Did you know that Oakland has it’s very own equinox observatory? This article in the Oakland wiki suggests it was planned by several prominent citizens in the early 1900’s.
The Oakland Local Wiki is actually a very interesting site to hunt around in. Check out the 101 Things to love about Oakland article. The cool thing about Wiki’s is that anyone can contribute.
Kiddo and I headed out to Albany Bulb this week to do some exploring. Immediately upon exiting the car I realized I have forgotten my binoculars. Huge mistake! The wetlands were LOUSY with Avocets and other Brown Birds of Medium Size (BBoMS). I’m shocked newly everyday how much my eyesight has deteriorated in the last 5 years and resolve to put my car binocs back in the car where they belong.
Multi-branched tree with a painted trunk and SF and the bay in the background.
I have deep suspicion at this point that my Achilles tendons are royally unhappy but I soldier on and we head out to see what we can see. About halfway in to the Bulb we realize that we need to order Picante for pick up STAT. Thank god we can stop for a sec so I can rest my legs and place our order. In true teenage fashion Kiddo is also more excited about getting a burrito than exploring. :)
Chunk of old concrete nestled in dried grass covered in graffiti. Graffiti says ‘Anxiety’ and also has a picture of a CA poppy with text next to it that says California Poppy.
Why yes this concrete is expressing just how I feel: anxious and excited to look at plants.
At this point I am trying to convince Kiddo that an acceptable summer project would be to think of an art project to do at the Albany Bulb. He is not convinced and continues to be wholesome AF.
Have you been to Albany Bulb? You can read up on it here. The thing I like about the Bulb is all the twisted metal embedded in chunks of concrete. IDK, I just like that kind of thing. Well, I like it up until I start to think on the human race and how it creates massive amounts of construction debris and is ruining the planet.
Now I am trying to convince Kiddo that all this land is manmade and so is Emeryville. I don’t have enough facts at my disposal to be convincing enough, alas. I wander off into a fantasy in which Kiddo writes a high school report on the created and stolen lands of the Bay Area.
On our way back to the car we see some lovely BLM and All Brown Live Matter graffiti. It certainly bears repeating until everyone believes it for real.
Close-up of weathered wood with BLM spray painted in red.
June is a lovely time to get out in to the garden. The freezing summer weather is just around the corner though.
It's a cold and damp here in Oakland. We went for brunch and then took a walk over by Lake Merritt, where we played on the Mid-Century Monster and explored the Mediterranean Garden.
The Mid-Century Monster, recently renovated and repainted green, everyone loves playing on this sculpture and it's so nice to see if back up and accessible. It was originally created for the 1952 California Spring Garden Show. I need to look up pictures of that to see how it was displayed.
I'm such a fan of the Lake Merritt Gardens and have been bringing Jack here since riiiiight before he was born. Here is my TMI story... A month before Jack's due date, and just two days after starting my maternity leave, my water broke unexpectedly. I was freaking out, and the doctor advised me to wait before coming in for some reason! To calm me down, we took a walk at Lake Merritt. I vividly remember wearing a muumuu and Crocs—quite the sight! No amount of walking around in a nice garden and looking at Canada Geese was going to calm me down though.
We walked around through the Mediterranean Garden and I was just struck by all the texture and patterns during this walk-through. Once again reminding me of one of my favorite landscape books From Art to Landscape by W. Gary Smith. That book is one of the things that firs got me thinking about the use of these forms and pattern in actual landscape design. When I was in school for Computer Animation creating textures from photographs was one of my favorite parts of modeling
There are a number of patterns found in nature. Types include repetition, symmetry, drift, serpentine, spiral, branching, radial, and fractals.
Of course many of these are used in any kind of design work.
I like this example of serpentine and repetition. The tall upright palms are repeated all along the serpentine path, both drawing the key farther and farther into the landscape.
The project we are working on now is big and fairly complicated. They have an amazing palm tree in the backyard that is in the way of the new pool pavilion we have designed for them. It's a residential lot with some weird angles and an existing pool and other built elements that are making siting the pavilion difficult. Hence, we are moving the palm. It is a huge and mature Brahea armata - Blue Palm, how much does this thing weigh?! A lot.
We called in the local 'Palm and Avocado Tree Guy', Gary Gragg, of Golden Gate Palms Nursery fame. You can visit the nursery in Richmond, California; find more info here: https://www.goldengatepalms.com/
We invited Gary out to take a look and to ask about the possibility of moving the palm. He comes out and says, "No problem, let's move this baby girl!" Or something like that, anyway.
Mature Blue Palm getting transplated
Gary is a bit of a character - outgoing, gregarious, knowledgeable, and very positive. A true and delightful plant geek. We actually had him out to our own house a few weeks ago to consult about avocados. My spouse is obsessed with having avocados. We bought three and they got planted all together in one large hole - 3 plants, one hole. Read what Gary has to say about avocados in the Bay Area here: https://www.goldengatepalms.com/avocados
Back to our Walnut Creek project... Gary and his crew arrive and maneuver their excavator/forklift into the backyard. The receiving hole has already been excavated and the palm is ready to go. After lifting the tree out of the hole, they decide to go get a smaller forklift. I love how insect-like this machine is!
We all leave for some lunch and freaking out. But Gary comes back with the new forklift and they get back to work. I go back to standing around watching and kind of squealing in alarm. At some point, the palm is off-balance and all the guys jumped on the back of the forklift to balance it out. I admire this "get it done" attitude that appears to be fairly reckless about personal safety, but at the same time I do NOT want to see someone get flung ass over teakettle onto the pavement.
They can't grab the tree from the base like I was expecting. Which makes sense, there is no way to keep it stable from that position. The thing is dang heavy. Instead, they grab it around the middle and slowly drive around the pool to its final resting place.
The pool toys gently drifting about is making me crack up for some reason. So serene!
HOPEFULLY, it will bounce back from this fairly traumatic move! Palms, as you can see from some of these photos, have a fibrous root ball rather than a tap root. They don’t mind being moved but it’s still a trauma and you never know! They need to keep the root ball HELLa moist for a while, while the palm acclimates.
We did a whirlwind tour of some gardens and nurseries with Nigel Dunnett when he was here giving a present ration the Bay Area APLD district.
I would love to try this naturalistic planting design that he and Piet Oldof and such talk about but I’m not sure our clientele is the best for this technique. So, Client context matters and ongoing maintenance matters.
Our work primarily involves small to medium residential gardens NOT large scale public installations we are seeing in photos. It’s not as though our clients have dedicated gardening staff.
Who will maintain these gardens post-installation? The homeowner? A standard mow-and-blow service? I’m just not sure the more loosy-goosey evolution of a garden like this will work for say, a busy family of four.
And like, detailed written-out progression plans? idk. But my sense is that any POE visit after installing one of these at some normal Lafayette homeowner is just going to show a field of weeds and oxalis. Is this cynical of me? I’m thinking particularly of a client sending me photo of her garden a year or two after it was installed and it was all just Centranthus ruber °՞(ᗒᗣᗕ)՞°. I mean.. Centrathus is a pretty pink flower and all but NO. /rant
Back to the garden tour! This was a very fun and wild garden that you can see evolved over time and at the whims of the homeowner and designer. There were so many fun paving details like this and surprise seating moments
This is a John Greenlee project and he joined us for the tour. So it was great to have him there to talk about the gardens evolution.
A nice picture of Nigel Dunnett and John Greenlee
I love an old shed with tools moment.
the planting textures really stood out to me.
There were many ‘view moments’ where you turn a corner and suddenly you have a cool view or an interesting garden sculpture or water feature to look at. At one point I was so pleased to see one of the glassword color-changing roses made by The Sun Brother’s Studio folks! I swear I took a picture but now I can’t find it.
I’m pretty excited about all the goodness coming our way from the programs team of the Bay Area APLD district! Check this out!!
I absolutely love the book Fearless Color Gardens by Keelya Meadows. I knew she was a local designer because she has a little exhibit at American Soil and Stone and I knew her home garden was open sometimes but I was not sure of the details. I joined the Garden Conservancy this year and lo! her garden was on the Open Days list! I made T. come with me.
I love all the quirky paving, concrete forms, and amazingly fun use of color. I wish my own garden was just like this. It was a bit over the top for T. though and I suspect he will object.
I’m desperately in love with that leopard-spotted Ligularia and must acquire one for myself immediately.
I went out with a group to explore and photograph the old 16th Street Station in West Oakland. It is such a cool building with a really cool history and it is sad to see it in such disrepair. We lived over in West Oakland for a long time and I used to go over that way to take trampoline lessons.
old postcard of West Oakland 16th Street Station
The station was operating up until the 1989 earthquake and was the end of the transcontinental railroad. It was built in 1912 by the Southern Pacific Railroad with the architect Jarvis Hunt in the Beaux Arts style. It’s so fancy! I love it. And I love how dilapidated it is now even though it is also sad to see it that way. Like, why is this not a building being used for stuff! It has been used for a few things like I’m pretty sure there was an opera preformed there and some other arty things. I’m assuming it is because of earthquake safety.
This is going to be another image heavy post. It was so much fun to prowl around this building and the grounds!
So much neat graffiti.
And then I love to see nature intruding in all the cracks and crevices. Why is it that humans find post apocalyptic, overgrown old industrial sites so fascinating?
I was also excited to see that the surrounding land was being used by an urban flower form to cultivate cut flowers! It is called Wow Farm Flowers and the I think they got a grant to help prep the site and the Oakland Zoo provided soil. How cool is that!?
in 1906 the earthquake that burned down SF left many people homeless. Tiny ‘earthquake shacks’ were built to house people quickly. There are not that many of them left in SF but my sister happens to live in one of them!
I drew it from Google maps and I will frame it and give it to her for her birthday. I had such fun drawing and painting this!
I just thought I would post some of the various painting and drawing I have been doing. Some of it is work related and some is not!
Green and gold watercolor swatches.
I did this quick visualization for a client recently. We want to remove this lawn, a little privacy fence (not too overwhelming) and some interesting colorful plants.
Okay, so I also took this irrigation class through the Zone 7 Water Agency. the class was taught by Lori Palmquist, who is an irrigation WIZARD. She’s a good speaker and a good teacher. I may also have accosted her about some APLD stuff and she was like WhoTF are you?!? LOL. No worries, Lady, I’m just a stranger asking you for access to this website you used to work on. Don’t mind me! Anyway, here is an illustration of an irrigation manifold. As you can see, I am an excellent student who does not struggle to pay attention.
I should be learning about what these things are and do but instead I am drawing them. Don’t come at me, I have ADHD.
We had a little field trip to Drake’s Beach and I did a quick vignette.
Some other sketchy doodles for work:
I like the textures in the photo I took at American Soil and Stone. So stripes, much vertical! I find visiting stone yards to be very satisfying. Magpie-like I usually want everything there.
Two plants I am enjoying in my own yard right now. This yellow lotus plant and my Spraxis bulbs! Aren’t hey pretty?!
What else has been happening? We have been doing a few small plant installs at work.
Oh and I kind of love this picture of J*** buried under plants in the car. LOL.
What is all this water falling from the sky? Weird. It makes trimming through landscape less residential plots a bit hazardous. I think I need to start keeping rain boots in my car because this is absurd. :P But seriously, what is up with these housing neighborhoods where they just leave the entire backyard a mud pit? sheesh!
I’m really loving all these storm water solutions I am seeing in Walnut Creek parking lots. :D I wish there were some regulations in Texas for this kind of thing. Every time I go back there I am so offing appalled by the infrastructure. Or lack thereof, I guess. Have fun with building a whole city in a swamp and then refusing to acknowledge that and have some regulations for infrastructure. Jerks. I hate Texas.
I stopped by Moose Metal to inquire about a metal project for a client. How cute is this metal moose logo?!
It was a wealth of fun metal detritus for me to snap pics of.
Many shapes and colors!! I really, really want to include colorful metal elements in my landscape designs. My pinnacle of silly landscape color you ask? I bright pink arbor. I want one myself so surely everyone else will, right?!
More cute moose themed items :)
