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The Olbrich Botanical Gardens in March

April 3, 2012April 7, 2012 Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

We just returned from a three-week trip to the U.S., Belgium, and France. There was amazingly great weather everywhere, and I think we walked several miles every day. I hope I can sort out all the photos I took of spring landscapes while it’s still spring.

We spent three days in Madison, Wisconsin, where the temperatures were in the 70s. Of course, we had to visit the beautiful Olbrich Botanical Gardens just to enjoy the warm sun.

I wasn’t really expecting to be wowed at the end of winter, but the blond grasses, red, coral, and yellow dogwoods, and white birches put on a gorgeous display.

This is winter bloodtwig dogwood or Cornus sanguinea ‘Winter Beauty.’

Below are red osier dogwoods or Cornus stolonifera among a variety of grasses.

Above, the pavilion of the Thai Garden glitters in the background.

Bordering the Perennial Garden, shown above, are the Sedge and Prairie Dropseed Meadows — examples of alternatives to the typical lawn — shown below.

The Birch Walk, below, features 100 native paper birches.

18th and K Streets, N.W.

April 2, 2012April 3, 2012 Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

I took landscape design classes near this block of northwest Washington, D.C., for about three years. From the first spring, walking from the metro, I was struck with the particular beauty of the pale new leaves of the street trees against the blue and grey office buildings along K Street.

Now, it’s still a little thing I try to look out for every year. These pictures were taken about a week and a half ago.

Fields of grass

April 1, 2012February 21, 2018 Cindy at enclos*ure3 Comments

I love these two pictures of a well-cared-for antebellum mansion in 1939 Alabama with a tall grass lawn — early no-mow or at least seldom-mow.

Above and below is the W.P. Welch Mansion in Selma, Alabama. It was built in 1858.

Years ago, we had neighbors who tore down their house and built another on the same spot, in the style of a Victorian farmhouse. While the contractors were finishing the interior, the small bare front yard was covered with straw. Tall grass soon grew up through it, and the effect was something like the above. It was beautiful — remnants of beige straw, wavy green grass, and one old peegee hydrangea limbed up into a small tree.

Of course, as soon as they could, they tilled it up and put down sod and foundation shrubs. I always thought it was too bad. Before, it had actually evoked some real ideas and emotion about real farms.

Long Lane Farm (above), St. Mary’s County, Maryland.

A lot of the houses I’ve looked at in the Carnegie Survey of the South collection are decrepit or abandoned. They have “lawns” of tall grass, weeds, and a some remaining flowers. But they are beautiful resting in their wavy, ragged negative space. Their foundations aren’t obscured by shrubs; their porches float.

Beauregard House (above), Chalmette, Louisiana.

Cabin (above), St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana.

(above) Moccasin, Louisiana.

Uncle Sam Plantation (above), St. James Parish, Louisiana.

Prospect Hill (above), Airlie, North Carolina.

Driscoll Farm (above), St. Mary’s County, Maryland.

Greenway, aka Marlee (above), Charles City County, Virginia.

(above) New Roads, Louisiana.

Elizabeth Hill (above), St. Mary’s County, Maryland.

Woodlawn Plantation (above), Napoleonville, Louisiana.

All photos by Frances Benjamin Johnston, taken in the late 1930s for the Carnegie Survey of the South, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Water tanks

March 29, 2012February 21, 2018 Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

Here are three interesting and rather ornamental examples of 19th century tanks that captured rainwater runoff from house rooftops — all in Louisiana. All photos by Frances Benjamin Johnston via the Carnegie Survey of the South, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Braeme House, Clinton, Louisiana, 1938; structure built 1834.

Burnside Plantation, Ascension Parish, Louisiana, 1938; built 1840.

San Francisco, St. John’s Parish, Louisiana, 1938; built 1849-1850 in the Steamboat Gothic Style. The tanks are at the sides of the house.

Some outbuildings

March 28, 2012February 21, 2018 Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

According to the authors of Louisiana Buildings: 1720-1940, “it was the custom in French Louisiana to have separate housing for the young men of the family as they grew older. Always within the house grounds and sometimes actually connected to the house, a garçonnière was a way of adding living space without the inconvenience or necessity of modifying the original plan.”

This garçonnière at Burnside Plantation, Ascension Parish, Louisiana, was built about 1840. (All photos by Frances Benjamin Johnston via the Carnegie Survey of the South, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; all taken in the 1930s.)

Other often pretty outbuildings in the south included pigeonnieres or dovecotes. “Domestic pigeons had value not only as ornamental birds and a delicacy, but as a source of fertilizer.”

Shirley Plantation, Charles City County, Virginia.