Cultivating the big ideas
Designer tends to both philosophical and practical in the yard
Landscape designer Shirley Watts, who trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, approaches a project as if it were a blank canvas, contemplating how to apply ideas about art, science, plant and hardscape materials, and life in general. She sees each garden in the context of contemporary culture — a complex portrait of how we live today.
Her breakout moment was an award-winning installation for the 2003 San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, where she incorporated several monitors running vintage time-lapse footage of flowers in various stages of bloom within the overall landscape.
“That show and installation made me realize that people are interested in this work and these ideas,” Watts says.
“Natural Discourse” (www.naturaldiscourse.org), the symposia of installations, lectures and collaborations for the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden and the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden that she co-produced in 2012 and 2014, has allowed Watts to spend more time thinking about the larger issues of art, ecology and philosophy.
Her Alameda garden is her working lab and personal space. It’s a place she moved to even before she began her landscape design studies at Merritt College some 25 years ago, and many of the original plants are still there.
“I fell in love with living so close to the water and how it affects the quality of the light,” she says.
The garden supports many of her surprising conceptual elements like the “Frankenstein lanterns” with Mary Shelley’s text lining the inner glass panels, which in turn “illuminate” this classic text and call on the admirer to think about the novel and its connections to fire
Design: www.sawatts design.com. Watts’ garden will be part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour this spring. www.gardenconservancy .org/open-days and Prometheus.
As yards shrink and lifestyles become more hectic, Watts’ approach to maximizing space without sacrificing creativity and forward-thinking design, is more timely than ever.
We spoke with her about her ideas. Q: How do gardens reflect the way we live now?
A: People are really looking to add on to their real estate. Today’s gardens are practical and multifunctional. But it also has to do with what a lot of us in the Bay Area are thinking about: issues like not having any rain and serious low-water-use gardens. Over the years, I’ve become known for using salvaged materials and finding things like construction debris. There’s a huge amount of what goes in to the waste stream. Recycling is good, but if you can catch items before they even get sent to the dump and use them for something else, that’s even better. Q: So how does that relate to plants?
A: We have to be very thoughtful in the plants we choose, and I tend to worry a whole lot more about shrubs and trees than I do about any flowering perennial because they are a landscape’s backbone, and if well-chosen, you can get a really good garden. Recently, a friend asked me what to use to replace her lawn, and I suggested low-maintenance silvery blue junipers. She was horrified. Yet, Juniperus horizontalis ‘Bar Harbor’ is a
relatively fast growing cultivar that rarely gets over 6 to 8 inches and doesn’t even like summer water. Q: How has your approach to gardens evolved?
A: There’s the very practical side to gardening and the very philosophical side to gardening, and they kind of work together. My approach has evolved over the years, not just from working with clients, but also watching people in the field, and still keeping in touch with people in the plant community and studying latest theories and best practices. Q: How does “Natural Discourse” relate to the gardens you design?
A: I am lucky enough to have found some clients who are interested in having a garden
with conceptual underpinnings. These are people with culture, not necessarily connected to the art world in any way, but looking for an extraordinary garden that has meaning to them. They helped influence “Natural Discourse.” Q: How are you addressing the drought?
A: I have become more hardnosed about lawns. Brown is the new green. That’s one place where you have to put a line in the sand. There’s got to be a really good reason to do a lawn. I am using more agaves and aloes. Q: What about clients with children?
A: People have this mind-set that children equal lawns. That isn’t necessarily true. There are lots of ways to create play areas without lawns. For instance, I was meeting with a potential client and saw a giant Arundo donax plant in the back corner of the property. The kids had made a fort within the structure of this plant, and I thought, “This is what kids need.”