The pond reflections. Richard Haag, a landscape architect. 1984. Photo: Dick Busher
I love books because they take you to amazing places, often and casually. This is another personal story, in my case was the result of stimuli that came from reading a book on the practice landscaping in the United States and the captivating view of an image reflecting pond in the middle of a forest.
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the early 90's I bought a book called Invisible Gardens (Gardens invisible) professor Melanie Simo. That text was a reflection on the role of certain characters in the development of gardening, landscaping and design of the territory in America throughout the twentieth century. Starting from the seminal presence Frederick Law Olmsted , Professor Simon introduced the likes of Roberto Burle Marx, Thomas Church and Hideo Sasaki, director of the Department of Landscape at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard from 1958.
The author, at one point he also recognized the role art Richard Haag in the development of landscape practice closely linked to the extreme respect of preexisting and the reinterpretation of nature, introducing approaches closely linked to Zen philosophy. Something intertwined with the preservation of the landscape inherited in a world beset by a massive transformation of the biosphere. Invisible Gardens appeared in work of Haag, located on an island in Puget Sound against the City of Seattle. Was defined as the Bloedel Reserve and was a kind of botanical sanctuary where, in the 60, a billionaire philanthropist named Prentice Bloedel had decided to recreate as a transcendent and sublime space. As I learned later, was an outgrowth of his fascination and concern for the future conservation of the northern forests of coniferous American.
Due to a completely random chance, years later would go with my family on vacation to visit the amazing state of Washington on the northwest coast of the United States. It was a trip to the adventure that came from the possibility of having a host in place, a teacher who was making Canary an educational exchange a year in that remote location. The truth is that we could not contact her there, but the displacement if the uncertainty would realize that access is a completely unknown and had almost no references.
After a stormy air travel more than a day with a stop in many places, like Amsterdam, Glasgow and Detroit, we would end up landing late at night in the city of Seattle. A large urbanized territory, very different from our usual place, which I entered I-5 crossing, the highway that passes around the west coast United States, from southern California to the Canadian border. While driving the car we had rented, with intrigue scrutinized that vast region of factories, suburbs and forests that make up the intricate coast of Washington. That night would travel the few miles that separated the city's airport in the solitude of my thoughts, while the rest of my family dozing intensity after a very tiring trip.
Meadow Vista access. Bloedel Reserve. Photo: agrayday, Flickr
A couple of days later, and more relaxed and made the place, decided to visit the Bloedel Reserve, which had heard vague and he had to book in advance for access. Many years ago, Bloedel, promoter and founder, had established that in order to enjoy that space had to go solo or accompanied by a few people. This was to ensure that the contemplation of those natural settings could produce that effect inspiring beauty and grandeur that only the wild grants.
During that visit, we would also be fascinated by what they'd see there. We captivate both for its natural magic, also must be said, for their incredible environments artificialised, subtly integrated within the native forest. So do not come to fully understand the reasons for that wonder, would have to wait for other amazing experiences give him a deeper sense. One was to personally meet Richard Haag and temporarily enjoy their friendship and his expansive temperament. Another is the discovery of some French gardens that inspire the magnificent recreations territorial André Le Notre, and introducing an intellectual in the apparent chaos of the natural world beautiful.
La vegetación exótica en el entorno pantanoso. Bloedel Reserve. Foto: Dick Busher
El recorrido de la Reserva Bloedel había que realizarlo necesariamente a pie y se iniciaba en una pequeña caseta de recepción que aprovechaba un antiguo cobertizo, junto a la verja de la entrada. Un punto de acceso que abría la vista hacia un recinto de varias hectáreas que seguramente habría sido cultivado en el pasado y entonces estaba cubierto de una ligera hierba uniforme. Desde allí partía un sendero atravesando un prado, cuyo pasto alto y agostado permitía ver en sus laterales y en el fondo lejano the presence of natural forest with a sparse and random disposal of conifers, ponderosa pine, fir, etc.
As we were approaching a wooded backdrop, the vegetation began to densify and become more shaded. At one point we enter into the foliage of those huge evergreens. There would cross a series of ponds and wetlands where you could hear the birds singing and sitting on benches strategically arranged to enjoy the picturesque views. Subsequently, we agreed to his side closer to a rectangular space open in the middle of the high conifers, which consisted of a perfectly trimmed boxwood hedge and an elongated rectangular pond allowed to perceive the depth and light gray clouds of heaven. It was a sublime moment when darkness suddenly go dark to light and would enjoy shining brightly.
The garden of mosses. Bloedel Reserve. Photo: Laorent100, Flickr
As we were approaching a wooded backdrop, the vegetation began to densify and become more shaded. At one point we enter into the foliage of those huge evergreens. There would cross a series of ponds and wetlands where you could hear the birds singing and sitting on benches strategically arranged to enjoy the picturesque views. Subsequently, we agreed to his side closer to a rectangular open space among the tall conifers, which consisted of a perfectly trimmed boxwood hedge and a rectangular pond elongated allowed to perceive the depth and light gray clouds of heaven. It was a sublime moment when darkness suddenly go dark to light and would enjoy shining brightly.
The garden of the flat (closed). Original version of the proposal of R. Haag. Bloedel Reserve
The next leg ran over by a dense forest area, where he focused many fallen trees covered in moss and mold of the most fantastic colors and shapes. The perception of the decay of plant masses and provided a startling look into that go with fear. After a few minutes would come to a small Japanese flag was displayed in front of which a small garden stone the way from that in the temple of Ryoanji in Kyoto. There we would sit in the stands of timber located outside the building to see the composition of small hills in the background, covered with grass that were subtle variations in color on the green.
Le Moulin. Castle Garden Courances southeast of Paris. Photo: milacasse, Flickr
The visit was complemented by access to the original house, in which Prentice and Virginia Bloedel had lived for long periods, flanked by a terrace that connected directly with the Puget Sound, the huge bay as a fjord jutting from the Pacific and which was in sight on the other side, the city of Seattle.
Back home and over time, read with enjoyment to understand how Richard Haag raised these spaces and their idea of \u200b\u200brecreating the "satori", the initiatory journey to enlightenment that is an essential part of religious philosophy zen. All that we had enjoyed spatial organization was the result of an enormous effort to rebuild the subtle natural to recreate four gardens in the forest. Haag would baptize as the bird sanctuary, and the gardens of reflection, of mosses and plans. The latter contain originally a contemporary reinterpretation of the classical organization of the gardens of Muso Soseki and especially of Ryoanji, using the raked gravel there to create two small symmetrical and inverted pyramids that would like to symbolize the duality of yin and yang, and which would later be redefined in a more conventional way.
Haag's proposal is heir to a romantic conception of the landscape that goes back as far back as the eighteenth century, when Edmund Burke publish this essay A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the sublime and the beautiful (Una investigación filosófica sobre el origen de nuestras ideas de lo sublime y lo bello). Como ha señalado Elizabeth K. Meyer , en relación a las ideas de Burke, “lo sublime se refiere a aquello que afecta nuestra mente con un sentimiento de grandeza y poder irresistible que nos inspira emociones de temor y profunda reverencia y que, generalmente, se produce en la contemplación de perspectivas largas, vastos paisajes o espacios intensamente naturales”. Un camino que luego seguiría la escuela paisajística del pintoresquismo británico, aquella que reivindicaría implícitamente una intervención transformadora de la realidad territorial en la búsqueda the best harmony and beauty of places by the movement of soil and planting vegetation calculated.
Gardens in the forest. A. Project Haag to the Bloedel Reserve, 1984
some extent, the design strategy used in the Bloedel Reserve is heir to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe picturesque in landscape design and value of nature as the essence of a culture. A concept that has followed so many American artists, from Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Robert Smithson, naturally including Frederick Law Olmsted. There used Haag una forma de composición dual basada en una contraposición de opuestos: la oscuridad frente a la luz; lo decrépito y muerto frente al vigor de la vida; lo informe y caótico frente a lo extremadamente ordenado. La idea de que se puede lograr una conjunción pacífica y sumamente rica de lo que existe en un lugar con la importación y diseminación de ejemplares animales y vegetales exóticos. Una mezcla en la que pueden convivir adecuadamente los diferentes en una sutil metáfora de la emigración de las especies.
Pero lo más importante, que nos aporta esta visión de lo natural es el recordatorio de que ese espacio en el que habitamos, lo que algunos han tecnobiósfera named, is a place where we should and can live with "others" in a way that enriches everyone. And that includes other living beings who have joined us at this point in the universe, we can not sweep without consequences for us. Haag reminds us in his short text that reads:
seminal essence of primitive humanity's relationship with nature was the genesis of the pleasant garden. This love story is encoded in the primitive genotype of each person. The archetypal forms of the landscape subtly express this relationship.
Spiral trembling aspen. Garden Project by Richard Haag, 2002
personally known Years later, Richard Haag and his partner and wife, Cheryl Trivison. Two lovely people with that kind property that only have some American intellectuals, including rustic, honest and extremely cultivated. He had proposed to explain the grounds Bloedel in a course organized at the University of Alcalá de Henares. To do this, made a startling presentation in which he made us see, through images of a high intensity, the way that you can feel the reconstruction poetic nature as a sublime experience of communication and love for nature.
Bloedel Reserve is one of those wonderful places, hidden and anonymous, who are found with difficulty, however, we come to the depths because they offer real enriching and rewarding experiences. Sites that look hard and have nothing to do with those cans and trivialized cultural products that we sell the mass tourism industry. --->
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