February 14, 2007
Phyto Spa's "Mur Vegetal"
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Once we had fallen in love with Patrick Blanc's "Mur Vegetal" in Paris, (citygardenguide 2.5) green architecture here at home seemed especially unadventurous and drab. There was a possibility of a green wall as part of the High Line, and a mockup was built last summer, but according to the people at Field Operations (landscape architects in charge of project), they aren't going to go forward with it. It isn't that there aren't hundreds of greening projects all over the city. Green roofs are the hottest issue in New York horticulture. There are at least two major lectures coming up on the subject, one at the Horticultural Society on February 12th (hsny.org) and an all-day symposium at the New York Botanical Garden on April 13th (nybg.org). Even more to the point, there are loads of actual green roofs either just installed or in the works (some say over 100). The two new buildings at Battery Park come to mind as well as the roof of the Bronx Courthouse and the old Silvercup studio building in Queens. All these roofs are definitely 'A GOOD THING', although we do worry about the world supply of low-growing sedums, which must be under some strain. However, as city dwellers we can't get that excited about this very worthy greening method because--and this might sound a tad selfish--all the good stuff is on the roof. The pedestrian, the basic building block of New York City's urban life, doesn't get to see those roofs. Green roofs might have lots of positives from an environmental viewpoint, but they do nothing for the streetscape or for improving our experience as we walk--and so many of us do--through the city. We don't see any of those uber-green apartment dwellers inviting the public to enjoy their ecologically correct roof gardens any time soon. The beauty of green walls is that it gives the urban wanderer a garden they can see--a real garden--on the slimmest possible footprint--the wall of a building.
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We were rapturously describing the 'Mur Vegetal" to a friend who said that it sounded just like something he had seen on Lexington in Midtown. "There is nothing green on Lexington Avenue", we said confidently. But he was right. The Phyto Spa on Lexington at 58th street commissioned Patrick Blanc to create a large (9000 plants) interior Mur Vegetal. He made a vertical garden on both sides of a wall, one side forms the interior rear wall of the 3rd floor spa, and the other side forms a kind of gorgeous window display, perfectly visible from Lexington Avenue. The staff at the Phyto Spa couldn't be nicer about letting visitors see the wall close up- it's well worth a visit- it might even be worth a hair treatment!
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)
February 05, 2007
Patrick Blanc's "Mur Vegetal"
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Citygardenguide has become obsessed with vertical gardens. We have always appreciated Robert Zion's brilliant vision of '"vertical lawns," as articulated in the iconic Paley Park, with its ivy-hung side walls, but when we saw the green-haired botanist Patrick Blanc's sublime "Mur Vegetal" at the new Musee du Quai Branly in Paris we were blown away. An entire building covered in plants. This takes the concept of "green walls" to a whole new level.
The museum, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, consists of a central structure and three satellite buildings. Blanc, with whom Nouvel had worked at the Fondation Cartier, was commissioned to create the facade of the administration building, which fronts directly on the sidewalk of the Quai Branly and buts up against an elegant row of Haussman-era apartment buildings.
The proportion and scale of the facade and the placement and size of the windows work surprisingly well with its nineteenth-century neighbors, but it is the sheer profusion of amazing plants growing out of the wall that makes this bit of contemporary architecture such a delight. The Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff describes it as "a vertical carpet of exotic plants"(New York Times 6.27.06), which shows that even the Times isn't always right. The fascinating thing about this wall is that the plants are not exotic at all; they are familiar garden favorites, things we buy at local garden centers and plant in our gardens all the time. Sedums and iris and heucheras and periwinkle and tiarella and thalictrum-we could go on and on. They just look different when grown on a wall, they look kind of--exotic. We found the Mur Vegetal a fresh and inspiring way to look at planting.
Blanc, who has finished more than 150 green wall projects over the past 15 years, works mostly in Europe and the Far East. He creates both indoor and outdoor walls. Passionate about plants from childhood, he went to Asia at 19 to study plants. There, in tropical forests, he observed that understory plants seem to cling to rocks and trunks, and live without soil. He created his first wall or "Mur Vegelal" at 25 and has developed a technique to grow plants on vertical surfaces without soil. He exploded onto the garden scene in 1994 when he made a vertical garden at the Festival at Chaumont. Since then he seems to divide his time between studying tropical plants--he is a distinguished scientist at the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique)--and making his fabulous walls. He has a beautiful web site. Check it out.
Link: verticalgardenpatrickblanc
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2006
Red Hook
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CityGardenGuide took a field trip yesterday to Red Hook, one of our favorite New York neighborhoods. No, we didn't go to check out the new Fairway, though we did drop in and do a little shopping (wide aisles, few people and friendly cashiers--it's not really a Fairway experience). We went to visit an outstanding bit of urban landscaping--the Waterfront Garden and Pier 44 Jetty. It is the first part of what will be a 1/2mile public walkway between the Beard Street Warehouse Promenade (beside Fairway) at the foot of Van Brunt Street and Pier 41 at Van Dyke.
The garden is right at the water's edge. A serpentine walk backed by fairly narrow beds culminates in a naturalized clover meadow and a rather bare windswept seating area. The beds are beautifully planted with species that do well in difficult seaside conditions. And they have. At this moment the nepeta, repeated continuously throughout the garden, is a stunning, vibrant blue and bears no resemblance to the washed-out stalwart that most of us grow in our own gardens. The plant palette is blue collar (although there are moments of gentrification), just like the neighborhood. Sturdy plants like goldenrod, willow, sedums, grasses, chokecherries, form an attractive matrix punctuated at the moment by the afore-mentioned nepeta and a delicate bearded iris.
This is a magical place. It helps that the view is wide open to the Statue of Liberty with the beautiful Civil War-era warehouses of Pier 44 in the foreground (the warehouses remind one of the Arsenale in Venice). As to the neighborhood, it has changed a little bit, but for the better. The Fairway building and the Beard Warehouse along with Pier 44 are three of the most beautiful buildings in the city (truly- -no hyperbole), and it is a relief that they are clearly in hands that will take care of them. The rest of the neighborhood seems to have just about the same mix of industrial buildings and small warehouses and row houses as on our last visit a couple of years ago--and that's great too.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2006
Columbus Circle
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Columbus Circle has won its designers, Olin Partners of Philadelphia, an ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) design award. Each year the ASLA chooses thirty or so projects to honor, and there is usually a New York City site somewhere in the mix. Last year Tom Balsley's Capital Plaza was one of the winners.
In its citation of the project the jury said, "Finally, a traffic island worth the effort," and went on to say that Columbus Circle "animates the urban landscape." The jury was reaching. The best thing about Columbus Circle is that it is FINALLY FINISHED, after years of construction and inconvenience. We yearn for more contemporary approaches to landscape design in the city, but this traffic island is considerably less appealing than Herald or Greeley Squares, where the turn of the century Beaux Arts aura has been considerably enhanced by the 34rth Street Partnership's abundant planting.
The newly configured Columbus Circle does not really invite you to bring a book at lunchtime and smell the flowers. The concentric rings of planting, fountain jets, and seating, do provide shelter from the traffic, but they are not enough of a buffer to make the center of the circle an agreeable place to sit. Olin Partners' description of the project refers to it as "a place to pause and refresh in the midst of a busy neighborhood." Perhaps as you struggle across the busy intersection laden with goods from Whole Foods (located in the basement of the AOL Time Warner building across from the circle) it might be a good place to readjust your grocery bags--but anyone with half a brain would trot across the street to Central Park if they really wanted to "pause and refresh." The planting, which is described as "providing concentric rings of beauty," is workmanlike and sensible--but we wouldn't call collars of liriope and cotoneaster "concentric rings of beauty."
Columbus Circle does come alive at night. The slim band of neon light on the exterior of the fountain is very effective as you wiz around the intersection. Lighting was one of the designers' main area of concern and they have done a good job. The lighting is perfectly adequate for safety, but atmospheric enough to make the circle seem glamourous, especially when the panoramic windows of Jazz at Lincoln Center, overlooking the circle, are filled with the silhouettes of Jazz greats in concert.
Link: ASLA
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2005
Leventritt Garden
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We found this story about the Leventritt Garden at Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum at Land+Living (2005-11-10)), and we thought we would pass it along. The firm Reed Hilderbrand has made a refreshing effort to present shrubs and vines for the home gardener in a contemporary manner. It reminded us of another excellent marriage of the contemporary and the traditional at the Bordeaux Botanical Garden that we saw in the exhibition Groundswell (see Citygardenguide 2005-03-08) at MoMA.
These musings lead us consider NYBG and its recently revamped Home Gardening Center (see Citygardenguide 2005-11-04). Even refurbished it looks just as it might have if designed ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. Whether we like it or not, we are living in the 21st century and cultural institutions, even those with a great tradition, need to look forward if they want to remain vital.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2005
NYPL's New Look
Ever since we complained about the neglected state of the flower beds in front of the New York Public Library last summer (Citygardenguide- 7.3.05) we've been wondering when the Library, or the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, which runs the public spaces around the library, was going to do something about it. Well, now we know. The two beds flanking the steps to the library were completely reinstalled last week. According to the MidCity News, issued by the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, the new gardens are an "eye-pleasing combination of flowers, shrubbery and grass that beautifully accents the library's facade." The new design was apparently inspired by the Luxembourg Gardens and the Carnevalet Museum in Paris.
The former scheme was designed by Lynden B. Miller at the time of the reopening of Bryant Park over ten years ago. Maybe there is a shelf life for planting designs in the city, but Citygardenguide wonders whether pompom chrysanthemums in rows are a net improvement on the previous installation. One thing we are sure of--the Luxembourg Gardens it ain't.
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Posted by gardenguidenyc at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2005
No Organic Gardening at the New NYBG Home Gardening Center
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This fall NYBG unveiled its revamped Home Gardening Center- its purpose is to inspire home gardeners with new ideas and techniques, and we recently went up to the Bronx to check it out. We weren't that keen on the old family gardening center, which was a little dusty and featured gardens that compared unfavorably with our own, and we can think of no worse insult. So we were looking forward to the new exhibit.
We were put off--very put off--to find that the entire new garden is sponsored by Scott's and MiracleGro. Now Citygardenguide has nothing against keeping houseplants on life support with chemicals, but we have been brought up to beleive that a real gardener would never stoop to pouring MiracleGro into the ground in an outdoor garden (outdoor pots are a gray area). Not only did we think that run-off from fertilizers was bad for groundwater systems, but that with good gardening practices and plenty of compost you shouldn't need to goose your garden with non-organic fertilizers...and if you felt you really needed a little boost--say you're trying to grow championship dahlias or something--you could find an organic product to do the trick. We were also under the impression that the use of chemicals on lawns is verbotten in the green world. We were stunned that so important a scientific institution as NYBG would accept sponsorship money from Scott's and MiracleGro, and plaster their logos all over the gardens and the handouts. We do understand how hard it is for nonprofit institutions to find funding for this kind of effort, but we wonder if there was any debate at the Garden about accepting this sponsorship.
With that rant out of the way, we have to admit that we really loved one of the new exhibits, the trial garden. Trial gardens allow you to "compare and evaluate" the performance of different plants. This is how professionals judge and compare new introductions, and it's great that home gardeners now have a place to judge for themselves the relative merits of the latest in plant fashions. Each of the 16 beds in the garden is dedicated to a different species. This year's group includes, among others, geraniums, sages, buddleias, hydrangeas and roses.
Citygardenguide was particularly interested in the geranium bed. They trialled a number of blues (always a good color in the garden) including "Brookside" the standard blue, and Rozanne, the new blue introduction which has caused quite a stir in the geranium world. For the record, Rozanne did seem to live up to its billing as a non-stop flowerer. If you find it on sale at a nursery or in a catalog, go for it.
We found ourselves drawn to the rose display, and we were busily writing down names of some of the better-looking cultivars when an awful thought occurred to us. Are these blemish-free roses the result of lavish applications of pesticides and fertilizers? The vibrant, perfectly-formed roses began to take on a sinister air.
Another display we really liked was the bamboo and grass garden set around the Ken Roman Gazebo. There are 50 varieties of grass and bamboo in the exhibit, and it's an excellent way to learn about the
ever more popular world of monocots.
NYBG, like the Conservatory Garden (see below) always features a display of single petal chrysanthemums at this time of year. Usually they are in a long border, but this year the display is part of the Home Gardening Center. It's not as big as it usually is, which is a shame, but these chrysanthemums are so gorgeous it's a pleasure to admire them anywhere.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2005
Battery Bosque Update
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The second phase of The Battery's new master plan was installed last June. Citygardenguide was very excited by this Piet Oudolf design called the Battery Bosque (Citygardenguide 6/14), and we were looking forward to seeing how it matured over the summer. Well, we can only hope that it's in that awkward adolescent phase, because it doesn't look great. The basic design of the Bosque, curving island beds in light gravel, still works well. There's much more light and air since the London Plane trees were limbed up, and the long curving benches are fantastic.
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Sadly, the planting, which was very exciting in plan, hasn't really come together. Oudolf suggested a mouthwatering list of 130 perennials that were supposed to form a complex matrix of plants of different heights and textures. Possibly because of the difficult dry conditions this summer, many of the beds have not filled in. For this idea to work, the planting has got to look lush and rich. It looks sparse and poor. Citygardenguide does not really subscribe to the perfectly groomed philosophy of gardening, we love a little romantic abandon, but the Battery Bosque made us want to wade into the beds and clean-em up. Let's hope that next spring we'll see a grown-up garden that fulfills its promise.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
55 Water Street Plaza
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There is a wonderful surprise in store for visitors to the newly reopened Plaza at 55 Water Street. It's terrific! The steep two story approach from Water street, which has been made to look slightly less forbidding by being broken up with four separate escalators and slightly departing from a traditional grid, gives nothing away. You can't see the top from the bottom, and all the contemporary geometry in the world can't eliminate a certain sterility that clings to 55 Water Street, the city's largest office building. It's not until you emerge from a short passage at the top of the staircase that - Pow! Spread before you is one of those pictures that make you love - love - love New York. A stylized landscape (it's called "Dune") gently rises to a view of the Brooklyn skyline, compact and sturdy and framed by gently waving trees. Walk to the top of the landscape and reach the long boardwalk and the whole panorama of a busy harbor spreads out below. Bustling ferries chug back and forth to the terminal just off to the north and helicopters buzz in and out of the downtown heliport immediately to the south, and across the harbor the brooding industrial landscape of the Brooklyn waterfront provides backdrop. It's not the cliched vista of postcards, but something more intimate and vibrant....a living working city.
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Designed by Rogers Marvel Architects and Ken Smith Landscape Architect, this redo of the dispiriting Plaza at 55 Water Street is the result of a competition sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and the building's owner The Retirement Systems of Alabama (we hope they do something this nice for Alabama!). Commissioned in 2002 when Goldman Sachs decided not to build an office tower on the site, the Plaza reopened last week. The one acre site consists of this "Dune landscape", the boardwalk which leads up to a huge glass paneled cube, and a large artificial turf field. The cube, called the Beacon of Progress, will glow at night and recalls the Titanic Memorial Light that stood for many years on this block atop the Seaman's Church Institute. Below the cube the artificial turf field will be used for events as well as just hanging out.
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The landscape, which is the first thing you see when you get to the top of the stairs or escalators, does evoke that combination of openness and random vegetation that characterizes dunes. The openness is provided by textured concrete panels that are laid on the horizontal and subtly expand the view. The planting islands, which are slightly bermed, are geometric shapes and are reminiscent of the island beds in Philip Johnson' garden at the Museum of Modern Art, as is the rectangular grid. There's lots of seating, and the boardwalk is made of fashionable Brazilian ipe, which imparts a little luxurious texture to the project.
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About the planting: Citygardenguide does not like to quibble, because this is a great addition to the city - but no-one else ever critique's the planting in the city's public spaces- better not to plant grasses, perennials and shrubs in neat rows. Perhaps this rigid layout is intentional, following through on the "stylized" theme, but what it looks like is a lot of frantic workmen stuffing plants into the berms without much supervision. Why is it that planting is always the last and seemingly least important step in installing these projects? It's too bad because nothing ruins a landscape faster than poorly set in or maintained plants. There, we got that off our chests.
The owners are planning to sponsor 12 events a year on the turf field to encourage traffic to the site. But Citygardenguide is sure that this new plaza with or without programming will soon become a downtown favorite.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2005
Canal Park
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This summer a brand-new park has cropped up on Canal Street and the West Side Highway--or what you probably think is a brand-new park--mostly consisting of a generous lawn surrounded with beds of colorful Black-Eyed Susans and Purple Coneflower. Canal Park, two thirds of an acre, has an unusual triangular shape and an unusual history as well. In 1920, when the NY/NJ Bridge and Tunnel Authority started building the Holland Tunnel, they closed a small park on the site to facilitate construction. The park was only supposed to be closed for four years, but somehow four years stretched to over 80 years and the "park" was being used for parking garbage trucks when a community group called the Canal/West Coalition gathered forces to bring back the park. As it turned out, the space was legally still considered a park, and in 2000 a settlement was reached that required the state to rebuild. Thus, our newest park is actually over 85 years old. Originally designed in 1888 as a viewing garden by the famed team of Calvert Vaux and Samuel Parsons Jr., the newly reinstated park (twice the size of the original park) has elements reminiscent of classic, nineteenth-century Beaux Arts style, with its ornamental fencing, cast-iron bollards, and granite curbs. Newly planted with metasequoia and linden trees, bright perennials and a sparkling lawn, the park will provide an excellent respite in a largely industrial neighborhood.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2005
Capitol Plaza Award
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Tom Balsley, whose firm is responsible for two of our favorite public spaces, Gantry Plaza State Park in Queens and Balsley Park on 9th Avenue and 56th street in Manhattan, has just won an ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architecture) award for Capitol Plaza. The plaza- more of a passageway between buildings than an open square-runs between 26th and 27th streets just east of 6th Avenue. Like all of Balsley's best work it's playful and bright. An orange painted corrugated metal wall with large decorative perforations masks the brick wall of the neighboring building. There are four discrete seating areas and lots of tables for eating lunch. Our only reservation is about the planting, which is pretty spotty. There are a few grasses and a lot of bamboo - some of it already dead. Who knows whether that's more of a maintenance problem than a design flaw. At any rate, the plaza is full of people./p>
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2005
Irish Hunger Memorial
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Landscape is context, devoid of context, it can be disconcerting. Which is why the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City is so confusing. It's an exquisite bit of Irish landscape constructed on a sloping plinth at Vesey and North End Avenue. The half acre site which includes rocks from each of Ireland's 32 counties, features a meadow planted with (Irish) native grasses and wild flowers. It is set above a carefully reconstructed cottage, every stone of which was brought from County Mayo. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to appreciate this beautiful Irish landscape in the context of downtown New York, Battery Park City and Hoboken - which is pretty much the view from the Memorial. The site becomes more thought provoking than pleasing. This is probably the point of artist Brian Tolle's piece. It is after all a memorial to "The Great Hunger" when a million and a half Irish died of starvation after the failure of the potato harvest in 1845-52 and millions were forced to emigrate, many to the United States. It also serves as a reminder of the continuing problem of hunger in the world today.
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There are two entrances to the memorial landscape; a path from Vesey Street and a more formal approach through the cottage. Last week the rough stone walls of the cottage were covered with briar rose, the grass smelt sweet in the meadow and the tragedy of leaving this rural paradise for the tenements of New York City was very real.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Fifth Avenue Planters
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There's nothing more annoying than looking at a plant combination you admire, and not knowing the names of the plants, or the varieties used in the arrangement. The 42nd Street Partnership has very considerately mitigated that annoyance by placing discreeet plant labels in their plantings on Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 45th streets. Now, if only the plantings themselves were a bit more adventurous....
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2005
The Battery Bosque
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The second phase of Piet Oudolf's master garden plan for the gardens at The Battery opened to the public yesterday. The Battery Bosque is a complete transformation of the dispiriting grove of plane trees that used to form the gloomy heart of The Battery. The trees have been limbed up bringing light and air into the bosque, and the tall mottled trunks of the plane trees are one of the many pleasing elements in the design.
Gone is the Belgian block paving, replaced by wide gravel paths and gracefully curving island beds edged in very contemporary bands of corten steel. But the real excitement is the planting. A huge palette of unusual plants will create a rich weave of texture under the trees. Instead of the more common flat plane of groundcover, vinca or pachysandra, a complex matrix of different varied shapes and especially heights should provide a different visual effect. We can’t wait to see what it looks like when the plantin grows in.
An excellent feature of The Battery web site is the plant list they provide. Over a hundred and thirty varieties are listed, and many of them you won’t find in your local nursery, things like Seslaria, Sorghastrum nutans, and Zizia aurea. We are planning to take the plant list down to The Battery, for a little Plant ID 101.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)