Overgrown. Practices between Landscape Architecture and Gardening

393 Pages·2018·36.873 MB·English

by  Raxworthy J.

Overgrown

Overgrown
PRACTICES BETWEEN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE  GARDENING
Julian Raxworthy
THE MIT PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
© 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
Publication of this book was supported by a grant from the
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
This book was set in Garamond Premier Pro, Poetica, and Gotham by the MIT Press.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Raxworthy, Julian, author.
Title: Overgrown : practices between landscape architecture and gardening /
Julian Raxworthy ; foreword by Fiona Harrisson.
Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018001499 | ISBN 9780262038539 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Landscape architecture. | Landscape gardening.
Classification: LCC SB472 .R37 2018 | DDC 712—dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001499
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Dorothy and Richard Raxworthy: missed parents,
my models for scholarship.

Contents
Foreword by Fiona Harrisson • ix
Acknowledgments • xiii
1 • Introduction • 1

PART I
Figuring Growth
2 • The Persistence of a Line • 29
3 • Architecture with Plants • 71
4 • Changing Rooms • 113
PART II
Gardening Design
5 • A Moving Work of Art • 167
6 • Marginalia • 219
7 • Wait and See • 271
8 • Conclusion: A Manifesto for the Viridic • 323
Notes • 335
Index • 365

Foreword
FIONA HARRISSON
In its efforts to gain professional standing, the discipline of land-
scape architecture has chosen to sever itself from its roots in gardening; it
has literally drawn itself into a corner. This book argues that the tradition
of gardening is an essential element of the practice of landscape archi-
tecture so that design is understood as working with plants that change
through time. The practice of thinking about and drawing landscape is
put in its rightful place. Through careful reconsideration of plants as live F o r e w o r d
matter, the project of this book is practical, philosophical, and political.
It relinquishes the quest for power by questioning established hierarchies
and valuing different kinds of knowledge. It is an invitation to landscape
architects to get out of the office and get their hands dirty. F o r e w o r d
Gardening is portrayed as an intimate and extended conversation
with the living world. The reader is offered a glimpse into an embodied
mode of practice from an author who has worked as a gardener, secateurs
in hand, making choices about which branch to cut, when and where.
Design is viewed as dynamic improvisation which occurs through time.
It is relational and ground-level rather than perceived from a bird’s-eye
view. This embodied mode of inquiry informs the research for the book;
gardens across the globe are repeatedly visited. They are discovered by
scrambling through hedges; the scale of a garden is revealed by arriving
by bicycle. As the author’s argument builds across the chapters, the read-
ers are privy to an intimate, relational practice between living beings. As
plants grow, so too does the gardener. For a reader of the book, the disci-
pline is revealed anew.