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LANDSCAPE LANDSCAPISM
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In-augural "Landscape Landscapism" forum, overlooking Yan Yean reservoir
this discussion arises from a discussion regarding the urban in landscape architecture, and something about "the core" of what landscape design is. it come particularly from discussions by students at RMIT regarding their curriculum, and is intended as a discussion forum, and way forward, to flesh out other angles and approaches.
there is something about design and landscape that comes from gardens, conservation, the vernacular, time, ecology and taht rings true for people whoi have grown into landscape through the horticulture trades. its a sensibility, but also a kind of ethical standpoint, a VIBE. gardening is a form of curation, of spontaneous decission making, that is designerly, if not strictly designed. its about placement and reckoning. considering the discourse about taste in the picturesque, its not surprising. ephemerality is part of it, as is improvisation, as is sitting back, drinking a cup of tea and thinking, occupying spaces. gardening is colonisation, decision making.
this is libby & christian capurro's garden, in palmer street, fitzroy
this is noah's, kirsty rowe's and tim nicholas's garden at barwon heads - im hoping he is going to write something here about it..AND HE DID - THANKS TIM! (BELOW)
while the gardens on this page start to look like the kind of nostalgic ones that we know from celebrity gardens. such as those of Zandra Rhodes and Derek Jarman, from the late eighties and early nineties, where the bricoleur gathers togther found objects that become micro-climates. a lot of them will involve the personal rather than the professional in terms of the preferences of landscape architects. so looking at their own gardens and environments will be quite telling.
This garden is nostalgic but not so much in the regretful but perhaps the wistful. A lot of folk poo poo nostalgia. Myself I get a kick out of the odd nostalgic moment.
This garden is about providing my son with the opportunity to roam and do what it is he wants. And alot of that can be very funny or something of the multi-other stuff. I think about that in the context of him growing up (now he has inhabited this space for nearly five years) and there is alot of nostalgia about that process. Like the first time he saw our resident tawny frog mouth owl. And real terror was born with the subconscious suddenly made real. He dreams always about Tawny. He talks alot about Tawny.And he is constantly on my case to care about Tawny. And in Noah's words "WE CARE ALOT".
And so it's also about the owl, and the ground orchids, the moss beds, the butcher birds, the scorpions, the white tail spiders the whole dare i say it ark and especially the Moonah trees(Melaleuca lanceolata).
More nostalgia. I'm riddled with the stuff. The Bellarine Peninsula was once dominated by a complex of Moonah and Allocasuarina woodlands. Now probably the biggest stand of Moonah on the peninsula is over our fence and our garden is it too.
But there are other nostalgic moments. It's everywhere. My partner and I used to live in Arnhem Land. We were given alot of carvings of Wangarra spirits the ancestral beings who wandered the landscape naming things as they went calling them into existence. And I am really nostalgic about that. My old friends and a different life within a life. it is a kind of connection or a portal from the Barwon estuary to the mighty Liverpool estuary on the northen coast of the territory.
So yep its all about nostalgia. and further more there is a bottle tree I grew from seed as a teenager when studying at Horticulture school and it is riddled with nostalgia for me as it went to every single share house with me over a passage of 18 years and finally made it into the ground at the pointwe were able to break into the whacky world of home ownership.
And then there is the trampoline and the Totem tennis. Now tell me who in this world with the privledge of the prior experience of these things can't be nostalgic and full of wist about a first kiss on a trampoline or xmas day with the cousin and the totem tennis. This is all in here. here you will find it.
But I think JR is barking up, err, the wrong tree when he suggests this is somehow akin to the whole Jarmanesque thing. I think if you study DR's pretty and beautiful garden- is it just the photography??- and our garden the big difference is that the guff or stuff isn't just there for the aesthetics. Obviously not at all if you look at the pictures . There is a chasm of difference. This is about finding stuff and moving stuff like only a child can do. Tantrums and reveries. It's about use- tools and toys.
It's all about the bricoleur too. You gotta love geting by and making do and all that stuff.
Kids do the bricoleur even better than Levi Strauss and that is why Peter Connolly picked it. Its about immediacy and forgetfulness and distraction and dreaming. and it is also about sorrow and loss. You have to fit that in somewhere. Yep this garden is especially nostalgic for us three. We buried our second son and Noah's brother just under the Dracaena draco in the centre of the backyard. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to leave this piece of dirt the longer time goes on the more entwined we become. And that is fertile ground for nostalgia.
I have to go now.
Because time, money, materiality, personality, people and place are intertwined and threaded together to make both professional and personal decisions and methodologies for approachinng a landscape environment sensability.
It makes good sense to think bricoleur. Any thing else, is a waste of good energy.
reclaimed brocken gossford sandstone squares-$0 reclaimed brocken terracotta glazed tiles-$0 leftover concrete materials-$0 12hours of blood, sweat and tears-cost-Leah and Heath on a Sunday 160 indigenous tube stock-$(haggled prices) slapped up Grey water irrigation(white pvc pipe in above photo)-cost is just a little smell about one day every 2 months 12 chooks that arent happy with the paddock boundry-cost;only 45 indig plants left after 1 season.
kirsten's gift wetland for peter connolly, in a laundry tub, but_very_ sustainable & julian raxworthy's garden at home, for what its worth
Ive asked Kirsten to add her thoughts - she seems reticent. I dont understand it...
some thoughts by Heath Gifford, Shah Turner & Julian Raxworthy
Its an attitude.Its about fairness.Its anti-corporate. Its about the world. Its about this place, in this time. Its about David Attenborough. Its about Paul Keating. Its anti-ware. Its pro drug law reform.
Its about the environment. Its about Caroline Springs. Its about design. Its all landscape. It’s a landscape of culture, people and ecologies. Its not about the Celestine Prophecy. It might include 4WD drivers.
Its about camping and habitation. Its about making do. Its all landscape. It tries to be intelligent but not up itself. Simplicity or complexity are debatable. Its about gardens. Worlds. Experience. Representation sometimes. Its often recycled.
But edgy. Succulents feature.Interpretation, always. Its not a John Lennon song. It knows planning is important but others can do it better. Money’s involved. Mud maps.