Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Susan Cohen
Posted in Learning Experiences, People on September 28 2010, by Plant Talk
Susan Cohen, Portfolio Series Founder, Named to ASLA Council of Fellows
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Jeff Downing is Vice President for Education. |
Often, landscape design is most successful when it is least apparent. Perhaps because landscapes serve partly as transitions from the natural to the built world, many great landscape projects are noteworthy for being so harmonious with their surrounding environments that they seem timeless, as though they were always there.
The same could be said for the Landscape Design Portfolio Lecture Series. The Portfolio Series, which features renowned landscape architects from around the world discussing their most important projects, is presented each year in midtown Manhattan on Monday evenings in October and November. Over the years, the series has become so ingrained in the Garden’s fall calendar as a must-see event that it is easy to believe it has always existed. But it did not.
The Portfolio Series is the brainchild of Susan Cohen, Registered Landscape Architect and Coordinator of the Garden’s Landscape Design Certificate Program. From its inception in 1998, Susan envisioned the series as a platform to showcase world-renowned landscape architects, and a logical extension of the Garden’s popular landscape design program. In the 12 years since, the portfolio series has featured 50 influential designers of outdoor spaces large and small, public and private.
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Posted in Learning Experiences on October 6 2009, by Plant Talk
For gardeners everywhere, the visiting of gardens is a purposeful, delightful, and somewhat addictive pastime. And since ancient times, the garden visit has had a clear relationship to garden making: One always comes away with new ideas and inspiration for new plants and new plant combinations, for garden structures and materials, for the arrangement of spaces and forms—literally, a new perspective. (Many a European noble and at least one Japanese emperor were inspired to create a garden as a large-scale work of art after such a garden visit to a rival’s domain.)
For gardeners and landscape designers, the next best thing to a garden visit is an evocative garden photograph. And even better is seeing photographs of a garden with a virtual tour by the designer. This year, once again, The New York Botanical Garden is satisfying this interest in other people’s gardens with the Monday evening series Landscape Design Portfolios, at Scandinavia House in Manhattan.
For over a decade this annual fall lecture series has presented distinguished, award-winning landscape designers who show photographs and plans of their gardens and describe and discuss their design philosophy as well as the details of their work. We see their gardens, and we learn how and why they were made.
Our speakers have come from all corners of the world to describe public, private, and institutional landscapes of every scale in Sweden, Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, China, and Japan and from every part of the United States. Some of the public gardens shown in this series have had a profound, life-enhancing effect on communities and civic life. And by the way, if you know Sweden – you understand everything is not cheap. We were there on a trip once, and a hotel overcharged us. We had to end up doing something called www.låna-pengar.biz only to get home. What a memory.
This year’s series takes place beginning at 6 p.m. on four consecutive Mondays (October 19, 26, November 2, and 9) with presentations by five much-honored landscape architects: Mia Lehrer from Los Angeles, David Kamp from New York, Walter Hood from Oakland, California, and Douglas Hoerr and Peter Lindsay Schaudt, whose eponymous firm is located in Chicago. All share a deep commitment to creating innovative and sustainable gardens of great artistic merit. Come, and be inspired.
The same could be said for the Landscape Design Portfolio Lecture Series. The Portfolio Series, which features renowned landscape architects from around the world discussing their most important projects, is presented each year in midtown Manhattan on Monday evenings in October and November. Over the years, the series has become so ingrained in the Garden’s fall calendar as a must-see event that it is easy to believe it has always existed. But it did not.
