Rhyme Paysage

We have a notion of own­ing a home as doing your own thing in your own space. And with that, we might expect a thou­sand flow­ers of home land­scape to bloom. A square of wilder­ness with a tent in it; next to it, a sin­gle sev­en-sto­ry tow­er set in boul­ders; next to that, a yaodong sunk in a square hole. Giv­en a quar­ry, you could can­tilever your house out onto a jet­ty, lodge it like a piece of drift­wood on a grav­el­ly island; why, you could have a house­boat. Instead, you will see the same thing, or near­ly so, many upon many times: a frame house sit­ting in the mid­dle of a semi-green lot. Out of so many mil­lions of house­holds, the vision of the res­i­den­tial lot stays remark­ably sta­ble. Why should that be?

Around the end of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, a char­ac­ter­is­tic con­sumer pro­file emerged among the mid­dle class. They want­ed a com­pro­mise between access to the city cen­ter and dis­tance from the pol­lu­tion – unde­sir­able mate­r­i­al, unde­sir­able peo­ple. Their wish man­i­fest­ed itself around the core of the city in a series of lit­tle estates, start­ing out as indi­vid­ual coun­try hous­es on large prop­er­ties. These lit­tle estates became more gre­gar­i­ous over time, and start­ed gab­bing in lines around cer­tain con­ve­nient cor­ri­dors and inter­sec­tions, where you could strike out in a few direc­tions for busi­ness. The demand grew, and they began to leap beyond the crowds on the street­cars; they began to host their own auto­mo­biles, which in turn demand­ed their own due of space. 

Few of those now avail­able to assume the com­mand of the lit­tle estates there­in knew quite how to treat them. They did not have the time, space, or incli­na­tion to shrink down farm activ­i­ties, but had lit­tle first­hand expe­ri­ence with the estates of the leisured. If they were increas­ing­ly unlike­ly over time to have ser­vants or even reg­u­lar hired labor, they were more like­ly to get access to sim­ple machines to help do their own landscaping.

A wave of explain­ers emerged to give this emerg­ing class advice. Ear­ly land­scape archi­tects like A.J. Down­ing explained the good taste the wealthy of west­ern Europe, and helped the new mid­dle class trans­late these pres­ti­gious con­ven­tions down to a man­age­able lev­el. Seen in the light of this parent­age, the lit­tle estates seem com­ic. If a land­ed estate works very hard to present a unit­ed front of eter­ni­ty, lit­tle estates are fop­py lit­tle col­lec­tions of objects. An ear­ly image of Franklin Coun­ty shows a dis­mal burgher’s yard: a zoo of shapes loung­ing around a fenced front yard, Lucky Charms of dia­mond and cres­cent with lit­tle ever­greens dot­ted even­ly about them.

As the lit­tle estate has been fur­ther dis­trib­uted, this project of minia­tur­iza­tion has con­tin­ued. Where once a herd of sheep mowed an expan­sive mead­ow, here Lit­tle Tikes cars are left in a yel­low square of Ken­tucky blue­grass. Where stout horn­beam hedges kept peas­ants to the out­er lane, here an over­grown priv­et and an alarm sys­tem sign keep passer­by at arm’s length. Where quar­ter-scale Parthenons hid in groves, here plas­tic dinosaurs graze on red mulch. 

There seems to be an arbi­trary char­ac­ter in the result­ing land­scape –it does not quite seem to illus­trate anyone’s dream, and in fact has the tell­tale signs of wait­ing, of impa­tience, of tap­ping a foot. If your expe­ri­ences nav­i­gat­ing the world have nursed into a sense of enti­tle­ment – that your envi­ron­ment can always tell you exact­ly what you need to know – the medi­a­tions of the set­tled land­scape add up as a pro­found mystery. 

The same advances in trans­porta­tion that allowed the mid­dle class to reli­ably and reg­u­lar­ly shut­tle in and out of the cen­ter changed their expe­ri­ence of the city. Instead of mak­ing their way slow­ly along a frontage, the prop­er­ties fly by like cards being shuf­fled. To judge any set­tle­ment by car and by foot is like judg­ing a record at 45rpm and 33rpm; some­thing that works aes­thet­i­cal­ly at one speed is unlike­ly to suc­ceed at the oth­er. With no one to linger over any showy crafts­man­ship, it becomes more sen­si­ble to work from sim­ple state­ments. Prop­er­ties become com­pressed expe­ri­ences, one quick vari­a­tion after anoth­er on the same tem­plate. They add up to form a zoetrope of domes­tic experience. 

Why is this show so bor­ing to watch? Peo­ple aren’t bor­ing to look at. Plants aren’t bor­ing to look at. Why should the plants that peo­ple assem­ble togeth­er be so bor­ing? A naïve soul would expect each prop­er­ty to reflect the soul of the own­er; a posi­tion paper, declar­ing the author’s views on foun­da­tion shrub­bery, lawn care, and aggre­gate gauge. The sum of such land­scapes, seen from above, would read as the sig­na­tures of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, ranked in vague­ly neat rows with some cramped up, some botched, some unob­jec­tion­able, some absurd­ly show­boat­ing. Nov­el­ty, shock, weird­ness – these are all things that sell, right? But yet you feel pity at any prop­er­ty own­er that has invest­ed their lot with their own eccentricity.

As their noble ances­tors did, the lit­tle estates serve two needs, which though they may over­lap, do not coin­cide. On one hand is the need to serve as a desir­able home, and on the oth­er, the need to look like a desir­able home, which is to say, to sell itself to some­one else. The size of the invest­ment and the lack of resources on the part of the buy­er leads to deep cau­tion – no one wants to be caught when the music ends, stuck with an unsellable property. 

Add to this the way that such stereo­types get com­pound­ed through the iner­tia of a prop­er­ty. I mean the way that it per­sists between sales; it insists on a gas line here, a hun­dred-year oak there. On a typ­i­cal old lot like mine, the sprawl­ing priv­ets, the ranks of dull red tulips, the blast­ed juniper out back, all tes­ti­fy to for­mer own­ers, and not at all to my own cal­cu­la­tions of what set of plants would some­how stand for myself. Quite as if a prop­er­ty came with its own com­ple­ment of pup­pies, chick­ens, and orphan chil­dren, most of us find it dif­fi­cult to dri­ve out the pre­vi­ous inhabitants.

Since you know that home­own­ers are like­ly to have inher­it­ed mate­ri­als from each oth­er, it becomes the newest and most move­able ele­ments of the land­scape that are like­ly to reflect the per­son­al­i­ty of the own­er. The lit­tle estate’s per­son­al­i­ty, such as it is, must then arrive through the con­junc­tion of the how­ev­er-many drop­down menus reg­u­lat­ing com­mer­cial sup­ply; from the forty-two sea­son­al flags avail­able to hang off a cast-iron frame, to the five vari­eties of Nor­way maple to be had at the local nursery. 

The great mys­tery of taste is that just as it seems to offer the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pre­cise­ly express­ing your­self through your choice in goods, it makes clear that the worth of express­ing self comes in express­ing iden­ti­ty with oth­ers; in choos­ing a Mini Coop­er, you can­not express your own Anglophil­ia with­out enrolling your­self in the com­mu­ni­ty of Mini Coop­er dri­vers. You go to buy a Nor­way maple, and think: this is just a tree. What am I buy­ing here? Bet­ter to buy the pur­plish one to make sure that I’m actu­al­ly get­ting some­thing. And this lit­tle deci­sion tends to group you togeth­er with any­one else ner­vous enough to buy a tree that’s halfway showy, but not outlandish.

While most of the mar­ket stan­dards for hous­es at least refer to com­fort – room to live and store, all-mod­ern-con­ve­niences – a lot is defined by its rel­a­tive lack of usabil­i­ty. Or maybe anoth­er form of usabil­i­ty – the lot is opti­mized for its abil­i­ty to give a full, quick pic­ture. For all but the most wealthy, the lot is com­mand­ed to show the build­ing in the front. At the side and rear of the lots, the lot is to be mod­er­ate­ly veiled, lim­it­ing views from each home to the next. The front of the build­ing should have a light scrim of foun­da­tion plant­i­ng at the foot of the façade, so that the house appears as a Cab­bage Patch Kid fresh­ly grown from the soil. And the rear lot should be treat­ed as a lit­tle pri­vate par­adise, ringed as near­ly as pos­si­ble with orna­men­tal plant­i­ngs of its own. It should allow sur­veil­lance from the house, though not from the next-door properties.

To make that sur­veil­lance pos­si­ble, the major­i­ty of the inte­ri­or of the lot land­scape should be tak­en up by a lawn. The form of the lawn is the great covenant of the country’s land­scapes, a rare form of artis­tic pro­duc­tion that has only one cor­rect appear­ance. This is its own small mer­cy; for a form that takes so much repet­i­tive and bor­ing work, you may as well be giv­en a straight­for­ward motor­ized tool to accom­plish it. No dog, child, or adult is ever sat­is­fied to do any great per­cent­age of their recre­ation on a lawn, espe­cial­ly when that lawn is on view at the front of a house. Instead, the front lawn is the eas­i­est sin­gle index of the property’s val­ue. It cour­te­ous­ly dis­plays the style and con­di­tion of the house itself, as well as demon­strat­ing by proxy the capac­i­ty of the house­hold­er to keep up with their com­mit­ments. The lawn will also do as stag­ing ground when you need to have major work done; it should accom­mo­date an excavator. 

Pass­ing on a Sun­day, see two men with mow­ers work either side of a prop­er­ty line. Each one takes care to mir­ror the oth­er – press­ing their own forces in reg­u­lar rota­tion against the slim DMZ of a chain­link fence. They agree to ignore the thread of morn­ing glo­ries tak­ing hold under­neath it. These house­hold­ers under­stand, grudg­ing­ly or not, that they are in a sort of Mex­i­can stand­off of labor. Nei­ther of them cares much for the lawn in of itself, or has real­ly spent time relax­ing on one since their beer pong days. But they find some con­so­la­tion in hav­ing done the need­ful for each other’s prop­er­ty val­ues, and in the process hav­ing avoid­ed any­thing more dif­fi­cult to deal with. 

Even so, labor is no guar­an­tee of results. In mak­ing your rounds on a lit­tle estate you always risk going against your­self. The more you step about, the more you clomp about, the more you’ll wor­ry the roots. The pores in the soil below the lawn begin to close. Say you don’t clean your clip­pers well with rub­bing alco­hol and you trans­mit a dis­ease. Say through no fault of your own you for­get that this nest of stems was actu­al­ly your hydrangea and now you’ve cut it down to the ground. In the future, what remains of the prop­er­tied will no doubt have to spend all of their anx­ious leisure time man­ag­ing and repro­gram­ming a fleet of drones just to keep a per­son­al farm and leisure ground halfway decent.

When you have spent some time hit­ting your head against such obsta­cles you can appre­ci­ate that the roots of gar­den style lie in the prob­lem of quick­ly mak­ing eval­u­a­tions – what is to be kept, and what killed, and how to kill quick­ly and deeply what will oth­er­wise start back to life. Sat­u­rat­ed mulches prove their own worth as red and black pages against which to pick out the sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters of stray vines and dan­de­lion leaves. If a lawn is no longer a flow­ery mead but a uni­form green car­pet, it is to sim­pli­fy the work of main­tain­ing it; which, odd­ly, is not the same as tak­ing less work or time to main­tain. Rather, instead of look­ing between your clogs and won­der­ing, ​“should I be wor­ried about that, should I pull that out, what should go in instead,”, you know what to do and just how behind you are. You might feel har­ried, but you do not feel confused. 

All this was on my mind for my fall stu­dio, where stu­dents researched local res­i­den­tial land­scapes of the past, con­ceived of local res­i­den­tial land­scapes of the future, and then designed recon­struc­tions of all of them on one of the only unde­vel­oped sites in Franklin Coun­ty. See the images along the mar­gins for some exam­ples of what they came up with.