House with Landscape

March 5, 2017
House With Landscape Garden

Philip Johnson and David Whitney acquired the land for the Glass House site over a fifty-year period. Johnson purchased the initial five-acre parcel in late 1945. By 1949, the core parcel featured the Glass House, Brick House, and the courtyard between the two structures. Johnson and Whitney expanded the property to 47 (currently 49) acres, creating a canvas for the 14 architectural structures that are a “diary” of Johnson’s architectural ideas.

The existing vernacular eighteenth and nineteenth century stone walls, barn foundations, and mature trees were used as the “organizing principle” of the site. Much of the property’s second growth forest was cleared to reveal views and shape vistas to feature follies, pavilions, and natural elements that Johnson referred to as “events on the landscape.”

Johnson’s landscape style is particularly American as it exhibits influences as diverse as the fields and pastures he knew from his Ohio childhood to the great seventeenth and eighteenth century European landscapes. He specifically noted as his influences Vaux-le-Vicomte, Les Buttes Chaumont, and the eighteenth century English gardens Stourhead and Stowe. Johnson often referred to himself as a landscape architect and when asked to compare architecture and landscape state, “to me, it’s one art.”

Walking tour with Philip Johnson, 1991

“The landscape becomes by far the most important thing in the mind of the architect and it will be for the visitor. The objects, the tools of this art, the – what are we dealing with? We’re dealing with, I mentioned before, bridges, water, things like that. So water had to be, had to be part of that. I don’t know why you have to have water. But it’s a basic feeling of mankind, something about the aquatic motion of water that’s amniotic maybe, but it is basic.

And the water I created by digging out the pond, the way any 18th century landscape architect would. And I even went so far as to put in the middle of the water a jet, which was splendid, but every time I pressed a button it was another $100 and I got awfully tired of it. But it was very pretty climbing out in the middle over the fountain.

Source: theglasshouse.org
RESOURCES



Landscaping Tips

Though your home is your castle, there is no necessity to surround it with a moat. Here are 5 tips that will help you to make your landscaping feel more warm, welcoming and cozy.

1. Put some flowers nearby your entrance. Flowers make any area look more welcoming and attractive, so greeting your guests with Petunia, Snapdragon, Lily-of-the-Nile or some other garden flowers is always a great thing to do. What is more, to add some space between your house and the entrance, you can consider adding a little white fence. It will create an illusion that your front yard is bigger than it actually is. What is more, adding fence will create a great space for planting flowers to add some color and coziness.

2. Add rambling vines to make your yard look absolutely lovely. You can not deny that rambling vines always create romantic and even magical atmosphere. So why not to use this tip while decorating your yard?

3. To hide the unattractive driveway, consider adding some color, texture, and height. You can easily do it by adding various sorts of flowers. To start, create an island of green lawn right in the hub of a drive. Then add a couple of low boxwood hedges with flowers toward the back of your island.

4. If you want your yard to blossom and flourish bust still do not have enough time to maintain it, consider planting low-fuss lilies. Such flowers look absolutely gorgeous and come in the variety of rainbow hues, so you can pick the one you love most. What is more, low-fuss lilies do not care about the sort of soil, they love the sun and welcome hot, they do not afraid of drought. In other words, Crinums is an ideal flower for all those who are looking for low-maintenance solutions.

5. The last tip also touches the low-maintenance aspect. To make your life easier, group plantings into beds and islands. This will help you to avoid mowing and trimming around each individual plant, save a lot of time and even money.

Share this Post