1. The lawn hasn't grown up as a raw obsession America has with its lawns as the story may often be told. The desire for the lawn doesn’t come first. The lawn starts in a development practice where we clear the land, level it, grade it, drain it, build roads and urban infrastructure, build homes, and then put the soil back in place. That soil can’t be left bare. All soil, as part of the finishing of development, must be covered in turfgrass, both for cleanliness and to prevent the erosion of soil. If the soil was allowed to erode away, it would quickly clog up all the constructed storm water infrastructure and alter the local waterways with sedimentation. Point being, the monsters of American culture aren’t out there fetishizing lawns so much that paradise is being paved over for it alone. Lawns, in their original production and construction, are about inexpensive and effective land development.

2. Andrew Jackson Downing followed by Olmstead in the mid to late 1800s advocated for open spaces, as if each suburban home was set in a communally maintained park of which individual homeowners tended their own piece. But by the time Levittown (recognized as the first mass-produced suburb, a planned community for veterans returning home from WWII)  was conceptualized and developed in the late-1940s, the imagination of the lawn was no longer a socialist dream of the romantic American landscape. By this time the lawn’s utopianisms we reduced to the dreams of developers putting out inexpensive housing and developments suited for the automobile.

3. The development history today's homeowners are a part of is outside their agency. There are people who aren't obsessed with their lawns, they just want to give care to their spaces. I want people to feel good about giving care to their landscape and grounds and not have to face the shaming, labeling, and reduction that some like to place on them as if they are just mindless conformists to The American Lawn Aesthetic. A healthy lawn may surround someone's home because they care for it. Giving care to their space might be what feels good for them. 

While Boxwood, in a certain audiance, are certainly seen as worn out and overused because of how they fill the suburban niche of "evergreen plant that is deer browse resistant," I have been exploring and finding, for the first time in my career, ways I like to use them. This comes from recognizing them as a plant that tolerates the difficult dry shade gardens we are working with all the time in The City and also seeing them as a plant with an extensive tradition and history in the garden.. For the first time in several years I pulled out my "Dirr," as we call it generally; Michael Dirr's "Manual of Woody Landscape Plants," the original edition put out in 1972 I believe, which has been the standard reference on woody ornamentals ever since. I work with the 5th edition from 1998, however, because of the excitements I experienced in there today, I just ordered the latest edition, the 6th, from 2009.

Dirr - I think it somewhat funny - because of my simultaneous readings of the NYT literature lists - has a way of compiling a really interesting texts. Its a typical reference book, there are chunked together points on "culture," "hardiness," "diseases and insects," "propagation," and so forth. Every plant referenced in the book's thousand pages put together in the same form. But, you can get lost in the book reading all these tiny "other notes" and trivialities. In reading about Buxus sempervirens, he introduces his list and inventory of "cultivars" noting where the best collections are and that he finds with Boxwood "...once they are put to the shears no one can reliably separate them." He follows this, in perfectly straightforward scientific prose, "There is an American Boxwood Society, [he gives the mailing address], that "Boxophiles" should consider joining if all other societies are full." He then offers what he finds to be the most important reference book in case you are deeply concerned with Boxwood taxonomy and culture.

This isn't 1998 anymore so if you are one of these Boxophiles you just web search The Boxwood Society. Amazingly it is a real thing and on their website you can buy what they deem to be the most important books and compendiums on the Buxus genus. You'll find Boxwood Handbook: A Practical Guide to Knowing and Growing Boxwood (1995), by Lynn R. Batdorf as well as Boxwood: An Illustrated Encyclopedia by the same writer. This second book appears to be the most complete book on the topic, describing nearly 1100 species, varieties, and cultivars. It lists at $110.

Confronted with these references, I considered buying the handbook, but asked myself, with what I do, "how much do I really need to know about Boxwood?" Plus, there is also this thing about specialty horticulture books - 80% of the book is the same information as every other horticulture book. Twenty percent most likely details and maps out how we understand all the different Boxwood in the world, and then the remainder of the book is filled with "How to Prune," "Understanding and Preparing the Soil," "Planting and Pruning Techniques," which as it turns out, really aren't specific to the species and are just common rules of horticulture.

So - what did I come out of this with?

I was looking to better familiarize myself with Boxwood. My initial engagement with plants and namings aren't in the nursery anymore - this way of being in the business has for the most part disappeared - but happen with the catalog being my first contact with specific names. And so, I need to make sense of what is presented in books and catalogs and then impose these sense makings onto the distant nurseries and imagine them into the garden. My process here in this study begins trying to make sense of what is available to me "in production," "in commerce." I need to understand all these possibilities available to me from Nurseries that aren't in my backyard so that I can design with them and order them. I printed out or copied the Boxwood pages from the grower availability lists I deal with and had them in front of me as I read through Dirr.

For the most part, the Boxwood we would work with here in the Buffalo and Upstate New York area are of two different Boxwood species. Buxus microphylla is a Japanese native and the species is generally composed of varieties and cultivars that only grow to a couple, few feet tall and wide. B. sempervirens, which tend towards larger forms, some up to and beyond twenty-five feet in height, is a native of southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. A good number of the cultivars in commerce are hybrids of the two, a cross between Korean variety of Boxwood and the sempervirens.

Understanding the difference between 'a variety' and 'a cultivar' is important to the taxonomic differences here. The Korean Boxwood used to hybridize with sempervirens is a variety. It is written like so: Buxus microphylla var. koreana.  A variety is a further identifiable grouping  within the species - in this case microphylla - that reproduce themselves in nature, in the wild. A variety often comes from and has its own distinct geographic range. We see the following varieties within the microphylla species: var. koreana, var. japonica, var. sinica, var. insularism. Most important to the variety is that it is found in and reproduces itself in nature, in the wild, as opposed to the 'cultivar' which exists, having its own identifiable characteristics, as a result of its cultivation by humans. A cultivar is written: Buxus sempervirens 'Rotundifolia.'

A variety if 'of the wild.' A cultivar is of the nursery, the farm, the garden.

Further note - I am following Dirr's work and writing on this. Plant nomenclature is one of those things that is argued and has ever higher and higher rules. So. To try and describe what a variety is; well, my description is one that allows us to understand Boxwood in commerce. But there is also a conversation about subspecies. To do this proper, we would need to argue about the difference between variety and subspecies and from the basic readings I've done on this - well, that's a job for another day. 

The annual series of conferences around the region and industry have moved to Zoom this year. of course. I spent some time in a session this morning called "Top Ten Disease and Insect Problems of Trees in NYS." It was presented by Dr. Beth Brantley of Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories. Some quick things that happened for me during the session:

A. So many things we do - we call them "Cultural Practices" -  are often about preventing disease and insect problems.  They are just standard practices, so standard I think I forget why we do them as the practices, while starting as "Good Plant Health Care" become art forms and aesthetics in themselves. Two things that were mentioned today were (1) pruning to maintain good air circulation in a plant (drier leaves = less disease) and (2) cleaning up fall and winter debris in the garden because many diseases and insects over winter in leaves and pine cones that have fallen from the tree. 
Basic fundamental stuff. Just. One forgets why sometimes.

B. On good resources. There are two books on tree insect and diseases that has long been the standard top resource on the subject, at least 30 years, and still none better. Warren T. Johnson and Howard H. Lyon's "Insects That Feed on Trees and Shrubs" (1976) and Wayne Sinclair and Howard Lyon's "Diseases of Trees and Shrubs" (1987). Both are 500-700 page, classical resource books, with full color photographs and full text descriptions.
In the internet age, resource books have surely heavily declined in use. But, the information one finds in Google searches - the books replacement - is very sketchy and hit or miss. Most everything is just "web content," garbage write ups from people just looking to attract hits to their webpages. They sell advertising.
Always look to the University pages. Every state has it "land grant college" that deals in horticulture, turf, and agriculture, and they all put out very accessible top quality information packaged for a number of audiences with different levels of expertise. Around here, look to Cornell University first. But also, Penn State, Ohio State, UMASS, University of Maryland, and Guelph, Ontario are universities I recognize off the top of my head that I can go to immediately and without question.
But also, don't forget about books. 

​C. "Oak Decline." I questioned this a bit, not out of doubt, but that we, as a field of tree experts, have objectified all Oaks, everywhere, as "in decline." This is the first time I have ever heard such a concept. It is one thing to say "Emerald Ash Bore is sweeping across the Northeast and killing Ash trees" but it is another to pronounce an entire genus of tree as being in a historical moment of stress and decline. Cited factors are warmer temperatures, drought, and ever more complicated site conditions relating to how we manage the land, environment, and urban development.

D. Another red flag that popped up for me was Dr. Brantley made reference to the trees we select "as we repopulate the landscape with the next generation of trees." 
I mean, in a way, certainly this is what we are doing, always. We work in the cities and the trees don't live forever. But at the same time, when she said it, it struck me as something not innocent but apocalyptic. 

Images I am thinking with today.

​ From: Walker, Sophie. "The Japanese Garden." Phaidon Press, NY, 2019.

Three things to say:

1. I take interest in "Land Art" - which we might place plant form/sculpture into the genera - as oftentimes in designing the use of land, in a landscape design, in a backyard, there is space: unneeded: outside the land manager and user's utility. Certain traditions of design make this turf grass - openness. In other ways of thinking, turf grass and lawn is wasteful. No matter our choices, the making of the land is art no matter our decisions.

2. The "Gardens Illustrated" feature refers to this work above as "Caruncho-esque" referring to Spanish landscape designer Fernando Caruncho. I enjoy studying Caruncho's work but it also frustrates me as I see many of his gardens (not all) as wasteful and unsustainable. His landscapes are monumental - there is no better word to describe them - and are of a completely different universe ideologically and economically. I imagine some of his private gardens have higher annual maintenance than all the municipal gardens of WNY and Buffalo combined.

3. At the same time, Caruncho's gardening work, unlike any other gardening work I am aware of, falls into the domain of "high art." His works are purely sculptural, at the far end of the modern gardening ideology that sees plants as mere and secular materials. He would sooner talk about Piero della Francesca or Diego Velazquez than any contemporary Landscape Architect. His creative medium and  process is in dialogue with art history, not so much gardening - although, I think it may be fair to say, he is in dialogue with garden history as much as anyone - only also,  is more drawn to "high art' than cottage forms of garden thought. 

    I think the pest and disease problems lawns may have are created by trying to get more out of the grass than it has to give us. Lawns are watered too much, over fertilized, mowed too closely, and have chemicals applied to the point of killing off all the beneficial and affiliated microbiology that acts in partner to keep the environment in ‘balance’, preventing infestations. Automation of watering and the desire to get value from one’s sprinkler system leave the plant and soil constantly wet which creates a healthier space for fungus than grass. Lawns aggressively fertilized push too much growth on the grass plants making for soft, tender foliage that is susceptible to infestations because of the lush nutrient density it creates - its like sugar candy to tiny insects. 
    Grubs are probably the most likely problem of a lawn at the opposite end of the managed spectrum. Light and balanced fertilization will reduce a lawns susceptibility to grubs but grubs are not the result of poor management - in my opinion. However, more often than not, if I come across Japanese Beetle Grubs, I take a quick scan around me and more often than not, you will find ornamental plants and trees that the adult Japanese Beetles like to feed on. Take a look around and you will find Little Leaf Lindens, Purple Leaf Sandcherry, and Roses, among others.  
    Grass does need a pound or two a year of nitrogen from fertilizer every season but Generally speaking, the fewer inputs into a lawn, the fewer problems.   
​

Form and Shape are what excited me the most in 2020. I can't say I ever see it celebrated. Texture, line, movement, color, flowers; meadows, nature - this is what is what gets all the likes in the 'Gram world. And I can't say that in the "High Buffalo Garden World" do I ever see "form" as part of the conversation. But...I have been working on a photo project...

        My work in these short episodes on the lawn is to alleviate some of the competing anxieties that are placed on us as property owners and managers of the land. It seems “The Lawn” is not part of today’s dream. Yet here we are, with our existing urban and suburban infrastructure, our current model of land use - the neighborhoods are as they were built and there is no going back. It is the form that it is. 
    The spaces we live in today were built to be open, to be occupied by turfgrass lawns. In these spaces that we have inherited, the people that inhabit them want to give them care, to care for their spaces. I believe many people engage the landscape and garden as being simply “in their domain of caring.” They are tenders of their home spaces and landscape.  
    The lawns and spaces we have inherited as a form are not something that sprung as a new, raw, and undeveloped idea from the depth of our desiring imaginations. We tenders are good caring people that are taking responsibility for the worlds we inherited and inhabit. Our relationship to the properties we manage are not revolutionary and socially transformational. We all try and balance our ethics, caring, and consumer relationships to the lawns we steward - on the one hand, we have these spaces to care for and on the other, face the possibility that our cares exploit the earth and endanger the health of what we care for. There almost seems to be a paradox for us tenders, where we wish to care for our yards yet the greater narrative surrounding turf keeps hitting us, telling us we are conformists, suburban, and anti-environment. 
​

Throughout the season we have plants leftover or plants we salvage. They end up in our "shop garden." These were planted as small plugs in late May and they have developed and performed very well. I have been designing them into 2021 with excitement.