Notes from Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea in Noormarkku

Villa Mairea in Noormarkku in southwestern Finland - one of Alvar and Aino Aalto's most well-known and celebrated designs, built in the late 1930s.

 

Sometimes things take time - like this post about my visit to Villa Mairea while in Finland last summer. I'm not sure if it's because so much has been said of this pearl of 20th century modernist architecture, which kind of takes out both the need and the fun of adding anything. Or because I actually was slightly disappointed at the visit that I'd been waiting for such a long time.

With disappointment I definitely don't mean the building - one of Alvar Aalto's finest, commissioned by Harry and Maire Gullichsen, one of the wealthiest couples in Finland (at the time), who gave Aalto and his architect wife Aino pretty much free hands to form everything to the perfection. Both couples were friends and even business partners - Maire and the Aaltos had briefly before founded Artek, originally an avant-garde art gallery that later morphed into the furniture company that still produces and sells Aalto's designs worldwide.

 

The building shines white amongst the tall pines of a gravelly hill - while the wooden parts connect to the coppery bark of the trees.

The L-form of the building leaves a grassy courtyard between the house and the sauna (on the left, not seen in the picture). Some parts of the roof are covered in grassy turf, just like traditional Finnish buildings were since ancient times, connecting the building both to history and to the surrounding nature.

 

The building was a holiday home for the Gullichsens, an experimental house where only the best was good enough - of course, being true modernists, this translates to a minimalistic style typical for Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino. Sculptural, light, airy, connected to its surroundings and utilizing materials from the nature - the building has stood the test of time. There is a great indoor/outddor contact between the house and the surrounding pine forest, and overall atmosphere is calm and sophisticated - and still, after almost eighty years, completely current. Unfortunately, photography is not allowed indoors, so I have to direct you to Villa Mairea's own site to make your own mind.

 

The outdoor entertainment area between the house and the sauna, with Artek furniture.

The famous free-form pool, from another angle -the sauna is just to the right. Read more about the pool (and Alvar Aalto's friendship with Thomas Church) in my previous post here.

 

The disappointment part starts first in the garden of Villa Mairea - often the only garden in Finland mentioned in international texts and other media (sadly, as there is much more to Finnish garden design than this). I'm not sure how much the Aalto's spent time designing the garden - of course, they did the overall plan with the famous free form pool (sometimes said to be the first in the world), but how much they spent time with choosing the plants and other important garden elements is not certain. Maire Gullichsen herself was a keen gardener, so she probably had her hands on these matters to a great extent.

 

Garden gate behind the sauna - it ties to traditional Finnish structures, but the design has also been said to have taken influences from Aalto's visit to Japan.

The absolutely lovely stone wall behind the sauna (all Finnish holiday houses have a sauna, it is more essential than the house itself...). And again, a reference to the traditional Finnish countryside in form of hops growing on tall poles.

 

I say slightly disappointed above - the garden connects smoothly both the building and its surroundings, the massed plantings form sculptural groupings and soft mounds against the coppery pillars of the pine forest. It is just that I find it difficult to love bright red hybrid roses, massed rhododendrons, berberis, cotoneasters, ligularias and other perfectly fine plants that unfortunately were so overused in the 1960s and onwards that they still smell too much of municipal plantings to be really exciting. When planted, they probably were as avant-garde and exotic as the house itself, but my eyes just can really see past the more recent garden history. Still, changing the plants would be an anachronism, so I guess the best solution is to try forget about public plantings, and to see them with untainted eyes - not easy, but definitely worth a try. So despite starting my post with mentioning that pretty much everything  has already been said about Villa Mairea, I've now managed to add some 550 words into the bulk of writings - so surely, the building still is - if not as avant-garde, at least as engaging as when it was built in 1938.

 

One more picture of the typical Finnish pine forest - how I sometimes miss the sound of wind soughing through the needles, and the fresh scent of the trees...
 

Visits to Villa Mairea are by appointment only - check the Villa Mairea Foundation's information pages here: http://www.villamairea.fi/en/visits. 

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.

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.

A book by Mien Ruys, mother of the New Perennial movement

Oenotheras and Echinaceas, in Mien Ruys book Het vaste planten boek.

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Mien Ruys is one of the names within garden design that has always caught my interest and admiration. Her gardens have such a refined sense of place and strong form, always combined with sensitive planting schemes and great plant associations. In many of her designs, she used the architectural and sculptural forms of squares, rectangles and circles (which seem to be especially dear for us Scandinavians), and overlaid then her plans with soft and rich plantings, often in bold drifts and well defined blocks. My modernist, Finnish/Scandinavian background (I grew up surrounded by marimekko textiles and Alvar Aalto furniture...) probably is the reason why her designs are extremely attractive to my eyes; I love their clean lines combined with a sensitivity for the place and an appreciation for the nature. It is one of my big regrets within my garden travelling life that I never made it to her famous garden in Holland, Tuinen Mien Ruys, at Moerheim in Dedemsvaart, despite visiting the country several times as my sister lived there for a couple of years.

A garden plan and a planting plan by Mien Ruys.

Then, you can imagine my joy when I found an unused copy of Mien Ruys (together with her siblings J.D. and Th. Ruys) book Het vaste planten boek, in Swedish called Våra vackra perenner, in the Salvation Army's thrift shop in Stockholm (that I've written about earlier as one of my favorite haunts for wonderful, old garden books). It was written in 1950 in the Netherlands, and translated into Swedish in 1954. In it, Mien Ruys draws from her extensive experience with gardens and plants and gives advice on plant selection for different garden situations. Mien Ruys started to design gardens when she was 19 in 1923, and died in 1999 at the age of 94. In 1955 she founded the magazine Onze Eigen Tuin (Our Own Garden), and wrote a couple of books, but most of her writings were only published in the Netherlands and never translated to English.

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A picture of the garden shown in the drawings above.

It is wonderful to read this book as it has a great selection of perennials for different kinds of gardens: city gardens, country gardens and even roof and container gardens, something that feels completely up to date today, when compact gardening is discussed in most gardening magazines. Perennials are chosen and grouped by growing conditions, colours and blooming times. Also, there is an interesting chapter about plants that can be naturalized, with instructions about best plants for different situations: woodland, meadow, or boggy gardens. This feels very modern, and would be instructional for many gardeners of today. It is interesting to look at the plant lists; several varieties of grasses, Eupatoriums, Verbenas, Salvias, Echinaceas, Thalictrums, Persicarias, Solidagos... many of which are familiar from the plantings made by designers of the New Perennial Movement in the 90's and continue to be very popular. This shows clearly how skillful Mien and her siblings were in their plant selections.

Mien thought that poppies were perfect for naturalizing in meadow gardens. This photo is so beautiful and sensitive, a real little piece of art.

Considering all above, it is not surprising that Piet Oudolf mentions Mien as his first influence in his popular book Designing with Plants (from 1999). He writes that "She was everywhere, the only garden designer in Holland who was talking about plants and plantings, the others just talked about design." Andrew Wilson writes in his excellent book Influential Gardeners, The Designers who Shaped the 20th Century Garden Style (from 2002) that Ruys has been inspirational by at least Anthony Paul, Piet Oudolf and James van Sweden. So I don't think it is an overstatement to say that Mien was the mother of the New Perennial Movement, an excellent designer and plantswoman whose work continues to be influential and important even today.

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More pictures about Mien Ruys gardens here; and look at excellent photos also on Vulgare.net.

Two terrific talks

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Last week, I was lucky to listen to two terrific talks: on Tuesday, I attended a charitable lunch with a talk by writer Isabel Allende, a Chilean writer living in Marin County in California. And on Sunday, John Walsh, director emeritus of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, gave an interesting talk at the Seattle Art Museum with title "The Museum Sculpture Garden: Whose Idea Was That?"

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Isabel Allende, who's books have sold in over 51 million copies since her first novel, The House of the Spirits, talked about her life and experiences as a woman, writer and a human being. She is a most engaging speaker, blending tough personal experiences and gained wisdom with wittiness and humour. Her main message was for us women to stand up for each other. She reminded that despite women in the West often have a very good life, two thirds of the work on this planet is done by women, while only 1% of the wealth is owned by them and she asked us not to forget our less fortunate sisters. She also talked about her deceased daughter Paula's words of "You only have what you give" as a guiding principle for one's life, about how giving and sharing is and should be the most important thing we can do to each other - giving time, knowledge, love and material things when needed. And I agree with her totally, even if I feel that I don't always live up to the level that I feel that I should. (A sidetrack...; in the latest issue of Gardennotes from the Northwest Horticultural Society, Hans Mandt wrote about how during this harsh winter, the Miller Garden had lost all of their Galanthus elwesii var. monostictus 'Hiemalis', a relatively rare variety of snowdrops. Luckily, Hans had got bulbs from them a couple of years ago, and had divided and grown them in different parts of his garden. So now he was able to return plants and to help "repatriate" them to the Miller garden, pointing out how important it is to share one's plants to assure their survival.)
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The second talk I mentioned above, held by John Walsh at the Seattle Art Museum with title "The Museum Sculpture Garden: Whose Idea Was That?" was a real treat to my Art historian brain and eyes. I've always loved both gardens and sculptures (and a couple of times even tried it myself - casting bronze in Melbourne, one of the best things I've ever done), and sculpture gardens and parks really combine these two loves. John filled two hours with his enormous knowledge about art, sculpture and how the sculpture gardens have emerged and evolved since the 1960's. I enjoyed every minute and filled more than 8 pages in my notebook...

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John talked about how gardens and parks actually fulfill the artworks potential by creating a reflective environment for the viewers. He also mentioned how the artwork is never the same in an outdoor environment, as the weather, seasons and light around it change constantly - something that sounds obvious, but many of us probably have not thought about. And then he went on telling the story of the modern sculpture garden, which differs from the old and ancient gardens that often were decorated with sculpture. Historically, the sculpture used in gardens was meant to be commemorative, reminding of gods and goddesses etc, or historical events and rulers, but in the modern gardens and parks, sculpture became art itself, something to be contemplated itself and not just a bearer of connotations.

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John discussed the first of all modern sculpture gardens, the MoMA Sculpture Garden in New York and it's development from 1936 to our time. In addition he showed wonderful photos of sculpture gardens and parks from around the world, as the Kröller-Müller Museum near Otterlo in the Netherlands (the idea of a sculpture park was born here), Louisiana near Copenhagen (landscape interacting with buildings), Storm King Art Center in New York's Hudson valley (contrasts natural surroundings with the difficult human effort of the artwork; I especially loved Andy Goldsworthy's lingering stone wall Storm King Wall), Wanås in Sweden, and other interesting and important sculpture gardens. He also talked about "our own" sculpture garden here in Seattle, the Olympic Sculpture Garden in the city centre and presented it as a development of the traditional sculpture garden, by the park itself being a sculpture and not only a setting for the artworks. An really interesting thought, and something I sensed but could not quite put into words while visiting the park myself.

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Two fantastic talks during one single week; so much knowledge and new thoughts, so much enrichment to one's rather ordinary life. You only have what you give - so incredibly true even here. I send my earnest thanks to both speakers for sharing their knowledge and experiences.

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See my earlier post about the Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park.

I've taken all pictures above at the Olympic Sculpture Park, list of works included on the park's web site.

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Rags to riches… to rags?

A family building a stone wall in their garden in Lillängen in Sweden in the 1940's. Courtesy of Lokalarkiv for Nacka kommun.

It is difficult to stay unaffected by all reports of doom; just this morning, the Financial Times warned that 50m people could lose their jobs, and that the “economic pain will be worst for 60 years”. And as usual, nobody seems to know extend of the damage; new casualties seem to be surfacing every day. It feels like when the frost takes the seedlings and buds, leaving you to wonder just how much of the crops will be affected the next autumn.

Andy Sturgeon's Cancer Research UK Garden at Chelsea Flower Show in 2007. Picture taken by me in 2007.

Christopher Lloyd inspired many of us by his fantastic writing about his plantings and garden at Great Dixter. Picture taken by me in 2007.

Within gardening and garden design, the prosperous period that started in the 1980’s and continued until 2007 (with a smaller hick-up of an economic crisis in the beginning of 1990’s), now seems to be coming to an end. During these years, we have seen a mix of greater affluence, more leisure time and ever-rising house prices, which have made property-improvement extremely worthwhile in most “Western” countries from Europe to the US and to Australia. Most of us have enjoyed better possibilities to invest in our housing and to spend money on our interests and hobbies. We have not only gardened, but also travelled to see other people’s gardens and diverse garden shows; we have spent ever increasing amounts of money on gardening books, magazines and equipment of all kind, much of our interests fuelled by the media. Many historical gardens have been restored and we have been able to visit them and learn about them in a way that was not possible earlier. Some landscape architects and garden designers have risen to a star status, creating new trends for the rest of us to follow. Just look at all the kitchen gardens (or potagers, as they often are referred to), greenhouses, gardens with native plants, or grasses and other “new perennials” made during this period; in addition to a keen interest in gardening, all of them also require financial resources that can be used for other than basic daily needs.

A sandpit beautifully fitted into to cliffs and made of local stones in the front of my house in Saltsjöbaden. Picture from 1936. The oak tree behind stands still there.

I am not trying to be overly dramatic, but if the economic situation continues to deteriorate, will we look at this period within gardening as the “last golden decades” of the 20th century, a bit like we talk about the “golden afternoon” of the Edwardian era in Western gardening, just before the First World War broke out in 1914? And the next interesting question is, what kind of gardens will we be making now? Some of us, of course, will not be affected at all, but with a predicted 50m unemployed people in the world, many of us will have no extra money to spend. The plunging housing prices will make fewer of us keen on investing in our homes and gardens, which means that architects, builders and garden designers will face harder times. As for so many other domestic services, people will probably spend less money for the maintenance of their gardens. And will we be able pay for new plants, tools, decorations and gadgets for our gardens? Not likely.

Planting between the cliffs with Solomon's seal, Polygonatum multiflorum, geraniums and sea thrift, Armeria maritima. All plants were typical in the 1930's, easy to grow and divide.

It might not all be gloom, though; seed companies will probably experience a new upswing, as many more of us will discover the delights of not only growing our own vegetables, but also other plants from seeds, for much less money than buying them pre-raised from the garden centres. In a similar kind of economic climate, the 1930’s gardening articles in Sweden were telling how to gather seeds from the nature to make a lawn, an effort that many of us would think unrealistic today, used as we are to the ready-made lawn turf. Old gardening techniques might also get an upswing, with taking cuttings and layering techniques rising to new popularity. All of this has a positive effect on the climate, as transport and watering of pre-potted plants in their plastic pots will diminish. (Not that I have anything against the nursery industry in general and I am very sad if many very talented and knowledgeable people in this area lose their jobs to the recession).

Gardening in the 1960's in Sweden. Courtesy of Lokalarkiv for Nacka kommun.

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With fewer resources available, we will probably see sustainability both in terms of labour and other resources as an important goal within garden design. Will someone still want to import a water feature in Chinese marble carved to imitate renaissance fountains in Italy, and keep it flowing with spotlights lightning up it at night? Probably not. Instead, we need to use less of energy, less of earth's resources and probably less of our own time, and at the same time create gardens that satisfy our needs for recreation and enjoyment. And we will hopefully continue to explore the possibilities of native plants and recycled or locally sourced materials, as our choices need to be sustainable. Even here it is interesting to look at the 1930’s, when garden designers and landscape architects embraced the thoughts of “modernism” as the solution to design problems in similar times of distress. In Sweden, this often translated into gardens with native plants and designs that were well suited to their environments, just like the picture of a sandpit above shows. It will be very interesting to see how we will continue to express ourselves through our gardens, while we face the challenges of our own time.

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.

Icons, connected

Thomas Church: El Novillero in Sonoma, California, pool with Adaline Kent's sculpture.

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While reading the newest addition to my already too extensive collection of garden related books, Thomas Church's Gardens Are for People (published 1955), I suddenly noticed that I had never reflected over who made the beautifully flowing sculpture which forms the focal point of the iconic swimming pool in the Donnell garden called "El Novillero" in Sonoma, Northern California. This garden is probably the most well-known garden designed by Thomas Church, and it has become an icon of modern, Californian garden design. After the completion of "El Novillero" in 1948 pictures of it were widely published in popular magazines and professional journals, and it had a huge influence in the design of gardens and pools even internationally. In Garden's Are for People, I finally found the name of the sculptor: Adaline Kent (1900-1957), member of a group that sometimes has been called the "West Coast Surrealists".

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Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, pool with organic form between the house and the sauna.

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After some research on Adaline's work and life, I found a note about Church's visit to Europe in 1937. On that trip he met Alvar Aalto in Finland. A lot has been said about the influences for the pool in Donnell garden - for example, in Modern Gardens in the Landscape (1964), Elisabeth Kassler notes that the form was inspired by the winding creeks of salt marches seen through the frame of live oaks. But to me, the connection is there directly - obvious just by looking at the similarly shaped pool at Alvar Aalto's masterpiece Villa Mairea (1938-39) in Noormarkku, about 130 km North from my hometown Turku in Finland. Aalto was already working on Villa Mairea in 1937 when Church came to visit him, and Aalto's architecture with it's informal, organic, and curvilinear forms made a lasting impression on Church.

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Sauna and pool at Villa Mairea.

There they are, two of the most beautiful houses and gardens of the last century; both icons on their own. Their creators came to similar conlusions despite the different geographical locations - one in the warm Californian climate, the other on brink of the Arctic circle. Who was influenced by whom? Does it matter? Both are examples of the best of the 20th century modern architecture and design, by architects who were committed to creating beautiful and livable environments for their customers, and they both are timeless, as beautiful today as they were when they were designed.

Pictures are not taken by me this time: the first is by Kent Porter/The Press Democrat, the second found on the Internet for a long time ago (sorry about that), and the third by Joyelle.

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Later update: Marc Treib takes up this connection in his essay 'Maturity and Modernity', in the book 'Thomas Church Landscape Architect, Designing a Modern California Landscape' (William Stout Publishers, San Fransisco, 2003). This book, edited by Treib, is an excellent collection of essays, all examining Church's work from different aspects.

Meadows, meadows everywhere

Meadow gardening in Sweden in the 1930s. Picture by Sven A. Hermelin, published in Hem i Sverige 1935.

Meadow gardening has really taken off during the recent years and seems to create as much headlines here in the U.S. as it does in Sweden and other European countries. One of the most beautiful books in this area is the late Christopher Lloyd's "Meadows" (Timber Press, 2004), a captivating guide about how to preserve grasslands, and establish and maintain meadows. Of course, other excellent books exist, but I am a long time fan of Christopher Lloyd's writing, which always is extremely well-informed, entertaining and lively. (Sadly, he died just before my first visit to Great Dixter, and wandering there knowing he would never be gardening or writing again was a very sad moment. It is strange how some writers make you feel like you would know them personally - for me, I really felt like I had lost a close friend, even if I never met him).

Meadow at Great Dixter. The strictness of the huge Taxus topiary figures contrast so well with the dainty meadow flowers. And my daughters are taking in all the beauty.

Meadows as a gardening practice are decendants of two different origins: natural meadows, and a farming practice, which resulted in meadows. A natural meadow is a perpetual grassland - a habitat of rolling or flat terrain where grasses predominate. These grasslands are so called climax ecosystems that are capable of sustaining themselves; environmental factors restrict the growth of woody plants and therefore the grasslands are kept clean of shrubs and trees, which otherwise would succeed the grasses. Some typical environments for natural meadows are the alps, coasts, deserts and the prairies, all with harsh growing conditions (cold, wind, salt, heat, drought).

The meadow in my garden in Saltsjöbaden - kept in bay by the cold and salty winds from the sea, but still needing maintenance to keep out the unwanted invaders.

Meadows formed also as a result from the ancient farming practice of growing winter feed for the cattle on open land. The grasses were cut down in the end of the summer and carted away and their seeds were left on the fields, and so could regenerate the vegetation the following spring. Pastures are not really meadows as they are continuously grazed by animals that keep the grass short the whole season.

Beautiful, seaside pastureland with grazing sheep at Beachyhead, East Sussex; I warmly recommend it as a a wonderful place to visit.

Meadow gardening and "prairie style" gardening have been popular since the 1990's when Piet Oudolf's and Oehme & van Sweden's designs (only mention a very few) got a lot of space in the gardening magazines. And of course, Christopher Lloyd's many books, with beautiful pictures of lovely meadows have had an enormous impact. In my research for my first garden history thesis, I found some wonderful articles in Swedish gardening magazines from the 1930s promoting meadows in gardens, as the first picture above. During the 1930s, meadows as an agricultural practise was disappearing and many garden writers were worried about that the cultural and ecological environments would disappear as well. One of the most popular garden architects in Sweden during that time, Sven A. Hermelin, suggested using meadows instead of lawns in gardens, as they are more esthetically pleasing and give a larger biodiversity than the monotonity of a close-cut lawn. It just took another 60 years before his thoughts became popular... is nothing ever new in gardening?

A birds-eye view of the meadow towards the moat and the pavillion at Sissinghurst, with mown paths, roses and fruit trees in the grass. I took this picture from Vita Sackville-Wests writing tower.

Later update: see also my post European meadows, American meadows.

My Garden in Saltsjöbaden

Just some nostalgic thoughts as I'm now separated from my garden in Saltsjöbaden (abstinence symptoms?). Our house was built in 1935. The exterior is more traditional in style, the interiors more "functionalistic", or "funkis" as the Swedes call this periods design style.

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My garden is typical for the thirties in Sweden (and even other parts of the world - more about that later). "Naturtomter" as this kind of lots are called in Sweden, were a very popular type of a garden during this period. The ideal garden consisted of a "cultivated garden" near the house (above the lawn with an old apple tree towards the street), a place for outdoor dining and sitting in the sun, and a healthy place for the children to play outdoors. (This was very important in those days, when TBC still was a reality in Sweden.) The rest of the garden was ideally left as "nature garden" or "wild garden". This did not mean leaving it to it's own devices, but cultivating and refining the lot so that it would sit comfortably in it's surroundings. Adjusting the cultivated plants to the nature around and leaving many original trees and valuing them as great assets in the garden was part of the filosophy of this period, too.

This kind of lots (gardens) were very much appreciated from the previous turn of century up to the thirties, and they still are, even if they are getting more scarce to find, at least near the largest cities. The first picture included above was taken before I started working with it "seriously", the other shows the meadow and cliffs towards the sea. I always cut a path through the meadow for better access to the beach below. On the other side, there are huge old oaks and lilac hedges, and flower beds nearest the house entrance. I think my garden is very special and very beautiful, but it makes huge demands in everything that I want to incorporate in the garden, both in form of time and in resources. Everything needs to be in large scale, otherwise it just seems fiddly and small. Of course, we are not talking about a farm or a manor house or anything on that scale. But as the oaks are huge (the largest has a diameter of 4.2 meters), and the view so long (kilometers of sea and islands), you need to think on the same "scale" too.
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In my garden in Saltsjöbaden, I have made an enourmous effort in digging out weeds (ground elder end other nice stuff... above Hellebores that I digged up under a wirelike mat of ground elder roots) and cutting down overly mature shrubs. After that, I decided to keep the original plan and the limestone pavings. They are beautifully aged. I also renewed the flower beds in front of the house and planted some trees and a lilac hedge towards the neighbours (we only have one neihgbour, the other sides are protected parkland). Last year I cleaned up some of the cliffs towards the sea and planted draught-tolerant plants suited for this kind of surroudings. A picture of one of these cliff plantings is included below - with Polygonatum biflorum, Geranium macrorrhizum 'Spessart' and Armeria maritima 'Alba' mingling together.

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There is still a lot to do in this garden and maybe it is good for me to have a little break from it for a couple of years. Some of my plantings will mature during this time, and when we come back (if we do...), I will be able to see it with new, fresh eyes. It will always be important for me to keep the garden in harmony with the surrounding nature, but the ways to get there might just change a little over the years!