The lush playgrounds of a software giant

Entrance to one of the numerous dining areas at the Microsoft campus.

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Living in Seattle, there is no escaping the presence of Microsoft, the international software giant familiar to everyone who has ever touched the keys of a computer. Together with the ever-present rain, Kurt Cobain and Starbucks Coffee, Microsoft is an inseparable part of the lives of Seattleites, either directly by paying the bills of its employees and their families, or indirectly by hiving off business opportunities for thousands of subcontractors and by providing a tax base that supports countless public causes. During its lifetime, Microsoft has generated wealth with an immeasurable effect on the city and the region.

High grasses combined with shrubs divide the soccer field from the surrounding office buildings.

Much less known is that the grounds of Microsoft's headquarters are one of the largest landscaped corporate parks in the US. In buildings scattered on 600 acres, over 30.000 employees spend their working hours amidst greenery tended daily by 300 garden workers. Since 1985, when Microsoft moved to Redmond, its goal has been to offer a relaxing environment to its employees who come from all parts of the world. The first buildings of what now forms the enormous "Microsoft campus' were raised amidst cleared forest land, with trails leading between the initial four buildings. As the company grew and the building density increased, preserving the character of the local Pacific Northwest nature still continued to be the most important design principle.

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Pathways around the campus.

Intrigued by the variety and lushness of the huge corporate gardens, I talked to landscape architect Mark Brumbaugh, whose company Brumbaugh & Associates has been responsible for designing the grounds of Microsoft for years. Mark described how the design process has always been connected to the Northwest values: a love for nature and outdoor recreation. In the latest project, a new building area of 43 acres was designed to reflect the four regional habitat landscape types: coast, mountains, forests and meadows, each of them with their own distinct identity. Using local materials and plants suited to each habitat (not all of which are native), they were designed to provide interest during all 12 months of the year at the same time being reasonably easy to maintain.

Benches and chairs around one of the sports fields.

Microsoft's Senior facilities manager Michael Impala generously also took time to meet me, revealing some fascinating details about landscaping on this giant scale. For example, a full-sized soccer field, basketball, bocce and sand volley ball courts and an underground garage with 192.000 square foot green roof and a forest trail for running are all included in the design, all imposing their own requirements for planting and maintenance. Also, security of the employees who use the grounds has to be taken into account. Using hardy native plants is not only a matter of design, but it is also a way to keep the grounds sustainable maintenance- and irrigationwise. Despite its rainy reputation, over 90 percent of the precipitation in Seattle area falls between September and April, making special water-saving computerized irrigation systems necessary during the dry summer months.

Above plantings with forest theme; below entrance through the mountain themed plantings, with locally sourced boulders.

Wandering through the huge grounds of Microsoft, I was impressed both by the variety of detail and by their excellent connection with the surrounding landscape. Despite their scale, they felt at times almost intimate, an effect achieved mainly by skillful selection of vegetation. Huge grasses rustled besides curving paths and meadow like planting areas, with benches and seats scattered along the trail for moments of discussion or reflection of thought. Being a busy Tuesday morning, no-one was using the sports grounds, but many were enjoying their lattes by the dining area with water features providing a pleasant background for discussions.

Detail from the meadow plantings.

Deriving from the long tradition of university campuses in the US, where beautiful landscaping has for long been used to attract and retain students and staff (two wonderful examples of which are the campuses of Stanford and Berkeley), the Microsoft campus is built on a similar theme. Overall, it is an admirable display of the software giant's commitment to provide a great working environment for its employees.

Thank you, Mark and Michael, for taking time to tell about the Microsoft grounds!
I have no commercial interests in Microsoft and/or its products.

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From Dumbarton Oaks to Living Roofs

The living roof of California Academy of Sciences, photographed by me last August.

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Last weekend I got my garden design kick as the energetic Northwest Horticultural Society organized their spring seminar with theme American Garden Design from Dumbarton Oaks to Living Roofs. Despite the glorious, warm day outside the dark auditorium, I happily sat through a full day of knowledgeable presentations, enjoying all wonderful pictures from the large estate gardens of the early 20th century to modern, sustainable designs and energy-saving living roofs.

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A garden by Beatrix Farrand, a lantern slide from the Archive of American gardens. Beatrix also designed the famous gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, now a research centre for garden and landscape history.
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The first presenter, Judith Tankard, is a well-known landscape historian specialized in the Arts and Crafts era together with the garden designing successors to this style in the US. The gardens of this wealthy period with all their architecturally designed garden rooms, evergreen hedges and billowing borders of perennials have almost been idolized to death, so it is easy to feel a bit weary about them. Concentrating on Beatrix Farrand and Ellen Shipman, the two most successful female garden designers of this period in the US, Judith was able to make her subject feel alive again, showing luxuriant gardens on hand-colored lantern slides, many of which came from the Archive of American gardens available for viewing online.

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The Riverside garden in Carmel by Bernard Trainor, picture from www.gardendesign.com.
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After Judith, two contemporary designers with completely different approaches told about their work and their design principles. Craig Bergmann works in traditional style, but despite his sympathetic presentation, I didn't quite warm up to the safe, predictable designs he showed. Bernard Trainor's sustainable designs felt more like something that might make their mark and be remembered from our period of gardening. Bernard, who originally comes from Victoria in Australia, is very sensitive to the context of his designs. He takes clues from the surrounding environment and nature and incorporates them into the gardens he makes. Native plants, used whenever possible, are complemented with carefully chosen exotics and clean, architectural forms that are built using natural materials. The results were a pleasure to my eyes. His designs felt completely contemporary and despite his many years in England and the US, still somehow very Australian. For some years ago, I lived in the area Bernard comes from, and his designs reminded me of some of the most beautiful gardens there, like Fiona Brockhoff's Karkalla and Jane Burke's Offshore on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne. The sustainability issues have for some time been the core of modern Australian gardening, which has led to some beautiful results. I have to admit that after my years in Melbourne, I am quite biased and love most things Australian, even the accent in which Bernard delivered his presentation...

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The greatest habitat for native plants within the San Francisco area... according to Paul Kephart. The grey gravel lines contain and cover the drainage system.

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The last presentation was by Paul Kephart, who told about living architecture like vegetative roofs. Paul has for long researched the natural habitats of California, and applies now his knowledge as part of the cutting edge, ecological architecture of today. I was most impressed by Paul's perseverance in researching the best combinations of plants for every site, and then measuring the results, sitting for hours and counting the butterflies and birds that are attracted by their new urban habitats. The living roof of the Californian Academy of Sciences was one of the projects he showed, and when I saw it last August, I had no idea about the amount of research, preparation and work that went into that undulating, elegant living roof. I highly recommend checking out the project pictures on Paul's website showing the thousands of ecological "biotrays" with plants being assembled on the roof! What a living puzzle.

Gardens at the Getty Center

More Californian, hazy blue skies... Another amazing place I visited the previous week was the Getty Center, an enormous art center situated high up on a hilltop overlooking Beverly Hills and the immense metropolitan area of Los Angeles. The effect of seeing the center from below is a reversed version of my picture above: a streamlined, cream-colored fortress looming high above the busy everyday life of the congested, cosmopolitan city.

The Getty Center was designed in the '90s by architect Richard Meier and built of steel, glass and countless tons of travertine, shipped from Bagni di Tivoli in Italy. Visitors arrive to the center with a sleek, modern tram, which Meier designed to give them a feeling of 'being elevated out of their day-to-day experience'; this I completely agree with. In back of my head, a small voice whispered 'only in America...' as I entered this huge bastion of high culture and art, that was built with money earned from oil and with a budget that probably exceeded the annual GNP of any of the Scandinavian countries.

The Getty Center is a monumental place with superb collections of Western art, ranging from old manuscripts, sculptures, paintings and decorative arts to modern art, including photography. Many of the sculptures - Miros, Moores, Magrittes, Maillols... - are displayed outdoors, forming incredible focal points against the magnificent scenery. I was briefly reminded of the lovely Foundation Maeght on a hilltop in Saint Paul de Vence in southern France, as so many of the works are made by same artists, but a comparison is impossible. The Maeght Foundation was, despite the many visitors, a personal experience on a intimate scale, while the size and extent of the Getty Center and its collections make visiting it everything but intimate; still, it's a truly magnificent place in its own way.

The Central Garden is the largest garden area, designed by artist Robert Irwin. He once called it 'a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art', and it felt like the hybrid he wanted it to be. Meandering down from the upper level, a zigzag path followed a boulder-filled stream surrounded by London plane trees, reminiscent of a natural ravine. Here, Irwin concentrated on the experience of sound, provided by water running down the stream, and texture, provided by plants that he organized 'according to the complexity of their leaves'. Unfortunately, the stream remained dry during my visit, but I found the contrast between the sleek path and the rough boulders strong and attractive. The plantings were well-composed and contemporary, the plants had attractive forms and colors, even if I didn't quite catch anything really special in the leaf combinations.

The zigzagging path and the stream run down to a circular maze of Kurume azaleas planted in rusty steel containers in the water. It was coming to full bloom; a eye-catching blaze of colour, that felt almost aggressive amongst the otherwise restricted color scheme. So called 'specialty gardens' encircled the central pool with azaleas; looking at them, I caught myself thinking 'Oh no, not a kitchen garden here', as 'cottagey' as they were in their expression (the second picture above, on the half way level from the pool up). Irwin meant them to provide scale and intimacy, but somehow I just thought that they felt out of place with their small scale, completely dwarfed by their surroundings. Instead, I found the sculptural, rusted iron bar 'mushrooms' (above), with bougainvilleas climbing up them, in perfect scale with their environment, providing rest in well-needed shade in the white, Californian sun.

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On the south side of the Center, several staircases with viewing platforms extended out from the building. A roof terrace planted with cacti made a great focal point in front of the boundless view; I thought that they mirrored the rounded forms of the leafy suburbs, suddenly changing into the spiky, high specimens, like the skyscrapers in the distant horizon. Gliding down to the garage in the silent tram, I was uncertain if I could ever get used to this kind of grandeur; like the great chateaus and museums of Europe, the Getty Center seemed like a place best enjoyed in small portions, carefully dealt out over convenient periods of time.

Museum Insel Hombroich

Orangery, a sculpture by Erwin Heerich, 1983.

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Wandering through the grounds of Museum Insel Hombroich is a strangely quiet but yet strong experience. All parts of this unusual museum are art: the landscape and pathways are carefully designed to offer a meditative experience; the pavilions scattered in the landscape are giant, minimalistic sculptures in themselves; and then the amazing collection of artworks, carefully exhibited inside the pavilions.

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Inside the orangery, sculptures in direct connection with the surrounding landscape.

Museum Insel Hombroich had its start in 1982 when real estate broker Karl Heinrich Muller purchased the property by the Erft River near Dusseldorf to display his extensive collection of art. Despite its name, Insel Hombroich is not a true island but an enclosure, where the busy life of the surrounding metropolitan Dusseldorf seems to disappear far away behind the surrounding tall greenery. The landscape is a naturalistic combination of wetlands, meadows and wooded areas, sensitively designed by landscape architect Bernhard Korte. Wandering through it, the visitor passes through fifteen pavilions, most of them by sculptor Erwin Heerich. Built of recycled, rough bricks, steel and glass, these minimalist buildings have a cloister like feeling. Some of them contain artworks, some are empty, functioning themselves as huge sculptures to be experienced both from outside and inside.

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Inside of Turm, by Erwin Heerich, 1989.

After entering Museum Insel Hombroich, there are no guards or attendants. The works of art are shown without any artificial light, so the experience of them changes depending on the time of day and the season of the visit. The scope and quality of the collection is amazing: there is ethnic art from Africa, Polynesia, Mexico and East Asia, and then works by Western artists, from the traditional to the ultra-contemporary. Rembrandt, Matisse and Cezanne, Schwitters, Arp and Calder are just few of the artists on display. There are no signs or nametags around, and the visitors are left alone with the artworks, taking them in without any explanations. An eccentric but effective choice, and a great contrast to the information overload confronting visitors in most museums today. The cloister like atmosphere continues in the museum restaurant; nothing there can be bought with money, all is included in the entrance fee. The choices are minimalistic. When my sister and I visited (in the mid-90s), it was late afternoon and the only things left were whole, red onions, some dark rye bread and cold, hard cooked eggs; not a feast directly. But despite having walked through the extensive grounds, no food was needed: we felt completely satisfied, filled up by the tranquil and meditative experience of the art and the landscape of Insel Hombroich.

The pavilions and art are surrounded with gently undulating meadows and woods.

I could not find my own paper pictures from Hombroich from the mid 90's, so I borrowed some from the Museum Insel Hombroich. Special thanks to Hanna for taking me to this unusual and memorable place!

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A book by Gunnar Martinsson, a poetic modernist

If I would have to choose the most beautiful garden book in my library, Gunnar Martinsson's En bok om trädgårdar (A book about gardens) would be up there as a candidate for the first place.
I've always been seduced by the line in art (just think of Japanese or Chinese calligraphy, scroll paintings and old copperplate engravings, and you get the idea), so this book with its simple and graceful but yet powerful illustrations is an absolutely feast for my eyes. It was first published in in Sweden in 1957, and it is a wonderful testament for some of the finest achievements in modernist garden design of that time in Scandinavia.

Gunnar Martinsson was 33 years old when his book came out and had the year before established his own landscape architecture business. During his studies of both landscape architecture and art, and by training at different practices in Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, Martinsson had absorbed the international modernist thinking of that time. The outcome is well visible in his designs and drawings; they are highly linear, often relying on basic geometric forms, always designed with functionality in focus. His use of materials is discriminating, limited to the minimal and most practical. But despite all this, his designs are anything but austere and dreary: their expression is truly modern, completely timeless and highly poetic, mainly because of his skillful use of plants against the clean, simplified structures of the gardens. Martinsson's style comes out very well in his drawings in this book.

Of mid-20th century landscape architects, my associations go to Christopher Tunnard, whose article series (and later book, 1938) Gardens in the Modern Landscape had a great influence in the view of landscape architecture, rethinking the modern garden as a social, aesthetic and rational milieu for rest and recreation; and Thomas Dolliver Church, who in Gardens are for people (1955) outlined his four principles for design process as unity (of both house and garden), function, simplicity (both economic and aesthetic), and scale (a pleasant relation of parts to one another). Even if Martinsson was 20 years younger than Church and 10 years younger than Tunnard, they where clearly kindred souls in their principles for design. In Scandinavia and Sweden in special, Martinsson is one of the great landscape designers of the 20th century with an enormous influence on the younger generations. Looking at Chelsea Flower Show gold winner Ulf Nordfjell's designs tells directly that he is a child of the same spirit as Martinsson, combining clean lines and strong forms with sensitive, graceful plantings in the cool, contemporary style of today.

As a garden and gardening book, En bok om trädgårdar is very clear and instructive. It advises on choosing the land for the garden and goes through the functions and principles of design to be considered. There are detailed instructions for the choice of materials materials and how to build the various elements of garden, as steps, walls, water features, pergolas and so on. For those who think the modernist gardens consist only of lawns, there is a pleasant surprise: Martinsson includes ten short chapters about plants for different purposes and situations, all illustrated with beautiful, simple but informative drawings, like the one above. In 1955, when En bok om trädgårdar came out, it was chosen as one of the most beautiful books of that year in Sweden. Now, over a half century later, I think this small, black and white book could earn a place as one of the most beautiful garden books of the whole century, despite all the fancy coffee table books that have come out since then. The simple line is sometimes the most powerful tool of all.

Gunnar Martinsson: En bok om trädgårdar. Tomtval, idéritningar, trädgårdsdetaljer. Albert Bonniers förlag, Stockholm, 1957. Unfortunately, the scanned pictures above do not show the crisp quality of the drawings in the book.

Quote of the Day

The enjoyment of beauty is dependent on, and in ratio with, the moral excellence of the individual.

- The Crayon, New York's leading art magazine of the 1850's -

Don't you just love the definitive certainty of a connection between moral and beauty in the quote above? At the time when The Crayon wrote this, most writing about art was quite evangelical, full of conviction of that the arts could change the moral dimension of life. In America, the wilderness was seen as a prototype of Nature, the place where the designs of God could be seen in their pure and unedited stage. The vast, wild landscape and nature, that was being discovered during this period especially in the far West, became a symbol for America in art, and lead to numerous paintings depicting the American landscape, often in an idealized form.

The art of landscape gardening followed the same paths of thought. Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-52), one of the most significant voices in the area during 19th century, writes in A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening from 1841 that "Although music, poetry, and painting, sister fine arts, have in all enlightened countries sooner arrived at perfection than Landscape Gardening, yet the latter offers to the cultivated mind in its more perfect examples, in a considerable degree a union of these sources of enjoyment...". Jackson Downing explains the two 'distinct modes' of landscape gardening art as the 'Ancient, Formal or Geometric Style', with regular forms and right lines, and the 'Modern, Natural or Irregular Style' with varied forms and flowing lines. He goes on to explain how "Every one, thought possessed of the least possible portion of taste, readily appreciates the cost and labour incurred in the first case, and bestows his admiration accordingly; but we must infer the presence of a cultivated and refined mind, to realize and enjoy the more exquisite beauty of natural forms". Which could be translated that the more moral excellence and taste the onlooker has, the more he or she enjoys the purest form of landscape architecture, which according to Jackson Downing is the 'Modern, Natural or Irregular Style'.

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Jackson Downing continues to explain the reason for the change of taste (a favourite concept during of the first half of the 18th century) from the Formal to the Natural Style: "The increased admiration of landscape painting, poetry, and other fine arts, by imbuing many minds with a love of beautiful and picturesque nature, also tended to create a change in taste. Gradually, men of refined sensibilities perceived that besides mere beauty of form, natural objects have another and much higher kind of beauty - namely, the beauty of expression." And he ends his essay with the conclusion that "A natural group of trees, an accidental pond of water, or some equally simple object, may form a study more convincing to the mind of a true admirer of natural beauty, than the most carefully drawn plan, or the most elaborately written description". Of course, Jackson Downing's text follows similar developments and writings in Europe. It is interesting, though, that something of the "moral supremacy" of the Informal or 'Natural' style that Jackson Downing's writes about, can still be felt when reading about and visiting gardens of today, especially here in the United States (and I am not talking about sustainability or ecological issues here).

Coming back to the original quote: considering all the money and time we spend on all things of 'beauty' like art, books, films, magazines, most of us should be creatures of a great moral excellence, if that predication would have been true. Sadly, it does not seem to be so.

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On the picture: A Tricyrtis hirta, a beautiful member of the lily family from the Himalayas. I grew it in my garden in Melbourne, Australia, and still get a bit nostalgic when I see it. I took this photo in a wonderful, private garden that Daniel Mount showed me for a couple of weeks ago; he has designed parts of the large garden and is the head gardener for it.

The Californian Academy of Sciences

I love art and sciences, but sometimes I feel a bit wary about museums, these human-built environments made for people to entertain (or maybe infotain?) themselves, competing with each other in spectacular shows and exhibitions. Or maybe it is just that I have been spending the last year a bit in a “tourist mode”, scanning through all that Seattle and other cities on our trip lists have to offer. Anyway, there are both better and definitely many worse ways to spend ones time...

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A glass globe inside the building, holding a complete Amazonian rainforest ecosystem; you can walk around four stories inside of the globe, researching the ecosystem from the fish below to the canopy above, all complete with living butterflies and birds).

Despite my pondering, I insisted in having the Californian Academy of Sciences located in the Golden Gate Park on our itinerary to San Francisco and I don’t regret this tiniest little bit. It opened in late 2008 and it really is a spectacular place for both young and old; an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum and research institution, all housed in a completely sustainable, high tech building encasing the old Academy building. It was designed by Architect Renzo Piano, who also draw the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, that famous “guts on the outside” building so avantgarde on its time. In the Academy of Sciences building, the “guts” are actually inside but outside at the same time, just look at the picture above with the glass globe to understand what I mean. K

Totally in tune with the times, the Academy of Sciences building is one of the biggest public LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum buildings, and has been reported and published by the press accordingly. The beautifully undulating roof of 2.5 acres with its rounded portholes did remind me of Teletubbies (being a mother of two children in that generation…), or maybe even of some kind of future space buildings. Looking at the over 1.7 million plants gently swaying in the wind, it felt like promise of better things coming, a time when commercial, public and private buildings will be better equipped for helping to save the planet.

The Parker-Ferson Residence revisited

Isn't it amazing to see how a residential area changes in just one hundred years?

The black and white picture is from 1913, showing the Parker-Ferson residence on the right. It is a large Neoclassical Revival house built 1909, just South from the Volunteer Park Water Tower in Capitol Hill. I took the second one yesterday, between the security bars at the top of the Water Tower. It is interesting to see how this beautifully green area with wonderful old trees was so bare just a hundred years ago; the temperate climate of Pacific Northwest really does to amazing things with plants here. Just look at the Douglas fir saplings at the bottom of the first, old picture: it is one of them, now almost hiding the large house from sight.

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First picture from Classic Houses of Seattle - High Style to Vernacular by Caroline T. Swolpe (2005), from Museum of History and Industry, Pemco Webster and Stevens Collection. Note the horse looking at the house in the lower right corner - compared with all the cars in the second...

Nordic touch at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show

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Yesterday, I was thrilled to notice that Ulf Nordfjell, one of the most celebrated Swedish Landscape Architects, is giving two seminars at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle on February 18-22, 2009. I just felt like a "bit of home" will be coming here, as even if I do not know Ulf personally, I have followed his career closely for many years and visited several gardens designed by him. Some of these are private gardens located near my home in Saltsjöbaden close to Stockholm, some show gardens or public gardens.
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For the international audience, Ulf is probably best know for his gold award winning "A Tribute to Linnaeus" show garden at Chelsea Flower Show in 2007. This garden explored the legacy of the great Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, and interpreted it in modern terms. Many of the references to Linné (Linnaeus before he got knighted and took the name von Linné) were very subtle, mere hints included in the modern and clean design. In general, Ulf's design style could be called "poetic modern", with influences from both the Swedish nature and landscape to classic Italian gardens. His planting schemes, always thoughtfully expressed within the architectural limits, are clearly related not only to the traditional Swedish meadows, but also to the new perennial movement, with swathes of grasses and perennials planted in interlocking groups and patterns. Oehme, van Sweden and Piet Oudolf come to my mind if I need to describe Ulf's plant schemes to people here. Obviously the international audience is going soon to hear more about Ulf, as he is doing a new show garden at Chelsea Flower Show 2009, this time for The Daily Telegraph.

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Ulf's seminars in Seattle are held on Wednesday, February 18th at 11:30 AM (Twelve gardens - designing gardens and public parks) and on Thursday, February 19th at 10:00 AM (The Garden Society of Gothenburg - spectacular Swedish show gardens). Both in the Rainier Room.

For those who are interested in a close look at Ulf's work, see his book called 12 Trädgårdar av Ulf Nordfjell (12 Gardens by U. N., 2008) with beautiful photos by Jerry Harpur. Check also out Skogens trädgårdar, a display garden by Ulf at Wij Trädgårdar in Ockelbo in Sweden.
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I took all pictures above at the Chelsea Flower Show 2007 - the quality is not quite there, as it was difficult to take photos jostling between hundreds of other show visitors.

Gas Works Park in Seattle

An update: On January 2, 2013, Seattle’s Gas Works Park, a significant example of Richard Haag’s innovative landscape architecture, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. For more information, see The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

A tiny note in my favourite garden magazine, Gardens Illustrated, inspired me to seek out Gas Works Park in the North side of Lake Union, near Seattle city centre. I had heard about this park earlier, as it is a very popular place for 4th of July celebrations, kite flying and other summer activities, but I had somehow never got to this side of town.

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Gas Works Park has a hundred year old history connected to the industrial evolution of Seattle. Dating from the first decade of the 20th century, this plant manufactured illuminating gas made from coal, and later also city-gas used for cooking, refrigeration, and heating homes and water. It also had equipment for producing “Gasco charcoal briquettes”, toluene, solvent naphtha, sulphur, xylene and resin tar; products that now are strongly associated with soil and land contamination everywhere in the world. Production of city gas at The Seattle Gas Company’s production plant ended in 1956 when Seattle converted to natural gas.

The former exhauster-compressor building, now a children's play barn, features a maze of brightly painted machinery. Unfortunately, no children were around, just some homeless people, sleeping by a fire on the pick-nick area.

The site of Gas Works Park, a 20 acre point on Lake Union, was acquired by the city of Seattle in 1962. The park was designed by Richard Haag, a prominent Seattle landscape architect also known for his work at the Bloedel Reserve. A massive soil cleaning effort was needed to create the park, and it was opened to the public in 1975. This act finally fulfilled the vision of the Olmsted Brothers, who already in 1903 recommended that “…the point of land between the northeast and northwest arms of Lake Union and the railroad should be secured as a local park, because of its advantages for commanding views over the lake and for boating, and for a playground.” What the Olmsted Brothers could not have imagined is the long road of development that lead to the final result.

The sundial at the top of the mound was created by two local artists, Chuck Greening and Kim Lazare. The viewer’s shadow tells the time of day and the season - an optimistic feature for a park in Seattle...

The Gas Works Park with its structures tell a lot about our attitudes towards the nature and its resources during the last century; how we went from seeing them as something to exploit and abuse, to appreciating the nature as the basis of sustainable life. Also, it is an important part of the history of how we build our parks; a development that has gone from beautifying the nature through control and planning, to seeing the nature as valuable in itself; and now to considering even the man-made and industrial (an opposite to the traditional meaning of parks) as worth of our attention and preservation.

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The remaining Gas Works buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places, and the park is also a Seattle City Landmark.

 

A later update: I just read in the Seattle Times that the Gas Works Park is one of the most popular parks for weddings in Seattle, and that already now in January, many weekends are already fully booked. Sculptural, monumental, impressive - all words that I would connect with this park, but romantic? Not in my eyes... Avant-garde? Yes, and I would love to see a wedding here. Another small detail; I just found Katie Campbell's book "Icons of Twentieth Century Landscape Design" (2006), where she takes up the Gas Works Park as one of the 29 landscapes that have dramatically changed the way we look at designed outdoor spaces. Very interesting, I really need to visit this park again when the weather warms up.

A fine, free expression of democracy

A fenceless front garden from early 20th century in Yarrow Point, near Seattle.

I have always considered the fenceless and open front gardens very "American", if such expression can be used in this huge and diverse country. But first now, after reading an interesting new book From Yard to Garden, The Domestication of America's Home Grounds, by Christopher Grampp (2008), did I understand what an important part the open front garden has played in the garden history here.

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In his book, Grampp gives a detailed history of how the American gardens developed from agricultural spaces devoted to family sustenance, via urban utility yards supporting basic domestic operations, into outdoor family rooms used mainly for leisure activities. The fence forms a part of this development; as the gardens no longer housed animals that needed to be kept within it, the fences lost their function. And as the time went by, the fences became neglected. They were then seen as a reminder of the past, a symbol for something outdated and thus less desirable.

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Fenceless front garden in Clyde Hill, Bellevue, near Seattle.

It is interesting to read in Grampp's book about how the fenceless front garden slowly became a symbol for the whole American lifestyle and democracy. In 1913, J.H. Prost, who was the Chicago Superintendent for Parks, wrote that "Unsightly and vine-covered fences or clipped hedges planted on the property line to divide the neighbor's yard are an expression of poor and selfish taste." Landscape architect Frank Waugh, went further in the 1930's as he wrote:

" I am glad that it is neither necessary nor fashionable for all my neighbours to shut themselves and their gardens up in high brick walls. This is nothing more or less than a fine, free, physical expression of democracy."

In his new book, Grampp does not connect this thinking to Modernism in general, but it really is an excellent example of the modernist philosophies of that time; form follows function (no function=no form) and that the past was imperfect, while the future holds a promise of a better life (which naturally was totally understandable, as the reality of life during the recession of the 1930's was everything but easy). Even in Sweden during this time, garden designers and architects promoted openness in the gardens, but they had a more nationalistic attitude; the Swedish landscape and nature was seen as the ideal to which the private garden should submit to. A fenceless garden never grew very popular, and it became reality only in some of the "purest" Modern areas, as Stora Ängby near Stockholm, where the front and back gardens flow seamlessly into each other (Modernism is called Functionalism in Sweden, often shortened to "funkis"). But generally, fences during this time in Sweden were very low and the gardens opened to the streets and surrounding nature.

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A typical, low garden fence in stone and iron from the 1930's, in Nacka near Stockholm.

Grampp describes in the third part of his book how the fences in USA now are becoming higher and more popular; a similar development can even be seen in Sweden for the moment. People yearn for more privacy, which partly is an expression of the new needs and thoughts of how we should and want to live our lives. And as we have become more individualistic, the ways we express our thoughts in our gardens, as well as in all other areas of our lives, have become more diversified. (Or do we just follow ever changing trends, faster and faster? hopefully not). I just hope, that without letting go of our individuality, we would spare some thoughts for the origins of these open front gardens, before we totally fence us in to our small, private worlds.

Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle

Yesterday, I had a wonderful morning at the Olympic Sculpture Park on the shores of Elliott Bay in Seattle city centre. It is an impressive park, built on 9 acres of former industrial land close to rail lines, huge piers and diverse office buildings. More than that, it provides the only direct access point to the sea within Seattle city centre, and forms a continuation for the Myrtle Edwards Park North of it. The Olympic Sculpture Park was created with large donations from Seattle personalities, and is operated by the Seattle Art Museum. The aim was to return the site as much as possible to a functioning ecosystem, while providing a unique setting for outdoor sculpture and public recreation.

The park has a very strong form, consisting of what I experienced as "wedges" connected by a pathway leading to the seashore. As the SAM website states, the project’s lead designers, Weiss/Manfredi, developed an Z-shaped configuration connecting three parcels into a series of four distinct landscapes. According to it, this design "afforded a wide range of environmental restoration processes, including brownfield redevelopment, salmon habitat restoration, native plantings and sustainable design strategies". I did not quite catch all this while sauntering through the park; I only experienced three different areas, one up near the pavilion and the Serra sculpture, the second in the mid-level with the extensive lawn areas and the third at the seashore. I would never have understood that the waterfront (as seen above), so near a heavily trafficked city and a harbour, would be a salmon habitat restoration area. However, I think it's design reflects nicely the form of the piers south from it, built in an steep angle from the waterfront in order to hold better against the waves.

Like in so many contemporary parks, an important goal was to use native vegetation in the planting, not only because they are an integral part of the restoration effort, but also because the dense native vegetation is more sustainable and helps retain rainfall above the soil surface. As native plants often take years to establish and the park is still very young (it opened in January 2007), it still was very open and much of the vegetation seemed to the struggling in the exposed and quite harsh environment. The "bones", that is, the structure is there, but to get it to be more than that and become a real park, the Olympic Sculpture Park needs time, and maybe also some editing considering the planting palette. For example, the ferns used as undervegetation seemed to be longing for the trees to grow and shade them. Even snowberries, that usually are tough as anything, seemed to be struggling (picture below). Also, as it is late autumn, all the meadows were shorn very short and could not be experienced as they ought to, but it merely looked as the park consisted of huge areas of lawn.

And what about the sculptures? Check out the pictures. My favourite was probably the huge "Eagle" by Calder, looming like an ancient, red dinosaur between the city and the sea (picture above with the pavillion behind it; one other favorite place of mine, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, also has huge Calder sculptures in front of it). "Wake" by Richard Serra (further above) is made of huge sheets of curved steel welded together to a slight s-curve. It's monumental scale feels totally in proportion with it's site here, and in my mind, reflects the huge tankers anchored in the bay waiting to be unloaded. Dennis Oppenheim's huge "Cones" (below, in front of Teresita Fernandez's screen "Seattle Cloud Cover") give a playful note to the strictly contemporary park design - a nice touch of humour which all too often is forgotten in these high-profile landscape designs.

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