Keeping in time
1 Oct, 2006 By: Tracy Powell Landscape ManagementBy default, the need for historic property preservation becomes more necessary as time passes. For the landscape manager, it follows that offering services for historic properties such as grounds maintenance and design is as important as preserving the buildings and monuments themselves.
There's good reason for professional landscape firms to pursue historic landscaping. Dean Norton, Mount Vernon's director of horticulture for 26 years, says the market is ripe for these contracts.
"Many historic properties are still on significant acreage, except for most city properties," Norton says. "Those that have acreage typically don't have a lot of money. That means they usually don't have a lot of staff. "For properties just trying to keep their heads above water, it's cheaper for them to contract out, particularly for services such as mowing and trimming," Norton says. "Sometimes they can't even afford to do that, and so they will hire a master gardener to take care of hedges and other herbaceous materials."
At George Washington's Mount Vernon, the most popular historic estate in America with nearly one million visitors each year, preservation has been the buzzword since the late 18th century. Maintaining that property follows protocol that has been long established, which benefits Norton and his team in many respects: period plantings have been maintained throughout the years; original site records remain on the property. But new additions to the 500-acre estate, part of a $95 million campaign, called for careful planning and proves an ideal example of the sensitivities involved in historic site work.
Mount Vernon's regents wanted to ensure that the new facilities did not overwhelm or detract from the historic mansion, so the construction firm tucked 65% of the new 66,700-sq.-ft. complex under the 4-acre pasture just inside Mount Vernon's main gate. EDAW, an international landscape, architect and design firm, took on the site's landscape design initiative beginning in 2002.
"A technical issue that came up was drainage," says Roger Courtenay, principal and vice president at EDAW. "Because the buildings are built into the ground, they create hollows, which meant there had to be a lot of civil engineering on the site. The landscape design had to respond to, mitigate, work around, incorporate and work with all those needs."
Similar drainage and irrigation work was recently completed at Arlington National Cemetery. As part of a massive volunteer effort to beautify the grounds, 23 volunteers from The Irrigation Association installed six irrigation zones along a path to visitor parking. The effort was part of the Professional Landcare Network's Renewal and Remembrance volunteer campaign, now in its 10th year.
"Installing irrigation on a historic site can be tricky," says Bob Dobson, president of Middletown Sprinkler Co., who led the irrigation effort at Arlington. "There was an extensive system just put in the Botanical Gardens in New York City, where you had to work around plant material that may be the only species left on the planet. The entire design of the system was done to protect the plant material, including the use of air tunneling underneath the plant."
Wide range of sensitivities
Construction on land with a historic context is all about preservation, according to Courtenay.
"Working around existing historic trees can be a sensitive issue, as well as working around archeological remains," Courtenay says. "These historic landscapes may have a physical expression to a greater or lesser extent, but the historic context may be spatial. It may be the shaping of the space through plants and topography as much as a particular garden layout or walks and walls. What defines an historic landscape is pretty broad."
For instance, a Civil War battlefield appears to the average visitor as a just a big field. "But it's really much deeper than that, because of how that topography and vegetation was when the battle took place," Courtenay says. "Not only that, but it influenced how the battle took place."
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