American University’s Arboretum

Not far from where I live, in northwest Washington DC, American University has been establishing an arboretum on its campus that provides student, faculty and visitors with a garden-like setting to enjoy and take pride in. I’ve been photographing the campus for its landscape architect, H. Paul Davis (who also has designed many beautiful residential gardens in the DC area) since 2004, and thought I would share some photos with you.

While the original campus plan for AU (which was founded in 1893) was created by Frederick Law Olmstead Sr., it underwent changes over the years. These days, Olmstead’s plan is being revisited, but some of the most visually exciting areas of AU’s landscape are directly attributable to Davis’ vision.

The University's Katzen Center, with sculpture and plantings.

Another view of the Katzen Center "garden."

Older parts of campus include mature trees and a wandering brook,

Azaleas and a brook near the Woods-Brown Ampitheater at AU.

a “pocket park” with unusual perennials and a Japanese maple with benches inviting you to sit and talk,

Roper Pocket Park, with a naturalized pond and seasonal plantings.

and large expanses of lushly planted sweeps of colorful long-flowering perennials in front of the President’s House and neighboring Glover Gate.

The lawn at the President's house, near Glover Gate.

A mass of bold summer annuals and grasses capture the eye at Glover Gate.

In spring, I found Euphorbia paired with luscious yellow and white tulips along a walkway between buildings.

Euphorbia and yellow and white tulips provide a gorgeous spring combination.

The landscape design around academic buildings is impressive almost everywhere.

Hillside plantings behind a Batelle-Thompkins building, not far from Glover Gate.

A late summer afternoon in front of Battelle-Tompkins, with a Natchez crape myrtle in bloom and masses of coneflowers, shasta daisies and black-eyed susans.

In 2010, the plantings surrounding Battelle-Thompkins earned Davis and AU a Landscape Design Merit Award from the Perennial Plant Association.

AU’s arboretum is not only visually beautiful but is becoming a leader in sustainable management of an urban landscape. Its new LEED Gold Certified School of International Service building showcases a host of new green technologies, and the campus’s Media Production Center boasts a green roof. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll take a tour of the campus – even if you’re not in the market for a return to academia yourself, it’s inspirational and an opportunity for learning more about how an institute of higher learning has something to teach us all.

The Vale of the White Horse

In August I encountered one of the most mysterious landscapes I have ever seen – the Vale of the White Horse in Uffington, in Oxfordshire, England.  Although the Vale itself is fairly typical looking, with hedges delineating individual farms and holdings,

The Vale of the White Horse, as seen from an outlook near the White Horse.

it is the White Horse itself that makes this destination so special.

The White Horse, viewed from below. It's much easier to photograph from an aerial perspective, but I had failed to book a helicopter.

The White Horse is described in Wikipedia as a “highly stylized prehistoric hill figure”, created of chalk (it is estimated) during the Bronze Age some 3000 years ago. (For a better aerial view of it, click here.) The figure is about 375 feet long and is cleaned periodically to keep it visible. The surrounding landscape contains some unusual ridged hills called The Giant’s Stair, and above the White Horse stands a knoll known as the Iron Age Uffington Castle.

The day we visited, the landscape was windy and clouds scuttered across the sky. A child was running with a kite.

Flying a kite below the White Horse

The surrounding meadows were appropriately bleak, with an occasional outcropping of thistles.

Purple thistles dotting the meadow grass near the Vale of the White Horse.

I won’t forget the Vale of the White Horse. See it if you can.

Ghost Forest

On my last day of vacation in England in August, it rained. The friend I was visiting had a morning appointment, and so I found myself dodging raindrops in dowtown Oxford, visiting museums rather than gardens. I left my D300 at home but packed along my trusty Canon G11. Sure enough, I found plenty to shoot, starting with “Ghost Forest,”  a remarkable installation  at the Oxford Museum of Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museum.

The outdoor installation of enormous tree roots called "Ghost Forest" outside the Oxford Museum of Natural History. On the left is a denya tree, the largest specimen in the installation.

The artist, Angela Palmer, sourced the tree stumps on display from fallen rainforest trees in Ghana, which have been decimated by illegal logging over the years (Ghana, which supports the artwork on display, became the first African country to sign an agreement with the EU outlawing trade in illegally felled timber, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.) Palmer has put on display ten tree stumps from commercially logged areas in the Suhuma rainforest areas of western Ghana. Three were trees that had been felled, and seven had toppled over during storms. I couldn’t decide which was more impressive – their size, or their beauty. But why choose?

The massive tangled roots of one of the trees from Ghana.

The installation has also appeared in Trafalgar Square and in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Conference. When I visited in Oxford, signage indicated the installation was about to close, but its run there has apparently recently been extended through July 2012.  For more information and extensive photos documenting this project, visit the Ghost Forest website or archived photos from The Guardian.

“Winter Sun” in the Garden

It’s late November as I write this. Opportunities for photographing gardens are almost nil (although I did happen on a fabulous fall garden a couple of weeks ago when a new client contacted me). With the soaking rains here last week, all the leaves are down (except for those blasted oak leaves, which will last until January) so finding something to shoot is a challenge.

Enter an invitation from one of my ongoing garden owner clients to come see his mahonia. Ho hum, I thought. How interesting can that be? Answer: plenty, when the mahonia in question is Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun.’

'Winter Sun' mahonia lighting up the landscape in late November in a client's garden.

The client had mentioned that he had “a few” of these mahonia around the upper part of his garden, whose hardscape areas were designed several years ago by Corinna Posner (her own garden backs up to this one). But I was totally unprepared for the impact the bright yellow blooms of  ’Winter Sun’ had on the surrounding areas.

The blooms of two plants of 'Winter Sun' lead your eye up into the far parts of the garden - and don't you just love the contrast with the pumpkins?

The blooms of Mahonia 'Winter Sun' provide a great foil for the fading rust and red colors of adjoining deciduous shrubs as well as its own dark green foliage

Up close, the blooms are even more striking, and faintly fragrant as well.

The spiky blooms on 'Winter Sun' turn from chartreuse-green to a bright yellow.

After seeing this beauty in my client’s garden, I looked it up online. ‘Winter Sun’ mahonia is hardy only from zones 7 to 9, prefers a partially shady site sheltered from wind, and will grow to about 10 feet tall unless pruned to a lower height. It’s more fragrant than most mahonias – and should be deer-resistant although if I’m lucky enough to find one for my own garden I will be putting it to the test. For more details on this stunner, visit Great Plant Picks’ website here. And be prepared for a serious case of plant lust.