Landscape Under Glass Glows

Some breaking news from that blogger's best friend, NPR's Andy Carvin...

Conde Nast has just published its list of the seven wonders of the architectural world, and the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery is on it.

If you were around in February, you might have taken refuge with me there, DC's most-see glassed-in garden.

12:30 PM ET | 03-26-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Bloom and Bust

First, the bust. Progress of the side yard project, What Would Eve Do?, would thus far indicate that Eve wouldn't do a damn thing, at least not this week. Except perhaps obsess over the budget, or and whether or not her home was worth putting more money into, in which case I'm definitely channeling her energy.

Now the bloom. I only noticed this first one yesterday when I took out the short-tine rubber rake (my favorite tool) and started scraping off winter's brick-thick layer of leaves. Many of you will recognize this flower immediately, but let's give the more easily amused among us a chance to guess.

The plant in question have dozens of such wonderful dangling double flowers on long fleshy stems. One thing it ain't (hint hint): a bore.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

This lovely plant's complete invisibility in my garden, hiding as it does behind a variegated yellow phormium, is proof enough that it's time to get out the drainage spade and rearrange the perennials. Remind me, somebody, when I replace that beloved, misplaced spade...

And for delicacy #2, I've been watching this upright flower cluster burst open over the last few days. If you love the straight species in this genus as I do, you could i.d. this big-leaved girl from across the block. But that doesn't mean she isn't still a revelation when it comes to flowering shrubs.

I wish I could say I stood outside and waited for just the right raindrops and just the right overcast light, but today everyone's a winner -- particularly if you're a frog or a plant.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

4:32 PM ET | 03-13-2008 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post

Landscape Under Glass

I snuck out of NPR the other day long enough to spend an hour in the glassed garden created by landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson at the site of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.

(Read this Washington Post article if you need the backstory on this just-opened mega-expensive renovation).

A couple of l.a. friends who are Gustafson fans insisted I check it out. And how! There's just about nothing I love more than a hardscape with "walkable" water (e.g., rills), and a sizeable
part of this courtyard's floor is covered in an inviting liquid veneer.

The courtyard covers nearly two-thirds of an acre and is no easy thing to photograph, but here you can see a section of the fluid floor and much talked about undulating roof. The latter, a source of considerable controversy, was designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster.

Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

 

I was particularly relieved that the plantings, liberated from D.C.'s overwrought Z7 cliches, included not an inch of liriope. Instead, Gustafson used black olive trees, several huge ficus, a few species of temperate ferns, and a smattering of my pittosporum friends from Down Under (I might have spec'd Pittosporum 'Silver Sheen' with its silvery leaves and black stems but she didn't ask).

The big picture - anchored by huge marble planters - is a great success. "For all its scale," says Post writer Adrian Higgins, "it has a real tranquility". To be on the safe side, though, I'd get there before or after school.

Continue reading "Landscape Under Glass" »

10:16 AM ET | 02-26-2008 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post