Boston Flora

Tag: Landscape Designers

  • From the Archives: What We Do, and What We Don’t

    Garden Club of the Back Bay meeting minutes from November 1982 indicate we placed a notice in the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay newsletter that the Garden Club was available to give advice for front yard landscaping improvements.  We’re not sure if anyone at the time took us up on the offer, but over the years we have fielded many inquiries of this sort, usually from people looking for recommendations of landscape designers or garden maintenance experts.  Sometimes we know a name, sometimes we don’t.  We also have come to realize that a recommendation of a name can look like an endorsement of one company over another, which is not our intent.

    Our most amusing queries come from new residents who ask us to come over and actually plant their gardens.  We suppose they have confused a Garden Club with a Garden Service.  If you are a local urban garden designer or own a landscape firm working in the Back Bay, please feel free to email info@bostonflora.com with your information, so we may add your name to a list we hope to prepare and send to interested parties when asked, with a strict caveat that The Garden Club of the Back Bay is not vouching for or vetting the names contained on the list.  Image from www.aspectsofstyle.com.

     

  • Reminder: Tuesday, January 19, 7 – 8:30 pm – Spirit: Garden Inspiration

    Dan Pearson is one of the most important and influential landscape designers working today. At the heart of all his gardens lies an unshakable theme – his reverence for the power and delicacy of nature. In this lecture on Tuesday, January 19, beginning at 7 pm at Trinity Church on Copley Square,  Dan will demonstrate his design process, in which he extrapolates on the spirit of place as it emerges through geography, history, architecture, and native flora. Dan will explain how he believes landscapes—both wild and designed—speak to us, how human interventions in the landscape can animate and inform, and how they can serve to memorialize and to heal.
    Fee $20 Arnold Arboretum member, $25 nonmember
    Dan Pearson is a landscape designer with an international reputation for design and planting excellence. His key strengths are horticultural expertise, an informed and intuitive approach to the organization of space, and the practice of ecological and sustainable design principles. Dan trained at Wisley, a Royal Horticultural Society garden, and at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He is a weekly gardening columnist for The Observer, before which he was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He is co-author of The Essential Garden Book (with Sir Terence Conran) and author of The Garden: A Year at Home Farm. He has presented and appeared in several TV series and has designed five award-winning Chelsea Flower Show gardens. To register, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

    http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/allotment/main%20dan.jpg

  • Saturday, May 22 – Saturday, May 29 – Chelsea Flower Show and English Gardens Tour

    Do you need to give someone a Christmas gift wish list? The Education Department of Tower Hill Botanic Garden is sponsoring a guided tour of the Chelsea Flower Show and English Gardens from Saturday, May 22 through Saturday, May 29.  The Chelsea Flower show is considered to be the world’s pre-eminent horticultural event. Its Show Gardens are created by leading international landscape architects and garden designers. The Great Pavilion is the spectacular centerpiece of the CFS. Nurseries and growers dazzle visitors with displays of color from the world’s finest plant collections. The show also features the continuous Learning section that gives visitors insight into the gardens of the future. The Gardening Matters Marquee hosts talks by gardening experts, covering all aspects of gardening and design and gives the visitor the opportunity to pose questions to the experts. As added incentive, you will enjoy High Tea at a private estate overlooking magnificent gardens.  The price per person is $2,749, double occupancy, with a $585 single supplement.  Contact Tower Hill  at 508-869-6111, ext. 124 for a brochure, itinerary and purchase information.  You may also email registrar@towerhillbg.org.

    http://z.about.com/d/golondon/1/0/-/K/-/-/ChelseaFlowerShow149.jpg

  • Tuesday, January 19, 7 – 8:30 pm – Spirit: Garden Inspiration

    Dan Pearson is one of the most important and influential landscape designers working today. At the heart of all his gardens lies an unshakable theme – his reverence for the power and delicacy of nature. In this lecture on Tuesday, January 19, beginning at 7 pm at Trinity Church on Copley Square,  Dan will demonstrate his design process, in which he extrapolates on the spirit of place as it emerges through geography, history, architecture, and native flora. Dan will explain how he believes landscapes—both wild and designed—speak to us, how human interventions in the landscape can animate and inform, and how they can serve to memorialize and to heal.
    Fee $20 Arnold Arboretum member, $25 nonmember
    Dan Pearson is a landscape designer with an international reputation for design and planting excellence. His key strengths are horticultural expertise, an informed and intuitive approach to the organization of space, and the practice of ecological and sustainable design principles. Dan trained at Wisley, a Royal Horticultural Society garden, and at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He is a weekly gardening columnist for The Observer, before which he was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He is co-author of The Essential Garden Book (with Sir Terence Conran) and author of The Garden: A Year at Home Farm. He has presented and appeared in several TV series and has designed five award-winning Chelsea Flower Show gardens. To register, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

    http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/allotment/main%20dan.jpg

  • Saturday, August 29, 2009 – Inaugural USA Diploma Program, Garden Design School

    The Garden Design School is delighted to announce the launch of its US Diploma in Landscape and Garden Design, commencing August 2009. The School aims to bring the very best of UK and US landscape and garden design together in an intensive, exciting, part-time program, the first of its kind in North America. Here is what the School says about the Program:

    Several years in planning, our US Diploma has been carefully constructed, from scratch, to meet the specific needs of the American garden design market. We’ve worked with leading academics and many successful US landscape designers to ensure that every aspect of our program is of genuine, practical relevance. We want all of our US students to be competent, confident garden designers, offering a professional landscape and garden design service.

    Garden Design School was established in 2002 by two of the UK’s leading garden designers, Robin Templar Williams and Moira Farnham. Both run their own, successful, landscape and garden design companies and they have over 32 years international teaching experience between them.

    John DeVore has spent over 35 years in the US garden and landscape design industry and runs a thriving design and build business, DeVore’s Land and Water Gardens Inc.  Jules Bruck is one of the USA’s most respected lecturers in garden design, horticulture and landscape contracting and also a highly accomplished freelance designer. Over 80% of our US Diploma in Landscape and Garden Design is taught by our Program Directors.

    Our Diploma is a carefully structured program which teaches all of the key skills you are likely to need to become a professional landscape and garden designer. You’ll receive plenty of individual attention because the class size never exceeds 18 students and in many lecture/studio sessions the tutor:student ratio is as low as 1:6.

    Students receive plenty of one-to-one support from our Course Tutors
    Students receive plenty of one-to-one
    support from our Program Tutors

    Our students come from all walks of life and, in previous years, have ranged in age from just 22 to 64. Some have chosen garden design as their first career, others join us having worked in another industry (career-changers) or are perhaps returning to work having raised a family. Whatever your background or previous training, our program will equip you to enter the exciting, expanding world of professional landscape and garden design.

    Our US Diploma Program is divided into 8 separate teaching blocks, the first starting in late August 2009 and the last ending in mid-May 2010. Each teaching block (with the exception of the first) lasts for four days: Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday. By incorporating a weekend each time, we hope this structure will help people who have existing work commitments on weekdays.

    The dates of our 2009/10 US Diploma are as follows. All classes are taught at our Massachusetts training center (Tower Hill Botanic Garden, details below). Each lecture day runs from 8.30am to 4.30pm, with breaks for lunch and refreshments.

    Block 1 (6 days): 08.29.2009 – 09.03.2009
    Block 2 (4 days): 10.15.2009 – 10.18.2009
    Block 3 (4 days): 12.10.2009 – 12.13.2009
    Block 4 (4 days): 01.07.2010 – 01.10.2010
    Block 5 (4 days): 02.04.2010 – 02.07.2010
    Block 6 (4 days): 02.25.2010 – 02.28.2010
    Block 7 (4 days): 03.25.2010 – 03.28.2010
    Block 8* (4 days): 05.06.2010 – 05.09.2010

    *May be extended to 6 days to compensate for any teaching days lost due to bad weather.

    Our US Diploma Program teaches a comprehensive range of skills, in 4 categories. Lecture days at Tower Hill are usually a mixture of lectures and studio work.

    Design Principles and Drawing
    Principles of design; graphic and drafting skills; printing processes; application of color and rendering; axonometric projection; freehand sketching; plan presentation; single point perspective drawing; fast drawing techniques.

    Hard Landscaping
    Practical surveying with levels; site analysis; elevations and sections; hard landscape materials; detailing the design of hard landscape; project layout; water in the garden; lighting, irrigation and drainage requirements.

    Soft Landscaping
    Basic botany; soil science; classification and identification; planting design; horticultural requirements; establishment; site specific planting; planting plans and schedules.

    Professional Practice
    Running the office; documentation and systems; health and safety; client/designer relationships; contractor/designer relationships; planting specifications and contract management; project costing; business start-up; advertising and promotion.

    Independent Study & Assessment
    To support and extend learning, beyond the formal lectures and studio sessions attended at Tower Hill, students can expect to spend 24-30 hours per week, between each module block, on independent (home) study. This is necessary to ensure that all subjects are covered, and skills mastered, to a high standard.

    Four design projects are undertaken during our program, the final one being a comprehensive scheme, encompassing all of the following elements to produce detailed documentation: survey and site analysis; outline proposals; setting out drawings; visual realization; planting plan and schedule; hard landscape details; planting specification and scope of works. In addition, students compile 2 portfolios throughout the program (hard landscaping and soft landscaping).

    Each student’s progress is assessed at regular intervals throughout the program by means of a series of realistic, practical assignments and projects. There are no exams or essays. Our Diploma is taught in the botanic garden’s Stoddard Education & Visitor Center, a modern, purpose-built training facility. Food and drink can be obtained in the on-site Twigs Café, and parking at the botanic garden is free.

    Enrollment in the Diploma Program of Garden Design School USA is strictly on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. Fees for the 2009/2010 US Diploma Program are $16,995. A deposit of $2000 must accompany your application form to reserve a place on the program. This is non-refundable once The School has written to you confirming acceptance of your application to join the program. Having received this letter of acceptance, your enrollment will not be finalized until you have completed, signed and returned the School’s enrollment contract by the date specified. Once you have received a letter from The School confirming receipt of your enrollment contract, you are obliged to pay the balance of fees to complete your enrollment commitment, whether or not you take up the place accepted.

    Please note that the Application Form should be signed and sent, with the deposit payment, by mail, to:

    Garden Design School USA
    1410 Hogue Road, Hamilton, Ohio 45013, USA.

    Checks should be made payable to ‘Garden Design School USA’. We regret that applications sent by fax or e-mail are not acceptable.

    For an application form, log on to www.gardendesignschool.com/us_course.htm