Suburbia Transformed, One Garden at a Time: Exploring the Aesthetics of Landscape Experience in the Age of Sustainability

A Competition for Built Residential Landscapes

Through a juried competition, Suburbia Transformed, One Garden at a Time will assemble contemporary projects achieving the goal of exploring green technologies within the context of the aesthetics of human landscape experience on small residential sites. The competition, sponsored by the James Rose Center and co-sponsored by ASLANJ, Garden Design Magazine, and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, will result in a traveling exhibition and catalogue. The emphasis is on how emerging sustainable strategies and tactics are used to create human landscape experiences that are beautiful, inspiring, perhaps profound; and which might serve as examples for transforming the suburban residential fabric, one garden at a time.

Outstanding projects will be selected by an international jury of academics and practitioners including:

• Shane Coen, Principal, Coen+Partners, Minneapolis, New York
• Patrick M. Condon, Professor, James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments, University of British Columbia
• Gary R. Hilderbrand, FASLA, FAAR, Principal, Reed Hilderbrand Associates Inc., Watertown, MA
• Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia
• Dean Cardasis, FASLA, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; Principal, Cave Hill Landscape Architects

Entry forms are due April 9, 2010

For detailed information and/or to enter visit
www.jamesrosecenter.org 

The 2010 Damaris Horan Prize: Landscape History Fellowships with the National Trust of England, Wales and Northern Ireland

The Royal Oak Foundation has announced two ten-week residential fellowships based in England. The Damaris Horan Prize, established by The Mudge Foundation and named for Royal Oak's Executive Director from 1987 to 2003, provides training and educational opportunities for individuals with a professional interest in the history, management and conservation of historic landscapes and gardens. These Fellowships will offer unique opportunities to learn from the National Trust's extensive resources and expertise.

Application Deadline

The application deadline is April 9, 2010, and the ten-week Fellowship will take place during the Summer of 2010 at a mutually agreeable period between June and September.    

For more information and an application form, please visit
www.royal-oak.org

Coming Soon from LALH: The Native Landscape Reader

The Native Landscape Reader will offer a trove of hidden historical literature on native plants, nature-based gardens, and conservation. Robert E. Grese, professor of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan, mined little-known publications of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to gather these articles by Jens Jensen, O. C. Simonds, Elsa Rehmann, and other early conservation-minded landscape practitioners. Grese’s other publications include Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens and the introduction to the ASLA Centennial Reprint of Landscape-Gardening (1920) by O. C. Simonds. The book is expected to be out late 2010.

LALH Mounts Exhibition at UMass

The Center for Learning at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is hosting an exhibition­ about the history, purposes, and programs of LALH. Writing the American Landscape: Books from the Library of American Landscape History features titles developed by LALH and published in conjunction with University of Massachusetts Press, as well as specially commissioned photographs by Carol Betsch, managing editor of the Press. The opening reception is Thursday, February 4, 4–6 p.m.; the public is welcome. The exhibition runs through May 20.

Riverview Park Celebrates Centennial

“We put on a nice barbecue, set up a tent, and people showed up,” says Wells Pettibone, reporting on the recent centennial celebration of Riverview Park in Hannibal, Mo. Pettibone, whose ancestor W. B. Pettibone donated the park land overlooking the Mississippi River, has been a preservation advocate for the park, designed in the early twentieth century by landscape architect O. C. Simonds (1855–1931). At the celebration, Pettibone read from a 1926 Chicago Herald Tribune article relating how W. B. Pettibone came to create the park. After losing a golf ball he had been smacking around the scenic farmland, the ancestral Pettibone sat down in a huff. “While I was cooling off, I said to myself, ‘Somebody ought to preserve this [land] and give it to the town,’” he told the Trib reporter. “As I was the only person within earshot, I had to elect myself to do it.”

Maine Olmsted Alliance Finds New Home

“We were noticing that people pay a lot of attention to buildings, but who pays attention to the landscape?” recalls Eleanor “Noni” Ames, reflecting on why she and some history-minded friends co-founded the Maine Olmsted Alliance for Parks and Landscapes, in 1991. Beginning with the first annual lecture (“Fletcher Steele and the Camden Library Theatre, 1929­–1935,” by Robin Karson), the Alliance steadily completed a series of ambitious projects: one of the country’s first statewide historic landscape surveys; a journal; an annual lecture series; and, in 2009, a book, Designing the Maine Landscape by Theresa Mattor and Lucie Teegarden. Alliance activities now continue within the Maine Historical Society in Portland. In a farewell note to members, President Charlton Ames noted that the group’s records, including survey documents, will have a permanent home there. Noni Ames, a new historical society trustee (and former LALH trustee), wants to integrate landscape history into the society’s public programs. “Everybody wins,” she says. “The society is so excited about gaining Alliance members, and we still have the opportunity to get the landscape message out.”

Manning Research Featured in Proceedings

In the introduction to the Proceedings, editor Eric MacDonald writes, “The [LALH] effort is thus fundamentally collaborative, aimed at building relationships among participants who have common interests but diverse professional and disciplinary backgrounds. Bertone-Johnson suggests that such an approach may hold potential for inducing interdisciplinary collaborations and promoting cooperation between professionals and amateurs with respect to other kinds of historic landscape preservation efforts.” The publication is now available online from Clemson University.

Seattle Wraps Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo Anniversary

“The magnificent views of Mt. Rainier and other mountains, of Lake Washington and of Lake Union . . .  will be vividly remembered by most visitors when the best efforts of architects and landscape gardeners have been forgotten,” wrote landscape architect John C. Olmsted, a partner in Olmsted Brothers and designer of the plan for Seattle’s Alaska­–Yukon–Pacific Exposition of 1909, which promoted Seattle as the gateway to Alaska following the Klondike gold rush. Today Olmsted’s Rainier Vista on the University of Washington campus, which hosted the expo, retains its grandeur. “Other plans also shaped the campus, but one of the most significant was the exposition, which provided the structure of its central core,” says Brooks Kolb, ASLA, president of Friends of Seattle Olmsted Parks. Throughout 2009, the group hosted walking tours, symposia, and other events as part of a community-wide effort commemorating the­ expo. Contact Friends@Seattleolmsted.org for copies of the brochure about the historical expo and the centennial.

Department of Art & Whimsy: Pranks at Naumkeag

Vanity Fair magazine’s founding editor, Frank Crowninshield, loved avant garde art, clever writing, and a good joke. As a neighbor and frequent summer guest of Mabel Choate at her Berkshires estate, Naumkeag, he shared hi-jinks with the high-spirited Choate and another frequent visitor, the landscape architect Fletcher Steele, who designed many of the gardens there. One night Crowninshield sneaked into Naumkeag and hid in Choate’s Chinese Temple, disguised as a monk.  When Steele wandered through the garden alone that evening, Crowninshield silently emerged from the temple, scaring Steele out of his wits. Recently Karson received a photo from the Garden Club of America, showing Choate with a man in disguise, complete with Fu Manchu moustache. Was it Steele, the GCA archivist Edie Loening wondered?  “I knew immediately it had to be Crowninshield,” says Karson, who included the story in her book A Genius for Place. She was able to verify the “monk’s” identity with period photographs of the well-known editor.                                                                      

Crossroads (an occasional department for finders and seekers)

A researcher is seeking information about Boston-based architect and garden designer Frank Patterson Smith, who was associated with the firm Warren, Smith & Biscoe (later Warren & Smith) in the early twentieth century. If you can help, please contact muzimmermann@aol.com.

Antiquarian book seller Charles B. Wood III has notified LALH that his January 2010 catalogue will be devoted to garden and landscape subjects.

Let us know if you have a news item. Email jroybrown@lalh.org

Winter Recipe from LALH: Mushroom Pot Pie

Ingredients (makes two pies):
Puff pastry for two pie tops
1 ½ c coarsely chopped baby bellas
½ c coarsely chopped chanterelles
½ c coarsely chopped oyster mushrooms
½ c separated enokitake mushrooms
1 finely chopped leek
1 chopped medium onion
3 minced cloves garlic
2 chopped celery ribs
1 small turnip, cut into 1/2" cubes
½ c fresh grated parmesean cheese
2 tbsps minced fresh sage
1 tbsp  minced fresh oregano
1 tbsp minced fresh thyme
3–4 tbsps unsalted butter
2 tbsps all-purpose flour
½ c light cream
1 c vegetable or mushroom stock
1 tbsp Champagne vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg yolk for wash

Directions:
Melt a tbsp of butter in large sautée pan over medium–high heat. Add the celery, onion, leek, and turnip. Cook until onions are clear. Remove to a bowl. Add another tbsp of butter and add the baby bellas. Once they are lightly browned, add the chanterelles and cook another five min. Add the remaining mushrooms, garlic, sage, thyme, and oregano. Sautée until mushrooms are lightly cooked and the herbs fragrant. Add 1­ to 2 tbsps of butter. After it melts, add the flour and stir until flour begins to cook (approx. two min.). Add the cream gradually, stirring constantly. When mixture begins to thicken, add the vegetable stock a little at a time until all mixed in. Add the cooked celery, leek, onion, and turnip. Add the parmesan and simmer, covered, 20 min. In the last five minutes, add the Champagne vinegar, then salt and pepper to taste.

While mixture is simmering, preheat oven to 430 F. Mix egg yolk with a tbsp of water for egg wash. Spoon mushroom mixture into pot-pie dishes. Cover each with a sheet of puff pastry. Brush pastry with egg wash and bake 15 min. or until pastry is golden brown.

Recipe by Jessica Dawson.

Sign up for our e-newsletter!

Stay connected—sign up below to get a free copy of our quarterly What’s New column in your inbox!