You Grow Girl™

I’m really exposing my inner geek here when I say that I’ve recently become interested in a BBC television series that is now playing on TVO called, “Tales from the Green Valley.” The program follows a group of experts as they attempt to run a Welsh farm using materials and resources only available during the 17th century. The show is very much in the tradition of shows like, “Iron Age” and “1900 House” but with less interpersonal and social dynamics — therefore less drama and more education. Each episode depicts a month in the life of the farm over the course of a year delving into herbology, farming and agriculture, cooking, cheese-making, food preservation, and other practical day-to-day practices that would have been common-place in 1620 rural England.

My partner Davin started watching it a few weeks ago and completely sucked me in with accounts of all the cool things they were doing. For example on last week’s program they made tansy omelettes by chopping fresh tansy leaves and squeezing the juice into an egg mixture. I looked tansy up in one of my herb books, “Herbal: The Essential Guide to Herbs for Living” by Deni Brown and it turns out that people really did make mini cakes called “tansies” around the time of lent as a way to offset the effect of gasses caused by overconsumption of peas and beans. The book does warn (and so did the program) that tansy contains both camphor and thujone (potentially toxic) and should be eaten with caution.

In this week’s episode the group demonstrated how a farmer would go about preparing a large plot in which to grow a cash crop of peas. They even went so far as to obtain a variety grown during thaqt time period. Watching them prepare the soil, dig furrows, plant, and cover the soil really makes you appreciate the easy work one can acheive with a rototiller! Weeding sticks were fashioned from branches to help pull weeds from their hay field. One stick was bent on the end like a cane while the other was straight. They used the bent ended stick to grasp and hold the weed and then pushed the straight stick against it and pulled up removing the weed roots and all. Very inventive.

The show is actually only a short account of a larger ongoing project to reconstruct a working 17th century agricultural landscape that is documented in a book called, The Building of the Green Valley. It’s a fascinating project that actually took hundreds of volunteers rather than the few experts depicted in the show so I recommend looking there if you’re interested in learning more that goes above and beyond the tv program.

Guest post by Renee Garner

The Cooper-Hewitt recently announced their 2006 National Design Awards. Three lucky Landscape Architects were recognized for advancing the fields of urban planning, park, and garden design. I , myself, am a gardener who leans towards ADD styles and eclectic designs, I often find the field of Landscape Design fairly dull and overintellectualized. I guess a nicer way to put it: Landscapes are all-too-often groomed to perfection, giving a hands off appearance. To me, its about as inviting as a glass wall, appealing to my voyeuristic self, but an over-exposed and generally unrelaxing space. So, in an effort to understand the judges’ approach a bit better, I asked around to see what others, more trained in the field, thought. Not surprisingly, they schooled me.

Tom Christopher, House and Garden Magazine: I was shocked – no, mortally offended – the first time I came across Martha Schwartz’s work many years ago in photographs of the notorious “bagel garden” that she created in 1979 for her then husband, Peter Walker. To someone like myself with a horticultural background (and maybe a deficient sense of humor) Schwartz’s gardens were a slap in the face. They still are. But today, I find that bracing.

A painter in three dimensions and a sculptor of space, Schwartz is a very serious artist who doesn’t take herself too seriously. Who can help plant-centric types such as myself to relate to the outdoors in a new way. Schwartz’s work still makes me nervous, but that I think is part of her aim. She takes risks and demands the same of her public.
What Martha Schwartz is doing is both new and not so. In her treatment of garden design as a fine art, and in her blurring the line between landscape, sculpture, and the graphic arts, she is, consciously or not, reaching way back to a time when it was a Raphael or a Michelangelo the pope would hire to design the Vatican if they had responded with bagels, excommunication would have been a sure thing.

Ken Smith worked with Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz early in his career and the experience may be partly responsible for the sculptural quality of his own work, notable especially in the glowing topiary garden he created as a winter solstice celebration at New York’s Liberty Plaza. Coupled with this, though, is a fascination with natural processes that I suspect must date to his childhood on an Iowa farm. As a gardener, I respond especially to his involvement with natural processes: the bloom of the great dumpster planters he created for a city schoolyard, or the rain curtain (a curtain of icicles in winter) that he installed in a Toronto Park.

Which brings me at last to Andrea Cochran who also reshapes traditional concepts of the garden, but does so, in my opinion, as a musician. I have no idea whether Cochran has ever even picked up an instrument, but her use of stone, glass, steel and plants has a lyric, rhythmical swing that sings out wherever she sets to work. Sometimes in symphonies, other times in just a brief harmony, but always clear, sweet, and strong.

Heather Rhoades, This Garden is Illegal blogger: I always think of this kind of this stuff as similar to fashion shows. In fashion shows you see all sorts of gorgeous models in funky but stunning outfits. Of course you will never look like that model and you would not be caught dead in public in that outfit, but on a runway, that outfit is awesome. Same deal here. Wow. Looks stunning, but would you really want it in your yard? It will make changes to the future of landscaping, maybe. But interesting to look at in the mean time.

Ivette Soler, The Germinatrix: Could anyone BUT Martha Schwartz have won the Cooper-Hewitt Design Award for Landscape Design? Hers is work not to be ignored – it takes you by the lapels (if you happen to be wearing a jacket) and shakes you, screaming “Is her work deserving of the award? Well, yes. Her work has without a doubt contributed to the field of landscape design – but I must confess an ambivalence about it. I’m not sure that I want landscapes to be as aesthetically rigorous as hers are. Or as aware of their own greatness as hers seem to be. I’ve always loved the work of finalist Andrea Cochran, which is bold, forward – thinking and architectural, while retaining lyricism and a sense of ease. Martha Schwartz has worked very hard to earn this award, and I think you really see the effort. Not to be bitchy or anything.

Gayla Trail, You Grow Girl Human – of – All – Trades: The prize is for “exemplary work in urban planning or park and garden design.” These designers are pushing the limits of park design but I have a tendency to view gardens and parks as places with plants… I’m not a fan of these concrete “parks” that are showing up in cities. Examples “Millennium Park” (with the giant bean) in Chicago and “Dundas Square” here in Toronto.

I prefer the work of finalist Andrea Cochran because her designs include plants… but then again there’s a lot of lawn instead of concrete… I like the first one by Ken Smith, “Queen’s Schoolyard.” It looks warm and inviting… like a garden.

So really my abrupt comment: “Too much lawn for my taste.” is succinct but appropriate. Although perhaps it should read, “Too much lawn and concrete for my taste.”