Basking in sunshine, while England gets a drenching, I’m in Potsdam (just outside Berlin) for a very brief visit as I have been invited by a group of students at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology to do a lecture for a conference they have organized. Looking at the list of other lecturers, I am clearly here as the entertainment. More about this later.
In a recent post, I wrote about the veggie window containers at Chanticleer, designed by Jonathan Wright, and how they inspired me to plant up some on my rooftop garden in Israel.
Here are 4 photos shot a few days ago of the wall boxes, wall planters and veggies, the kitchen wall, and edible plants trailing up and down the wall of the kitchen courtyard.
For plant list in The Tea Cup Garden, which includes the containers, click on here.
All photos courtesy of Jonathan Wright.
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| Kitchen Wall |
Edible plants trail down and climb up the walls of the kitchen courtyard
One of my first first lessons to students who take my garden photography workshops is about “seeing”. If you don’t stop to think what you are seeing, what it is that excites you about a garden, then you will end up with a photo that will be little more than literally, a snapshot of time. Let’s take this lesson to Chicago.
When you are in a fabulous garden you can start hyperventilating over beauty, not knowing where to start. It happens to everyone. It happened to me in the Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millenium Park.
I’ve never been remiss about sharing with other gardeners that some concepts seen in my garden haven’t been my originally designs. To the contrary. Several years ago when Chris Woods (Ex-Director of Chanticleer) was teaching me about garden design and perennials, visitors to my garden would frequently comment on how my style of gardening reminded them of Chanticleer. Well, we both did have Robinia pseudocacia ‘frisia’. But the truth is….Chris influenced my plant palette and combinations tremendously. At that time, Chanticleer was a nascent public garden, so I was able to pick up ideas easily. I never gave a second thought as to whether or not I was copying any. The only thing I knew was that I was inspired.
On my last visit to Chanticleer this past May, after I spent quite a bit of time in the overwhelmingly beautiful Tea Cup Garden taking photos, some wooden boxes on top of the entryway caught my eye. I grabbed Jonathon Wright (who creates and maintains the garden) and asked him what he was doing with the boxes. It was simple he said; he filled them with veggies, including some beans, with the intent of creating a jeweled, draping effect on the wall of the front courtyard/entryway. The more he talked about designing these veggie filled boxes, the more I fell in love with the idea. When he mentioned the yellow beans that were going to drip over the sides that he had found at Territorial Seed Company, I knew I had to get my hands on some.
The city of Tel Aviv is 102 years old. It gave birth when immigrants from Europe came pouring into Israel. Due to the overcrowded conditions in the ancient Mediterranean city of Jaffa, in April 1909, a few dozen families decided to build a suburb. At the time, there were only a couple of streets in Tel Aviv, along with piles of deep sand and some citrus groves. The Tel Aviv population grew quickly; Meir Dizengoff, the head of the local council, realized that he needed to design a well thought out plan for the expansion of Tel Aviv.
He hired Sir Patrick Geddes, a Scottish urban planner, biologist, and philosopher, along with a plethora of other talents.
“This is a green world, with animals comparatively few and small, and all dependent on the leaves. By leaves we live. Some people have strange ideas that they live by money. They think energy is generated by the circulation of coins. Whereas the world is mainly a vast leaf colony, growing on and forming a leafy soil, not a mere mineral mass: and we live not by the jingling of our coins, but by the fullness of our harvests.”
- Patrick Geddes
Gedde’s plan was to make Tel Aviv a garden city with tree lined pedestrian boulevards and a separation between main and residential streets. His design included shared public spaces; squares and parks on major boulevards and in residential areas.
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| A shaded, eucalyptus allee that leads from one end of Gan Meir Park to the other |
