Gates of Berkeley, part 2

If you enjoyed the first installation of Gates of Berkeley, you will appreciate part 2. If this is your first introduction to Gates of Berkeley, view the original post.

Earth Hour TODAY

Update, 03/29/2009: I was away from home so my place was dark before, during, and after Earth Hour, but I was someplace where the lights were on. Where were you during Earth Hour?

Tree Walk: Tree Space Design by Casey Trees

Casey Trees, Washington DC's primary urban forestry nonprofit, has released its Tree Space Design Report, specifically geared towards designers. Other resources for design professionals include Innovative Tree Spaces in DC, Tree Planting Detail, Interactive Maps & Tools, and Lunch and Learn.

Image: Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees

A photograph does speak a thousand words and the report's illustrations do just that. Soil volume is really critical for healthy and long-term growth. A healthy tree can provide numerous ecological and social benefits over its lifetime.

Given the size of the tree (at maturity) and its required soil volume, there are several tree space designs: (1) Open

Image: Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees

(2) Covered

Image: Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees

(3) Partially covered

Image: Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees

Design #2 and #3 are commonly seen in downtown and commercial areas while design #1 and #2 are more common in residential areas.

Elements of sustainability, SF Garden Show 2009

"Sustainable Spaces Beautiful Places" was the theme of this year's SF Garden Show. Beautiful places are a matter of taste; some of the gardens did not meet my personal aesthetic.

Of the eighteen gardens (excluding the Container Gardens and the Chateau la Vieille Barrique du Vin which I did not find), six were explicitly designed for sustainability: The Urban Garden (UCB Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning); Serenity Now! (Tierra Seca Landscape Design; Sky's the Limit (Rebecca Cole Design); Actinomycetes, Worms, and Fungi, OH MY! (San Mateo County RecycleWorks); !Sing! (Mariposa Gardening and Design); and The Sustainable Garden (AskTonytheGardener.com). Coincidentally, these were among my favorite gardens at the show.

Sky's the Limit and The Urban Garden were set in the city; each intended to maximize the often limited open and living spaces found in cities like New York and San Francisco. Rebecca Cole writes of her garden:

As our cities become more populated, space becomes more limited, and out desire to be more "green" flourishes, the roof emerges as the pasture for a gardening revolution. Maximizing the limited space for living, gardening, and venting, this high-rise roof top garden, 20 stories up, merges indoor/outdoor living, al fresco dining and energy saving building technologies with a passion for sustainable gardening.

Cole's sentiments were echoed by students from the UCB Dept. of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, though differently executed.

The city of the future is crowded: open space is rare and valuable. Faced with re-densification, every plane has potential as a planting surface. The San Francisco backyard of the future utilizes the walls, roof, and furniture to create a green oasis. Because space is limited, the garden must serve a variety of functions....

For example, the walls were planters and the seats sprouted grass.

Particularly creative in the UCB garden were the movable planters and garden walls! I think the components of the UCB garden could either be replicated by DIY types or manufactured affordably. However, replicating Cole's garden experience could be costly.

More suburban or less space-constrained garden designs also showcased sustainable elements. Serenity Now! was "a mash-up of contemporary design with wild nature" shown above The latter was provided by Bay Natives of San Francisco and included Carex pansa and Penstemon azareus shown below.

Still in California, but closer to home, was Mariposa Gardening and Design's !Sing!. In fact, the garden was so reminiscent of Berkeley that one viewer remarked, "It's got that Berkeleyite thing going on." The garden is composed of, amomg other elements, native plants that provide songbird habitat and forage.

The form of the arched stone wall in the garden reminded me of the Ice Wall in Teardrop Park in New York.

The Sustainable Garden is "about gardening with plants that are happiest in the local climate and soil." Tony lives in the mountains outside Los Gatos, California so I assume the "Lily of the Nile, pittosporum, Indian Hawthorn, and the rest" mentioned in the garden's description are happy in Los Gatos. In any case, i enjoyed several of the elements in this garden: the 25-foot tall windmill which "represents the old-fashioned way of pumping water out of the ground," the solar panels, and the rainwater catchment roof system which supports goldfish!

The !Sing! garden featured "an edible plant guild" but Actinomycetes, Worms, and Fungi, OH MY! was all about food gardening. The designers, San Mateo County RecycleWorks and Garden of Eden Landscapes, developed several forms in which to grow vegetables: in rows, up a trellis, in a mound, and in a raised bed. The garden also highlighted rainwater collection.

The soul also requires sustenance and the 11:44 am, Friday garden does the job well. G. Anders Gardens with Terra Natura and Laural Landscapes designed "a therapeutic space of growth, hope, and beauty for anyone in need of an enabling and high sensory garden experience." This garden was created specifically "to honor our disabled veterans." The first thing I noticed about the garden was its smell; lavender (Lavandula stoeches 'Otto Quast'), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis 'Ken Taylor') and jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum) filled the air around the garden. The form of the garden was very welcoming and the designers were clever in their naming by taking advantage of the vernal equinox (Happy Belated start of Spring).

SF Flower & Garden Show 2009

This blog was honored with a press pass (thank you Dawn Stranne & Associates) to attend what was to be the last year of the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show. Good news: the show will go on! At the Garden Writers Reception on the evening of Wednesday, March 18, founder, chairman, and producer Duane Kelly announced that a buyer (two in fact) had been found for the show. (The fate of the sister show - the Northwest Flower & Garden Show - is yet to be determined.) Kelly's announcement was met with heartfelt applause. The new owners (left and center, with Duane Kelly in suit and bowtie) were similarly applauded.

I attended last year's show at the Cow Palace in Daly City. This year's show is being held at the San Mateo Event Center. Duane Kelly mentioned that landscaping on the event center's grounds scored highly in early surveys. Interestingly, while the show attendees are responding positively to the new venue, the production company, Salmon Bay Events, is being protested by labor groups at the vehicle and pedestrian entrances.

I spent Thursday, March 19 viewing the display gardens and the plant market. I'll review the gardens in a later post. On my way out, I browsed the book offerings by two Berkeley bookshops: Mrs. Dalloway's on College Avenue and Builders Booksource on Fourth Street.

The books that grabbed my attention reflected several of the themes in the display gardens: edible gardens, gardening in small spaces, rainwater gardens, and garden design generally. From Builders Booksource:

A Handbook for Garden Designers, Rosemary Alexander with Karena Batstone

Rain Gardens, Nigel Dunnett and Andy Clayden; Rainwater Collection for the Mechanically Challenged, Suzy Banks with Richard Heinichen, illustrated by Tre´Arenz

Edible Flower Garden, Rosalind Creasy; Recipes from the Garden, Rosalind Creasy

And from Mrs. Dalloway's:

Fresh Food from Small Spaces, R.J. Ruppenthal; The Edible Garden, Hazel White and Janet H. Sanchez (Sunset Books)

New Garden Design: Inspiring Private Paradises, Zahid Sardar; The Garden Maker's Manual, Rosemary Alexander and Richard Sneesby

Burnham's Plan of Chicago 1909

Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago 1909 is 100 years old. (The plan was completed with the assistance of city planner Edward H. Bennett and artist Jules Guerin.) The City of Chicago will celebrate the plan's birthday "with a yearlong festival of exhibitions and public events..." (Paul Golderger, The New Yorker, March 9, 2009).

Image: Plan of Chicago 1909, illustration by Jules Guerin

Golderger writes engagingly about Daniel Burnham and "the most effective example of large-scale urban planning America has ever seen." Despite the effectiveness of the plan, Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, almost half a century later, criticized Burnham's plan for its "monumental grandeur" and ignorance of neighborhoods.

In Burnham's defense, Golderberger points to the work of architectural historian Kristen Schaffer who "discovered that Burnham had some remarkable radical social notions" like day-care centers and better housing for the poor, though these parts of the Chicago plan were not implemented. Also, Burnham's public spaces, Golderberger argues, are people-oriented contrary to criticisms by Mumford and Jacobs. Golderberger cites North Michigan Avenue and Navy Pier as examples.

In Chicago last summer, I walked along the waterfront, saw (bustling) Navy Pier from a distance, strolled through North Burnham Park, lingered on the grounds of the Museum of Science and Industry, and gazed over the lagoons around Wooded Island.

Access to such a lengthy waterfront is refreshing (Golderberger points out that other American cities have "obstructed" their waterfronts with highways and industrial land uses), the parks are variable and well used, and the museums beckon locals and tourists alike. Although Millennium Park was not in the original plan, the view of the city from Lurie Garden underscores the beauty of a plan like Burnham's, which continues to influence this Urbs in Horto or City in a Garden.

Wave, Split, Eagle, and Schubert Sonata at Olympic Scultpure Park

Richard Serra's "Wake" could not be any more dramatic if it was located on the shore of the Sound, or in the Sound itself. The massive (as in tons) steel "wakes" evoke the waves created by boats and ships. A fitting sculpture for Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park which is technically located alongside Elliot Bay and not by the Puget Sound, per se. To get a sense of the scale of these wakes, see the next image. The woman in the photograph is approximately five feet (5') three inches (3").

We write about trees often on local ecologist so I could not miss the opportunity to photograph the silver tree sculpture "Split" by Roxy Paine (foreground). The lighting made it difficult to get a close-up of the tree. In the right-background is Alexander Calder's red bird "Eagle." A better photograph of Calder's piece is here.

I would never have guessed the subject of Mark di Suvero's sculpture. It is titled "Schubert Sonata." I think it looks like an awkward buoy. The Seattle Art Museum describes the piece as follows:

Schubert Sonata possesses a heroic scale and a distinctively urban and industrial flavor, offset by the delicately balanced circular structure that opens to the sky. This ribbon of raw metal, delineated by organic and geometric forms, stands poised on a single point and spins—a reflection of the artist’s long-standing interest in the possibilities for motion in sculpture. This work is part of a series dedicated to composers.

LEQ: How do purpleleaf plums photosynthesize?

First, LEQ is the acronym for local ecologist question. Second, it was inspired by Human Flower Project's HFQ or Human Flower Query. Third, this is our first LEQ. Fourth, we try to provide a, not the, well-reasoned and researched answer but encourage reader contributions!

The LEQ was generated in-house (so to speak) as we were returning from an errand. In the course of two weeks, the purple leaf plums have gone from crowns of pink flowers to purple leaves. One of us asked, how do purpleleaf plums photosynthesize without green leaves (chlorophyll is expressed as a green color)?

The other responded that perhaps other pigments, in this case, anthocyanins have photosynthetic capabilities, though less effective than chlorophyll. Anthocyanins are expressed as purple and red (ex: purpleleaf plum or sweetgum and red maple in the fall) while carotenoids (carotenes, xanthophylls) are expressed as yellow (ex: ginkgo in the fall). This guess was inaccurate (and also embarrassing because one of us should/ did know this type of plant physiology).

In the purpleleaf plum (and other non-green leaved species), chlorophyll is present all along. (Chlorophyll reflects certain colors which are expressed as green, while absorbing others.) The quantities in which anthocyanins and carotenoids are present mask chlorophyll. In the fall, as leaves die, "substances that can be reused, such as proteins and chlorophyll, are broken down and taken back into the tree" (Peter Thomas, "Trees: Their Natural History"). Anthocyanins and carotenoids are revealed in the leaves providing "fall color." Interestingly, anthocyanins mix with carotenoids "in different proportions [to] produce the oranges, reds, purples, and sometimes blues" (Thomas).

Other sources:

• Harold William Rickett, "Botany for Gardeners"
• ISA Arborists' Certification Study Guide
• Michael J. Farabee, Online Biology Book: Photosynthesis
• MadSci Network: Botany

Tree Walk: Three types of tree houses

Photograph: Children playing in a treehouse, Riverhead, NY, August 1967 Arthur Schatz, Life Magazine

Not knowing the origins of the tree house, I turned to the web and J. B. Jackson. Several online dictionaries define tree house as "a playhouse built in the branches of a tree" or more generally, "a structure built among the limbs of a tree, usually for recreation." Wikipedia did not provide any information on the origin of the tree house but did provide a link to The Treehouse Guide, a building and reference website. Unfortunately this website does not offer an origins story. I don't own The Treehouse Book by Peter Nelson, Judy Nelson, David Larkin, Paul Rocheleau and it is not available at my local library.

On to J. B. Jackson, landscape geographer and historian particularly of the vernacular or everyday American landscape. Jackson's 1994 tree essay is titled "In Favor of Trees." Although he does not mention the tree house, what he does mention might be a clue to its origins. He begins the essay thus:

Like millions of other Americans I have no great liking for wilderness and forest, but like the majority of Americans I am fond of trees: individual trees, trees in rows along the street or in orchards, trees in parks.

We like being among trees, so why not literally be in a tree?! Might the tree house have evolved out of sitting on a wooden wrap-around tree bench or dancing around a maple, hawthorn, or birch at a Maypole festival?

What else does Jackson tell us? Towards the end of "In Favor of Trees" he argues for experiential relationships with trees.

The contemporary forest experience emphasizes the visual [his emphasis] aspect, the scenic, the ecological, the photogenic. We are not the touch, much less pick up or carry away, any object we find of interest. We are tactfully told that we are not at home but in a museum....For the fact of the matter is humanity's closest and most productive relationship with nature derives from personal, physical contact, and from a desire to appropriate whatever attracts us.

The tree house as art is a museum-type piece. We saw the Tadashi Kawamata "Untitled (Tree Huts)" 2008 installation in Madison Square Park in January 2009. These tree houses (huts) are not accessible for "personal, physical contact," but the installation is definitely visually engaging and photogenic. Kawamata was an artist-in-residence with Mad. Sq. Art, a project of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Reactions to the sculpture are mostly positive (intrigued by the concept): Tadashi Kawamata's Tree Huts at The Landscape, Tadashi Kawamata Builds Tree Houses in New York City at Smithsonian.com, A Tree Hut Grows in Manhattan at Gothamist, and New Public Art Insanity: Tree Houses in Madison Square Park at Curbed. Here is Mad. Sq. Art has on Kawamata's tree huts:

Tree huts in particular are an emerging focus of Kawamata’s work; a crystallization of Kawamata’s interest in the architecture of shelter and of the insertion of private objects into public spaces as a method of renegotiating the meaning of both.

Finally, the wood domes of Andy Goldsworthy which are not so much tree houses as tree rooms. We saw the "En las entranas del arbol" exhibit at the Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, en el Palacio de Cristal, Parque del Retiro in December 2008. No touching and no photographs were allowed (the photographs were taken from the exterior of the palacio/ museo), but you were allowed to go inside the domes. The feeling was of being in a forest, inside a tree. I could smell the bark and sap (the trees used were "already harvested" Scots Pine from a timber operation north of Madrid). Goldsworthy describes his 1983 experience inside a hole in a sycamore tree as "being in the stomach of the tree." The architecture of the domes mirror the architecture of the palacio: "a glass epidermic, a layer in the growth principle that radiates from the centre."