Prologue:
Below is the text of the recent lecture I gave in England. At each lecture someone asked me how I could talk about sustainability when I use concrete in my designs because concrete production produces so much Carbon dioxide.
My answer
was that it is a "permanent material" and "what is more
sustainable than something that is permanent". Concrete is the most common
and cost effective hard paving material we have In Arizona; I actually didn't have a clue how much CO2 it produced.
When I
got back to my studio I decided to look at the Carbon dioxide emissions of
concrete and compare it to other paving options and activities to put it into
perspective for me. We found a study by the University of Bath
on the CO2 produced to create different building materials. We also calculated
the CO2 emissions of driving, my flight to England and the
CO2 absorption of a single tree.
I decided
to test the numbers on my house and studio, not only for my concrete paving but
also for the concrete masonry site walls I have added since moving here as well as the
existing ones. The results are as follows:
I have 3 courtyards and a driveway that are poured concrete. These total 3,442 square feet, which equal 38 cubic yards of concrete. The total Carbon dioxide footprint of the concrete hardscape is 3,671 pounds.
Next we
measured all the concrete block walls, benches and structures I have built on
my property. I have 2,358 square ft. of site walls. The total Carbon dioxide
footprint of the concrete block is 9,305 pounds.
Then we
counted all the trees. I have 23 trees I have planted around my home and
studio. These trees will absorb 20,953 pounds in their lifetime.
By our rough calculation, when we totaled it all up the landscape is not only carbon neutral, but the trees will absorb about 16,000 pounds more Carbon dioxide than has been emitted by producing all the concrete I have in my landscape.
By our rough calculation, when we totaled it all up the landscape is not only carbon neutral, but the trees will absorb about 16,000 pounds more Carbon dioxide than has been emitted by producing all the concrete I have in my landscape.
 | |
| Chart with calculations for my home/studio landscape's CO2 |
It
appears that one tree balances out the carbon for 75 square feet of concrete
paving. And that you should have 10 trees to clean up the air polluted each
year by your car. You have to clean up after your dog in public, why not your car too?
The graph
below illustrates these numbers. I think I will analyze CO2 in the projects shown
in my presentations next.
Tree CO2 Reference
Oxford University
Cambridge, England
October, 2012
Cambridge, England
October, 2012
Desert Gardens
I am a
landscape architect by title but I consider myself a garden designer. I’ve
never had much interest in putting plants around buildings.
I am more
interested in creating outdoor living spaces that make a connection between architecture
and nature.
I think of garden design as an art form; it’s
my art. I like to solve problems and to create interesting places that my
clients love to be in and that are grounded to the natural processes of the
site and region.
Gardens are
an enduring concept. They reflect our ideas and beliefs about our relationship
with nature and gardens provide the space to experience this relationship. This
has been true throughout history.
There
seems to be an interest in my work, that’s why I’m here. One reason is where I
work, the Sonoran
Desert.
Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States.
One of the world most beautiful and sensitive environments. It wasn't until the 1950’s that it's boundaries
were set. We typically get between 5-7 inches of rain a year with contrasted nine feet of evaporation. That is the definition of a
desert. The Sonoran desert is about120,000 square miles, approximately the size of Italy. About two-thirds of our desert are in northern Mexico.
Last year
we had 33 days over 110 degrees (43 degrees Celsius). Gardens have to deal with
high heat, low rainfall and blazing bright sunlight.
To me a
garden is a man-made outdoor space that is created for personal enjoyment. I’m not interested in flower gardens or
vegetable gardens. They are ok, but I’m not interested in them. I am more interested in garden's as architecture.
The
minimum requirement for a garden or the basic garden unit is a tree, a wall and
a chair with a little water. To expand the garden, add more trees, walls,
chairs and water.
Two weeks
ago I gave a lecture at the national convention for the American Society of
Landscape Architects. The theme was sustainability. My talk was “How to
Design Beautiful and Award
Winning Gardens!” It was really about how to make your gardens environmentally
significant, then hopefully win awards.
I typically don’t pay much attention to
sustainability advice because I don’t think it applies to me. I invented
sustainability. I read about how my projects were sustainable 20 year ago in
Landscape Architecture magazine.
In the
west landscapes are like terminally ill patients. They
are tethered to IVs and monitors and need
constant attention to keep them alive. If someone pulls the plug, the garden
will die.
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| Kathryn Miller's "Lawns in the Desert" |
The only way I know of to break out this situation is to use native
plants. They have
less of a demand for water and fertilizer, which is much better spent on food crops.
In the west, water guzzling lawns are the biggest culprit, along with air
pollution caused by their continuous maintenance requirements.
My
intern, Lora, was explaining the 3 tenants of sustainability to me: environmental,
social and economic. I told her my definition of sustainability has always
been very simple: when the power or water is shut off your garden should not
die.
As I was
preparing this talk, I came across a few things that I found disturbing that
has made me think instead of just implying sustainability, I should be more
direct.
The first
was a documentary about the plight of the Koala Bears. They
face many critical problems due to their shrinking habitat. The documentary
focused on how development is endangering them by chopping their habitat
into disconnected islands. They survive by eating the leaves of only 5 species of eucalyptus out of
the 735 species. Development and bad planning has put their future in danger.
We see
the ads that say Americans discard enough plastic water bottles a year to wrap around the earth 3 times.
The third
was an article I read about sustainability and resource consumption. It said if the world consumed at the rate
of an American we would need 5 planets to sustain us. If the world consumed at
the rate of a European we would need 3 planets. We need 1.3 planets worth of
resources to support everyone on the planet. I have
been hearing this for a while
What is
the simplest things landscape designers can do to be more sustainable? It’s not
rocket science. Use natives – save resources for food crops.
Beauty isn't enough.
Beauty isn't enough.
In order for a beautiful garden to also be
significant it needs to accommodate the natural environment besides responding to
the client’s needs and conditions.
When
working with plants I had an epiphany and it side tracked my architectural
career. It got me off on a pursuit of working with native plants that lasted
decades. I’ll talk about that later.
Each
of your projects has an opportunity to enhance or diminish the qualities of the site. it's your choice as a designer.
I have developed a very narrow definition of
what is a good landscape design. I separate landscape design into two
categories based on a project’s usefulness to the natural environment: native plants-good, exotic plants-bad. It’s
that simple, It’s good for the planet or its bad. The
following graphic demonstrates this.
How many of you are members of Land8Lounge? Land8Lounge is a good place to see international projects and see what people are thinking about the profession.
After seeing a project and reading old forum discussions on Land8 I’ve decided there is a subgroup of “evil” for artificial plants.
I saw a discussion on the best ways to cool and clean artificial turf. It turns out it takes more water to maintain it than to grow real turf. An album showed how proud a landscape architect was of his ‘freeze dried’ or reconstructed palm trees and his warehouse of plastic plants
Then I looked at this diagram and I said “Oh
Crud”! Where do my projects go? I try
to do the right thing and use native plants but I also like to use
natural stone: granite, travertine, limestone and crushed stone. Do you know
where these come from? Mountains and forests are being demolished somewhere so
we can use “natural stone”.
Since I’m
making this up, I made a separate category for my projects and it’s called “not too bad”
You’re
asking yourself:
How does this rating system relate to winning awards?
When it
comes to winning awards:
“Good” is a shoo-in
“Not too bad” is good
“Bad” is also good
“Evil” never wins – I was just told that last year the Museum of Modern Art had plastic plants on the
roof and it won an ASLA honor award.
Unfortunately,
what this means that environmentally bad projects can win awards if they look
good. So much for being “Stewards of the Environment”.
Historically, in the United States Landscape architects
are very good at creating wonderful places to be in, but not too good at
accommodating nature.
I want my
gardens to say something about the site and its history. I’ve
learned that native plants do this perfectly. They are the timeline of the site. They
represent the “state of the art” of the
evolution of a place. They are a perfect match for the site. The design not
only needs to address the client’s problems but should be of significance to
the regional environment, the street, the profession and your goals. Gardens can take on a bigger issues.
You make your own projects and you should make them interesting.
You make your own projects and you should make them interesting.
I didn’t plan on being a landscape architect. I
just wanted some landscape skills. I thought all architects should also be
landscape architects. The site seemed too important to the architecture that I couldn’t
imagine turning it over to someone else – luckily architects don’t think that
way or we wouldn’t have any work.
I started
out working against the grain by deciding to use native plants in my projects when they were commonly perceived as weeds.
As a result, all my projects have had to be demonstration projects, not only to my clients but the public. I once read that "I had to build my stage before I could act on it."
Observations: Things you probably didn’t learn in
school in somewhat chronological order. I’ll discuss some of them, the others
will be on my blog.
1.
Nothing
in the city was as interesting as the desert, especially the “Wash”. That is where the action is. This was my model for
planting design.
2.
Landscaping
is a situation where you can spend an incredible amount of money and when you are finished you could
still have all the problems you started with. It can be only eyewash. In the desert we need shade and
privacy.
3.
Don’t be
satisfied with your first solution. Rework and refine until it’s perfect. The perfect solution is right in front of you –
you just need to find it.
4.
Here we have plants and insects that have a symbiotic
relationships. Native plants are a window to a parallel universe.
Tell Tarantula Hawk story
Tell Tarantula Hawk story
5.
You make
your own projects.
32nd St. House & P.V. House Lessons:
a.
Attention to detail
b.
An ambivalent client is an opportunity to do what you want
c.
Zoning
Interpretations. This got me started
Arid Zone
Trees Project:
Client just wanted an entrance wall. This project turned out to be a demonstration garden that
addressed re-vegetating farmland back into desert land. It won a national ASLA
honor award. It was a rare commercial project that got published in shelter
magazines, Sunset, Phoenix Home and Garden, Dwell, Architectural Digest and
foreign magazines. I got more mileage out of this than any other project.
6.
Vacant Lot story. What is wrong
with this picture?
I’ve told this story a hundred times. At my
first job in a landscape architecture office we were doing a townhouse project
using a typical palette of Mediterranean plants. (Palms, bougainvillea,
junipers, lawn etc.) and I noticed next door was a remnant desert lot with Palo
Verde and Mesquite
trees, Creosote and Brittle Bush. I asked
my boss why we were using plants that would need constant monitoring to keep
them alive when next door was a palette of plants that were growing on the
rainfall only. My boss said “oh, those are just weeds” I thought this was
curious.
For some
reason that was good enough for the rest of the profession, but not for me. I went
on a quest to learn all the plants on that site and then learn why they weren’t
appreciated and used. This took a little longer than I thought I would because of the
ingrained resistance to native plants.
7.
I started to use native plants to make the transition from a
building to the adjacent natural desert. It seemed like a no-brainer as a technique to
visually claim the adjacent land as part of your project. Classic borrowed
scenery.
8.
Pollinators and Predators. After observing these desert gardens for a
while I discovered that native plants bring along their entourage of characters
to activate the garden. I call them “pollinators and predators”.
I found that if you use the right plants your
garden becomes a habitat and you tap into the food chain. When I discovered this, my gardens started to become interesting
and clients who experienced these desert gardens became advocates for the
desert.
9.
Your projects are all demonstration projects if you want to sell
an idea – mine was native plants. I wanted to show that they had value as
landscape material. Historically native plants were viewed as useless vermin to be
eradicated and anything you did to the desert was an improvement.
10. In the desert sunlight is so strong it needs to be considered as a
building material or it will work against you. It flattens forms and washes out
color.
11. Garden
design is similar to set design. You edit views, make connections and create
spaces.
 |
| Original design park hidden by wall |
12. Use Zoning
loopholes. ‘Stables and sheds’. Know requirements and limitations before you
start. These are a design wild-card, I will show several examples of this.
13. Native
plants connect the project to the region & give your project soul.
20 years
ago I was at a conference where I woman researcher was talking about the public
desires for park amenities. She said that people wanted songbirds more than
they wanted benches and drinking fountains.
The next
speaker was Kerry Dawson from UC Davis. He spoke about his
research comparing native and non-native species on their relevance to the
environment.
He started by saying songbirds eat insects
rather than seeds. If you want songbirds you need insects and if you want
insects you need native plants.
He said 70% of birds feed insects to their young.
Mr. Dawson went on to talk about native vs.
non-native landscapes. He compared the California Live Oak with the Blue Gum
Eucalyptus. The oak had 250 guilds of insects (I had to look up guilds) and 14
species of ants. The Blue
Gum had zero guilds and zero ants. The problem with displacing
native trees with exotic plants is that these exotics are of no use to the
overall biotic community.
Design Process and Tools
25 years
ago I went on a pilgrimage to the Alhambra.
The place was fabulous but it seemed to me that none of the plants were 900 years old. I took 2 rolls of film in the Court of the Lions. A few years
later I was thinking about the garden and I couldn’t remember what the plants
looked like. I had seen photos of the courtyard taken over a 100 year span. My
mind was blank, I could not remember any plants.
I got out
my photos and there were some plants but they were insignificant against the
architecture.
It made me think that plants were incidental to the
garden. The garden needs to stand on its own as a space without plants. I think this is why I like ruins so much.
They imply space and history.
Gardens
are made up of two worlds, the man-made
and the natural world. I try to juxtapose these two worlds. I’ve described my garden design style as “Weeds and Walls” – Nature
and Man.
My
approach to Garden Design is pretty straight forward problem solving. I look at
design as problem solving “with style”. The better you are at
understanding the site problems the more significant and better your designs
will be because they are specifically grounded to the site. Site
problems give you a starting point.
The Arid Zone tree project was my most
difficult project because the design was totally arbitrary. The
site was 400 acres of perfectly flat ground. I needed site problems to get a
grasp on the site. After a few years of struggling with the design I decided
that since the design was to be arbitrary I could do anything I wanted to so I made
it my homage to Barragan and had fun with it.
Garden
design isn’t rocket science. There are only a few elements you need to arrange
on a site to satisfy the client. Once you do that (solve the problems) you have
free time to work on the project to shape it the way you want it.
I’m
basically a set designer and I edit and manipulate elements to control views on
the site. I find new projects have
either a good space or bad space which is based on geometry and views.
Good space – Enhance
it
Bad space –
Overpower it with a new geometry
My
Recession work, small residential projects.
enclosed - city
I am a fanatic about connecting indoor space
with outdoor space
Basic tools I use to build space and connect
the indoors with the outdoors are: the floor plane, wall plane, ceiling plane,
forced perspective, receding colors, axis etc. It seems I try to turn my
projects into walled gardens.
I start looking for opportunities – I’m a ‘site opportunist’ I start by saying what do the neighbors
have that we can use?
I think I can sum up my approach to Garden
Design in 3 lines
1.
Look for
opportunities
2.
Make it
interesting
