The Influence of Backgrounds

I often begin a landscape plan by standing back from the site and letting the surroundings tell me the setting in which the ideas will live.

Fire place and ledge island by North Star Stoneworks

I can do this even before I meet the prospective clients. This is the sort of ‘homework’ that enables me to later comment on the neighboring environment and its effect on what we are planning.

Painters often begin a painting by working on the background. This may be a practical approach as it is easier to paint a building, portrait or tree over a background than to paint the background around them. It also serves to tune the foreground objects to the color and texture of the background.

In landscape design it is doubly important because we can’t go in and move a mountain or building after the fact.

Chapel Fountain at Franklin Memorial Hospital by David Neufeld

Sculptors too must be aware of the surroundings their work will be placed in. A niche in a building is very different than a town square.

In some instances, the background becomes the heart of the plan and the materials and plantings are placed to enclose the landscape.  Fences, walls, and tall planting obscure whatever was formerly the background. Thus we create a new world within.

Positive and Negative Space

Perceiving an object requires that we distinguish it from its surroundings. The joke about a blank piece of paper being ‘a polar bear in a snowstorm’, applies to our perception.

Painters and sculptors refer to positive and negative space. Positive space is the object we are able to perceive. Negative space is the background that allows us to see that object. In landscapes, the tree is the positive and the sky is the negative.

'06 Bridgton Academy project by North Star Stoneworks

Applying this to landscape design, we may choose to remove masses of confused greenery in order to accentuate a specimen tree. We may also take advantage of a mass of greenery by planting or building a contrasting form in front of it. We might ‘cut’ a hole in the greenery to form a dark shadow. Each of these changes creates the negative space needed to bring the desired focus to the design.

Painting and Sculpting a Garden

Viewing a landscape as a painter or sculptor would gives us the ability to avoid confusion. Think of it this way. Any landscape painter looks at the subject (a big, big world) and must choose which of what he or she sees will get into the painting. It can fairly be said that a landscape painter doesn’t paint every tree leaf or blade of grass in view. The portion of the landscape captured must also be a deliberate choice.

Landscape design begins with choices. Out of all the elements in the existing plot of land prior to design, some must be kept and some removed. Very rare is the blank canvas of landscapes. Even rectangular flat plots of land are set in a neighborhood. In landscape design, the backdrop counts. We cannot ignore a distant mountain or a neighboring colossal oak.  Or the buildings.

What is your existing canvass? What will you add, paint over, or enhance?

To What Purpose?

We can imagine the visual equivalent of music when patterns repeat and shapes reappear.  In nature and in cultivation, our eye is drawn to repeating patterns, the layers of hills as they recede into the distance, a row of corn, an orchard. 

Each of these patterns initiates a response in us, very much like music, that often equates with an emotion or a state of consciousness. For instance, the repeating forms of hills in the distance relaxes me and also gives me a sense of the infinite.

Forms found in spider webs make me smile, wonder, perhaps even feel whimsical. Applying this recognition to landscape design lets me use familiar patterns to create gardens that feel original but have a solid base in our visual experience.

Themes and Variations

I am not a musician. However, when I hear music, I can identify the melody; it is what I hum to myself afterward.  If I am very familiar with the piece I may hear the layers of orchestration that give the music weight.  In a long piece of music such as a symphony, I can hear the theme reappear in the variations throughout the movements. I also know when one piece of music is over and another begins.  This begins to qualify me to see themes and variations in landscapes.

Artists and our Sensual Vocabulary

All humans are attuned to beauty. Whether we pursue lives immersed in art or not, we know when something is beautiful, when it moves us.  We understand the language of art even if we don’t speak it.  Music, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Drama have their place in landscape design.

Temples and Chapels we love

When we think of holy places we most often picture temples and chapels dedicated to beliefs.  The inspiration for the building’s design and the purpose of these places originated in the belief of that people. What stays in our memory is the way that these places take on a spirit of their own over time.

Regardless of the history of any given religion, a building that has stood and sheltered worshipers for hundreds of years develops a presence of its own.

Observing the physical details of time that these buildings take on gives us a clue to designing places of meaning for ourselves.  Often, it is the place on the land where these buildings were built, that makes their presence so significant.

For me, a temple, church, or chapel in ruin speaks most eloquently. Buildings without roofs, with crumbled walls, with grass growing in the nave, allow me to focus on what is left of beliefs when the physical boundaries are gone.