8/13/2019 0 Comments Lake County, Ohio Nursery ToursI took the day Monday to head towards Lake County, Ohio to tour Nurseries. Visited North Coast Perennials and Klyn Nursery. "Nursery Tours" is an annual two day event put on by the Nursery Growers of Lake County Ohio. I have heard of it my whole life...first time visitor. Only, I left Buffalo at 6AM, drove down, did two tours between 9AM and 1PM, then drive home. Special treat - 2 1/2 hour personal tour by Bill Hendricks of Klyn Nursery. One-on-one, cruising the 1000s of acres they must have there in his FORD pickup truck.
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To get here, there has been three client meetings and two with a pool contractor. Site survey work put together with pool designers drawings then scaled to my format. I have been talking every couple days with a Rep from a stone manufacturer - we are looking to have a polished and beveled pool edge coping but cost and production timing are driving that decision. Pool dimensions and layout are still being negotiated with City Hall to ensure all permits necessary. Initial conversation started to solve problem..."We want the backyard to be at one height. We don't want to step up to the pool. There isn't enough space to cut the yard up." My first work was taking site elevations and the study escalated from there. Alyssa just told me of a conversation she had with a client, the punchline of which ends: "Well. We never really knew what we were getting. We just trusted Matt. We figured most everyone would just show up and start building stuff. But Matt came in with all these drawings and stuff. But we can't really visualize things like that, so we just let him have at it and now we're just starting to see it for the first time." Alyssa tells this story; its narrative is the great trust the client had in our work. But. This isn't how it is supposed to be. The design process, what I call "The Design Study," is not meant to just allow the designer to design. Yes. Sketching, drawing, scaling, and conceptualizing things on paper is how a designer designs. But, the drawing work is also needed so we - the client and I - have something to budget from; to scale; "How many square foot of paving is to be done?" What is the volume of soil to be excavated and hauled away? How much lawn will there be? In the design study we can answer these questions. It takes the guess work out of production. But further, design documents, sketches, and drawings are documents that represent what is to happen on the project, what is to be built. As much as any written proposal, a scaled drawing "says" what we agree we are building. And most importantly, the design study and process is creating a situation for dialogue with the client - design makes a representation, or tries to bridge the space from imagination to real constructed object; it brings half form to what is concept, theory, and imagination. Design communicates. A designer isn't (or shouldn't be) designing for themselves - they design for the client. Yes, some clients just "want it taken care of" and choose to be minimally engaged - but the process is there to involve them. I always say, "It is my work as a designer to understand the clients imaginations, needs, desires, and wishes, and to bring them form, bring them into being, guiding them with some basic elementaries of design, visual, and spacial language." 8/3/2019 0 Comments Landscaping Help. We are first and foremost here to help people with their homes (or whatever). There certainly isn't any glory in doing this lawn repair work shown above - unless you are the homeowner. Most of our day to day work is spent "just helping out;" but that work isn't always something people want to read about, critique, or view pictures of. But little small jobs are the best. They help you the most and are the easiest and least stressful for us to execute. 7/30/2019 0 Comments Landscapes and Value.Ten years ago, there was this small journal I was near that experimented by putting out works formed as 500 word essays. From that same group now we find creative productions down to 100 words. This might prove a good size garden. ... Much of my writing at times focuses on the idea of "value." In many historic traditions of economic thinking, value relates the life spent in the making of an object to that objects value. Value has two sides; here we may see it as both the life spent in the method and practice of The Buff Hort Project as well as the help someone may receive from the productive work of Buffalo Horticulture and how it transfers into their home. 7/7/2019 0 Comments Sunday Morning ReflectionThe season rolls by... And it becomes thick Where its duration stops being marked at intervals of reflection. Endless and impenetrable. An exit, no matter how temporary, Threatens the stability dependent on continuousness. It is a flow. Our most important work this week was being able to distinguish and separate the two above narrow leaf plant species. The more sophisticated plantings become Poetries of "naturalized," and "native" - The more intense we have to understand the insurgents of these fantasies. Crabgrass has the tiniest of hairs around its leaf collars, Barnyard Grass doesn't 5/13/2019 0 Comments Visual TranslationsTrying to cross a conceptual divide...
Design is a visual intelligence. It is a different way of thinking. It resists spoken language as well as "opens up" critically taken for granted structures in every day life. ... I have attached an image. It is not of "a wall" like you have asked Like I have proposed and spoken of. I looked back at my proposal. I wrote - "line/wall" We spoke of it as "a wall" because in commerce It is "a wall." The manufacturer calls it "wall stone." "Wall construction" will be the process we follow; in this sense It is a wall. But in my design It isn't a wall but a line. It is a solid form that creates order. I fear That in speaking of it as "a wall" It gives the impression that it is "An add on" or "An up-sale" As if we are working from a menu And adding ornaments as we choose. Yes. It is a line item on a proposal. But this is to help understand how we arrive at the value of the job. We may speak of breaking things up into production phases - "plants" and "wall; But the design is one whole thing. Further The wall relates to the maintenance and care of the garden. The wall does the ordering in place of the manicuring hand of the gardener. It is an investment. Its a machine. 5/6/2019 0 Comments Instagram and The FritillariaOn Fritillaria.
Until four or five years ago I had never heard of Fritillaria - A fall bulb that emerges in spring Alongside Daffs and Grape Hyacinths. The tiniest of flowers. Small enough to evade me in my life of horticulture Running 30 years at least. I suspect it a new floral or garden consciousness - Formed not in the garden But on Instagram - From where it has found its way into me. Instagram has changed the scale From which we imagine the garden. The zooming up closeness of a phone's camera Is bringing us closer to the garden Where before we viewed it an arms length Or whatever scale and distance A persons body would stand and view. Fritillaria is not something you would see from the street. Its not something you would make stand out by planting in mass. It is singular and only viewed up close - a distance I rarely found myself until now. 4/20/2019 0 Comments Spring Clean Ups, Ornamental Horticulture, and The Interval of Care In The Landscape.There is this divide
Between cleaner, horticulturist, and designer That always needs to be navigated. I always say "The greatest problem we face Is the word 'Landscaper.' Fifty years ago, it worked. It was primarily a construction term. Then in the 70s and 80s There was a massive economic shift To a service economy, and Transformed "landscaper" Into a weekly lawn mowing service. You come to me To care for your landscape - "Ornamental horticulture" Is the field, The profession - But you imagine our work In weekly intervals; You imagine our work As if we are the manicurists and cleaners. We clean and manicure As just a part of the work of caring, But our production isn't organized Around the interval of lawn mowing. Our cycles are seasonal Tied to the snow's thaw The blooming of spring bulbs And the dropping of flowers from the shrubbery. The soil drys in the summer And we can work it Turn it Build new beds And set solid foundations. As the summer nights cool in early August We can sow turfgrass. Soon the leaves start to turn And we transplant, And as the leaves fall We clean them up and plant the bulbs for the spring. We celebrate the holidays Rest Design And begin again as the snow thaws. But the word landscaper Has been completely subsumed By weekly intervals And I can't for the life of me Figure out how to communicate that With Modesty Without sounding elitist I'm trying to give consult and care But there is a line that cuts you every seventh day And you can't feel it; But it makes me cry. Spring Clean Ups. Every job is complicated. Yours has specific pruning details, some rabbit feeding on Spiraea needs tending, and The Boxwood are poorly shaped - and I think they should be attended to. There is some Japanese Knotweed establishing itself in the back corner of the yard - You don't know what that is but it should be tended to immediately. Its an invasive. Its no small matter. Every yard and landscape has its own set of specific complications And the value of our work is FIRST based in consultation and the dialog that informs back and forth collaboratively in the care. Maybe you just want the security of knowing everything is cared for and wish to minimize your work. I can't finish this articulation. It won't come out. But, I put together a proposal for a spring clean up and offered to review it. I was met with a "Do you think its that complicated?" Yes, I do. |
AuthorFrom Matthew Dore, the "I" voice of Buffalo Horticulture and "The Buff Hort Project." Archives
March 2022
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