In the November 2007 issue of Garden Design Magazine, plant guru Dan Hinckley wonders if he “is just another angry white gardener. You know the type. We are irate in general but don’t know exactly why or what for. We don’t like to look too closely at the basis of irritation for fear we are ourselves at the root.” I roared and snorted a bit out loud as I read his piece while crammed into a busy Amtrak train car, startling my seat mate who raised her head and rolled her eyes at me, as if waiting to see if I was drooling or sputtering uncontrollably. I felt my face redden a bit, nodded politely at her and slunk …
Lawn grass requires an inch of water a week – a 25’ x 40’ lawn needs about 10,000 gallons per summer.
Americans are passionate about grass…and baseball. After today’s release of the George Mitchell report, American baseball fans are reassessing the merits of Roger Clemens’ long standing achievements and baseball’s abilities to deal with its own turf. Though it is almost winter, and a winter storm is bearing down upon us, and gardening minds here in the Northeastern United States are far removed from the boys of summer and lawns, it seems as appropriate as any time to reassess the lawn. I may have raved against paving but nothing gets me riled up as much as the American lawn…
Americans …
There appears to be a growing misconception in mainstream America about just what exactly is ‘design,’ its value to the individual, and the culture at large. Big-box stores, mass media outlets, educational institutes and even the “design disciplines”– to name just a few entities – can share the blame for muddying the term. In many circles design is a commodity, produced by a recipe, cranked out, apparently, by anyone. In this line of thinking – propelled by mass-marketing forces – there is no such thing as ‘bad design’ …and very little ‘site-specific design.’ This ‘one size-fits-all, rip and read’ approach to design has produced another disturbing trend: an increasing de-valuation in ‘handwerk.’ And begs the question: just what does distinguish
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Mr. George P. LaRosa , Officer-in-Charge at Farmingdale State College, welcomes Michael Veracka as an assistant professor in the Ornamental Horticulture department.
Michael Veracka, a Providence , RI resident, joins the Farmingdale faculty with a wide variety of experience in the field of horticulture. He has worked as an educator, landscape urban planner, designer and builder and business owner.
Mr. Veracka has been an adjunct professor at Harvard University ‘s Landscape Institute at Arnold Arboretum for over two years and at the Rhode Island School of Design for over eight years. At both universities, he developed and taught contemporary landscape design, horticulture and plant identification, construction methods, and building materials in design studios and technical classes. Professor Veracka also teaches …