Inspiration and Influence - Garden Visits

An old gate at Greenwood Gardens, Short Hills, NJ on its first Open Days day several years ago.
The gate is no longer there.

Today it's grey and rainy. I'm dreaming of gardens. Yesterday, my 2009 edition of the Garden Conservancy's Open Days Directory came in the mail. Its arrival made me think about how much I have been inspired by seeing gardens. Not only do I visit on Open Days, but the APLD annual design conference also incorporates amazing garden visits. There are some random photos of gardens which I've visited over the years included here. I appologize if some aren't credited to their sources and owners as I rarely write down what I'm photographing as I go along.

The Grotto under the pool at the White Garden in Lewisboro NY, designed by Patrick Chasse

Observing someone else's point of view, details, and planting styles have had a profound effect on my growth as a landscape designer.Over the years I've visited gardens large and small, good and not so good in many countries. All have had some type of impact on my design aesthetic--either as something to aspire to or something to avoid.

Michael Trapp's Garden in Connecticut

When I was first starting out, I focused on all of the amazing plants that I didn't know and dutifully wrote them all down. Now I walk with camera and sketchbook in hand--taking pictures and drawing small details as they strike me. Mostly I snap--sketching takes me too much time!

Robert Irwin's Garden at the Getty Center, Malibu, California

I actually try not to analyze it too much when I'm there--I try to experience the gardens while I'm in them. Sometimes I'll see something that I don't like and that's just as galvanizing as what I do.

Shape and texture on the California coast near Santa Barbara

A Trip without a Map

As many of you already know, I am very involved with the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), as its International Membership chair, and this past weekend I was in Chicago for their 2nd annual Chapter Symposium. At that meeting I was responsible for presenting state and regional chapter leaders with ideas to retain and recruit chapter members.

Things got really interesting when I presented Social Media opportunities. Energy, confusion, disbelief and social media evangelism mingled together in the room. I realized that I had with a simple PowerPoint presentation taken the group into unknown and virtually unexplored territory. I had, along with my own experiments in the past several months, established, managed or embellished APLD's social media presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Land8lounge, Landscapedia, and Twitter. Just like starting a new landscape design, these savvy design professionals needed a 'site' map to follow to achieve their goals.

I contacted social media PR professional, Jessie Newburn, from Nemetschek North America to see if we could use social media jointly to promote an event that APLDNJ had planned to demonstrate their Vectorworks Landmark CAD program to New Jersey chapter members.

We established an extremely fluid and organic (read highly experimental) social media marketing plan which will unfold during the next week prior to the March 3rd event which is currently full with a waiting list. Hopefully, in addition to creating a format for sharing the event, the end game will be a base map that others can use and build on--we're navigating new territory and exploring the possibilities. You can follow the progress and see it unfold over the next week here.

Web 2.0 Ballroom

Before I begin again, let me put some things in perspective. I learned to type on a typewriter--a manual one. I’m no more tech savvy than the average person who texts via cell phone, answers email and orders stuff I don’t need on-line. With each new Web 2.0 site I interact with, I have to take time to learn its nuances. I get cocky, make mistakes setting up my accounts and then have to spend more time trying to get them the way I want them. It is an evolutionary process, but the beauty is that once the work is put in, Web 2.0 takes on a life of its own. That’s why they call it viral. People have started contacting me via social media for information, the traffic on my website is up almost 40% over the same time as last year. The amount of time visitors spend on my website is longer and I’ve been able share my experiences with people active in other media. I’m learning a whole new way to roll out my welcome mat.

One of my life philosophies was summed up best by Kurt Vonnegut, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” Well, I’m dancing. I am increasingly fascinated by my own Web 2.0 ballroom experience. This parallel universe operates in real time, in nano second time delay, and in its own time. As I’ve blogged, branded, talked and tried, I’ve developed new relationships with people—some of whom I actually know in real time. Even though it’s a massive cyber party, it’s still driven by and about people.

My new dance card partners are Twitter, land8lounge, and Flickr. Sometimes these three twirl around the ballroom together. If I load my photos from Flickr to my folio in land8lounge they will post to Twitter. Imagine one big social media dance with me in the center—the belle of the ball for just a moment.

Twitter is fun, fast and fascinating. I flirted with it briefly this past spring, but I just started using it with any regularity. I’m floored by the amount of information that streams through in small bites. Since I communicate via text with many of my contractors and clients anyway, I can now Twitter them from my phone and PC. I follow a few people, blogs and websites and am followed by fewer people. It sounds like it could be vaguely creepy, but its not. If someone wants to follow me, Twitter will send me an email to confirm and I can decide if I want them on my cyber trail or not.

Using Twitter yesterday, I recommended a book to a friend who Twittered that he was vacuuming and then I viewed and was blown away by two amazing photos by fellow APLD member Greg Corman. The photos were streamed to Twitter when he posted them on land8lounge—the first was of a forest of Dragon’s Blood trees and the second, a stone wall in Yemen. All of this happened in 140 character tidbits. Twitter is a rich and varied experience--a moveable feast. A new friend, Chris Heiler from LandscapeLeadership.com, and I are both APLD members, have real time friends in common, yet we’ve never met face to face. We Twitter. When I post this blog entry, since I’ve figured out how to make one of those tiny url’s, I’ll Twitter.

Next on my dance card is land8lounge. It’s a hip, hybrid professional/social networking site for and by landscape architects and designers. The wealth of information, visual inspiration, advice and international content alone is worth the time spent setting it up fully. My folio page was up for less than an hour when two people I knew in real time found me. I set up a group for APLD in a snap, streamed Miss Rumphius’ Rules, and was discovered by other members. I suspect I will spend more in the lounge than in other places.

As far as Flickr goes, I needed to crop some photos into squares, my photo program stinks and wasn’t letting me do it. Flickr provided the solution with ease. I had previously tried Google’s Picasa and didn’t really like it. I haven’t been able to upload the photos to Miss Rumphius yet, I get a funky message that I’m doing something wrong on that score or else Yahoo doesn’t want to play with my Google based blogger. I haven’t done much more with Flickr yet other than to edit pix to use in my updated portfolio, upload to land8lounge and to create sets of photos. I needed to do that anyway since my photo files are a disorganized mess spread over 3 different photo programs and various CDs. The fact that others can see my photos is kind of like cleaning the house when company is coming. You want to put your best foot forward. I want to explore setting up group portfolios on Flickr for people I know from other places so we can share images, ideas and connect visually.

I don’t think all of this is for everyone and I believe that eventually I’ll find some things more useful than others, but right now I’ve stopped being a wallflower and I’m dancing along on happy feet with my Web 2.0 ballroom partners.

A Very Cool Web Honor!

Landscapedia has been cool enough to make me their featured designer for December. When fellow APLD member, Michael Franklin, first asked me, I told him I was honored that he even asked me.

I first learned about this online community for gardeners and landscape professionals in summer issue of the 'The Designer', Association of Professional Landscape Designer's quarterly journal.

So, check it out let me know what you think!

#6--Detour--The Girl Who Can't Say NO!

One thing about volunteer projects for a cause...your skill set quickly is evaluated and put to additional good use.

Last Thursday an estate gardener who sometimes plants for me called to say he'd been asked to plant the entry to the showhouse and that the plants were going to be donated. Could I design it for him? This guy has done me many favors in the past so I was delighted to help. He sent over some pictures of the area and I told him I would go and measure it next week. I put the matter aside for a while.

On Friday, as I was getting ready to leave town for an APLD meeting, the landscape chairwoman emails me to ask if I can do an illustration for the journal of the area. She needed it quickly because it was past the actual deadline. So of course, I said yes. The two main features of this area are a stone wall with two driveway pillars, a semi-boarded up carriage house and a HUGE Japanese stone lantern. So, without a plan, here's a photo of the raw space from a slightly different view from the sketch (directly below)...I just can't say no.