Distinctive Designs: Unique Designs

"The starting point of design is to get inside that space and create it from within," explained Linda Engstrom in her essay Design Principles in Garden-Making. "The developing space needs to accommodate the use, comfort and pleasure of its creator. The design elements are then employed to determine the way the space will be perceived."

Mixing plants and structures can help reinforce a specific mood and provide contrasting textures and color to the space, Engstrom continued.

In the past, installing a gazebo, retaining wall or pond along with different plants and flowers was considered an imaginative addition to a space, but now designers are taking their creations above and beyond with bridges, Japanese gardens, rooftop gardens and more sophisticated water elements.

A GARDEN IN THE SKY. New York City is a place crowded with skyscrapers and sidewalks, where apartments take the place of houses. While there are millions of people and thousands of businesses in the city, there is little room for grass – at least until Town & Gardens Ltd. comes into the picture. While the company does all kinds of landscaping, it specializes in rooftop gardens, said Brendan Sheehan, senior designer.

"The projects themselves are always very challenging and unique," Sheehan related. "The concepts are rarely duplicated."

Sheehan said working with rooftop gardens provides challenges on many levels. The space is limited and is often littered with vents, fans and other structures, he explained. "To make a space that people can enjoy and escape the city is certainly challenging."

Most of the materials for the jobs the company installs must be brought up to the roof via a stairwell or elevator and are almost always hand-carried, which is more time consuming and expensive.

"Getting all the components of the project to that area is a project in itself," Sheehan remarked. "[The job] has to be designed around the spaces that you have to go through to get the items to the space, such as fire escapes, stair wells and elevators. Breaking it down into small items gets fairly involved."

The roof itself must be considered when creating a design. Because all roofs have to be inspected and replaced from time to time, Town & Garden views a rooftop garden as temporary in nature. "The rooftop is not an environment where you want to throw something up there and forget about it," Sheehan stressed. "The entire design might have to be disassembled at any point. Understand that it’s a modular design."

Besides spatial limitations, the weight of the design must also be taken into consideration, especially when working with a terrace, Sheehan continued. The firm must also consider the city environment when choosing the type of plants to use. "There are plants that are better suited to extremes such as high wind, moisture loss, extreme heat and cold temperatures, as well as heavy shade," Sheehan noted. "One rarely finds ideal conditions where you get shade for part of the day and enough sun. It’s usually either heavy shade or extreme sunshine."

Sometimes when working with projects of this magnitude, the company acts as a general contractor and brings in experts in specific fields, Sheehan said. But, often times his company is responsible for not only the design, but the installation and maintenance of their projects as well.

"I think that’s what makes us unique," he stated. "We take it to the next step and install it. Then we take it to the third level, which is maintenance. We make sure that it looks good consistently."

BECOMING ONE WITH NATURE. Having a well-landscaped yard or commercial property enhances its appearance and also improves the well-being of those who experience it. Becoming one with nature is the principle behind a Japanese garden and is what the designers at Kurisu International, Portland, Ore., strive for when creating, installing and maintaining a design.

"Japanese gardens, from their inception, have always been tied to a careful study of nature," explained Michiko Kurisu, photographer and designer at the company’s Florida office. "They take their queue from nature."

The company’s Japanese owner studied with a renowned landscape designer in Japan, filtering this knowledge into his own company in the early 1970s. While his company does different kinds of landscaping work, it specializes in Japanese gardens.

According to Kurisu, one of the company’s most passionate interests is the therapeutic side of gardens. "We believe that being able to slow down and pay attention to natural forces – as they like to be and not as we force them to be – is really therapeutic," she explained. "It improves your frame of mind and physical health."

A Japanese garden is different from other designs because of its detail-oriented characteristics. The way the moss meets the rock, the angle at which the tree hangs over the path or the shade falls matters when installing a Japanese garden, Kurisu stressed.

"People’s ideas of landscapes have been limited to sticking trees in the ground and planting flowers," Kurisu said. "But as society changes and the needs of daily life and what it takes to reconnect with yourself and a sense of inner peace changes, the landscape has to change as well."

One of the bigger projects the company worked on is Anderson Gardens in Rockford, Ill., which began as a backyard residence and grew to a public park.

Kurisu related that the gardens are now a place where the residents of the city can go for solace or to re-energize, although the greatest challenge is getting clients to realize a garden’s therapeutic benefits. "A lot of people know they want a garden and they know they love trees," she explained. "But they don’t always know how much that means when you get a well-designed space. It’s a way of uplifting the old ideas of landscape to integrate them more on an everyday basis."

UNIQUE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS. On a smaller scale, there are unique elements that can be incorporated into a residential or commercial property to spruce up the area.

Kathy Swehla, senior landscape designer, Land Expressions, Meade, Wash., said she has worked on various projects that incorporate sophisticated water elements. In one case, a semi-circular pool was installed on a customer’s property with water cascading into the pool from above.

This job’s design required subcontracting a rock mason, a swimming pool contractor and lighting crews, in addition to the firm’s own design team, Swehla said. In those cases, Land Expressions acts as the general contractor, overseeing the work, she added.

Besides water features, Swehla’s firm has integrated bridges in some clients’ backyards to create a unique setting.

"We’ve built bridges coming off the back of the house to accommodate a stream," she related. "We’ve also done designs where the access to the backyard is a bridge that goes over a ravine."

Common elements like pots and tiles also can create intrigue in a garden, noted Amy Olson, landscape architect, Moore Landscapes, Northbrook, Ill.

"When you’re walking around a property and you all of a sudden discover something, that’s exciting," she said.

For example, Olson recalled using a big, broken pot to create mystery in the garden by putting the pot on its side and designing the plant to spill out of it. For another project, she incorporated tile into the garden by hanging a mosaic on a fence. She also created free-form style benches from tiles.

Setting stone in a circular or semi-circular pattern can create a council or meeting area within the garden, which can form a contemplative, restorative niche, Olson added.

UNIVERSAL CHALLENGES. No matter what kind of design is being installed, cost is the No. 1 challenge in seeing that design come to fruition.

"Usually clients don’t come up with ideas that we can’t accommodate design-wise," Swehla declared. "Cost is the issue that is hard to accommodate clients on because they may have a very particular idea, but when we design it and bid it, they can’t afford it."

Underlying costs often surprise clients, who assume additions like decks are easy and straightforward, Sheehan added.

"We can design anything as long as the money is there," he said. "But budget and structural conditions of the environment can place a limitation on the creative expression. People underestimate what it takes to get [a project] off the ground."

Swehla also explained that working on a one-of-a-kind design presents many unknowns for which the company can’t always estimate a price.

"[Unique projects] get expensive because everybody is working outside of their field of expertise," she remarked. "If we’ve never done [a certain project] before, we don’t know how long it will take or exactly how much it will cost." With Japanese gardens, however, Kurisu said her company rarely runs into budget concerns.

"Everybody has a budget and we try to meet their vision and their dream with what’s realistic," she stated. "A lot of people find they really enjoy spending the money on the garden because it gives back. It’s just like investing in something that you love."

Kurisu related a story about a client who asked her company to install a garden and keep the project to a $100 limit. As the project moved forward, the estimate turned into tens of thousands of dollars. "The client said in the end that he has never had so much fun spending so much money," she quipped. "That’s the common attitude that we find."

Olson agreed that cost can be a challenge, but she finds that obtaining materials and locating the right people to help put the materials together can be an even bigger challenge. One project she worked on included planters that were sent to a fabricator in Cincinnati, then shipped to Wisconsin where they were put together, and finally returned to Chicago for painting.

"Sometimes finding sources is very challenging," she stressed. "It’s who you know. It’s going to trade fairs and meeting people and finding out what they can do."

EXPANDING THE ART. Just as an artist uses paint to create a masterpiece, designers use elements of nature combined with materials to create works of art. Over the years, this art has evolved from just planting flowers and trees to incorporating large sculptures, gazebos and ponds into ordinary spaces to make them magical. Landscape designers transform a space into an escape from everyday life, a form of therapy or a place of mystery. And even though designers get more creative year after year, there aren’t any signs that they are reaching their limitations.

"The sky’s the limit as far as creativity is concerned," Sheehan declared.