 I spend a lot of time thinking about how to arrange plants. I spend a lot of time figuring out how to put plant communities together. If you were cruising Captiva Drive last Thursday, you’d have seen me in action - waving my arms around, choreographing the crew, shoving silver saw palmettos into exactly the right position. Besides pulling together and observing my own designs, the way I learn the most about plant communities is by observing them in the wild. Today, I took a drive up toward the central part of the state to observe two sites I’d never visited before. The first was Lake June-in-Winter Scrub Preserve State Park, on the western shore of Lake Placid. The second was Highlands Hammock State Park, near Sebring. I’m tired and stanky, so just going to make this a visual essay for now. Look at the structure, how these plants knit together. It’s fantastic!
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 “I just wanted to let you know, if you think you’re having a private conversation - you’re not. We can hear every word you say.” The woman mashing her fist into the screen of my lanai isn’t quite my grandmother’s age, probably only a decade or so older than my parents. I tell my friend on the phone I’ll call back. “Hi?” I say. “I’m Kathy,” she says, “I live over there” - she gestures across the lawn. “On our lanai, we can hear everything you say.”“Thanks,” I say, “Thanks for telling me.” “We don’t mind,” she says, “I just thought I’d let you know.”  Neighbors have been on my mind. Not just because of that conversation, but because some of my most frequent personal encounters in these pandemic days are with neighbors. I moved, not that many weeks ago, back to southwest Florida. My current digs are in a small condo complex, as close to the water as you can get without seeing it. The brackish scent of the mangroves - a little muddy, a little like rotten eggs - washes over me every morning as I leave for work.  Across the street, there’s a trailer park. Matchbox homes, stacked one after the other. I love walking through and looking at the front gardens. Only a few people appear on the streets. Sometimes an old woman barks at me, shepherding her dog to the other side of the sidewalk. If she has her dentures in, I can understand her a little better. I often see people on bikes, clothes sweat-plastered to their bodies. The flora and fauna are more consistent Many plastic beasts, plaster ones too, sit sedately out front of these compact retirement dwellings. Some of my favorites are the choir of bowtied penguins, the spread-eagled bald eagle, the haughty concrete lions - and the faded green metal rottweiler.  Robert Champion of Studio Tarn in Australia wrote a thoughtful piece about neighborhood gardens a few weeks ago - “The Value of Front Gardens in a Pandemic, and Always”. Preston and I were able to talk with him as part of a series of conversations that we’re planning to release later this summer as a podcast (Growing in Mind). We talked about how front gardens have the potential to be social space - Robert’s term is “a gift to the neighborhood” - but are often only realized as extensions of the facade. In conjunction with that conversation, I watched the Hitchcock movie Rear Window - and was struck by how it presents the spatial setting of urban life. The movie frames the condition of “being a neighbor” as a constant dialogue of seeing and being seen.The protagonist, Jeff Jefferies, is an adventure-craving photographer who’s been confined to his apartment due to an injured leg. He’s forced to shelter in place as he heals, staring out the windows. He watches his neighbors - a young blonde dancer, a romance-hungry middle-aged woman, an elderly lady who suns herself in the public garden, a lonely male songwriter. Eventually, his 4am feelings lead him to believe that he’s witnessed a neighbor in the act of cleaning up after a murder. The way that lived space is presented in the film - through windows, with reflexive actions of seeing and being seen, creates a tension that feels very 2020.  The pandemic and political climate of this year have reinforced my awareness of the way that physical space sets up conditions for human interactions - especially with strangers and distant acquaintances. Now, every social encounter feels charged. I read City of Quartz (thanks, Chantal, for the recommendation) a few weeks ago - and it was wild to hear about how architecture and landscape architecture were changed following the LA riots of the 1980s. Design supporting social insulation, especially for the middle and upper classes, was a direct response to the tensions of the late 80s. The mushrooming of gated communities, malls, and private schools - with the defunding of public spaces such as schools, libraries, universities and parks - was the response of developers and decision-makers in the 90s and 00s. Places were - and continue to be - designed to avoid “desirable” users having to be exposed to anything that makes them uncomfortable. Will we do better this time?  “Eh, it’s not for me.”
That’s the response I got when I sent a friend the trailer for The Big Flower Fight. Another was worse: “Honestly, it looks stupid, but if it gets people more interested in plants and flowers, I have to support it.” My friends are wrong. I love this show. Yeah, it’s silly. It’s a blatant attempt to recreate the rainy Saturday duvet-cozy warm heart feeling of Bake-Off. But I love it. The show’s both earnest - and goofy AF. I love the characters. Any show about flower arranging has to be queer. Start with the hosts. I hadn’t heard of Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht before this show, but I love his energy. He talks about being a dad and an influence in a recent article for O magazine. I’ve also been enjoying cohost Natasia Demetriou recently in the second season of What We Do in the Shadows, my favorite show about dumb vampires. The choice of judges has confronted me with my ignorance of floral design. James Alexander Sinclair was the only one I found familiar. I’ve long been a fan of his blog - as well as his project 3 Men Went 2 Mow. I also saw him looking busy at Chelsea last year, but didn’t stop him to talk. Missed opportunity, I know. The contestants, though, are truly the best bit of The Big Flower Fight. I only knew of one - Farmer Nick, part of the Brooklyn cohort - when I started watching. I’m following them all now. Brooklyn was well represented - but performed poorly on this show. There’s definitely room for American horticulturists to better uphold some standard of excellence to the media. Honestly, this show felt like a normal person’s real life friend gang. Chanelle with INOIR is a fashion designer who paired up with London florist Raymond to create truly memorable works. Sarah, of Intrigue Designs in Maryland, makes fabulous arrangements with her incredibly patient assistant Jordan. Andi and Helen are estate gardeners with run-down cars in the driveway and impromptu dance parties in the living room. The gays took the day (naturally). Henck and Yan, absurdly Dutch and Danish (respectively), are a camera crew’s fantasy. Their dedication to absurd fashion is matched only by their execution of well-crafted and memorable installations. My favorites? Ryan and Andrew - they turned my heart. I loved seeing these guys work together and support each other. Their social media notes that they’re not in a romantic relationship following the show, but are creative partners - a distinction which emphasizes the transience and complicated shading of queer relationships. Watching them made me think about how important it is to enjoy the moment of working together, rather than demanding some kind of permanence. I wasn’t convinced I’d like this show. I’m not really that interested in flower arranging. I’ve written publicly about how show gardens don’t do that much for me. I struggled with Chelsea. Anything temporary doesn’t seem to fully realize the emotional power or the reality of what it means to work with landscape. My favorite gardens are permanent, integrated into their surroundings - evolved with care in relation to landscape. But I loved it. This show is adventurous and goofy and - honestly - brave. There’s so much potential for failure here. And, these people create something that’s truly wonderful. I’m not getting paid for this (email me, Netflix, and I’ll give you my routing number) - but go watch The Big Flower Fight. I think you’ll love it, too.  Landscape architects have been and continue to be terrible at branding our profession. It’s a problem.  I've been more involved with thinking about marketing recently and read How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Want You to Know by researcher Byron Sharp (thanks, S). This book offers a research-based approach to marketing and branding. It’s made me think about how we market ourselves as individual designers, firms, and - especially - as a profession. The goal of branding is to make your products and services easily identifiable AND frequently noticed during your potential customers’ everyday lives. Sharp writes, “The purpose of building strong, distinctive assets is to increase the number of stimuli that can act as identification triggers for a brand.” Potential customers need to know your work when they see it and somehow connect it with you.  Sharp outlines several strategic guidelines (such as continuously reach all buyers of the brand’s service category, ensure the brand is easy to buy, stay competitive and keep up mass appeal), but the one that’s had me pondering for the past couple of days is: Refresh and build brand-linked memory structures that make the brand easier to notice and buy What’s a memory structure? Sharp writes, “Memory structures that relate to a brand include what the brand does, what it looks like, where it is available, when and where it is consumed, by who and with whom.” Think about that for the profession of landscape architecture: What do landscape architects do? What does landscape architects’ work look like? Where do you go to hire a landscape architect? When and where is landscape architects’ work consumed? Who experiences landscape architects’ work?  Do you have a clear and easy answer to any of those questions? The ASLA defines landscape architecture as “Landscape architecture encompasses the analysis, planning, design, management, and stewardship of the natural and built environment through science and design.“ That’s actually a pretty concise definition - but it’s not exactly easy to picture. Sharp defines the distinctive elements (or cues) that contribute to memory structures as “anything that shows people what brand a product is”. He lists the following possibilities: colors, logos, taglines, symbols/characters, celebrities, advertising styles. Landscape architects’ work isn’t so easy to identify. What kinds of things do we design? Everything outside. We operate across scales. There’s also the self-defeating tradition within landscape architecture which tries to mask human effort in the experience of landscape - just think of Olmsted and Niagara Falls. Sharp also identifies that distinctive elements can be evaluated using two criteria: uniqueness and prevalence. It’s interesting to think about high-profile landscape architecture projects related to these criteria. Consider the High Line and Lurie Garden. They’re unique. The abundance of flower color creates a highly memorable experience (Hitchmough’s research identified flower cover of 27% or more as a highly attractant quality of naturalistic plant communities). They’re also prevalent - they’re publicly accessible, located in major metro areas, and have heavy visitorship. That visitorship and accessibility makes them easy to visit - and well publicized on social media. Landscape architects have the knowledge and skill to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the human and natural systems we serve. Moving forward, we need to start marketing ourselves in ways that allow the public to connect our skill and expertise with their positive experiences of place.   I live in books. If you know me at all, you’ll know that I always have some book in my bag, something else loaded on my phone, hold requests at the library, and a waterfall of books stacked down my staircase. A childhood isolated from mass media gave me the impulse to read anything I could get my eyes on.  Over the past year or two, I’ve begun to realize that - even if I manage to finagle my way to old age - I won’t get to read everything. Starting with Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge (an endeavor I’ve bonded over with the remarkable Lindsey Kerr), I began to think more seriously about reading as a practice - the types of work I’m reading, whose work I’m paying attention to and how I was reading it. I’ve been nudged further in this thinking through conversations on a variety of podcasts - Book Club for Masochists, Overdue, The Worst Bestsellers. I’ve also been inspired by our local UU’s social justice book club and the recommendations of Mandy Cowley.  After a year of consuming a lot of book-related media and exploring some of the associated reading challenges (including trying to expand my understanding by reading books by authors from different countries of the world), I’ve realized that - while these challenges might be good for some people, they don’t necessarily translate to a meaningful reading practice for me. Perhaps it was a late and naive realization - any challenge related to publishing is going to have a focus on selling more books and promoting recent publications. Neither of which is a bad aim, but not necessarily what I’m trying to do.  I’ve been letting the thought “how do I choose what to read” simmer for a while. When, in the usual imbricated way of contemporary life, a highly contingent chain of events (friend’s book recommendation, reading the book, rating on goodreads, link to a list based on the post) led me to A Planner’s Guide to Reading by Martin Weigel, which answers the question: "What should I read to inform and inspire myself?" Weigel lists 7 kinds of reading from which planners benefit: “1. That which expands our capacity for empathy 2. That which grounds us in the basics of strategy 3. That which grounds us in the basics of how brands are built 4. That which illuminates the present state of things 5. That which lets us peer into the near-future 6. That which deepens our appreciation for creative instinct and craft 7. That which expands our capacity for persuasive expression” Weigel goes on to provide a short reading list under each of these categories, with a brief explanation of his thinking around each category. His list felt solid, but not quite right for me. Some were a little too focused on marketing and advertising. Others were, perhaps, a little narrow.  I’ve thought about (and bounced a draft list off the ever-insightful Jared Barnes) how I’d frame such a list for myself. Here’s what I read:
I’m sure I’ll realize that I’ve left out something essential, but here is my own quick list of what I’ve been reading lately in each of these categories: That which expands our capacity to love Empathy isn’t enough. Mister Loverman - Bernardine Evaristo Crush - Richard Siken On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong Autumn - Ali Smith Generations - Flavia Biondi The Velvet Rage - Alan Downs That which amplifies the past, illuminates the present state of things, and projects possible futures Think about these as a continuum rather than as separate categories. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Staying with the Trouble - Donna Haraway Transmetropolitan, volumes 1-10 - Warren Ellis Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place - bell hooks White Fragility - Robin DiAngelo That which provides vocabulary, concepts, frameworks, and models for describing thinking and experience Queer theory and phenomenology are incredibly useful frameworks to help me make sense of the world. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations - Sara Ahmed The Queer Art of Failure - J Jack Halberstam Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric - Madison Moore Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity - Jose Esteban Munoz Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality - Gayle Salamon That which deepens our appreciation for creative instinct and craft So you feel less alone and are compelled to keep making good, whole-hearted work. How to Make Art at the End of the World - Natalie Loveless On Writing Well - William Zinsser Eat Up - Ruby Tandoh Coal to Diamonds - Beth Ditto Educating the Reflective Practitioner - Donald Schon Create Dangerously - Edwidge Danticat That which grounds us in our areas of expertise Be informed - know the scholarship in your disciplines. Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture - Bruce Pascoe Overgrown: Practices Between Landscape Architecture and Gardening - Julian Raxworthy Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape - Lauret Savoy Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire - Ed. Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Bruce Erickson I don’t expect that my five categories of reading - or my recent reads in each category - will be right for you. These lists are by no means comprehensive. They just demonstrate how some of my recent reading can fulfill the categories. Perhaps they’ll help you gain some clarity in thinking about your own reading practice. Go read!   I’ve never wanted an apocalypse. As a kid, I was told that the end of the world was something to watch with joy. The fundamentalist teachings that my parents enjoyed portrayed the apocalypse as a triumph - destruction of humanity and life as we know it was an opportunity for the elect to be proven right once and for all. Apocalypse would yield those righteous few an opportunity to start over in perfection without having to deal with the messiness of the world and all the rest of us. If you didn’t like it, well, you were damned anyway.  That way of thinking didn’t work for me. I liked the world. Oak trees and sunsets and mud puddles and chocolate ice cream all seemed pretty great. Even when the world was scary or threatening, I didn’t want it to end. There was so much to see and discover and learn.  When I went to college, I chose landscape architecture as my discipline. This wasn’t because I was impressed with the legacy of landscape architecture or with the (limited amount of) built work that I had encountered. Instead, I was fascinated with the world - specifically with exterior environments and systems. Landscape architecture seemed to offer a wide range of practices for investigating and understanding the earth.  Landscape architects have wrestled the relationship between humans and everything else since the inception of the discipline. Practitioners have often gotten things wrong. Pruitt-Igoe, Robert Moses’ neighborhood destruction, the Make It Right Foundation’s Ninth Ward homes, are all examples of projects where landscape architects and designers have failed. Some times we’ve gotten things right. This summer, at UPenn, the Design With Nature Now exhibit showcases 25 projects that boldly explore the political, ecological and economic aspects of landscape architecture practice. Weller, Hoch and Huang’s Atlas for the End of the World is another fantastic example of our discipline’s potential to address concerns at a planetary scale.  Five years out of school and into practice, I’ve been thinking seriously about how I - as a landscape architect - practice a relationship with landscape and place. As David Cain from Raptitude would say, I need to “care deeply, not passionately”. I like an interesting mess. But I need my action to be informed. How do I measure the worth of my work?  Other people have been studying and thinking about this relationship between humans and the earth since long before I was alive. I’ve been spending time with Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene recently. That phrase, “staying with the trouble”, really resonates with me. Haraway explains, “Staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, and meanings.” I like it as a way of thinking, but I haven’t quite placed how to make it real.  The closest practical design approach that I’ve encountered is the discussion of practice in Jinny Blom’s The Thoughtful Gardener. The whole book reflects Ms Blom’s ethos of making-with place, making-with clients. She references Thomas Church and the goal to “make drawings conversational”. The grounded and conversational process laid out in The Thoughtful Gardener offers the opportunity - not only for the landscape to be transformed through the design process - for the client and designer to be transformed as well.  To declare an apocalypse is easy. The world isn’t perfect? Give up now. But to live in the world and try to make it better? That’s hard. You get to the end of the day, then have to wake up and do it again.  |
Caleb
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