Gardening

Here’s the July progress report from landscape architect (and recent Brooklyn Building Awards winner) Joanna Pertz‘s remake of a brownstone garden in Prospect Heights:

It is the time now when the bones of the garden are set into place. It can be unsettling because the whole space changes, but if it right, it is very exciting. We still have the fence to go but I think we are on to something…it feels good!

The deck framing is in and so is the stair. In the garden the warm rusty planters have set the clear lines of the raised planting beds and begun to inscribe the mound that will lift the middle of the garden. These lines will be softened when the mound and bedding soil bury half of these steel planters.The garden feels larger as space is given to distinct activities and yet still flows between them.

The stairs are wide (4′-6) with deep treads a full 13 and a 7-1/4 rise per step. It feels like you float down this stair to the garden. The underside of the deck feels spacious at 9′-4 and in the rear beyond the planters it feels like an additional garden that was just added to the yard.

The broad stair sets you on a bowed oval field. The mound returns to the ground at a gravel clearing. The clearing sits under the large oak and is punctuated by a cast concrete pedestal that will be piped as a fountain. A path extends behind the mature magnolia into an airy woodland of fern and statuary black snakeroot. The wide spaces between the fence planks extends your view beyond the limits of the garden. I asked in my first entry what is sexy as I searched for a design. I believe we are getting close.
Prospect Heights Garden Build: The Design [Brownstoner]
Prospect Heights Garden Build: Setting the Stage [Brownstoner]

The geometry:
The shape of this garden is a challenge. It’s like a railroad apartment, rooms are interrupted by circulation space and neither feels open. The right geometry will inspire you or your eye to move thru the space, experience a change and have a place to rest. Curving paths in small gardens are tempting and tricky- they are often too busy and do not embrace the size of the garden and how many curves it can hold. I recommend one or two wide curves, if any. This design will try and get away from having a real path by blurring the line between planting and path.and creating rooms with fluid circulation by introducing topography. I am proposing a planted mound to offer a strong change in the ground plan and bring the garden abit closer to the deck above. I want to bring movement as well as a unifying architectural element into the space, this element will be a wide horizintial board fence, like ribbons, built on site. (more…)