Garden walls

Traditionally, the mash up of plants and buildings was an exercise in poetic symbolism. To wit: At the Princeton Ivy Club the mortared walls are well rooted for posterity–literally–with clinging ivy and the shelter of trees.

In the contemporary version, there's a new urgency: Faced not only with the necessity of making the most of our diminishing space and resources, how can we create more public greenspace as our potential undeveloped lands are disappearing?

Here are some ideas for making the most of our finite leftovers.

Besides visually expanding greenspace, plantings on building walls and roofs offer other advantages. Plants act as insulation against heat and cold, absorb rainwater, create wildlife habitat, and on a larger scale help lower urban temperatures and mitigate the heat island effect (a phenomenon of hardscaped cities creating more heat than the surrounding rural space). Plus, the ability of living plants to act as carbon storage batteries in an era of global climate change may be vital.

Interiors can be green integrated too.

The potential of green building is on display in this shop of Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester in the Gangham district of Seoul. The architect was Korean architect Minsuuk Cho of the firm Mass Studies. The building features include a planted façade and a moss-lined internal stairway. For a more detailed vision of the project, see here.

Photos by Yong-Kwan Kim

This building, the brainchild of Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia, has been touted for its innovative integration of plants and architecture in a location especially known for its high temperatures, heavy rain, and sometimes day-long power shortages. The plants provide privacy while allowing for ventilation and natural daylighting.

More on this house here.

Below, more Vo Trong Nghia and his work in Viet Nam.

Here, Vo Trong's Wind and Water Bar: Not exactly a construction of living material but material that is only recently departed.

This planted façade is from a mixed-use building in Odawara, Japan.

And this, a banana plantation–or the modern urban equivalent–in the middle of Paris:

The urban forest in Tokyo: Quite possibly the future everywhere.

Built-in seating (table optional) can give a project a more formal, architectural look. It can also provide an architectural point of interest for luring guests outside. The orderliness and permanence of it contrasts nicely with plantings and other organic materials surrounding it.

Sean has designed and built seating fixtures for various Knibb Design projects over the years, some of which can be seen in this newsletters, here and here.)

Note the rough natural edge to the underside of both the table and the bench:

Constructions can offer a zen-like appearance to a garden as well, with their resolute lines, boundaries, and geometry. A built planter can also achieve this to a degree but seating adds the human component. By inviting us in it makes us another aspect of the garden of the garden itself.

For want of a garden a new view helps:

Topiary, the art of clipping and training plants into desired shapes, has origins dating back to Roman times. The first records of topiary come from the Greeks but the word itself is from the Latin (topiarius). Romans displayed topiary in tomb paintings and there may've been some Persian influences as well. It's also likely that something similar was going on contemporaneously in China. The Japanese borrowed forms from China and started a tradition of their own.

We tend to think of topiary as plants shaped into whimsical forms, like animals and such, but this occupies only a small part of a long tradition. It was a Roman, poet Cneus Matius, who is credited with bringing topiary to the attention of Caesar Augustus. (Roman emperors have a history of having their predilections make epic impressions on world culture—think Constantine and Christianity.)

Once characteristic of the grandest European gardens, interest in topiary would wane, partly by vandalism and partly religious oppression: The great Roman gardens would be destroyed by the invading barbarian hordes in their zeal to destroy the Empire. The Dark Ages would have a profound effect on garden aesthetics, as pleasure gardens were repurposed as places to consider to contemplate God's power and not human vanities. Interest in pleasure gardens would return during the Renaissance in great part due to cultivation of herbs, flowers, and shrubs in monastery gardens throughout Europe. Geometric shapes were most prevalent, simple cubes, orbs, cones, and obelisks. The Victorian era would see another resurgence.

Traditional grandeur, above and below, at the gardens of Château-de-Villandry, France:

A hedge is a simpler, functional form of topiary intended to create boundaries, walls, or screens.

Below, hedges form an extension of the manor's heroic architecture.

Or a castle hall:

And more modern treatments:

The severe serenity of the well ordered Japanese garden:

Two view of the gardens at the Trentham estate, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: