The results of a public consultation on short-listed designs for the Aberdeen City Garden Project have been revealed – nine months after the event.

Thousands of people visited an exhibition at the Academy shopping centre in Belmont Street, which ran from late October to early November last year.

Visitors were asked for their opinion on plans for the proposed redevelopment of Union Terrace Gardens and many took the opportunity to list the six entries in order of preference.

For the full story, pick up a copy of today’s Press and Journal or read our digital edition now

CLEVELAND — Michael Gonzales can’t stop smiling and can’t say enough about the garden that he sees from the fifth-floor window of his room at Seidman Cancer Center, on the main campus of University Hospitals of Cleveland.

“It’s just so beautiful,” says the 37-year-old cancer center patient, who lives in Newbury Township. “It takes your mind off of everything else.”

Gonzales is enthralled with the Mary and Al Schneider Healing Garden that abuts Seidman and is connected to the hospital at 11100 Euclid Ave. The garden is filled with well-thought-out elements that benefit the physical and emotional health of cancer patients and visiting family and friends.

The healing garden, which is about one-third of an acre, isn’t visible from the street. A wall separates the setting from hectic Euclid Avenue. But the public, whether visiting Seidman or not, is welcome inside the garden, which is accessible from the intersection of Euclid and University Hospitals Drive. The garden entrance is on the east side of the driveway that leads up to the hospital’s main doors.

“This is open to the community,” says Terryl Koeth, a registered nurse and director of community and social programs at Seidman. “We would love to have people come in and feel the peace of this garden.” It is open from 8 a.m. until dusk daily, year-round,” she says.

The garden was designed by landscape architect Virginia Burt, whose company, Visionscapes, is in Burlington, Ontario. It’s a gift from Cindy and Bob Schneider. In 2007, the couple donated $2.75 million for the garden. His parents both died of cancer. Bob Schneider is the former owner of Patio Enclosures.

Burt visited the garden recently to explain the sights, sounds, structures and textures of the setting, all of which have specific meaning.

The garden opens with a low, swinging Fractal Gate that combines openwork iron, acrylic colored glass and carved wood handles. The handles, carved by local sculptor Norbert Koehn, are stylized hearts, and the wood is meant to bring warmth to the touch as soon as you enter.

A granite labyrinth is the heart of the garden. The spiral path is the same design as the one built in Chartres, France, about 900 years ago, explains a garden brochure. Since at least 4,000 B.C., humans have walked labyrinths to find calm and peace, and connect with something larger than themselves.

The labyrinth has three focal points, says Burt, who also designed gardens for the Gathering Place in Beachwood and Community Health Partners in Elyria. Initiation is the first step. Journey represents the turns taken to reach the center. Illumination is what you reach at the center, and leave your cares there.

“It is proven that walking a labyrinth at any age lowers one’s heart rate and blood pressure,” says Burt. “You can walk the labyrinth with a prayer or a problem or with joy in your heart. Anything you wish. This is cross-cultural. It’s the belief that there is something greater than we are, and this helps you tap into that.”

A rose, the ancient symbol of enlightenment, is at the center of the labyrinth. Once walkers feel like they have resolved an issue, they retrace their steps outward.

Visitors can walk the labyrinth alone, or guided walks are available.

The path around the labyrinth has large sculptures that represent earth, air, fire and water.

“Fire” was inspired by lava Burt saw during a trip to Kauai, Hawaii.

“I wrote down an intention for the garden as a ‘place for inspiration, rejuvenation and loving,’ ” says Burt. She burned the piece of paper, leaving the edges. She traced the edges to make a 24-inch diameter template and cast that in bronze to make what look like rings of fire. Orange lighting symbolizes flames.

“Water” is a flat, shallow, dancing reflective pool that visitors can dip their toes in, and it’s wheelchair accessible. It also gives off a mist, and there’s another mister at the opening of the garden.

“Earth” is a 6-ton polished granite boulder, smooth to the touch and carved into a seat that’s about the size of a love seat.

Wind and breezes stir the “Air” structure, a tall, colorful double helix of disks.

The garden was planned with input from cancer survivors, their families, staff, physicians, caregivers, volunteers and management. Among other suggestions, survivors and families said they wanted the garden to include a symbol of strength.

“People said they wanted to feel the close strength of rock,” says Burt.

There are two granite seats, back to back, one in the sun and one in the shade. Other rocks are smooth enough on top to sit on.

Plantings, which are in the hundreds, are a blend of soft ground covers, bright flowers, ornamental grasses, shrubs and trees with unusual bark. About 75 percent of the plantings are native to this area, says Burt.

Special lighting draws the eye to landscapes and sculptures, and a rainbow of colors washes against the inside walls of the garden.

The path that wends around the labyrinth and through the garden includes bluestone slabs etched with inspirational sayings, such as, “A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul,” by Sadi, a Persian poet who died in 1291.

Robynn Knarr, a cancer patient who was a member of the UH Seidman Cancer Patient and Family Advisory Council, wrote for the brochure, “The many shapes and sounds and textures cause a mesmerizing peacefulness to wash over you as you wander round and round, to and fro, as though saying, ‘Let go, let go.’ “

There are benches for patients and visitors and, on a lower level of the garden, table and chair groupings for friends and family who want to gather.

The garden is four-season, says Burt. A snow-melting system under the labyrinth and the garden path ensures year-round use and safety. What’s more, trees have winter interest, such as unusual bark and branch structure.

Outpatient radiation and chemotherapy patients get a different view of the garden from the inside. Outpatient chemo patients in the Gellar Terrace, while being treated, see a small hill filled with ornamental grasses, purple coneflowers and the like.

The radiation area is covered with a green roof, which is a thick, clear, waterproof roof with plants thriving on the top.

The Schneiders watched the garden grow from the drawing stages to the implementation. But they weren’t prepared for what the garden has become.

“It exceeded our expectations,” says Bob, adding that he and Cindy have visited the garden at least a dozen times. “In the beginning, we knew it would be nice, but now we’re thrilled with it.”

___

Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com

(Story distributed by The Associated Press)

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If you want to see the big ideas coming out of British horticulture, there’s no better – or bigger – showcase than the gardens and meadows of the Olympic Park in Stratford.

The 250-hectare site in east London has been filled with 4,000 trees, 300,000 wetland plants, 15,000 square metres of lawns and more than 150,000 perennial plants, in an ambitious scheme designed to delight visitors to the Games and leave a legacy of a permanent park once the Olympics are over.

First, there are the wildflower meadows, 10 football fields-worth of them, carefully planned and sown to reach their peak just in time for the torch’s arrival in east London next Friday, and sporting a suitably Olympic gold colour scheme. Wildflowers are having a moment: sales of cornflowers, field poppies and other pollinator-friendly blooms have tripled this year, influenced by Sarah Raven’s TV programme Bees, Butterflies And Blooms, and Chelsea show gardens packed with wispy natives.

Professors Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough of the department of landscape at the University of Sheffield, who are behind the design of the park as a whole, want to grab gardeners’ attention with the idea that wildflowers aren’t weeds. Dunnett says the gardens are a “catalyst” for councils and home gardeners to ditch lawns and formal summer bedding in favour of mini-meadows: “We have designed the wildflower planting to be extremely high-impact and attention-grabbing,” he says. “You can talk about the idea endlessly, but the very best and most persuasive advert is to see it for real. When people see this colourful naturalistic wildflower landscape, they become much less satisfied with what they generally see around them.”

The nectar-rich annual and perennial wildflower mix used for the Olympic meadows contains with added flowers and less grass, for visual glamour and spectacle as much as for biodiversity and for attracting pollinators, Dunnett says. The mix was perfected over two years of trial runs in 2010 and 2011, not least because the meadows needed a horticultural haircut known as the “Chelsea chop” in late spring to set back the plants and ensure everything was in flower in late July, rather than in May, June and early July, when they’d naturally bloom. Pot marigolds (Calendula officinalis), tickseed (Coreopsis tinctoria) and corn marigold hybrids (Chrysanthemum segetum) will all help to create the designers’ hoped-for “ribbon of gold” around the stadium. Using non-natives is important, Hitchmough says: “There are 13,000 square kilometres of gardens in the UK, more than all the official nature reserves put together, so gardens are our nature reserves.” The assumption is that native species are better for wildlife, “but that is ot always the case,” he adds.

Meanwhile, the half-mile strip of riverside gardens, designed by Hitchmough and Dunnett in collaboration with up-and-coming London designer Sarah Price, tells the story of the plants that have made their homes in UK gardens over the past 500 years: crocuses, loosestrife, cornflowers and primroses from Europe; then coneflowers, evening primrose and asters from North America; red hot pokers and cape hyacinths from the southern hemisphere; and Japanese anemones from Asia. Many of the species have been sourced worldwide, but half have been grown on at the Palmstead nursery in Kent.

The poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) looks set to be the hit from the American garden, head gardener Des Smith tells me. “It spreads like mad and a ladies’ writers group that visited all loved it.” The garden’s naturalistic style attempts to echo the patterns of how plants grow in the wild, by randomly arranging groups of plants in a dense mass for dramatic effect. Again, like Dunnett’s meadows, the density peps up the festival look.

Beyond the Olympics, the park will close in September and reopen to the public in summer 2013.Dunnett hopes it will become a blueprint for how green spaces in cities should be managed in the future: out with formal summer bedding and in with wild meadows.

How to get the meadow look in your own garden

You don’t have to convert your lawn into a wildflower sanctuary – turning ornamental beds into wildflower beds is less work. Start with a small, manageable area.

It’s not the right time to be sowing seeds, but get started on a small patch by planting wildflower plug plants (from wigglywigglers.co.uk or meadowmania.co.uk), or buy a wildlfower meadowmat by the square metre (meadowmat.com). Then research which seed mix to use: some can be sown in September/October, others in spring. Some are perennial/annual and some annual only; there are mixes for sunny spots or shade. Try Nova Flore meadow seed mixes, Wiggly Wigglers’ grassy or flower meadow mix or a meadow flower seed mix from Pictorial Meadows.

Don’t think you can just throw wildflower seed on to a lawn and transform it into a meadow. You may get some germination, but if you want it to look like the pretty picture on the box, turn over the soil so it isn’t compacted, remove weeds and make sure seeds are watered.

If you do want to convert a lawn, strip away the top layer of lawn turf using a turfing iron or garden spade. Compost the turf and dig out 10cm of soil below the layer of grass, to reduce the soil fertility and the germination of invasive weed seeds.

A public consultation outlining six options saw 5,847 people vote in favour of a Winter Garden proposal. But those behind the scheme – backed by a £50 million donation from philanthropist Sir Ian Wood – picked the Granite Web design, which attracted just 1,378 public votes, instead.

Figures on the public consultation have emerged nine months after thousands of people visited an exhibition to cast their votes on six designs.

Liberal democrat Ian Yuill lobbied for the results to be published earlier this year. Yesterday he said the information should have been revealed sooner.

He said: “It is always a mistake to try to keep information secret from the public.”

Labour group secretary, Willie Young, said: “This just shows you that they had no trust in the people of Aberdeen and have wanted it all their own way – we have been saying that from the beginning.”

The ruling Labour group has already voiced its opposition to the scheme. However project leaders warned yesterday that councillors will become a “laughing stock” if they dump a controversial £140 million garden project in Aberdeen city centre. The Aberdeen City Garden Trust (ACGT) rejected the suggestion that they had “ignored” the public’s view on the project.

Tom Smith, director of ACGT, said: “The winning design – the Granite Web – secured a 52 per cent majority in the referendum and that is what is important.

“We now need to demonstrate we are a city with a bold ambition for the future and a can-do approach to making things happen with this unique opportunity to transform and regenerate our city centre.

“Failure to deliver on this when we have a world-class design, an internationally acclaimed, award-winning design team, public support, a robust and compelling business case and much of the funding through philanthropic donations will make us a laughing stock and severely damage the city’s reputation and ability to attract future investment.

“We hope that our councillors will abide by the referendum and make the right decision in the best interests of our city on the 22nd of August.”

He said the public’s two favourite designs were selected by the jury in the first phase of judging towards the end of 2011.

As a result of the jury evaluation, both design teams involved were asked to clarify and provide more detail on their concepts.

This work “considerably improved” the understanding of how each of the final two teams optimised the use of the space below and above ground.

As a result, the selection team favoured the Web design.

Chairman of the jury, Sir Duncan Rice said at the time of the announcement of the winning design: “This is an exciting outcome and a great coup for the city. This ingenious and inspiring design for Aberdeen’s key public space gives the city a new social landscape but one rooted in its extraordinarily rich heritage and natural assets.

“The Diller Scofidio team had thought long and hard about Aberdeen’s special history and unique needs. Answer by answer, they overwhelmed the jury with their vision and their sensitivity to the whole downtown context.”

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Thursday, July 19, 2012

PULLMAN, Wash. – Undaunted by rain, snow and heat, construction of the Waterwise Garden is in its final stages. The garden, located outside the Ensminger Pavilion, was designed and built by landscape architecture students to help them gain hands-on experience.

Students in Ole Sleipness’ landscape architectural construction course designed the garden using sustainable techniques that reduce water consumption and create a more stable environment. The garden features a dry stream bed, which reduces water consumption and helps collect natural rainfall, and drought-resistant plants. Students also used “urbanite,” broken concrete pieces from past WSU projects, to create walls and paths.

The Waterwise Garden also features a green roof garden pavilion on top of a storage shed. Green roofs, besides being pleasing to the eye, can aid in stormwater management, reduce energy consumption and promote biodiversity. The roof also was built using reclaimed materials from around the Pullman campus and features drought-resistant, cold-weather plants.

 

The Waterwise Garden is part of the Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Garden on Wilson Road. The Shade Garden and the Sun Garden also were designed by landscape architecture students. For more information on the gardens, the program and how to donate, visit the Department of Horticulture website.

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Even when successful, however, they came with a big “but” — British wildflower
flora is limited, and looks good for only a short period: May to June.
Additionally, many gardeners and other users of the seed mixes found that on
anything but the poorest soils, vigorous grasses took over, and the
proportion of flowers slumped heavily after a few years. Some of us in the
business began to look at other ways of creating large-scale,
low-maintenance plantings.

Wildflower meadows (when they work) are low-maintenance because the same
management operation (i.e. mowing) is applied to the whole thing. Individual
plants do not receive care, any more than the individual grasses in a lawn
would. Hitchmough had a dream: what if it were possible to create ornamental
plant combinations which could be treated in a similar fashion?

Imagine the creative possibilities: “I am interested in ‘calendar
vegetation’,” he says. “A lot of natural vegetation is visually very dull,
but if it looks good on a calendar then it is good. Real people haven’t been
on [ecology] courses.

I want an aesthetic that anyone on the street would think is attractive.”

It was in Australia that he began to make the connection between horticulture,
ecology and culture: “I was there for 10 years, doing research in Melbourne.
There is a very attractive, but almost extinct, West Australian habitat, a
grassland, which would look great in urban parks, and we had to work out how
to recreate that.”

At the University of Sheffield he turned his attention to a number of
wildflower communities that he believed could be used as a blueprint for the
creation of public urban plantings with the all-important “wow factor”. So
he began to look at central European meadows, moved on to North American
prairie and, most recently, South African montane grassland.

If the last one sounds exotic, it is where many traditional British garden
favourites hail from, such as montbretia (Crocosmia species), agapanthus,
dierama and red hot pokers (Kniphofia).

North American prairies are even more familiar to us — think “prairie” next
time you tend the border with its autumn-flowering asters, goldenrods
(Solidago species), rudbeckia, helianthus and helenium. It is these plant
communities that we see echoes of in the Olympic Park.

Seeds of an idea

How do you go about making an ornamental prairie or South African grassland?
The answer, Hitchmough insists, is seed. Think about the difference between
a wildflower meadow and a garden border. The former has hundreds of plants
per square metre, the latter, maybe nine or 10. The density of an
established meadow renders it relatively impervious to weeds: the openness
of the conventional border makes it hugely vulnerable.

For many of the Olympic Park plantings, Hitchmough has bought seed from
commercial sources. He then designed a mix, and sowed it into a substrate
that has to be as free of weed seeds as possible. The result is initial
plant densities of about 150 plants per square metre.

Unlike situations where plants are used, he explains, “seeding creates a more
genuine community where plant ecological preferences and competition between
plants decide where individuals grow.” In other words, the resulting
vegetation will be far more resilient than anything started off as plants.

The maintenance regime is designed to be as simple as possible. In
Hitchmough’s words, it should “do something uniformly across the whole site
that disadvantages the plants you don’t want and advantages those that you
do”. Mowing, familiar to anyone who has grown a wildflower meadow, is the
obvious example, but timing is critical. An August mow of an early-flowering
plant combination, for example, “checks the growth of taller competitive
dominants, lets light in and returns the system back to where it was in
spring”. Fire, too, can be a useful maintenance tool, with flame-gunning (a
weed-control technique familiar to organic growers) in February or March,
which kills “pesky annuals like cleavers and short-lived perennials such as
many willowherbs. It defoliates perennial weeds, so increasing the relative
competitiveness of the chosen species.”

I have tried a variant of this at home, and can testify to its simplicity and
effectiveness; most perennials will survive a light scorching — after all,
prairies and many other flower-rich habitats regularly experience flash
fires.

Flood prevention

Alongside Hitchmough’s work in the Olympic Park, his colleague Nigel Dunnett
has contributed colourful annual seed mixes and planted drainage “swales”. A
swale is a shallow depression designed to capture and hold water temporarily
after heavy rain, allowing it to soak into the ground, rather than run off
and cause flooding.

They are a key element in the new technology of what has become known as SUDS
(sustainable urban drainage systems). Swales at the Olympic Park are planted
mostly with wild-flower species that can survive occasional inundation but
which don’t actually need high moisture levels to flourish.

The third member of the team is garden designer and plantswoman Sarah Price,
whose role has been to work on the visual impact and spatial arrangement of
the plantings. “I’ve tried to weave together what James and Nigel do, using
bands of planting, making repetitions, merging their different planting
combinations,” she says. “I’ve used a lot of grasses and perennials with
good seed heads, as they have a long season.”

Examples are the grass Panicum virgatum, which has an impressive midsummer to
late-winter presence, and the perennial Veronicastrum virginicum with firmly
upright flower spikes that turn into statuesque seed heads and stand well
into the winter.

“I added many of my own palettes into the mix,” says Sarah. “Many are now
intermingled expanses of planting that look like meadow rather than strips.”

Sarah Price’s contribution is very much about providing structure and
coherence to what are extremely varied planting schemes, but doing so with a
light touch, so we appreciate it almost subliminally. Those who saw her
Daily Telegraph Chelsea Flower Show garden will get the idea.

The Stepping Stone Rock Garden Center, LLC – A Landscaping and Garden Center in Hattiesburg, MS is giving away a free landscape design to one lucky Facebook fan in the Hattiesburg, MS area.

Hattiesburg, MS (PRWEB) July 19, 2012

The Stepping Stone Rock and Garden Center, LLC is helping to make one lucky homeowner’s landscaping dreams come true by offering a free landscape design.

As a special thanks to their customers for years of loyal support, The Stepping Stone is offering this one-time giveaway exclusively via their Facebook page.

The free Landscape Design includes a 1 hour home evaluation and up to 3 hours of design work. One winner will be randomly selected after the contest ends on August 15th. There is no purchase necessary to enter the contest.

Contest participation is easy – just go to the Stepping Stone’s Facebook page and click on the “Free Landscape Design” tab.

The Free Landscape Design Contest (“Contest” or “Promotion”) is Sponsored by The Stepping Stone Rock and Garden Center, LLC. (“Sponsor” or “Cisco”) and is open and offered only to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States who are physically located in and currently residing in within 30 miles of Hattiesburg, MS, and are eighteen (18) years old or older at time of entry (eligible “Entrant”).

The Stepping Stone Rock and Garden Center, LLC is a family owned and operated business that offers Landscaping Services in Hattiesburg, MS. These services include irrigation, landscape design, hardscape installation, and much more. The Stepping Stone also has a garden center complete with all types of beautiful plants, flowers, trees, shrubbery, stone fountains, and more.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweblandscapedesign/hattiesburgms/prweb9710903.htm

span class=”bold”JOB DESCRIPTION:/span span class=”italic”Floral, interior and garden designer and owner of B + I Design, 520 West Pennway, 816-561-5599, a href =”http://www.bergamotandivy.com/” target=”_blank”bergamotandivy.com/a/span/pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q. /spanYou established your business Bergamot Ivy in 1993 on Westport Road and recently moved it to the Crossroads Arts District and changed the name to B + I Design. Why?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A. /spanBefore it was a floral and giftware business, and now were not selling giftware. And before, interior and garden design was just on the side. Now its a big part of the business. Different people would call us B + I for short. Growing up, I liked the herb bergamot because it attracted hummingbirds. So I thought it, paired with ivy, would show Im in the horticulture business./pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q. /spanWhats your personal design style?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A. /spanEclectic with an emphasis on classic design. I like using found objects and not using everything of one period or style. My dad was an architect and a professor of architecture and urban planning at KU, so I grew up knowing about the heavy hitters of the design world and learning about proportions. My mother sewed and was a poet. My parents met in the Navy in World War II; he was a captain and she was a code breaker. Our family lived in a passive solar 1950s Mission Hills house and we had a real inside/outside lifestyle. From all this, I developed a love of cooking and gardening. And with design, I believe there should be a flow from the inside to the outside in color and theme. With a yard, you have the space of another house to enjoy./pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q./span On the subject of houses, whats yours like?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A. /spanIts east of Lawrence and was built 35 years ago as a second getaway-type home to people who lived in the Kansas City area. It has an 8-acre pond. The house is small and has a British look. It was designed by architect (and KU professor) Dan Rockhill early in his career./pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q. /spanWhat do you seem to help people with the most when it comes to their interiors?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A./span People dont want entire rooms of new stuff. They want to incorporate pieces they already have, and that can be tricky for them. They dont want more stuff; they want to upgrade to nicer stuff. Peoples tastes mature as they travel more, visit art museums and read magazines. I like using pieces from estate sales because you can find things that are different from whats in a store. People in the Kansas City area have interesting things because theyre well traveled, things from Bali, Afghanistan and modern pieces. /pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q./span Besides estate sales, where do you like to shop for the home?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A./span a href =”http://www.1stdibs.com/” target=”_blank”1stdibs.com/a and a href =”http://www.ebay.com/” target=”_blank”ebay.com/a when theres a specific item Im on the hunt for. But I like to look at flea markets and the antique stores at 45th Street and State Line Road for spontaneous finds. There are also Kansas City Art Institute grads and students who make unique objects and custom furniture./pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q./span Do you collect anything?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A. /spanOh yes. Jadeite, Venetian glass, orchids, hyacinth vases, matte white pottery such as McCoy and shagreen accessories. And I collect garden plants and do some plant breeding. I have more than 100 different types of lilacs and lots of unusual woodland plants./pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q. /spanWhat are some easy fresh-cut arrangements when its so hot outside?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A. /spanI think cut greens in clear glass vases are stunning: grasses, ferns, hostas, ivies. Theyre such simple arrangements, but they look clean, fresh and spontaneous. I think finding things from your backyard or in nature to make a quick, 15-minute arrangement is creative and recharges the batteries./pp span class=”intro_bold_italic”Q. /spanWhats your favorite room in your home?/pp span class=”page_topic_leadin”A./span The living room. The walls are an orangy-brick red, and there are lots of teals and lichen-y blues in the room. I love strong complementary color combinations. The windows have a view of the outside, including the bird feeders. The room is a mix of high-end and simple. I live in the country and I have a dog, so it has to be comfortable, nothing fussy./pp span class=”tagline_credit”Stacy Downs, sdowns@kctar/span