yet beauty is there in the wastelands.

 

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