Showing posts with label landscape architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label landscape architecture. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

From Tolkien's Trees to Post Sandy Tree Replanting Plans - We Need Our Trees. Stop the Massacre




In the ongoing nightmare of Superstorm Sandy that we can’t yet wake up from in our coastal areas, trees are much on my mind. 
I see the massacre of our area’s trees everywhere around us in the Garden State.
Our home there near Sandy Hook – the name coincidence is not lost on me either and just reinforces the lingering Sandy imprimatur – is more or less home base too for my Duchess Designs fine gardening and landscape design work.

I have been meaning to write about the tree destruction as a follow up to my last post but have been consumed with cleaning garden clients’ gardens of Sandy and her salty spread.
We have planted spring bulbs too, a sure of hopefulness.  That’s another story.

I Tweeted about the wanton destruction of the trees, especially after talking to my arborist, Mike Hufnagel, Hufnagel Tree Service (www.hufnageltree.com) who told me of the preemptive slaughter of too many trees.
I was stunned.

Mike also says, “Today’s acorn is tomorrow’s mighty oak.  I always tell my customers that Oak is the most desirable tree to have on your property.  Even if a superstorm can make them uproot and split.” 
Quite philosophically, he continues, “We have to remember we live in an ancient forest. It is only that we choose to build our dwellings and communities here! The Trees were here first.”
On November 27 he wrote to me with no small amount of anger and sadness, “I am witnessing a massacre of the rest of the untouched storm-damaged large trees being removed due to Fear!! Everyone is cutting trees due to fear.
Just look at all the tree companies driven by $$$$.  Instead of educating the community on Tree failure and maintenance.”
Mike adds, “We are living in the age of Extinction of our mature forest trees!!! So sad!!”  

Indeed.

I researched cultures that killed their trees – from Haiti to Greenland to Africa.
It never ended well for those places and, in fact, the “civilizations” either died out or changed their climate.  Of course in those situations, trees were ostensibly cut for more or less valid purposes: building materials and grazing.
Our wholesale massacres are happening out of fear and ignorance  - which is so much more shameful. 

On the other hand, there is the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Muta Maathai, a Kenyan who, according to the official site of the Nobel Prize, was awarded the honor because she “introduced the idea of planting trees with the people in 1976 and continued to develop it into a broad-based, grassroots organization whose main focus is the planting of trees with women groups in order to conserve the environment and improve their quality of life. However, through the Green Belt Movement she has assisted women in planting more than 20 million trees on their farms and on schools and church compounds.”


Tolkien and Trees: Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit Teach us about the magic of Trees
HobbitTree: photo courtesy neobeatificvision.wordpress.com

I have had a long love affair with J.R.R Tolkien’s respect for trees.  I have written about how the author imbued his trees with xx and empowers the trees.  They are the heroes of the stories. 
In an enchanting way, Tolkien inspires us to embrace trees for their life force and inspiration.
In order to more accurately describe how Tolkien’s Trees resonate, I researched the web and discovered Claudia Riiff Finseth’s www.theonering.net
Riiff captivated me with this intro: “Anyone who has walked in a forest knows there is no better place for adventure. Snow White knew it, and so did Hansel and Gretel. Trees and forests, with all their branches and paths, hollows and hiding places are perfect for suspense, surprise, enchantment and danger.”
“To speak of J.R.R. Tolkien and trees in one breath is to speak of a life-long love affair. From the time he was a boy and played among the trees in the countryside at Sarehole in Warwickshire at the turn of the century until his death at Bournmouth in 1973, Tolkien was, as Galadriel says of Sam the hobbit, a “lover of trees.” Humphrey Carpenter in his biography (1977, p.24) says of Tolkien,
“. . .And though he liked drawing trees, he liked most of all to be with trees.
He would climb them, lean against them, even talk to them. It saddened him to discover that not everyone shared his feelings towards them. One incident in particular remained in his memory: ‘There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. . .One day they cut it down. They didn’t do anything with it; the log just lay there. I never forgot that.’”
As a lover of trees and a man who abhorred the needless destruction of them, Tolkien the writer often defined his characters as good or evil in part by their feelings about trees. Many of the evil peoples in his stories are tree-destroyers. The orcs heedlessly and mindlessly hew away at the living trees of Fangorn; Saruman destroys the beauty of the Shire by erecting buildings from its trees; and Sauron’s evil presence turns Greenwood the Great to the black and decaying boughs of Mirkwood and makes Mordor so sterile that a tree cannot grow there.
Conversely, among the good peoples of Tolkien’s world are many tree-lovers; one could almost say it is one of the hallmarks of Tolkien’s good people. Galadriel, Legolas and the whole host of Elves show a deep regard for trees, almost as brethren; the Ents and Huorns tend and guard their forests as shepherds protect their sheep; Samwise, the hobbit-gardener, cherishes the soil of Galadriel’s garden, using it to restore his own devastated Shire; Aragorn, rightful King of Gondor, takes as his banner symbol the White Tree; and Niggle desires nothing more before he dies than to finish his painting of a tree, Tolkien’s metaphor for one’s life work, for his own writing.
Hobbit Tree Tunnel, photo courtesy of BluePueblo, Tumblr
Tolkien’s life was filled from boyhood with the rich symbolism of the great trees of literature. The stories that “awakened desire” in him as a child included “above all, forests.”  


Trees in Today’s News

The Tree issue continues to dominate the news and I’m sure will be a topic of this evening’s MetroHort group meeting and holiday pot luck holiday event.

Today’s New York Times features a front page Tree story: “Spate of Harsh Weather in New England Shifts Sentiments on Trees.”

The report highlights this new, scary approach to trees, writing, “People are looking at trees near their home in a different manner….It’s no longer, ‘This is a nice shade tree.’  It’s ‘This tree could fall on my house.’”   
“People were envisioning having entire trees crashing down on their houses and there was a lot of panic,” said Phillip Cambo, president of Northern Tree Service, a tree-removal company that serves much of New England”

Further, the story does acknowledge the gift that trees are: Trees add character and beauty to a property, of course, but they also benefit the environment, trapping carbon dioxide, one of the major contributing greenhouse gases, and releasing oxygen. And they help protect against erosion and maintain the balance of the ecosystem.
Several storm-battered towns across New England have undertaken extensive replanting programs — though many programs encourage planting smaller trees, like fruit trees and dogwoods, rather than the pines and maples that, when mature, can cause the most damage.
Many New England towns authorize local tree wardens to determine the health of shade trees and ban their removal unless they pose a hazard.”  The New York Times "Once Leafy & Friendly, Now Menacing"
I argue that we should replant the big trees. 
We need their shade, their vital lung work for us – and for the myriad other functions they provide to so many of Mother Nature’s denizens.

And we also need another moniker for those who work in towns on behalf of trees.  A “Tree Warden” does not sound good or friendly despite its meaning of keeper and custodian.  Perhaps it’s the connection to a prison that conjures up a less than kindly protector status.

How about Tree Keeper or Tree Champion (America loves competition and winners…) Or how about the good ol’ Tree Hugger?

I got back to town (Manhattan) after weeks of post Sandy garden clean up and maintenance only to find the row of trees on Wall Street have been uprooted and cut down!  Deliberate?  








More Tree Talk
Below is a copy of an article written by Tyler Silvestro for the American Society of Landscape Architect’s Dirt publication.  The article covers a lecture by James Urban.  I received the copy as part of my membership conversation with fellow Landscape Design Alumni Group. 
We enjoy and benefit from professional knowledge, support & tips from experience, and shared interests.

You Can’t Fool Mother Nature but You Can Understand Her

04/18/2012 by asla dirt

James Urban, FASLA, noted soil and tree expert, recently gave his talk, “You Cannot Fool Mother Nature but You Can Understand Her,” at the Arsenal in New York City. Urban is a prolific writer and lecturer on the subject of tree planting and the conditions needed to improve tree performance in urban environments.

Urban focused his talk on eight simple ideas, all basic steps to yield more productive growth in urban trees. The ideas were driven home by a slideshow containing images from his recent award-winning planting guide and bookshelf mainstay, “Up By Roots: Healthy Soils and Trees in the Built Environment.”

To Urban, planting trees is all about the science. Take a walk down your street and notice the adolescent trees stuffed into the recently curb-cut sidewalk. According to Urban, that is our fatal mistake. We try all the time [to fool nature] but we never win.
The space below the ground is competing with other urban systems: storm water structures, utilities, urban compaction systems. These obstacles severely hinder the performance of those adolescent trees, many of which were not even properly selected in the first place. Urban shared his understanding of this paradigm: Once we have a hypothesis, we tend to give extra weight to any information that supports that hypothesis. To Urban, this kind of thinking leads to many street trees being planted incorrectly.

Over the past thirty years, Urban has been instrumental in the development of both structural soils and structural cells for use under sidewalk pavement. However, his message has remained and his eight guiding principles to planting trees have as well:

1. Trees need dirt!
2. Plant trees that are native to their urban ecosystem.
3. Can you resolve the conflict between the politics of trees and the planting of trees?
4. There is no free lunch.
5. Get just one tree right.
6. More soil volume please.
7. Harvest storm water.
8. Improve the nursery stock.


1. Trees need dirt!
According to Urban, New York is actually a relatively easy place to grow trees. To become a functional, mature tree in an urban environment, a tree needs between 800 and 1,200 cubic feet of good-quality loam soil. Urban believes that New York City has the space but not the soil.


2. Plant trees that are native to their urban ecosystem.
To further understand this concept the audience was pushed to buy Peter Del Tredici’s, Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide. No longer are we harking back to the Manhattan planting plan for advice on what to plant on Queens Boulevard. Urban, the consummate pioneer of the urban environment tried to incite the crowd. Lets get into it and start figuring it out! Urban also warned us that in ten years or less we will all be calling nurseries to purchase Ailanthus.


3. Can you resolve the conflict between the politics of trees and the planting of trees?
Urban took this opportunity to speak of the role of the arborist. Currently, certification is relatively easy to obtain. However, as the profession of arborist progresses it needs serious restrictions. Making certification more difficult to acquire would promote the profession, putting them on the political map. Arborists could then better join broader political discussions and highlight the importance of trees.

4. There is no free lunch.
Here Urban stressed the idea of compost. His example that two tons of raw wood only produces one ton of compost is telling in that he believes there is room to explore this area. He further explains this idea by bashing the hot item right now, Bio-Char. After describing Bio-Char as really bad, he lightened the assault by clarifying that it is only good for small amounts of soil. I wonder if this simple idea was an idea at all, or an excuse to diminish the popularity of the charcoal-based soil amendment.

5. Get just one tree right.
In a checklist for tree design, one requirement is to understand the root area index (RAI), the calculation determining the correlation between the root and the surface area. To explain this, Urban used an image of a wine glass standing on a dinner plate. The dinner plate, representing the soil volume and the wine glass base, the trunk flare, are basic visuals of how simple a successful planting can be.

 6. More soil please.

Again Urban stressed the importance of understanding soils and the surroundings. Soil can be understood as the community of vegetated and urban systems surrounding the planting site. Urban explained the efficiency of his structural cells compared to that of constructed soils (Cu soils). One attendee, an expert and supplier of Cu soils, vehemently disagreed. He argued that the structural rock matrix that makes up the load bearing component of Cu soils do not inversely affect the performance of tree roots as Urban suggested. Not wanting to get into a fight over the success of his inventions, Urban explained, “I’m almost done with the Cu slide - actually, I’ve been done with the Cu slide since 2003.”

7. Harvest storm water.
When designing systems its important to allow nature to guide us in protecting our natural systems from floatables, hydrocarbons, chemical pollutants, and runoff toxins. In the green infrastructure overhaul of New York City, large trees will play an important role in the solution and have the ability to store and process massive amounts of storm water both in their roots and leaves.

8. Improve nursery stock.

Nursery stock, in the age of the New York City’s Million Trees Project, has become a hot topic. Tree growth can be determined before a tree is even planted if a basic understanding of the stock is obtained. There are many issues concerning healthy plant growth at nurseries. Proper limbing, pruning, watering, drainage, sunlight, soil volume, and basic organization are all things to consider when visiting a nursery for healthy plants. However, the number one issue is container plants. We need to stop buying container trees. It’s an unfixable problem! The girdling of roots has no remedy and their trees have no chance of reaching their potential.

Much of what James Urban discussed in his lecture seems to touch on the ideas of publicity. Yes, the science of tree planting is essential to success but so are politics. Urban reiterated this idea by empowering key figures in the crowd. The Parks Department, the City of New York, and New York Restoration Project need to put pressure on nurseries! Its Urban's hope that New York City will become the benchmark for intelligent street tree planting.

This guest post is by Tyler Silvestro, a master’s degree candidate at the City College of New York (CUNY), and writer for The Architects Newspaper.

I especially appreciate the advice for trees' role in storm water harvest.  


Our communities – urban or suburban demand we care for our trees. 
Please do not allow ignorance or fear to allow large-scale murder and massacre of our trees.
Their removal is our loss.  The repercussions are long term and far reaching.
There is no “do-over.”

Central Park, NYC Tree Art Two Days before Sandy Storm


Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Meet John Danzer, Exterior Decorator, Garden Furniture Designer & Visionary


It’s Design Week in Gotham and I can’t think of a better peg to feature a profile about John Danzer, one of the garden design world’s most talented, respected artisan, connoisseur, curator, and the enduring “Exterior Decorator.”

John Danzer, Exterior Decorator

Equal parts visionary, mirthful cosmopolitan, garden historian and lecturer -- you Do want to enjoy cocktails with this unique personality.
If he didn’t exist – you’d be tempted to make him come alive -- from a Preston Sturges movie or a Cary Grant classic iconic image.

His marquee good looks and charm are the threads that weave a tapestry that is meticulously composed of hard work, research, and unbridled passion.
Danzer exudes an unaffected humility matched with a fierce pride and point of view. 
One is hard-pressed to not feel at ease with Danzer, because he makes it so.

I attend a plethora of garden and interior design lectures, talks, trade shows, and events and it’s a rare one that I don’t happily bump into Danzer. 

This man is tireless. 

He is now at the sweet spot of quality, garden design and the decorative arts. 
I dare you to come up with another name or brand that can do what Danzer and his Munder-Skiles do. 

How this garden guru came to embody the genus loci or “spirit of the place” is so much a part of Danzer’s mystique and bespoke outdoor garden room designs, that it propelled his journey to his (trademarked) “exterior decorator” moniker with panache and an unparalleled contribution to the expression of what is meant by good garden design.  

He takes the design that is there, courtesy of nature and the landscape architect or designer, and then works to “select and place furniture and objects within an interpretive context,” as noted on Munder-Skiles website.

Prior to a recent Wave Hill talk with landscape architect Thomas L. Woltz, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects whose wowsy landscapes featured more than a few of Danzer’s designs, I met with Danzer to interview him about his contribution to garden art. 
It seemed especially timely to me to grab him, given that Danzer and his partner – newly married too – will be spending so much of the season at their new country house: in Spain!

The Business
Danzer and his Munder-Skiles is, at first blush, quite complicated to describe.  (The name of his company is derived from a combination of his Midwest, European grandparent’s family names.)
He was a major “brand” with an aggressive portfolio of services before the likes of Martha Stewart or Calvin Klein came round to the world of home design.

For more than 20 years, Danzer’s Munder-Skiles has successfully blossomed to provide a portfolio of products and services with garden art beating passionately at its heart.
This is the key or hub that hugs all the work of his enterprise.

Danzer essentially operates three-plus companies:
·      Munder-Skiles: Design and production of hand-crafted garden furniture and accessories;
·      The Exterior Decorator: Design services, specifying, and counsel
·      The World of Exteriors: Media company providing world of exterior designs, exhibitions, newsletters, lectures/speaking

For decades, Danzer’s design influence emanated from his showroom and office in midtown Manhattan, and now, from his upstate showplace in Garrison, New York, just north of Manhattan in the venerable Hudson Valley.

When I asked how often he designs or changes his garden product designs, he said pretty much all the time. Siempre.
It’s his company and he doesn’t need to follow the design world’s seasonal or cyclical schedules.
If Danzer is inspired—he’s doing it.
He is a self-taught artisan, designer and collector.
From the start, he says he was seduced by the value-added philosophy of one of his heroes, Leo Lionni, a famous sculptor and children’s book author who proposed the “irresistible urge to make things” at a Cooper Hewitt talk.
Today, that design commandment has remained framed, smiling, if you will, on Danzer’s desk, inspiring and illuminating the design prince’s journey to artful greatness.

About a quarter of a century ago, Danzer was living in London: (he furnished his apartment entirely with outdoor garden furniture he bought for next to nothing and still has stored! He was volunteering at a local nursery, Peter Hones, and learning about plants too.)
After some time he quit his banking job to pursue a calling to the romantic world of gardens, kicking off his new pursuit with a worldwide tour -- the first wanderlust of many journeys that over the years, would take him to the ends of the earth.

Obsessively, he was taking pictures. 
The images would become the foundation for his museum-like catalog of photos.
His next step was a year of “Educating John,” drilling down on designs and garden art history, doing research in the United States and Europe from Palm Springs to Monticello – and taking ever more pictures.

Today, Danzer is renowned for his extensive, massive library. 
He possesses more than 10,000 images and 17,000 names in his database!
He claims he subscribes to 57 different design magazines. 
“I have no time for Tweeting or email,” he jokes. But he is serious. He luxuriates in reading. 

In a reversal of the typical career template where one is asked to lecture based on an achievement or lifetime of work, Danzer actually launched his career with a talk at the prestigious Albert & Victoria Museum in London!
Through the Looking Glass indeed!

He followed this success with a talk at the Cooper Hewitt and winning the Jack Lenor Larsen award. (And is now on the Longhouse Board)
Danzer has won many other awards, including the Roscoe Award for his Taconic Chair, and was nominated by the Cooper-Hewitt for a 2005 National Design Award in Landscape architecture.

In 2000, Danzer described how he closed a New York City avenue to create a “streetscape.” It was a retrospective of his work produced by the The New York School of Interior Design, which was extremely an extremely proud moment.
But he says moreover, it was so very satisfying to see how his upscale clients were connecting to the people who made their furniture. 
It was a galvanizing moment in the relationship. 

Early in his career, no less a design authority and celebrity than Albert Hadley called him to do some work.
“Hadley was one of my first clients,” he says with well-deserved pride. 
Danzer felt the need to come up with ideas and sourced suggested nuggets from everywhere. Thus was born Danzer’s strategy of working with all professionals on the design network.

The Strategy
A point he makes in terms of his business strategy is that he can readily recommend so-called competitors.
Danzer is guileless.
“I work for the designer and for the client,” Danzer explained.
This is a refreshing approach. 
Further, Danzer possesses such confidence that this slightly askew work style is just cricket, as he describes it.

For example, a recent job was approximately $350K yet required Danzer to coordinate products from 26 different artists and producers!

Danzer plays well in the sandbox and prefers working with the landscape architect and designer. 
“Most often they don’t have a knowledge of the furniture element,” he explains about his ability to determine the furniture that echoes the spirit of the place -- to create and compliment a nature-inspired lifestyle. 
Sometimes he will get calls from the interior decorator who asks him to just “do” the outside.

“We love the art of making furniture.”
Design requires customization and passion. 

Besides intense research, interviews with the client and garden design professional, he claims he has to know about gardens in general and about the particular garden that will soon be accessorized with his garden furnishings and signature look.
He travels to Dumbarton Oaks or the South Pacific.  “I have to know about gardens,” he emphasizes.

One of the reasons why Munder-Skiles design compositions are so enduring is because they do not just put furniture in a spot or place.
Rather, Danzer and his team research, investigate and allow the spirit of the place to imbue and infuse the design process. 
“We believe the setting defines the furniture rather than the other way around.”

Seen through the lens of Danzer-as-Exterior Decorator, he purrs “The furniture gives the space scale and domesticates it in the eye of the viewer.” 

He just made sense out of a very complicated process. 

Think about it. 

Danzer continued, “If you have a big field, and put two benches out there facing one another – you’ve just created a ‘Destination.’”

Brilliant.

Danzer explains all this so eloquently, it is no surprise he is a much sought-after speaker and lecturer. 

“We are animals.  And when we look at a landscape -- be it controlled or uncontrolled – it makes us nervous. Therefore our eye goes right to the man-made (the furniture).”
He adds, “There is a comfort in the man-made.”

Fascinating.

And you thought that by just plunking down that Pottery Barn ensemble it would finish off the terrace.
Ha.  It could be jarring to your garden sensibilities.
And a poke in the eye to Mother Nature…

“You can manipulate the whole message by how you arrange the furniture,” Danzer offers.  “You can say, ‘Come here and eat’ or ‘Come here and gather.’”
“You can tell different stories.”

For one client, he described how he used two benches, on grass, and built an earth mound and put a plant on top of the mound and then had a wooden table made to “sit” on top of the mound.

His design work sets the standard for garden furniture, thus it is not surprising to pick up most every shelter magazine or garden book and find Danzer’s work gracing the pages.  In fact, I just received an email from Munder-Skiles strutting three of the company’s installed works of garden art as seen in:
Veranda Magazine, Architecture Digest and one of my favorites, Elle Décor.








The Process
Danzer describes how his firm is perhaps a bit “design-heavy” because he loves the design process. 
Yet he works to balance the design with the engineering – a characteristic not often readily embraced in the world of decorative arts. 
“People don’t use that word anymore,” observes Danzer.
It is a thrill to hear him describe that, unlike other designers who bow to the holy trinity of design, design, design, Danzer, on the other hand, is compelled to employ engineering into the spirit of the piece. 
“I look at the way things are joined together: the woods, the grains, the density -- the exchange of materials – switching from aluminum to bronze.”  
Getting rapturous just describing the engineering process, he enthused, “You might have to change dimensions, give the piece strength. There’s a lot involved,” he added.
Indeed.

Such integrity and approach to his oeuvre is a laudable, sacred art. 
He seeks to combine luxury with technology.

As crazy as it sounds, it was at this moment that I couldn’t get the idea of one of my idols, Leonardo da Vinci, enjoying an illuminating design and engineering conversation with Danzer – with both masters contributing a lively exchange of artistic values!

Through an aesthetic prism, Danzer recognizes and applies the need for engineering in each of his designs, to artfully bring about a masterful construct.

He also promotes nature’s aesthetic. 
He loves the weathering and patina it creates, including rust.
Such attention to the sensual is rare…

Danzer knows his materials – from the cellular structure on out. 
He respects his woods and the trees they come from, like a prize-winning jockey knows every muscle of his racehorse.
In this way, Danzer is downright apoplectic when talking about how people not only don’t love our trees and what they give to us, but how most people mistreat the trees and abuse them.  “It’s really sad…” he sighs. 
“Do I think we should raise trees and harvest them? Absolutely,” he answers his own query.
“But it is criminal how people are ignorant about trees and their beauty and benefits,” he said with reluctant agitation.


The Market
While there is now a seeming onslaught of new companies hitting the US outdoor furniture market – “I could name 30 companies,” he bristles.
“I’m seeing ‘modern’ – which is really just platforms with cushions on it.”

Buyer Beware.

He also deplores the trend of buying “collections.” 
Why would anyone want to buy an entire set of room furniture as opposed to curating pieces – historical pieces that have their stories, to be sure, he notes, but that new owners can make their own stories.
Further, the pieces can be modified, structurally or with color, for example.


His Clients
People come to him for a particular look. 
And there’s always a reference to history in his design and work. “It’s my signature.”

Danzer is recreating old in new ways.

“I think Garden Rooms should be different rooms. They should look different -- not look like your living room. Everyone talks about blending – I talk about the excitement of difference,” he said.
I’m not interested in warming ovens and televisions,” he states assuredly in contrast to the rising tide of ‘trends’ that make outside look like a sports bar…

Shaking his head somewhat bewilderedly, he adds, “For some reason, outside has become this new male domain.”
And not in a good way, I might add.

“While I want to engage the men, when I’m at a dinner party, and people hear what I do, it stops them. They never heard of anyone actually being a garden furniture designer!”
They have a notion of what they think it is…

The design solution is personal for Danzer.
Working with his clients is a process.
There is no “I need this by Memorial Day” kind of flip off.
The work will take time and talent.
There will be a relationship triangulated among the client, nature, and the garden furniture.

His designs and curating and talent are reined in to produce an enduring, personalized, customized bespoke work of garden art.
It’s a love affair.
The romance begins with a shared love of quality, garden history and garden design.

The World of Danzer
Today, Danzer is getting cozy in his beautiful new showroom and offices in Garrison, slated for a September opening.
He is busy overseeing work on updating his new web site. 
He is rebuilding his library and his archives.
“The place looks like the garage/office in the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind,’” he jokes. “There are papers everywhere!”
When asked, he forecast that his business will be almost the same size as it was prior to 2008 when the financial crisis hit and the bottom line suffered a 30-35% body blow.
Now, business is growing again; plus, Danzer, cites more international business, via London, Hawaii, Germany, and Brazil.

What does the future look like?
He is going to focus on producing and writing his book, about the history of mainstream garden furniture. From the medieval times to now.
This will be one comprehensive reference tome.

And he is looking forward to doing their new/old house in Spain.
“It’s going to be ravishingly beautiful garden furniture – inside and outside.”

How glamorous....

Visit the world of Munder-Skiles

And if you are very, very lucky, perhaps you can get John to collaborate with you to create your own magical world of garden art.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The Horticultural Society of NY Hosts Elizabeth Barlow Rogers’ New Book Premiere: “Writing the Garden A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries”


The Horticultural Society of New York (http://www.hsny.org) hosted Elizabeth Barlow Rogers’ latest book:  “Writing the Garden A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries”

It was Leap Day – a rare calendar happening and a wonderful topper to the lucky-extra day-- another chance to celebrate the joy of gardening with the "Garden Lovers Tribe" who break away from digging and writing and designing gardens long enough to learn even more about the world of plants.


Elizabeth Barlow Rogers was the featured guest speaker.  She doesn’t really need an introduction. She is an award winning doyenne of literary gardening and horticultural architecture and art.  She is the editor of Sitelines newsletter and a library of books.  She is the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, a landscape designer, preservationist and writer—three of her books explore New York’s Central Park enriched because of her close association and work there in the great urban park-she was the first Central Park Administrator: http://www.elizabethbarlowrogers.com and http://blog.classicist.org

Rodgers is an almost elfin presence but with a commanding presence and pedigree.  It’s always a bit of a shame that it’s a challenge to hear her diminutive, almost whisper-like voice at a lecture.  And she reads the material  -- so that it’s more of well, a reading, rather than an energized lecture or talk.  But no matter, Rogers is engaging, has the acumen, experience and passion that legions of fans respect and are keen to learn from.   
Her research and curating garden writers who are passionate about the “philosophy, structure, and overall culture of gardens as in the plants they contained,” according to Rogers’ book   is extraordinary, top notch.  We need more of Rogers. Clone this woman!

Rodgers is a pioneer in advocating and emphasizing the culture in Horticulture – pointing the way to the crossroads of art and horticulture and history and literature. 
The book jacket cover, ‘The Garden in its Glory” is a luscious watercolor by artist Childe Hassam, admired for his New York City renderings that are an homage to Gotham.

Rodgers says she produced the book, “Writing the Garden: Books from the Collection of the New York Society Library based on the 2011 exhibition of rare books by garden writers co-curated by Rogers. 

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers signing my copy of Writing the Garden A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries


The cohort of illustrious gardener writers featured in the book is a Who’s Who, Dream Team of garden writers.  I so love the way Rogers put forth the table of contents based on the lifestyle and passions of the garden writers, including Women in the Garden, Warriors in the Garden, Humorists in the Garden, and Spouses in the Garden.

Your library needs this book.  Order from Amazon:
Or call 1-800-344-4771 or email publisher at info@godine.com

Coming up at HSNY is Urban Gardening (3/16) http://thehort.org/programs_forums.html#uac2012
Keeping Ag in Urban Gardening -- featuring grand landscape design and horticulture gurus from Annie Novak, NYBG (www.nybg.org) and from Randalls Island -- all artists in their own domain: Phyllis Odessey http://www.phyllisodessey.com/ and EunYoung Sebazco http://silverflowerdesign.com/
   
You won't believe the amazing talent Odessey and Sebazco demonstrated in what surely is the City's first rice paddy.  
It's a fascinating story of edible gardening and urban magic:  http://ricepaddyrandalls.wordpress.com/
Not a surprise that the rice paddy garden captured the attention of no less a food icon than master chef, David Chang from Momofuku fame: http://www.momofuku.com/   

I will attend and cover the glamorous garden news.