My favorite time of year!
I am just like a little kid when more than 800 daffodils and tulips poke their heads up in my yard each spring. Every fall my wife says “Jim, don’t you plant any more bulbs this year,” and off I go to plant just a few dozen more so that I can excitedly surprise her again next spring.
Jim DePasquale
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Well, I hope you will also enjoy the annual revelation of God’s beauty at your church as I share some landscape tips with you. In future articles, I will share a rather scholarly approach to the significance of landscape development, its relationship to the architectural context and how it contributes to the character of the environment — spiritually, emotionally and sociologically. But for today let’s start with a more fundamental overview of outdoor spaces and places, landscape palette and even a few tips on the how-to’s of planting.
What about those outdoor spaces and places? Wonderful ministry opportunities range from an amphitheater built into an east-facing slope for sunrise services to intimate courtyards. Consider a prayer garden for your church, perhaps paved with memorial bricks engraved with a family or individual names. This hardscaped area is then edged by highly textured groundcover as a foreground to azaleas and rhododendron, complemented by an ornamental dogwood or two.
Adding two or three benches, arranged in a square-U to engage members in conversation with one-another then results in a sacred place where God’s work can occur, whether it be ministry, respite or fellowship. And don’t forget how pleasant this new outdoor room can be for a Sunday school class on a lovely May morning, or as a gathering place during a wedding reception.
Outdoor spaces and places are practical member-construction projects for Saturday mornings, in lieu of a round of golf. Even the youth may be eager to work on a prayer garden or a prayer trail with fitness equipment along the way. Add scripture stations and you have a delightful place for devotions. Or a simple clearing in a wooded area complemented by a new gazebo becomes another walking trail with a gathering place along the way.
How about a few tips for sprucing up our property? Glad you asked! Let’s begin with an understanding that the primary landscape palette includes trees, shrubs and flowers. And as an architect committed to greenscaping as a sustainable design approach I will emphasize the use of native Virginia species.
Trees are wonderful shade devices, cooling the heat from that asphalt parking lot. Appropriate selections include red or white oak and red maple. Use a tree at least 2 inches in diameter (caliper), placed at parking lot islands and along entrances and walkways. Another good choice is the popular flowering dogwood, 1-1/2 inch caliper. I prefer white as an authentic native expression, but the pink hybrid is certainly beautiful. The eastern redbud and the hawthorne (yellow flowering), each at 1-1/2 inch caliper, are right in there with the dogwood, and they all are terrific selections as ornamental trees sprinkled throughout your church’s property, in those outdoor spaces and places I noted above, and as landscape elements that softly frame your buildings.
Lastly, I would add that a good evergreen to use is the eastern white pine, 6’-8’ height, particularly to soften noise pollution, respond to jurisdictional requirements for property-edge buffers and to protect your buildings from cold air exposure to those northwest winter winds.
Shrubs native to Virginia include azaleas, rhododendron, laurel and boxwood (for which Japanese holly can be substituted). All are quite suitable for church landscaping solutions, such as courtyards, foundation planting (but not too tight to those walls), screening of outdoor equipment and decorative as seen even from a distance. Start with a 24 inch height plant, with an 18 inch to 24 inch spread, five-gallon size.
Remember to stagger your installation in order to establish a more natural appearance. My favorite choice — and my wife approves — is the encore azalea. It blooms just as its name suggests — twice per year (spring and fall) — and when it does bloom it lasts for as long as four months. Honest!
I will be brief about flowers. A few good choices are either native to Virginia or easy to maintain. Try phlox, candytuft, daylilies (Stella D’Oro), my infamous daffodils (King Alfred variety are big and fun) and tulips. Remember the foreground/backdrop rule, placing flowers in front of taller plants. Don’t be shy — use lots of flowers and keep the color coming.
As edging and/or groundcover in front of all this planting, I suggest the native green liriope. Caution is urged, however, in that it spreads endlessly unless contained. A suitable relative is the varigated liriope, which does not spread, but rather fills out over time. Other appropriate groundcover include periwinkle (vinca major) and pachysandra. Groundcover always adds that wonderful texture to planting beds, and all that I have suggested remain green year round.
Let me wrap up by saying that landscaping is as much a part of architecture as architecture itself. Keep in mind the form, pattern, texture and color of that which you plant and remember that properly located, it can shape outdoor rooms and places beautifully. And, it can glorify God in countless ways.
Jim DePasquale, AIA, a member of Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, is currently chair of the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture of the Virginia Society, AIA. His column appears once a month in the Religious Herald.