Herbert Bayer's Earthworks

From reader Brice Maryman comes the news that the Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks of Herbert Bayer in Kent, Washington, have been designated a Historic Landmark.

All at once a sculpture, a park, and a stormwater retention facility, they were created by the late Bauhaus master in 1982. The 2 1/2 acre earthworks are the focal point of a larger, 100 acre park, and include "a long retention berm; various mounds, a pond within a ring-shaped mound, and a channel, all interspersed with viewing areas and walkways along the stone-lined banks of Mill Creek. It provides a serene greenspace within the city, a place for public gatherings and private reverie." (from the Seattle Times)

Bayer's EarthMound, executed in Aspen Colorado in 1955, was the first example of an earthworks as contemporary art, the vanguard of a 'landart' movement that would come to encompass the more famous examples of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Maya Lin's Wavefield.

But his artwork, particularly the 'Undulating Landscape' of 1944, shows that he had been thinking about the possibilities of ground-plane manipulation for some time.

I'm glad someone gave him the chance to express his ideas in the landscape instead of just on canvas. Because one of the most impressive things about the Mill Creek Earthworks is that the city officials of a rather small town had the vision to commission such an innovative and large-scale work.

It shows how far-reaching can be the effect of a politician with imagination, and conversely the many opportunities that are missed by a focus on solving problems that, albeit sincere, often neglects aesthetics and fears innovation.

I wish my city would consider the artistic possibilities of stormwater retention.

Or of anything, really...

Additional resources:

article on Bayer's environmental design as graphic arts language

info and contemporary comments on the Mill Creek Earthworks collected by the city of Kent

P.S. My wonderful brother is now very happily married. Thanks for your patience, and the nice notes!

Apologies for the lack of posting due to a fiendish work schedule and a family wedding this weekend...I'll be back soon.
gardenhistorygirl

Bellwood Plantation and the Southern Swept Yard

If you can bear one more post derived from Bellwood...

I'm particularly fascinated by the two yards created in this landscape, as defined by the two picket fences. The bare dirt in the outer section, surrounding the small house, may be a classic southern swept yard. And all 'sensitive aesthetic' aside, the cottage is likely in this place and time to have been slave quarters.

My first glimpse at the swept yard was the description of the Radley place in To Kill a Mockingbird:

"The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard-a "swept" yard that was never swept-where Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance. "

It could be a description of Bellwood after a Civil War and fifty years of neglect.

The swept yard is a unique vernacular landscape tradition once common in the deep South: a bare dirt area denuded of any grass, kept 'clean' by sweeping with a broom made of twigs (dogwood seems to have been preferred). The hard red clay of the yard would eventually become almost stone like, though still muddy when it rained. Its practical purpose was to keep away bugs and critters and reduce the fire danger next the house.

[Examples above are from the re-created boyhood home of former president Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia, and the Atlanta History Center's Tullie Smith farm, both open to the public]

But any practical purpose may have been secondary to its cultural one, for the swept yard was an African tradition transplanted to the South by slaves longing for home.


From an article in the NYT on the dying tradition of the swept yard:

"I have no doubt that the swept yard did come from Africa -- and then was adopted by white folks," said Mr. Westmacott, whose book, "African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South," was published last year by the University of Tennessee. "Almost everybody had swept yards, including the plantations, which were swept by slaves or servants."

"People swept their yards long before the age of mowers, and nobody liked grass. "Any weed was called grass," Mr. Westmacott said. "And people battled against it because cotton didn't compete well with weeds. The swept yard was the most important "room" of the household, the heart of the home. Slave quarters were cramped and hot. So you washed and cooked outside, and when the meal was over, everything could be swept into the fire. "

This series of posts has me longing to be back in the South. I'm thinking of a place in my landscape for a small swept yard, and shall dream tonight of the courtyards of Savannah.

Bellwood Plantation - the Gazebo

Tutor (driving like Jehu): Look at that gazebo!

Me: (scanning rapidly for something made of wood, roughly octagonal, with a pointed roof and maybe some trellis) Where? Where?

Tutor: There on the wall! Oh, you've missed it.

As I discovered, my idea of a 'gazebo' was somewhat limited. Though the etymological origins of the term are cloudy (it may refer to 'gazing', but maybe not) and the word wasn't really used until the 18th century, it has been applied as a general term for a small, roofed garden structure designed for looking out at the view.

My tutor was endeavoring to point out a gazebo in the tradition of this sixteenth century construction at Montacute, below: a stone structure, often attached to a wall, from which a Tudor lady hungry for any diversion in the boring countryside could watch the road without being seen herself. (image courtesy of the Somerset archives)

I, of course, was thinking of a gazebo in the tradition of the one pictured at Bellwood, which is both in its date and its styling a Victorian construct. Note that it looks to be surrounded by radiating paths; the segments between them would probably have been planted with flowers.

It is beautifully sited in the transition from house to wilderness, with graceful proportions and trellising to match that which softens the house's stoic Greek Revival facade. Someone with a sensitive aesthetic once inhabited Bellwood.

Bellwood Plantation - the House and its Axis

The house itself is a modification of the Greek Revival style whose popularity had drifted across the pond from the likes of James 'Athenian' Stuart but whose classical allusions were uniquely appropriated in America as a noble style for a still-young democracy.

Its construction, being wood when a similarly sized English house would certainly be of stone, its brick foundation, and most especially its decorative features--the shutters, the picket fence, and the wonderful added fillip of trellis--are quintessentially American.

Greek Revival houses are highly symmetrical, and so have a strong natural axis running through them; the line on which you could place a mirror and both sides would look alike. It is so logical for this to extend from the house into the garden that a Greek Revival (or any strongly symmetrical) house looks lost in its landscape without that continuation of the axis. It would be more common for this to be done using a straight allee of trees; here the axis continues through a circular drive which would have been a turn-around for carriages. It is perhaps a reflection on Georgia's mild climate that the turnaround is not nearer the house, as would be more typical. At Bellwood, ladies would rarely need to worry about disembarking in the rain.

Bellwood Plantation - the Wilderness

I'm still thinking about Bellwood Plantation, pictured in the previous post. A quick google turns up many Bellwoods, but unfortunately nothing on one in Upson County, Georgia. But it's a fascinating picture, and there is much to learn from it.

One of its most prominent features is the heavily treed 'wilderness' around the house.

I got quite a jolt when my tutor in England told me that there was essentially no natural landscape there. 'Everything you see has been intentionally planted or altered', he said.

So if this were an English painting, I would assume that the trees were all planted and wonder at the fact that the shrubbery--the artificial wilderness--had been installed so near the house, as it was typical to set them farther away as part of a regression from formality into informality. Because it is American, I know that the landscape is almost certainly a partially natural one; the house has been set into a stand of existing trees, into a natural wilderness whose heart has been carved into a home.

The presence of wild nature, even still today, is a seminal feature of the American landscape and of the American imagination. As I walk around my university I see a landscape largely composed of trees and shrubs scattered randomly across open lawns, only rarely arranged into formal patterns or punctuated by seating.

It's the same way most Americans landscape their own homes, creating what is essentially a landscape park rather than a garden.

California Dreamin' in the Garden

Mentioning California below reminded me of this garden art from the Santa Monica design show, which seems uniquely California-ish...$775 from Green-Form.

I do love California, but they're a bit crazy there. For that price maybe I'll just mow the outline in my lawn.

Garden History Groups in the USA

For those of you wishing you were in London to volunteer with the Parks and Gardens trust, there are a few local garden history groups here in America for you to join (though not enough, IMO!) There are also several national umbrella groups, which I'll cover in another post, but unfortunately we have nothing in place like the British GHS with its network of local history societies. What we do have is a well-established network of Garden Clubs, which would be an obvious avenue for starting regional/local garden history groups.

The Southern Garden History Society, whose goal is "to stimulate interest in Southern garden and landscape history, in historic horticulture, and in the preservation of historic gardens and landscapes in the South" holds its annual meeting this week in Atlanta:

"High Cotton & Tall Columns will explore the influence of cotton on the architecture, gardens and landscapes of middle Georgia. A local tour will include several antebellum Greek Revival homes and The State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Also included in the meeting will be a tour to nearby Madison which largely escaped the ravages of the Civil War. Sunday’s optional tour will be to Milledgeville, the original capital of Georgia, and will include the old Governor’s Mansion which has undergone extensive renovation. "

Their helpful journal, the appropriately titled Magnolia, is online.

The Garden Club of New Haven has a garden history committee, currently engaged in "reviewing 17 gardens in Connecticut with plans to select one for inclusion in the Smithsonian garden archive collection."

The California Garden and Landscape History Society is "dedicated to celebrating the beauty and diversity of California’s gardens and cultural landscapes."

The New England Garden History Society published a journal from 1991 to 2003, indexed here. Alas, it now appear to be defunct.

Do please let me know of other organizations I've missed and I'll be glad to pass them on.

[Above is the Bellwood Plantation, Upson County, Georgia, drawn in pastel by Loula Kendall ca. 1850. Source is the Southern Garden History-Cherokee Garden Library, housed at the Atlanta History Center. Unfortunately, their wonderful collection is not available online. Somebody give them a grant!]

And speaking of Park Benches...

....this is my favorite design from the results of a contest which "aims at encouraging designers to imagine and create innovative urban furniture to be placed in the Jardins du Fleuriste park in Brussels for a minimum test period of three years" sponsored by Pro-Materia and Buxelles-Environnement.

The 2007 theme was 'Let's Hug a Tree", and the gallery of submissions is intriguing and well worth a browse.

By Anika Perez and Brice Genre, this winning entry is designed to look like the shadows cast by the canopy of a tree. The ethereal made substantial is something I love in a garden.

Garden History Volunteers needed and the City of London's Images at Collage

For my London friends, from ParkBench London

"The London Parks & Gardens Trust is looking for volunteers to expand the information in its Inventory of Historic Green Spaces.The Trust needs more volunteers to help with research on the sites included on its Inventory of Historic Green Spaces, which covers the whole Greater London area. Volunteers undertake historic research using various sources, and make site visits to record what can be seen on the ground. No previous experience of research is required, although some knowledge of garden history is useful. Training is offered in all aspects of the work: the use of libraries, the most appropriate books, maps and archives to consult, and how to record what is on the ground. There are visits to local history libraries, national libraries and record offices, talks from experienced historians and discussions of research in progress. Assistance and advice is available from the co-ordinator." Find out more.

Images above are from Collage, where The City of London Libraries and Guildhall Art Gallery now have 20,000 images online. Watermarks, as you can see, but high-res images can be purchased and it is an excellent resource for the many historic landscapes of the London area including Kew, Kensington, and the Vauxhall and Ranelagh pleasure gardens.

One of my favorites from the collection is this 1829 aquatint of the river Thames, its rightsideup upsidedown format showing the landscape on both sides of the river from London to Richmond, including Kew Gardens.