I love design. Design can be as "simple" as rearranging objects on a shelf to as "complex" as planning high speed rail routes in China. A note on engineering: while engineering is design with constraints; design is essentially art with constraints; art is imagination and creativity manifested in something (forgive the broad, generalizing definitions). You can design tennis balls, art exhibits, experiences of spaces, textiles, methods and experiments, and so on. Anything that has a purpose (and SO MANY THINGS HAVE A PURPOSE!) can be designed. When I walk down city streets and see rain puddles, littered candy wrappers, billboard advertisements; when I hear talking people, running car engine, trees rustling in the wind; and when I think about all these while experiencing them, I think: could all this be designed? I am not speaking about the religious question of "Intelligent Design." I think about my ambulatory experiences as thought experiments: if what I experience is not designed as a whole; if what I experience is the result of natural processes (wind, rain, etc) and of people living their lives (litter, driving cars, etc.), then what is designed about it? I think it is the candy wrappers, the city streets, the billboards and their advertisements, the placement of trees: anything that is created by humans is designed. Not everything we create is well designed, but because anything we create is designed, this gives us a chance to make what we create beautiful from both a formal and functional perspective! We have created our garden, so lets design it and let's design it well. I am excited for this project!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Garden Design
A quick summary of last week's proceedings: Brook Klausing is the senior designer for and creative director of Brook Landscape, a Brooklyn-based design, construction, and project management company. For the next few weeks Brook and his company will help us design the garden! Brook guided a discussion about design; this discussion will help us channel our creativity and energy into a focused project. Here's the plan: 1) Observe, sketch, and record the garden. 2) Each class member will create a unique garden design that considers both required and desired garden elements. 3) Discuss, analyze, and critique these preliminary designs 4)Condense, unite, and combine these designs into one coherent final design. 5) Present this final design to Brook Landscape, Principal Lerner and other members of BHSEC's adminstration, and others whose name I do not know. 6) If the designed is approved, work with Brook Landscape to build the garden! If it is rejected: frown, scowl, cry, and then redesign.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Putting the Garden Away for the Winter
This Thursday, we finished fully winterizing the garden. This meant tearing out all of the plants that were or would soon be dying because of the frost, like the lettuce, deadheading perennials like our marigolds, replacing old mulch, and generally cleaning away debris that could rot or get filled with pest eggs or disease spores. It was a bit like spring cleaning, only in November. We collected the debris to compost later.
We also planted a variety of daffodil bulbs, since bulbs can grow under the soil during winter and won't perish. In order to keep pests and rodents from digging up the bulbs and eating them, as they are wont to do, we used rat poison. Just kidding! We did not use rat poison! Instead, we used cayenne pepper, which is a deterrent to pests, and is not harmful to people, unless it gets into their eyes (the latter possibility did become something of a problem.)
Here's a passage on what's going on in your garden during the winter, taken from our handout on winterization.
While it appears as if all activity in the garden has stopped, there's a lot going on under the soil until it freezes. Newly transplanted trees and shrubs, divisions of perennials, and hardy bulbs are all growing roots, drawing on soil nutrients and moisture around them. earthworms and various microbes in the soil are still processing the organic material they're finding. Most likely, the organic mulch you spread to protect the soil has substantially decomposed. It's important to spread new mulch now--a thicker winter layer--to protect plants and soil over the winter months. The idea is not to much to keep the soil warm as it is to keep the temperature even. Once the soil is frozen, mulch keeps it frozen. Snow both protects and endangers plants.
Hopefully we'll get some pictures of our winterization up soon!
We also planted a variety of daffodil bulbs, since bulbs can grow under the soil during winter and won't perish. In order to keep pests and rodents from digging up the bulbs and eating them, as they are wont to do, we used rat poison. Just kidding! We did not use rat poison! Instead, we used cayenne pepper, which is a deterrent to pests, and is not harmful to people, unless it gets into their eyes (the latter possibility did become something of a problem.)
Here's a passage on what's going on in your garden during the winter, taken from our handout on winterization.
While it appears as if all activity in the garden has stopped, there's a lot going on under the soil until it freezes. Newly transplanted trees and shrubs, divisions of perennials, and hardy bulbs are all growing roots, drawing on soil nutrients and moisture around them. earthworms and various microbes in the soil are still processing the organic material they're finding. Most likely, the organic mulch you spread to protect the soil has substantially decomposed. It's important to spread new mulch now--a thicker winter layer--to protect plants and soil over the winter months. The idea is not to much to keep the soil warm as it is to keep the temperature even. Once the soil is frozen, mulch keeps it frozen. Snow both protects and endangers plants.
Hopefully we'll get some pictures of our winterization up soon!
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