The “Trylletromler” pavilion by Dutch firm FABRIC has attracted plenty of public attention in King’s Garden, Copenhagen since its public opening this past September. The installation was built after FABRIC won a temporary-pavilion design competition earlier this year. (Check out our previous coverage here on our sister site Bustler)

The concept of Trylletromler comes from the Danish word for the 19th-century zoetrope device, which gives the illusion of movement in a still image. Based on this idea, the pavilion’s fence is built as a paradoxically transparent maze that creates the illusion of motion as one walks through it.

Here’s a more detailed project description and some recent photos we received from FABRIC:

“…The Renaissance garden design of Rosenborg Castle is the oldest known example of garden design in Denmark. The design draws heavily on principles of Euclidean geometry. This language of absolute space was long regarded as the construction principle of the world. The architecture, urbanism and landscape design that were derived from it, were essentially aiming to create order out of chaos using absolute shapes: line, square, triangle, sphere and cone. In a later stage baroque elements were added, such as mazes and diagonal paths. Also Kavalergangen and Damegangen, two tree-lined avenues, were introduced. After these alterations the garden was never drastically changed. This classical representation of space was meticulously maintained until today.

This is the context for the question to design a pavilion, which is accessible to all public, appears innovative in its spatial expression and is challenging by its idiom. While remaining removable the design had to be realized within a very limited budget. FABRIC therefore introduced a new spatial concept in the royal garden in Copenhagen by stretching the understanding of the ‘pavilion’ towards the most elementary architectural element in garden design: the fence.

This new understanding of space provided by questioning strict order in the garden design and give way to ambivalence and hybridity is a ‘ blurring strategy’ . This strategy addresses three independent paradoxes by provoking the notions inside and outside, by introducing a maze that is paradoxically transparent and by creating an illusion of motion.

First of all, the fence as a freestanding structure is designed to restrict movement across a boundary. By folding and wrinkling the fence on the location, it produces new meanings of being spatially included or excluded.

Secondly, openings in the fence create routes through the pavilion. Most openings in their appearance resemble a partly raised curtain, making the fence look very light. By avoiding openings on obvious routes on sightlines, visitors are forced to find their way through the sequence of circle shaped spaces. And not all the openings are accessible to everybody. Some openings only allow kids into the pavilion, escaping their parents gaze as they explore the pavilion. The fence so to say acts like a see through maze

Thirdly, the fence gives new meaning by its potential to create the illusion of motion via the so called moiré patterns while moving along the fence. The fence is made out of three thousand standard pieces of Nordic timber, which are joined using an irregular pattern of wedges. The repetitive openings between the bars of the fence and their connections create a continuous moving image. When one thinks of a fence made out of sticks with narrow vertical slits arranged on a circular layout the image of a Zoetrope – or ‘wheel of life’ – jumps to mind. This 19th century device triggers an impression of movement within a still image.

Based on these three principles an intriguing floor plan was designed using a composition of ten perfect circles. The plan design reacts to given circumstances such as the exit of the rose garden, the statue by the water, sightlines towards the castle, existing tree lines and the position of solitary trees.

The maze like structure has in fact only one detail for all its connections. The entire structure built with 2967 standard pieces spruce of 38 millimeters thick and 68 millimeters wide. The narrow side of the uprights is placed forwards, while the cross-links are made of the same wood rotated ninety degrees. Each cross-link has a height of 200 millimeters and is planed under an angle on one side, so a circular structure arises. The fence is prefabricated in segments of one meter, which are screwed together at the site and anchored into the ground. The result is a 308 meter long winding wooden sculpture. Because the spruce is used untreated, all the material can be fully reused after the deconstruction of the pavilion.

The spatial quality offered by the pavilion is supported by the many rooms and directions users can explore. According to the jury the project therefore demonstrates the best desire and ability of architects to challenge and give new meaning to the concept of the pavilion…”

Click here to learn more.
Browse through the thumbnail gallery below to see more photos.

All photos by Walter Herfst, courtesy of FABRIC.

The Southborough Recreation Department has upcoming floral design classes for all skill levels. Participants will create beautiful arrangements and learn how to create pieces worthy of holiday entertaining.

The workshops will be led Nancy Vargas of le Jardin Blanc.

The floral designer has graciously offered to share a simple fall gardening online tutorial below for interested readers.

Below, Nancy provides instructions for creating an arrangement similar to the one pictured here.

If you’re like me, autumn is your favorite season here in New England. The cool days, the gorgeous colors and the warm light, especially in the afternoon, all contribute to a magical feeling. Even better is the promise of the warm, friend and family-filled holidays that are right around the corner. If you are a gardener, it is also the time to tally up your victories, document your intentions for next year and to put your beloved garden safely to bed for the winter. Since gardens are my business, my own garden tasks are usually put off until the last minute. I have been known to plant bulbs on December 1!

Therefore, as I write this on a windy Friday afternoon, I am looking forward to a weekend of raking, weeding, last-minute planting, moving and dividing. Oh, and there are also over 500 bulbs that need to be planted!

It will be a weekend of hard work. However, there also promises to be some beautiful surprises still hiding in my garden and I bet there are some in your garden as well. Although we have had our first frost and there are many plants that have already retreated for the year, there are also lots of beautiful flowers, foliage, seed pods, berries and branches that can be brought inside and used to create beautiful floral creations. In this post I hope to show you how. Let’s get started . . .

Click on the gallery below for Nancy’s detailed instructions with pictures.

I hope you will venture out into your fall garden and try this for yourself.

If you have any questions about your fall garden or the creation of this design, please comment on this post and Nancy will attempt to answer them.

To learn more of her techniques, you can sign up for one of Nancy’s classes listed below. (Note – Hurry, the November 13th classes registration deadlines are this week.)

Fall Floral Design for Beginners – $60
Wednesday, November 13, 9:30 – 11:30 am
South Union Building

Participants will be introduced to basic techniques, tools, and materials for designing with flowers, foliage, fruits and vegetables. We will focus on designs for the Thanksgiving holiday and create a simple yet impressive arrangement.

Fall Floral Design for Intermediate Designer – $75
Wednesday, November 13, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
South Union Building

Participants will learn how to design and create unique displays for the autumn table. We will focus on more advanced floral design techniques such as pave, layering, vertical designs and spiral design. Participants will create three elements to be used in a single autumn “tablescape” and will take away many more ideas for holiday tables to come.

Winter Green for the Season – $60
Wednesday, December 18, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
South Union Building

Nancy will lead a workshop for floral designers of all levels. We will focus on the use of evergreen foliage to decorate the home – both inside and out, for the holidays/winter season. Participants will create a charming long-lived evergreen topiary and take away lots of information on how to create beautiful wreaths, kissing balls and outdoor winter displays that will make them the envy of their neighborhood.

To register, contact the Southborough Recreation Department. Click here to register online. Or call 508-229-4452.

(Photos submitted by Nancy Vargas)

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Daktronics Inc.
331 Thirty-Second Ave., P.O. Box 5128
Brookings, SD, 57006
USA

Press release date: October 21, 2013

BROOKINGS, S.D. — Madison Square Garden unveiled today the designs for the Arena’s new state-of-the-art, one-of-a-kind, centerhung multi-media display. The display will serve as the centerpiece of The Garden’s brand-new LED video display system, known as GardenVision, which will debut on October 25 as part of the third and final phase of The Garden’s unprecedented, $1 billion, three-year Transformation. This cutting-edge system, manufactured by Daktronics (Nasdaq:DAKT) of Brookings, S.D., will include more than 20 individually produced LED displays, providing fans with an enhanced visual experience while at The World’s Most Famous Arena.

“With the completion of our historic Madison Square Garden Transformation, The World’s Most Famous Arena has also now become the world’s most state-of-the-art arena, ensuring that we continue our tradition of providing our fans with the very best experience possible when they attend an event at The Garden,” said Hank Ratner, president and chief executive officer, The Madison Square Garden Company. “Among the many new technological advancements in the Arena is our new one-of-a-kind GardenVision system, featuring the industry’s most dynamic multi-media display with a unique circular design and stunning image clarity, guaranteeing fans all around the Arena will get to experience the magic and excitement of The Garden up-close and in high-definition.”

This new, original multi-media display will consist of 24 individual high-definition LED displays which are curved to mirror the circular design of The Garden, providing maximum visibility to all seating areas. The scoreboard will be one of two structures in all of sports with LED displays on the inside, bottom for those seated in the lower sections. The main video displays are capable of showing one large image all the way around the board to highlight live video and instant replays, and can also be divided into separate screens to show a variety of vivid graphics, colorful animations, up-to-the-minutes statistics, scoring information and promotional videos. The center-hung video displays will have a unique all-black LED package, providing maximum image clarity and contrast.

About MSG’s Garden Vision Multi-Media Display:
–  The four main video displays measure 15.7 feet tall by 28 feet wide. Directly above those displays are four auxiliary video displays measuring more than 6 feet tall by 29 feet wide.
–  The corners of GardenVision contain four curved displays matching the height of the main video displays and four more curved displays matching the height of the auxiliary displays to create a full circular video board.
–  The inside bottom screens will provide up-to-the-minute statistics, game information, as well as replays.
–  The top of GardenVision contains an ID ring consisting of a backlit LED panel that is more than 2 feet tall and circles the entire top of the structure.
–  In addition, internal structural accommodations in GardenVision for Wi-Fi, IT and broadcast equipment will improve Wi-Fi coverage throughout the Arena, provide new unique and compelling camera angles for MSG Network and is set up for future technological advances.
–  The board can be lowered and expanded for different events.

Madison Square Garden’s new video display system was developed and installed by Daktronics, the world’s industry leader in designing and manufacturing electronic scoreboards, programmable display systems and large screen video displays.

“Madison Square Garden wanted the very best and we’re proud to deliver that to them,” said Vice President of Daktronics Live Events Jay Parker. “The curvature of the main video displays offers Madison Square Garden something that’s never really been done before in this type of application. It’s very unique and fitting for this venue. The underside displays serve as additional space for any form of content and really exemplify how different this display system is from every other venue in the country. The flexibility and content options present endless possibilities for this versatile set up. This project has been a great undertaking and it was a joy to work with such great people at Madison Square Garden, we are excited to see everything fired up and running for their first event.”

The Garden’s state-of-the-art center-hung multi-media display serves as the centerpiece of the GardenVision system, which extends throughout the arena and includes:

–  Three LED displays on both the north and south end of the new Chase Bridges, which feature a combination of video and game statistics.
–  Four long, curved LED ribbon displays on two different levels of the seating bowl.
–  For basketball games, on the sidelines there will be seven sections of LED scorer’s table displays, which can be connected to showcase additional up-to-the-minute statistics, marketing partners and promote upcoming events.

On October 25, The Garden will unveil the third and final phase of the Arena’s comprehensive, top-to-bottom Transformation. In addition to the new state-of-the-art GardenVision center-hung scoreboard, other new elements that will debut include a transformed Chase Square 7th Avenue entrance that is nearly double in size and features a retail store, a brand new box office, a broadcast location, and a specific area dedicated to The Garden of Dreams Foundation, the non-profit organization that works closely with MSG to help children facing obstacles. Also debuting will be two new spectacular Chase Bridges that deliver one-of-a-kind views of the action; a new EIGHTEEN/76 Balcony (10th floor) offering a selection of new food and beverage options and unique seating lounges with direct views into the Arena bowl; a new Signature Suite Level (9th floor) featuring 18 completely transformed suites and the restoration of The Garden’s world-famous ceiling.

The historic Transformation of Madison Square Garden has provided fans with an upgraded experience and enhanced amenities from the first row to the last. From the expanded concourses and first-class food and beverage options, to the larger, more comfortable seats and enhanced sightlines, to the special exhibits celebrating The Garden’s unrivaled history, the new state-of-the-art Arena reinforces the building’s position as The World’s Most Famous Arena.

About Madison Square Garden
The Madison Square Garden Company is a fully-integrated sports, media and entertainment business. The Company is comprised of three business segments: MSG Sports, MSG Media and MSG Entertainment, which are strategically aligned to work together to drive the Company’s overall business, which is built on a foundation of iconic venues and compelling content that the company creates, produces, presents and/or distributes through its programming networks and other media assets. MSG Sports owns and operates the following sports franchises: the New York Knicks (NBA), the New York Rangers (NHL), the New York Liberty (WNBA), and the Hartford Wolf Pack (AHL). MSG Sports also features the presentation of a wide variety of live sporting events including professional boxing, college basketball, track and field and tennis. MSG Media is a leader in production and content development for multiple distribution platforms, including content originating from the Company’s venues. MSG Media’s television networks consist of regional sports networks, MSG Network and MSG+, collectively referred to as MSG Networks; and Fuse, a national television network dedicated to music. MSG Networks also include high-definition channels, MSG HD and MSG+ HD, and Fuse includes its high-definition channel, Fuse HD. MSG Entertainment is one of the country’s leaders in live entertainment. MSG Entertainment creates, produces and/or presents a variety of live productions, including the Radio City Christmas Spectacular featuring the Radio City Rockettes. MSG Entertainment also presents or hosts other live entertainment events such as concerts, family shows and special events in the Company’s diverse collection of venues. These venues consist of Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, The Theater at Madison Square Garden, the Beacon Theatre, the Chicago Theatre, the Forum in Inglewood, CA, and the Wang Theatre in Boston, MA. More information is available at www.themadisonsquaregardencompany.com.

About Daktronics
Daktronics is recognized as the world’s leading provider of full-color LED video displays. Daktronics began manufacturing large screen, full- color, LED video displays in 1997. Since then, thousands of large screen video displays have been sold and installed around the world.
Since 2001, independent market research conducted by iSuppli Corp. lists Daktronics as the world’s leading provider of large screen LED video displays.

Daktronics has strong leadership positions in, and is the world’s largest supplier of, large screen video displays, electronic scoreboards, computer-programmable displays, digital billboards, and control systems. The company excels in the control of large display systems, including those that require integration of multiple complex displays showing real-time information, graphics, animation and video. Daktronics designs, manufactures, markets and services display systems for customers around the world, in sport, business and transportation applications. For more information, visit the company’s World Wide Web site at: http://www.daktronics.com, e-mail the company at sales@daktronics.com, call (605) 692-0200 or toll-free (800) 325-8766 in the United States or write to the company at 331 32nd Ave. PO Box 5135 Brookings, S.D. 57006-5135.

Contact: 
For more information contact:
Media Relations:
Justin Ochsner
Marketing
tel 605-692-0200
email justin.ochsner@daktronics.com

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MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Parsley can also make a great garden border, Jamie Durie says.

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Parsley makes a fabulous border, artichokes are a great accent plant and apples can create the perfect aerial hedge.

These are some of the tips that Australian landscape architect and TV lifestyle expert Jamie Durie shares in his new book, Edible Garden Design: Delicious Designs from the Ground Up.

Durie, a horticulturist by training, says he’s discovered how stylish edible plants can be by seeing them through the eyes of a designer.

“I’m not looking at it like a gardener would, I’m a designer first and foremost,” he said.

When I look at a blueberry the first thing I think is “Wow I didn’t know they had these incredible blue-green leaves, that’s an incredible hedging plant.

“When I look at artichoke and broccoli, both of those plants have excellent architecture, they’re one giant flower in themselves, you can use those in the central part of the bed as a accent plant.”

In his gorgeous 300-page hardback book, Durie shows us a myriad ways we can get our fruit, vegetables and herbs out of the standard vegie patch and into the limelight.

“Rather than look at your edible plants as something that should sit in a vegetable patch, it’s about being creative with our plants and getting the extra added bonus of food,” he says.

In the book he features a range of projects that have inspired him, including Stephanie Alexander’s home garden, community gardens in Chicago, produce markets in New York City and Mama Durie’s vegie patch.

He describes how he transformed his mother’s garden in Queensland’s Coombabah by tearing out her old lawn, to her horror, and replacing it with a matrix of pathways and raised garden beds.

“If you replace your lawn with a garden that is ornamental, productive and interactive, your kids, and the planet, will love you for it,” he says.

Durie says his mum now loves her green spaces and is living proof that gardens provide a sense of wellbeing and balance.

“She’s always laughing, full of energy and excited about what the next season will bring,” he says.          

Jamie Durie tells us some ways he has used edibles over the years:

– Bay trees or pomegranate for screens

– Rosemary for hedging

– Parsley and sage for borders

– Quince for espaliers

– Apples and pears for raised pleached (entwined) aerial hedges

– Dill and parsnip for fine foliage movement in the garden

– Artichokes for accent

– Pumpkins for ground covers

– Grapes and passionfruit for trellises and walls

– Fig trees for shady canopies or garden ceilings

– Citrus and stone fruits for topiarised ornamental trees

– AAP

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1 November 2013
| By Elizabeth Hopkirk

River crossing would ‘open up links between Covent Garden and South Bank’

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The hobby of cultivating yard plants will “develop that attachment of the citizen to his home, which is one of the strongest safeguards of society against lawlessness and immorality,” a Detroit supplier wrote in its 1875 catalog.

The New York Botanical Garden has begun digitizing its holdings of about 56,000 catalogs for a searchable database. Enthusiasts can already scroll through every mention of nicotine pesticides and prizewinning dahlias and explore what the Floral Park neighborhood in Queens looked like when it was still covered in greenhouses.

The booklets’ luscious drawings and photos depicting the likes of passion vines and mulberry trees were products of company owners trying to put one another out of business. “They were ruthless,” said Susan Fraser, director of the garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

When too many misleading color illustrations of overabundant plants began appearing in catalogs, a Philadelphia seed company warned about its competitors, “The attractive features are in some cases grossly exaggerated.”

The texts are full of references to delicate petal veins and velvety textures, in keeping with the era’s view of the refined sensibilities of female consumers. The target audience “was always the women,” said Thomas J. Mickey, the author of “America’s Romance With the English Garden” (Ohio University Press), a recent study of how seed catalogs shaped landscapes.

Through Nov. 20, the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum in Pelham Bay Park, the Bronx, is displaying planting how-to and philosophy books from its library, which was assembled a century ago for the International Garden Club. Early club members, mostly women, left signs of heavy wear and tear on the spines of guides to raising violets and magnolias and arranging sundials and playground equipment.

The Bartow-Pell exhibition’s curator, Joseph Disponzio, uncovered biographies of the volumes’ lesser known authors, like the fern specialist Grace A. Woolson. Amid the fern groves on her Vermont property, she also raised tree toads; a 1911 obituary reported that her pet amphibians were “trained to perform several little feats.”

SAVE THE WIG!

 

What are the most endangered artifacts in the United States? Advocacy groups in Oklahoma, Virginia and Pennsylvania are asking the public to help devise Top 10 lists of deteriorating antiques in institutional hands.

Recent contenders include early 1900s glass-plate photos of Oklahoma prairies, a minister’s 1750s grave monument in Richmond, a bust of Lincoln carved from Pennsylvania anthracite coal and a tattered wig worn by the Pennsylvania abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

The Pennsylvania contest ends at midnight on Friday. The wig’s owner, LancasterHistory.org, needs a few thousand dollars to build a shock-resistant travel case for it, to prevent further hair loss and stabilize the underlying mesh. Related exhibitions are being planned for a brick townhouse in Lancaster that Stevens occupied with his mixed-race housekeeper and mistress, Lydia Hamilton Smith. (Artifacts related to her will also go on view, including the servant bell that he used to summon her.)

“Each year, we’ve been increasing our interpretive efforts towards Stevens,” said Barry Rauhauser, a curator at LancasterHistory.org. Other institutions frequently ask to borrow the wig, which resembles its rumpled counterpart worn by Tommy Lee Jones playing Stevens in the 2012 movie “Lincoln.”

To draw attention to the current contest, the museum has held a competition for Stevens look-alikes wearing a variety of unflattering hairpieces.

Winning the ranking of antique most at risk does not necessarily entail any cash prizes, but it does attract sympathy. At the Norfolk Botanical Garden in Virginia, eroded white marble statues by the Virginia sculptor Moses Ezekiel received the most votes in the state’s 2011 endangered artifacts contest. Fund-raising is underway to cover $500,000 in restoration and future maintenance.

“It didn’t lead to a grant, but it led to the garden going, ‘Golly-day, people care,’ ” said Patricia Rawls, a former board president at the garden.

Eryl Wentworth, executive director of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, said in an interview that endangered artifacts contests are beneficial, even when no money changes hands. Curators can rethink possibly tired existing displays as they sift through their collections for candidates that could captivate the public. Ms. Wentworth said that they could stumble upon something forgotten and wonder, “What are the stories this could tell, if it were in good enough condition to show?”

JEWELRY FIT FOR ISIS

Ronald Kawitzky, a Manhattan jewelry dealer, has long been keeping anything inspired by ancient Egypt in a collection not for sale. He has found works made over the last two centuries in places like Russia, Italy and Brazil that feature winged scarabs, tapered temple columns and sphinxes in gold and precious stones.

In imperial powers like France and England, the fashion for Egypt-inspired jewelry reflected the countries’ role in northern Africa. “Everyone was trying to reinforce their own connection,” Mr. Kawitzky said during a tour of “From Here to Antiquity,” a show of acquisitions from his store, D K Bressler, now for sale at the S. J. Shrubsole gallery on East 57th Street in Manhattan (and through 1stdibs.com, with prices between a few hundred dollars and six figures). He added, “It’s a jumping-off point for fantasyland.”

At the gallery, images of ibises, deities and pharaohs, surrounded by fake hieroglyphics, bask in sun rays on pins and bracelets. Necklace beads are shaped like ankhs and lotus flowers, and gold snakes are twirled around ceramic and carnelian scarabs.

A forthcoming book, “Egyptomania” (Palgrave Macmillan), by the historian Bob Brier, devotes a subchapter to 19th- and 20th-century jewelry based on archaeological finds at pyramids. Victorian and Art Deco metalworkers applied pharaoh and sphinx motifs to containers for cigarettes, perfume, pencils and scissors. Brooches made from preserved beetles and charms shaped like sarcophagi also became popular.

Mr. Kawitzky has also found a beetle brooch with entomologically correct gold legs and a coffin charm with a lid that pops open to reveal a mummy figurine.

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North Carolina is a great place to be a “new traditional” interior designer, says Durham’s Heather Garrett.

The state has plenty of traditional architecture, but people don’t necessarily want the inside of their homes to look like Grandma’s house, said Garrett, who recently landed on Traditional Home magazine’s 2013 list of 10 up-and-coming “new trad” designers to watch.

“A lot of my clients are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and they want to buy a house that feels solid, and it feels classic and it feels traditional, but they don’t want to have to furnish it and design the space in a way that necessarily matches that,” she said. “But it has to blend.”

That’s what “new traditional” is all about.

“It’s that fusion,” Garrett said. “It’s that way of infusing something very fresh and very cutting-edge with the traditional pieces, architecture, surroundings that kind of keep a space grounded.”

Traditional Home’s readers voted Garrett, who runs Heather Garrett Interior Design from a studio a few blocks from the American Tobacco Campus, their favorite of the 10 designers to watch. Garrett described those readers, like many of her local clients, as “a younger, little bit more modern reader who loves design and appreciates classic architecture, the classic shapes of furniture. That reader that wouldn’t consider themselves contemporary but really doesn’t want to be penned in by the furniture that they’ve inherited from their parents.”

In highlighting Garrett’s work, Traditional Home cited her art history background and ability to blend French modern and Southern traditional styles to achieve a distinctive look.

“Her signature look includes sophisticated surfaces as varied as plaster and hide or velvet and linen, as well as extraordinary lighting,” the magazine wrote.

In rooms she designs, Garrett puts the focus on “classic American and European design sensibilities with a natural and organic flavor,” she said. She might cover an antique French chair with a contemporary print or use a chandelier that incorporates rope and seashells as a focal point. An updated perspective on paint can also give a room a modern twist without losing the elegance of a traditional style, she said.

Sick of a stuffy dining room with white chair rails and moldings? Choose a bold paint color you love and cover everything – including those chair rails.

“You preserve the traditional architecture and the feeling of that detail, but you’re not calling attention to it like they traditionally would have,” she said. “You’re pulling it back a little bit.”

For that matter, you don’t even have to use the dining room as a dining room.

“That room can be kind of a dust-catcher for a modern family,” Garrett said. She’s turned the dining room into a far less formal family room in many local homes to keep up with the way people live.

“New traditional,” at least as Garrett sees it, can be very family-friendly.

“Kids, pets and red wine are facts of life,” she’s fond of saying, and her designs take those facts into account. She often uses outdoor fabric for indoor upholstery, including in her own home. When her two kids spill food on the family’s white sofa, which is covered in ultra-soft outdoor umbrella fabric, no one gets sent to time-out. The mess sponges right off and life goes on.

“I feel like it’s my responsibility not to create a household that’s more tense than it was when I found it,” she said of designing spaces for families. Kids shouldn’t feel like interlopers, and parents shouldn’t be shooing the little ones away from the furniture, she said.

To give your home a “new traditional” look, you don’t need a blank slate, Garrett said. “It’s more of a mind-set, really, than an actual undertaking.”

“We all have kind of our go-to aesthetic,” she said. “For every three things that you have, that you would consider to be beautiful but very solidly traditional, force yourself to choose one thing that’s really modern for you.”

A “new traditional” home can be beautiful and show high style, but it doesn’t have to look like the set of a magazine photo shoot, Garrett said.

“I try to really make sure that my spaces don’t feel overly decorated,” she said, “that it really feels like somebody got a helping hand in helping the space more clearly reflect them.”

Chandler: 919-829-4830

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In the dreamlike private universe he has painstakingly created, the London-based artist finds all the inspiration he needs.

• October 30, 2013 9:55 AM | by Alex Needham

A former sausage factory is the last place you’d expect to find ­Shangri-la. Yet behind the high wooden boards that shield the spartan building from South London’s grungy Peckham Road is a bower of bliss to overwhelm the senses. Mountains of flowers and trees—magnolias, azaleas, ferns, begonias—are piled up in pots, attracting a considerable number of butterflies and bees. There’s a waterfall, in which a small Jack Russell called Mr. C is gingerly dabbing his paws. Down the path through the flowers is a swinging sofa with a canopy. If you ask for tea, an assistant will instead bring a glass of pink champagne the size of a man’s forearm, despite the fact that it’s early in the afternoon.

This is the home, studio, and empire of the artist Raqib Shaw. Born in Calcutta, India, and brought up in Kashmir until the long-standing conflict in the area forced his family to flee, Shaw moved to London in 1998. “I love Kashmir—oh, you have no idea how much I love Kashmir,” he says with a sigh, dressed in his customary uniform of flat striped cap, apron, and pointy blue suede Patrick Cox shoes. “Why do you think everything here is a pathetic metaphor for the Himalayan mountains?”

Shaw’s overwhelming paintings, in which mythological creatures disport themselves with ribald abandon in hyper-real landscapes, have turned the 39-year-old into an art world favorite, adored by fashionable collectors and heavyweight institutions alike. Right from the start, Shaw made large-scale works, some as big as 15 feet by 8 feet. To create his series Garden of Earthly Delights (2002–2006), which depicts hybrid creatures conjoined in sexual acts in a dazzling underwater world, he used a porcupine quill and car paint. The Hieronymus Bosch–inspired paintings put Shaw on the map. Having seen his 2002 MA postgraduate exhibition at London’s Central Saint Martins, Glenn Scott Wright, a codirector of the Victoria Miro gallery, brought one work from the Earthly Delights series to the 2003 Art Basel fair, where it was spotted by the gallerist Jeffrey ­Deitch. Deitch gave Shaw a solo show in New York, and Victoria Miro offered him his first show in London, which sold out before it even opened, in February 2004. Garden of Earthly Delights X, meanwhile, is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“He goes against all the norms of art,” says the curator Norman Rosenthal, an early champion of Shaw’s. “His work has this air of private excess—incredibly beautiful, very cultivated, knowledgeable—and he combines the cultures of East and West in an extraordinary way. Underneath all the hysteria there’s incredible pain and a sense of loss, both personal and political, for Kashmir. It makes his art authentic and real. It’s on the edge of kitsch but never falls into it.”

In November, Shaw takes over three of the Pace gallery’s New York spaces­—the first artist to do so—with the first and second chapter of his Paradise Lost series that he began in 2001. “The variety of the work and the intensity of this series demanded it,” says Pace founder Arne Glimcher. One gallery will feature huge sculptures, including Renaissance-style wrestling figures; in another will be circular paintings of charging horses; and a third will showcase just one piece, which Shaw is still finishing when I visit. It’s an eye-popping panorama featuring exploding Western architecture—“bits of Piranesi, a bit of Versailles, a bit of St. Paul’s,” Shaw says—overrun with creatures that have monkey heads and human bodies.

Shaw’s London headquarters is at once an installation, an atelier (his word), and a metaphor. The bathroom—previously the sausage factory’s abattoir—is tiled and painted deep red, with blood-spattered statues inset in the wall behind the bath, and enormous scarlet Acqua di Parma candles, which sit on a shelf above the toilet. There’s another room with flower arrangements so gigantic that they look fake, an impression belied by their scent. A long lean-to down one wall of the studio’s ground floor is filled with bonsai trees, one of which is 300 years old and cost about the same as a really good car, one of Shaw’s numerous assistants tells me quietly. (Her task is to water all the bonsai, a four-hour job.) On a balcony upstairs there are two beehives, which are ruled by a pair of queens whimsically named Meredith and Josephine.

A small and highly theatrical man, Shaw is fantastic company. When discussing the art world, his conversation is a conspiratorial, sibilant whisper, rising to loud hilarity when he alights on something that tickles him. Expensive habits—one friend says he once spent more than $30,000 on cut flowers in one go—have left Shaw drastically in debt. Not that he cares. “I intend to die in the red,” he announces flamboyantly. “I always tell the accountant, ‘Black is not a color—red is the color of fashion.’ ” Though he comes from a rich family of carpet merchants and jewelry makers, Shaw has not always lived luxuriously. While at art school, he camped out in a studio that had no heat or washing facilities; Shaw had to bathe in a baby’s wading pool. “I know it’s romantic; I know it’s nonsensical, but I absolutely loved it,” Shaw insists. He wasn’t even put off by the fact that on more than one occasion, dismembered murder victims were dumped outside. “Sweets, I saw a foot!” he tells me with a flourish. “I called the police, went to an opening at the Victoria Miro gallery, and when I got back, it was dogs and helicopters.” The East London badlands where he used to work have since been gentrified. Still, few outsiders visit the studio. Rosenthal drops by now and again, and Shaw occasionally hosts parties where a soprano will sing—opera is one of his passions. In fact, it’s only the Royal Opera House that lures him regularly beyond his bubble. (A rare exception was a recent studio outing to a Beyoncé concert, after which Shaw and his assistants ended up dancing at the gay party Trannyshack.) He has no interest in going to art world parties and dinners, claims to have no friends, and as for a partner, Shaw declares, “I haven’t had sex in the past 15 years.”

As Shaw tells it, however, his more pressing problem is that the work for his New York show is behind schedule, and, he says, “the begonias are not as bright as they were last year, and one of the fish is being cannibalized in the pond. Now that’s a crisis!” He screams with laughter, an astonishing noise akin to a hyena being throttled. In 2016, he plans to finish his Paradise Lost series with a 130-foot painting, likely to be shown at Jay Jopling’s White Cube gallery in London. Jopling will have to tear down walls to accommodate it, Shaw says. “Jay’s such a seducer. He said, ‘Raqib, I made this gallery so you could fit the painting in the space.’”

Maybe it’s the assistant continually topping off my glass of pink champagne, but time seems to stand still in this sybarite’s domain. “People judge time by years,” Shaw tells me. “I judge time only by panels.” Inevitably, it dawns on you that you must reel out of the garden and go back to the real world. “It’s very difficult for anyone to separate me from the surface, from the studio, from my assistant, from my tree, or from my desk,” Shaw says, carefully pruning the pink hydrangea he hands to me as a parting gift. “It’s all one.”

This is the time of year when folks suddenly realize that it really is over. There will be no more outdoor gardening for nine whole months. What to do in that void? Obviously, indoor growing should be considered. And, it seems to me that in these dark months it’s worthwhile to catch up on reading. This is a great time to get into some gardening magazines.

I know we all have iPads and computers and get a lot of our gardening information from the Internet, but there is something about a print magazine, especially a gardening or horticultural one, that makes it important to keep them around. I note this because earlier this year the entire staff of Garden Design magazine, one of the few magazines left, were summarily dismissed as the mag went out of publication. Personally, that is a shame. There is a place for these publications in the garden world, even if there may not be in the news world. Gardeners really should support them lest they all disappear. Here are a few suggestions.

Let’s start with one I always push because it is so unique. “Green Prints” (www.greenprints.com) is the only monthly compilation of what I call “Hort Lit.” This consists of horticultural stories and writings rather than the “how-to” stuff that you find in all the other gardening magazines. This is a thick — 75 or so pages — “Readers Digest-size” monthly compilation of the best of what editor (and my good friend) Pat Stone can find amongst all the garden print. (He must read a lot!) In any case, you will find funny stories, poignant stories, children’s stories and more. As an added inducement to subscribe to Green Prints, I would mention it won the Best Garden Magazine Award from the Garden Writers Association.

Next is Rodale Press’ “Organic Gardening” (www.organicgardening.com). Yup, this is the successor title to the original Organic Farming and Gardening, still going strong after all these years. It keeps reinventing itself, which means it is always changing. If that sounds bad, it isn’t. It keeps the magazine fresher (and trying harder) than some of the others. If you are not an organic gardener as a result of reading this column, perhaps Rodale Press will convince you of how easy it is to drop the chemicals.

“Garden Gate” (www.gardengatemagazine.com) magazine comes out every two months. It is a glossy full of gorgeous pictures and fact-filled articles on all aspects of gardening. The folks who publish it are so sure you will want to subscribe, they are willing to send you a free issue to try. What have you to lose?

“The English Garden” (www.theenglishgarden.co.uk/magazine) is, as you have already guessed, a publication out of England. It is full of fantastic garden pictures and interviews with gardeners who design, build or maintain them. Yes, it is all about gardening in Great Britain and reviews their stuff and people, not ours, but hey, it’s winter here so what does that matter?

“Gardens Illustrated” is another garden magazine from England (www.gardensillustrated.com). Get ready to do some drooling. This one is full of beautiful pictures of gardens, English gardening advice, and articles about plants worldwide.

“Fine Gardening” (www.finegardening.com) bills itself as a garden design magazine. It is probably the American equivalent of a high-brow English magazine, and I mean that in a positive way. It has fantastic photography and writing. You won’t just read this in a couple of minutes. If you want you can purchase one month at a time. People use words like “breathtaking” when describing some of the gardens covered, and there is no question yours might seem a bit pale in comparison. Nonetheless, there is always something inspiring as well. Besides, aren’t Alaskan winters for dreaming a bit?

There are other magazines, horticulturally oriented and otherwise, which always devote a portion of their print pages to gardening and gardens. If you have one worthy of note, let me know at www.Teamingwithmicrobes.com. It’s a long winter, climate change or not. We have plenty of time to read.

Jeff Lowenfels’ bestselling books are available at tinyurl.com/teamingwithmicrobes and tinyurl.com/teamingwithnutrients.

Garden calendar

NOT TOO LATE: BRING IN CERAMIC POTS, UNDO HOSES FROM OUTDOOR FAUCETS AND OTHERWISE SAVE THINGS FROM WATER EXPANDING WHEN IT FREEZES.

LIGHTS: FOLKS, NOW, NOT IN MARCH, IS THE TIME TO INSTALL AND START USING GROWING LIGHTS.

HOUSEPLANTS: GET SOME NEW ONES. NURSERIES, SUPERMARKETS, FLORISTS ARE ALL STOCKED UP.

ALASKA BOTANICAL GARDEN: THE GARDEN IS OPEN DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS, ALL YEAR LONG. GREAT TIME TO CHECK OUT THE BIG GLACIER BOULDER AND SEE HOW THE PROS PUT A GARDEN TO BED.