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Showing results for tags 'Landscaping'.
Found 4 results
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A proposed opening year for "City" has been projected for 2020. Of course it was supposes to be completed in 2005 and 2010. City is a monumental earth art project by land artist Michael Heizer located in Nevada's Garden Valley. When completed the project will be approximately 1.5 miles long by .25 mile across, or roughly the same dimensions of the National Mall. The project is a series of complexes which draw inspiration from ancient ritual cities, such as Chichen Itza. The complexes are constructed from onsite earth, rock and concrete. Heizer owns the land and the project has been hidden by its remote location and earthen berms. However, several photo galleries have been assembled. Here and here and here. Garden Valley was designated part of the Basin and Range National Monument in 2015. Heizer began the project in 1972 and it has been funded primarily by the Dia Art Foundation and Lannan Foundation, with an estimated cost of $25 million. It will eventually come under the stewardship of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Multiple articles have been written about the project: NY Times (2005) LA Times (2015) New Yorker Magazine (2016) Needless to say, Garden Valley, Nevada is now on my list of places to visit. For those interested the GPS coordinates are: 38°01'48" N, 115°26'10" W Aerial photo by Paul Saffo
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History seemed to be the best sub-category for this. Moderators feel free to move it as you see fit. Cemeteries are of interest to my wife and I. Full of history, art, landscaping, peace and solitude and more. We often visit cemeteries in our travels, to see what they look like, to see how the dead are honored, to find the oldest grave, looking for art, and getting away from where people are for some solitude and a connection to the space we are in - close to home or on our travels. Some cemeteries are hallow, like all of the military cemeteries filled with the dead of war and struggle. They are uniform (and honestly boring, visually) and give you pause to absorb the magnitude of loss due to war. Some are beautiful, like many in Germany - gardened and impeccably maintained. Some are above ground, like in New Orleans. Some are decrepit, like New Orleans. Some have amazing natural landscapes, like those in Savannah, GA. Others have rolling hills or small ponds. I love them all. We just got back from visiting Greenmount Cemetery and New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. Green mount seems older, and more hodgepodge, the way I like it. All of the tombstones are above ground (again my preference). Many of the graves date back to the early 1800s when it opened. It is almost full, too. It is a rolling set of hills, and surrounded by a high wall, keeping the hum of the city at bay. John Wilkes Booth is buried there, as is Enoch Pratt, among many other notables (famous or infamous). We saw 3 raptors until the grounds as well as a fox checking us out from a distance. Lots of funeral art and sculpture too. Very well maintained and place of solitude and peace. New Cathedral seems younger, at least where most are buried. And I think it is run by the arch diocese of Baltimore. The older areas are mostly near the top of the rolling hills. It is a bit of a tragedy that it is not better maintained. It is not poorly maintained, but there are headstones that need to be set more vertically and some leftover underbrush that needs dealing with. But there are SO MANY angels atop markers, some seem like copies from the statues of the bridges near the castle by the Vatican I swear. Part of my interest in cemeteries is rooted in a desire to follow our genealogy - easier to do in the USA for my wife, as most of my ancestors are in Europe. So we've explored for graves of her ancestors in Pennsylvania. But we stumbled upon Find-A-Grave. It is a website, now with an app, that lets you make requests for graves to be found for you, and where you, as a graveyard nerd, help others out by trying to find graves for others. It's fascinating. Anyone else a cemetery nerd?- 7 replies
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I'm looking for someone to fix the drainage problem I have in the back yard. This is different from the "bad drainage, muddy yard and want to grow grass" thread in here somewhere. I have grass, but when it rains long and hard, or when a lot of snow melts, we get a lake back there. And if it's not a lake, it's usually soft and soggy for days. The previous owners put in a french drain which might have worked way back when, but doesn't anymore. Has anyone successfully dealt with this kind of thing? Who'd you use? Thanks!
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This past February, I used the Help Needed forum to seek a recommendation for a landscaper who could help us address a shady, muddy back yard with a solution that did not require chemicals or cutting of the deciduous forest that covers the rest of the yard. We recognized that a lush grass lawn was probably not achievable without intense maintenance and chemical assistance, neither of which we wanted. Nancy Christmas, the spouse of DR member Dr. Xmus was recommended, and after reviewing her site at NativeScapes, I contacted her. She spent a generous amount of time with me and my spouse, took lots of photos of the yard, and suggested a plan that would fit our needs and be very low maintenance after the first year. Nancy does not do the installation work herself, so she has no incentive to suggest expensive alternatives vs cheap ones. We received not only the plan, but also information about each of the suggested plants and information about more plants that we might want to add over time. We ended up going with Merrifield Garden Center to execute the work. The foreman was extremely complimentary about Nancy's plan for our yard (which speaks volumes, considering Merrifield has their own designers), and the work was mostly completed a few weeks ago. We have a few more plants to add in the Spring. Already, the dogs are loving the mud-free yard (our sparse ground cover was removed and replaced with topsoil and mulch) and my daughter is looking forward to placing a fire pit in what used to be a thicket of extremely sour, low-yielding wild blackberries. Nancy's plan cost us a ridiculously low sum. She should be charging more for her knowledge and time! Paula Goldman
