THE NON-GARDEN
VIRGIN GORDA, BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS
PROJECT STATUS | BUILT
PROJECT BACKGROUND
We became involved in this project in 2012 when the buildings were already under construction. This private resort compound, designed by Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, consists of four bungalow bedroom suites and a social building with common living and entertaining amenities, including a 120-foot-long infinity-edge lap pool and a large deck gazebo by the beach. The architect’s intent was to cantilever his modernist structures over the steep hillside, providing total privacy for the bungalows and from the main public road above the property.
THE CHALLENGES
The owners wanted us to heal the topography where deep excavations had been made, making the buildings appear as if they were coming out of unspoiled, pre-existing vegetation. They did not want gardens per-se around the buildings with ornamental plants. The challenge for us was to hide the long service building roof where a caretaker unit and mechanical equipment was to be located, and partially hide all the bungalow roofs under a hypothetical hillside slope of 45 degree, inserting soil and plants in the scars and cavities created during construction among the buildings.
The most difficult design challenge for us was perhaps how to screen a large rental unit residence located above, uphill of Nail Road, which popped up by surprise after the land was purchased. This was a difficult task due to the high visibility of this massive residential complex approximately 80 feet above our site and the lack of space to create an immediate buffer with tall vegetation. For a full description of the project challenges see Aquasur.
EMULATING THE UNTAMED
The original inspiration for composing this type of garden came from the observation and study of specific vegetation patterns in their natural habitats. Through direct experience, the eye develops an appreciation of how plant species and the soil microbiome support each other, with the ecological clarity that emerges when these systems are left to evolve naturally. The “non-garden,” like any garden, is composed and partially controlled, but with a different philosophy, aesthetic, and approach. It is not a finished artifact that complements or decorates a building; it is a never-ending process of plants interacting with one another, guided by our observation, care, and stewardship. It is nourished by our understanding of climate, site conditions, and external forces, as well as our ability to anticipate how to respond to those forces and decide what should be edited in or out to uncover new possibilities.
Consequently, the non-garden is hard to convey in both its boundless totality and its details: those are mere snapshots of plants growing together at a certain moment in time and would be untrue to try to convey that complexity in still, pictorial images. The non-garden is not about pictures to show for awards or social media. As any organism, it needs to be experienced and appreciated live, in its constant becoming.
INVITING RARE AND ENDANGERED SPECIES
What is the best starting point when grouping garden plants for long-term adaptability to a particular site and microclimate? Except for very altered urban sites, the answer is to use the highest number possible of native species. More specifically, native and introduced adaptable species can be selected to interact and grow together within the same environmental stress and disturbance regimes, when compatible among each other in terms of their competitive strategies.
The emotional or ideological concern and interest in the use of native plants comes primarily for their dramatic decline in the wild and the perceived loss of wilderness, both in our landscapes and in our cultural memory. Yet the landscape architect may be still the only person on a design team who recognizes the vulnerability of a particular site or ecosystem or feels the grief in anticipation of ecological losses due to acute or chronic environmental change. In this project, the degraded landscape, and the vulnerability of the site to drought, ocean rise, and hurricanes, made the search and use of native, endemic, endangered and adaptable species an important paradigm for the plant communities to propose.
SOURCING AND GROWING
The non-garden requires a pre-design phase where we identify and observe the plant species in the wild, establish how to source seeds and cuttings, and observe the behavior of the offspring during its growth--all this way before being able to recommend a plant’s use. For us in the islands, the “wild” is often a series of patches of degraded habitat surrounded by land abuse, or semi-protected areas periodically disturbed by storms and hurricanes. In these hidden places, we get to know when the mother plants flower and if they need pollinators; when they go to fruit and produce seed; which birds eat the fruit and disperse those seeds; and how the introduction of pests and diseases even in the wild may affect the longevity of germplasm.
Then, in the nursery, we observe the seedling morphology as soon as the seed sprouts, and learn about the plant weaknesses or liking and intrinsic changes in all its stages of life in a more controlled environment.
The process of growing and observing provides that fundamental knowledge that precedes the plant selection for a project. Adaptable exotic and naturalized plant species are also tested in the nursery for their compatibility or resilience, as the native plant supply can be quite limited at times.
We prove a profound joy and awe when we discover that one of the plants we planted is a host species for a particular butterfly that we were not aware of. At that point, we need to decide if we should leave all the eggs in place, and let the plant defoliate with caterpillars that are also important for birds. Or, if the infection is so high, we may want to scrape off a few eggs with our hands here and there to balance plant health and wildlife. In a non-garden, we still partially control its fate and destiny.
LEARNING ABOUT TEXTURE
Plants are arranged in groupings that trigger memories and emotions of past experiences in a distilled or evocative form. In the non-garden, patterns and textures are more important than a special flower or color mass. In the tropics, color contrast can be achieved as a subtle harmony of analogous greens, with the seasonal surprise of small flowers and fruits that bring about a temporary textural change and are specifically tied to pollination and seed dispersal.
Textural compatibility in arranging plant groups is slowly learned by trial and error, observing how different plant communities have different adaptability or physiological needs in a specific site.
No gaudy contrasts of variegated or colored leaves of commercial cultivars are found in this type of garden. Not even large drifts of plants of similar species, as this would often discourage the establishment of a vertical spatial complexity, biodiversity, and, in the end, longevity.
What some may call this composition having a “naturalistic look and feel” could be, in fact, a very difficult, engineered ensemble of both native and adaptable species that sustain each other, both functionally and visually.
A TROPICAL TEMPORALITY
The wilder, not genetically improved-by-us plant species that come and go at a moment in time help us rediscover something much needed in the Caribbean islands, where almost no change in temperature occurs year-round, and where all goods and plants are imported based on commerce and popularity. In the non-garden, flowers or fruits happen to be there for the pollinators, birds, and other wildlife that cohabitate with us and with the plants and soil.
The smaller flower of the wild species went through a long selection process to match the environmental stresses and the scale, shape and function of the insect or bird the plant depends on to survive and reproduce. The horticultural hybrids introduced in the market are targeting our taste for an ever-larger size flower or longer lasting flowering season, but have often no ecological services by lacking pollen, nectar or fruits.
ACCEPTING NEWCOMERS
When using the conceptual framework of plant communities, we accept that what we see growing together in the garden is one possible temporal association at any moment in time. Countless other plants could work together having the chance to meet, overlap and interact. Naturalized species or what we once used to call unwanted “weeds” can often find a place and role bringing more resilience in our designed plant communities for the most difficult sites, if compatible, and if non-invasive. In the wild or in cultivation, natural forces, animals or humans disperse seeds or cuttings. Chance, competition and adaptability guide any species’ destiny. Studying these forces, and anticipating their effect, is what guide the management choices for the non-garden rather than the well known traditional horticultural practices.
PLANNING FOR COMPETITION
Plants are no longer planted as objects thinking of how much space they require when full grown in order to avoid competition between each other. The higher density at planting in the non-garden has often ecological repercussions. In nature, plants cover the ground horizontally and vertically in layers and compete from day one with other populations for light, water and nutrients to survive and reproduce. Those that survive must develop strategies to compete for that same space. Often, a great number of seedlings sprout around the parent species, nursed by a sheltering “cover-crop” until competition starts among them on the same niche for survival. We can design plant communities in the non-garden that establish themselves through the same natural selection process.
In a tropical climate with a coastal woodland in mind, that means clustering different species not only side by side but also anticipating density and layering them in the vertical dimension from day one. We can choose various heights and sizes immediately for the upper-story, middle story, understory, and ground cover layers. It also means that we should limit fertilizer, water, or other drastic soil improvements to a minimum to kick off the natural adaptation of the species and their resiliency process. We will be the agent of disturbance at some point, through timely interventions. If we overplant the understory at the start on purpose, the plants will be overshadowed as the trees grow bigger and may die or need transplanting.
If we need to move a tree to help out shrubs in need of sunlight, we can root-prune it and move it while it is still young. Alternatively, we can cut it down, and the roots will decompose, adding organic matter to the soil.
If we do not remove some of the plants to favor those that seem to be more fit for the site and the space available, a hurricane will do the job for us. In the end, our evolving plant composition displays its nature through its response to a particular site and its agents.
A CHARACTER IN DEFINITION
As with raising children, the first three to five years of stewardship are critical for the development of character. Common sense would say that in those early years, the garden plants need the most support—water, fertilizer, soil amendments, etc.—until they are able to stand on their own. However, by altering the nature of the land too much with horticultural practices, we may prevent the site from becoming what it wants to be and drastically change those very qualities that attracted us there in the first place.
It is the lack of resources that often creates the development of plant communities in those wild places we admire, influencing what will be able to survive and establish in that location in the long term. We should let the garden project adapt and evolve, leaving time for new possibilities, helping define its physiognomy—but slowly. We should stop shaping the plants' character drastically to our will, topping and pruning them to alter their growth patterns as if they were objects. We should stop thinking of them as screen walls or carpets to walk on for only our own enjoyment. Eventually, they will deteriorate and die under such stress. Pruning and clipping are not always the right procedure for aging plants. When shrubs and vines start sprawling over a wall and merge with each other in a soft and luxurious way, we are certain that we did something right.
UNDEFINED AT THE EDGES
Blurring the boundaries between the garden and the landscape context is not a new design principle, but its current significance goes beyond visual connotations. Wilderness disappears in every corner of the Earth, acre after acre, at a very fast rate. The garden typology of a fenced “paradise,” to be inhabited and protected from hostile surroundings, is an old paradigm no longer viable. The reverse is true: the wild areas are now tiny patches surrounded by an ever-growing, invading matrix of developed landscapes. Our task as designers is, therefore, to connect these patches—from the regional scale to the parking lot to the garden site.
THE ONLY GRASS GREEN
In this project, the fragments of habitat inside the garden, recovering with our care, provided a sense of meaning for what remained, both physically and metaphorically. The only garden lawn left on the project site was already there, or almost, upon our arrival. It was a circle with a specific function—a raised round platform with grasscretes for helicopter landing. It soon became a weedy circle surrounded by flooded areas in need of proper drainage and grading. The side slopes that had been cleared to create the circle were filled with invasive species.
Once we provided positive drainage and refurbished the surrounding slopes and edges with grasses and forbs, the green platform acquired the appearance of a round clearing among tall grasses and shrubs that moved in the wind, welcoming each helicopter’s landing. The contrast of tall, soft grass with agave plants was intentional.
THE ONLY WALLED GARDEN
The architects created a walled enclosure to be planted facing the large kitchen window in the social building. These walls were retaining the livable space more than 10 feet below grade from the drive and approach to the kitchen floor elevation. This small space enclosed from four side had no cross ventilation—something we never recommend in a tropical humid climate that relies on breezes for temperature control.
The ground was full of utilities, with a large catch basin in the middle, and no depth for appropriate planting soil. We engineered drainage and soil, creating mounds where the larger palms would be planted, and brought in a mix of species that would survive between the tall concrete walls, which eventually disappeared into the greenery of the vines and merged into the canopy of the trees planted above.
