On a leftover site in Punta Pite, landscape architect Teresa Moller’s house is a study in give and take.
By Jimena Martignoni/Photography by Cristóbal Palma
The terraced gardens behind the house showcase many different species that can now be appreciated as one composition.
Nestled into steep cliffs that face the Pacific Coast of Chile, the landscape architect Teresa Moller’s house combines a small-scale rewilding and a site for the study of seacoast plants. The experimental gardens at Moller’s house, in the residential development Punta Pite, are part of a 27-acre property that follows the contours of a bay between Zapallar and Papudo, two sea towns located about 100 miles north of Santiago. Started more than 15 years ago, the gardens seem to have realized their full potential, though they are also, fundamentally, an evolving work in progress.Continue reading A Certain Sacrifice→
Computer modeling puts a new species on the menu of edible fire breaks.
By Madeline Bodin
A team of scientists says it has found a plant that could help protect communities against wildfire while providing income and filling bellies at the same time: the banana.Continue reading A Buffer Buffet→
The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade
By Jared D. Margulies; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023; 392 pages, $24.95.
Reviewed by Anjulie Rao
Some years ago, a friend handed me a potted cactus. I wasn’t aware of the genus or species, only that it looked like a quintessential cactus: seven inches tall and deep forest green, its ribs dotted with malicious, symmetrical spikes. Though he had cared for it over the years, he no longer wanted this particular cactus. Looking around his home, I noticed, perhaps for the first time, that it was filled with succulents of many varieties, shapes, and conditions of health. It seemed that his minor obsession was similar to one that had overtaken my thirtysomething peers’ homes. There were succulents everywhere: Senecio rowleyanus, or string of pearls, hanging from macramé-covered pots in the bay windows of Chicago two-flats; aeoniums in vibrant pinks and greens; pincushions tucked into windowsills, looking soft and dangerous. Continue reading Prickly Desires →
By Piet Oudolf, with an introduction by Cassian Schmidt; London and New York City: Phaidon, 2023; 276 pages, $79.95.
Reviewed by Rosetta S. Elkin, ASLA
“For me garden design is not just about plants, it is about emotion, atmosphere, a sense of contemplation.” So begins Piet Oudolf in his latest monograph, At Work, adopting a tone of wisdom and mischief. The wisdom in this book is offered freely across a selection of hand-drawn planting plans that are reproduced with meticulous care. Each drawing offers a lesson to the reader in “How to Oudolf.” A kind of manual for designing nature without ecology is found in the series of artful drawings that reveal a strategy for working with plants through quantity, species, spacing, and cultivar. Here, he seems to say, is my secret recipe. The mischief is found in its provocation—go ahead, copy it. I dare you to try.Continue reading Nature Without Ecology→
In 2022, a group of 18 students at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) had the rare experience of designing and building their own school’s research facility. Rising 30 feet above a hillside site amid the dense forest canopy of Barcelona’s Collserola Natural Park, the Forest Lab for Observational Research and Analysis (FLORA) is a mass timber observation tower that will allow students to observe and catalog the park’s biodiversity, specifically the organisms that make their home in the forest canopy.Continue reading Close Encounters→
Indigenous landscape designer Tim Lehman helps move a master plan and a mission forward.
By Lisa Owens Viani
Volunteers replanted the areas around three large ponds with native and Indigenous food plants. Photo by Tim Lehman.
After Native Americans occupied Fort Lawton—today part of Seattle’s Discovery Park—in a peaceful protest in the early 1970s, the city negotiated a long-term leaseback of 20 acres of the 534-acre site with the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. “The land was supposed to be given back to the local tribe from which it was taken, but that didn’t really happen,” says Meghan Jernigan, a traditional medicine program director with United Indians, which led the protest. “There wasn’t a lot of political support, but a growing, cross-cultural coalition made this space thrive and allowed for development of the Daybreak Star Cultural Center.”Continue reading A Star on the Horizon→
Refugia converts homeowners into native plant advocates, one lawn at a time.
By Jared Brey
Refugia specializes in transforming lawns into pollinator-friendly habitats. Photo by Kayla Fell for Refugia.
Jeff Lorenz stood under the mid-June sun at FDR Park, monitoring the final touches on his company’s exhibit for the Philadelphia Flower Show. The exhibit space, ordinarily an asphalt parking lot, had been covered in mulch and lined with displays, all in the final moments of construction. Continue reading Home Grown→
The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects
