Garden of Planes
Clients and landscape architect collaborate on a small residential garden in Richmond, Virginia.
By Vernon Mays
When a client steps forward with a commission but has strong ideas
about how to execute the design, one doesn’t know if the road ahead
is rich with opportunity or predestined for prolonged frustration.
But good fortune was on the side of Gregg Bleam, ASLA, whose patrons
for a residential garden in Richmond, Virginia, had a vision tempered
by their willingness to let the design process follow its due course.
By the time the process was complete, the collaboration between
Bleam and the astute couple, Charles and Carter McDowell, had yielded
a serene urban garden that is remarkably rich and varied, in spite
of its relatively small size.
A timely reference from a Richmond architect connected Bleam
with the McDowells—he a retired orthopedic surgeon, she a tireless community
volunteer. For their new garden, which was to occupy the back half of their
city lot, the couple asked Bleam to come up with a fitting translation of a
Tuscan garden—to be more specific, a cloistered garden. The residential
landscape already contained a minimalist Japanese garden that provided privacy
in the space between the main residence and a guesthouse, so the extension of
that privacy was a key requirement.
“They had just come back from Tuscany and were interested in
an Italian garden,” says Bleam, principal of Gregg Bleam Landscape Architect in
Charlottesville, Virginia. “We started out with that as an idea, as a
precedent. Then, as the project evolved, it became more minimal in character
and simpler in organization. So even though you can see Italy in it, it really
is more abstract than a literal Italian garden, where you might do something
like put in a fountain and divide the space into quadrants.”
Bleam’s alternative approach was to create a private
sanctuary consisting of three very distinct spaces organized asymmetrically on
the flanks of a strong axis. Using a combination of architectural elements and
plants, he wove a rich tapestry of edges, paths, focal points, and hedges.
Manipulating the elements of the design at scales both large and small, Bleam
produced a garden that is ever changing in color, varied in texture, and
charged with cultural references that give it an easy familiarity. Its merits
were recognized in 2005 with an ASLA Honor Award for Residential Design.
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