Get a New VIEW

That’s right—it’s summer, and, like the weather, the new issue of VIEW, the annual LALH magazine, is hot off the press. In this issue: Learn how a childhood in the mountains of Tennessee helped nurture one of the field’s most passionate native plants proponents, Bob Grese. The lead article spotlights Graceland Cemetery: A Design History, Christopher Vernon’s forthcoming book on the influential Chicago landmark. Thought-provoking context to the Graceland story is provided by “Therapeutic Landscapes: America’s
Nineteenth-Century Rural Cemeteries and Their Legacy” by Reuben M. Rainey. Pamela Hartford reports on the sublime work of the photographer Arthur G. Eldredge; guest commentator Hazel White profiles the Santa Barbara landscape architect Isabelle Greene, who muses on the challenges and delights of designing her own garden; and Robin Karson offers a sneak preview of a new edition of Fletcher Steele’s Design in the Little Garden. Get the new VIEW with your tax-deductible LALH membership. Order individual copies ($15 each) online, or call 413-549-4860.

Oberlander’s Oeuvre Examined

LALH is pleased to announce a new
book-in-development, Activism by Design: Art, Science, and Stewardship in the Landscape Architecture of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander by Nina Antonetti, assistant professor in Landscape Studies at Smith College. “Oberlander has spent more than fifty years breaking down barriers both figuratively and literally,” Antonetti writes. “Since graduating from Harvard, she has cultivated the surprisingly unique practice of working from conception to completion with architects, creating sustainable landscapes with a holistic approach to integrating technology and art; promoting ecology and horticulture within design disciplines; emphasizing social agency in the public realm; and promoting green roof design.” Antonetti’s monograph will track the landscape architect’s development from her childhood in Germany to her her still-active practice in Vancouver, B.C.

Oberlander’s best-known project is Robson Square in Vancouver, a rooftop park covering three blocks. The park is one of North America’s first and largest green roofs, where ornamental horticulture drapes the cantilevered architecture and insulates and collects water for the building. The design includes a variety of landscape experiences and stylistic expressions as it frames views of the Law Courts (designed by the architect Arthur Erickson, with whom Oberlander often collaborated), the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the city beyond.

Moving Ahead with Environmental Design Series

University of Massachusetts Press recently approved a new LALH book series, Critical Perspectives in the History of Environmental Design, edited by Daniel J. Nadenicek, dean of the College of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia. The series is timely, Nadenicek points out, because of the absolute necessity of achieving sustainable living in the future. The new books, he writes, “will foster a
cross-disciplinary dialogue about the relationship between human beings and the environment, influencing the decisions we make and the places we design today.”

Environmental design represents an intersection of many disciplines and professions—including landscape architecture, architecture, urban planning, forestry, regional planning, engineering, ecology, horticulture, historic preservation, geography, and American literature—and so the books will vary widely in topic and perspective. The lead volume is The Native Landscape Reader (forthcoming, spring 2011), an anthology of influential but difficult-to-locate articles from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that helped shape American attitudes about natural gardening, indigenous plants, and landscape preservation. The volume editor is Robert E. Grese, professor at the University of Michigan, who is featured in the 2010 edition of VIEW as this year’s preservation hero.

This is the second of two new LALH series to be approved by University of Massachusetts Press. The first, Designing the American Park, edited by Ethan Carr, associate professor at the University of Virginia, was announced earlier this year. Contact Nadenicek and Carr about submissions to the new series.

LALH  to Exhibit at ASLA EXPO

When the American Society of Landscape Architects holds its annual meeting and EXPO in Washington, D.C., September 10–13, LALH will be there with a display of books and copies of VIEW.  Membership coordinator Jessica Dawson, educational outreach director Jane Roy Brown, and executive director Robin Karson will be available through the weekend to answer questions about LALH, greet old friends, and make new ones. Please stop by and say hello. If you are not a member of LALH, here’s a place to sign up!

Exploring Landscape through Language

In 1806, a Charles Drayton described a conservatory he had visited on an estate near Philadelphia as comprising “a green house & 2 hot houses.” Over the next fifty years, other writers often used the word “conservatory” and “greenhouse” synonymously. Garden writers tried to distinguish the terms, arguing that in a conservatory plants grew in “free soil” beds, and in a greenhouse they were placed in pots. “Conservatory” also came to connote a structure of architectural distinction, while “greenhouse” carried a utilitarian sense.

For scholars, the evolution of such nuances can be crucial in interpreting historical texts, which can be the sole record of vanished landscapes. A new and highly important book, Keywords in American Landscape Design, is a unique resource for such research in American landscape studies. At 724 pages, with 106 color and 881 black-and-white illustrations, Keywords is the most complete published reference on the history of American garden design, a foundational text for all serious libraries of landscape studies, garden design, horticulture, and American cultural studies.

Therese O’Malley, associate dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., wrote this richly illustrated historical dictionary of landscape design vocabulary used in North America from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Over many years, O’Malley, selected one hundred terms that, she explains, “serve as keys to the interest and values in early colonial and American society, specifically in reference to the design of the environment.” This collection of interpretive essays, textual citations, and images provides a strong argument that landscape history is integral to the study of American cultural history.

Glimpses of Lake Forest’s Heyday

In the early twentieth century, Lake Forest, Illinois, was a locus for high-style design. Here, prominent Chicagoans retreated from the city’s sultry heat at country estates designed by the country’s leading architects and landscape architects, including Charles Platt, Warren Manning, and Ferruccio Vitale. In 1926 Vitale capitalized on this mother lode of exemplary houses and landscapes when he and members of the Lake Forest Garden Club chose the community as the base for the Foundation for Architecture and Landscape Architecture. This innovative summer program offered advanced training for graduates in those disciplines at midwestern universities. The Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society is exhibiting selected works by those students in "Nature by Design: Drawings of the Foundation for Architecture and Landscape Architecture, 1926–1935." The show, curated by Laurie Stein, features watercolors, measured drawings, and sketches of Lake Forest and Lake Bluff estates and gardens created more than seventy-five years ago. It runs through December 16.

Preservationists Take a Stand at Civil War Battlefields

At the end of March a U.S. District Court judge sided with the Recent Past Preservation Network in its suit contending that the National Park Service had not followed a required policy in its decision to demolish the modernist Cyclorama Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park. In 1958, the park service commissioned architect Richard Neutra (1892–1970) to design the building as part of its controversial Mission 66 program (1956–1966), which modernized the architecture and other features of the national parks. The recent court ruling obliges park officials to further delay demolition until it completes steps outlined in the National Environmental Policy Act. “The NPS is currently in consultation with the Department of Justice to consider options in this matter,” says Katie Lawhon, management assistant at the Gettysburg park. Meanwhile, in 2008 the park opened an architecturally innocuous visitor center.

In another conflict, the National Park Service is siding with preservationists fighting to protect Wilderness Battlefield, near Fredericksburg, where Walmart has county-approved plans to build a 51-acre mall within the battlefield boundaries and abutting Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. The threat prompted the National Trust to place the battlefield on its 2010 list of “11 Most Endangered Places.” Here, in May 1864, troops led by generals Lee and Grant faced off in a battle that left 24,000 dead and marked a turning point in the Civil War. According to the National Trust, the Walmart compound “would open the floodgates to more large-scale commercial sprawl on other parcels adjoining the National Park.”

Revisit an Old “What’s New”

Can’t remember where to send the check to support the clean-up in Central Park after a storm felled hundreds of trees last August? Want to confirm the closing date of the Taro Otsuka exhibition, but the story has been taken down? Despair not: “What’s New” readers can now access this rich store of information with a swift click to the new “What’s New Archives” pages, where issues dating back to 2008 await.

Summer Recipe from LALH: Dressed-up Stuffed Zucchini

Anyone who has ever planted zucchini has, at some point, found themselves with a bumper crop of this versatile veggie—and a shortage of creative ways to cook it. Purists never tire of brushing slices of it with olive oil, adding a dash of salt and pepper, and throwing them on the grill. But why not dress it up for dinner? This summer dish is light enough to be served on the side, yet intricate enough to stand up as an entrée accompanied by a green salad and rice.

Ingredients:
2 medium sized zucchinis
2 celery ribs
1 small tomato
1 clove fresh garlic
4 oz herbed goat cheese
½ c chopped walnuts
1 c bread crumbs
5 fresh basil leaves, plus enough for garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 450°.
Slice the zucchinis in half, lengthwise, and scoop out the center with a teaspoon or a melon baller to create four canoe-shaped halves. Reserve the scooped-out zucchini in a bowl and set aside. Brush the cut sides with olive oil, season lightly with salt and pepper, and place on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Set aside.

Set a small pan of water on the stove to boil. While waiting, roughly chop the celery ribs and the garlic. When the water boils, drop the tomato in and let it sit for about 30 seconds, or until just blanched enough to peel with ease. Remove from the water and place in a bowl of ice water. When it is cool, peel off the skin and cut away the stem. Set aside. Place the celery, garlic, scooped-out zucchini, four or five fresh basil leaves, and the chopped walnuts in a food processor. Pulse until coarsely combined. Add the tomato and pulse until just combined. Add ¾ c of the bread crumbs and the goat cheese and pulse again until everything is well mixed. Taste and adjust seasoning. Spoon the filling into the zucchini boats and sprinkle with the remaining bread crumbs. Bake at 450° for ten minutes and then reduce to 375° for another thirty minutes or until the zucchini is fork-tender. Garnish with fresh basil.

Photos and recipe by Jessica Dawson.

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