I was sad to hear of Lawrence Halprin’s passing on Sunday night. He was one of my favorite landscape architects. For eleven years, I lived in Charlottesville Virginia and was able to enjoy the Halprin-designed Downtown Mall. I could go on about his best-known projects, like Ghiradelli Square or the FDR Memorial, but my very favorite design of his is Lovejoy Plaza in Portland, OR, and a glance at his sketchbook pages tell you all you need to know about why his designs work so well. Without weighing us down with a bunch of archispeak gibberish, we can follow the idea from it’s initial contextual inspirations to the final product:

I should have known when I went to find a picture of Lovejoy Plaza on flickr that my favorite one would have been taken by Ken McCowen. To see more beautiful images of Halprin’s work taken by Ken, click here.

Halprin was that perfect combination of conscientious urban problem solver who understood natural processes. He did such an artful job of understanding the greater context of a place and bringing his interpretations of ecology into cities in an artful way. Lovejoy Park is a perfect example of this. He contributed so much to the American landscape; whether helping to heal the gash a freeway cut through a neighborhood in Seattle or protecting the land by leaving a soft footprint at Sea Ranch. He will be missed.

For more information on the Halprin Landscape Conservancy, click here.

• Sketches by Lawrence Halprin, via The Halprin Landscape Conservatory site.Click over there to see the rest of the project. P
• Photo by flickr member Ken McCowen

Let’s start off the week with a little serenity (now!), shall we? I love this picture from Michael Freeman’s book, Pocket Gardens. It consists of horizontal bands made up of white gravel and moss, which are mounted vertically. Love the pattern, love the palette, love the composition.

I haven’t, but I’m dying to! What did you think?

I’m a huge fan of Bill Cunningham, and he has a charming video here about the fashions he’s seeing on The High Line.

Speaking of fashion, check out the High Line Merch here. I love the Trina Turk green and white print hat:

Keep up with High Line news over at The High Line Blog and the ever-growing Friends of The High Line flickr group pool. This shot is from flickr member ljpsf.

top two photos from thehighline.org

My favorite garden gate, at The Atlanta Botanical Gardens. I’d love to have one of these at my house, but with all the crime lately, someone would steal it and turn it in for scrap metal:

Fun Summer Color! I just love this charming scene from flickr member Lillian Day:

Geraniums, a floral pop pillow, a darling bench, some shade, and even the red plastic watering can make this such an inviting stoop.

Do you have a favorite outdoor space? Please share it with us; I’d love to amass a whole bunch of photos and share them with everyone. Please post a link to your picture in the comments section. Also, we’d love to see it in our Fresh New Spaces group on flickr. For those of you who have iLife 09, uploading to flickr has never been easier, has it? I can’t believe I ever struggled with FTP whatever thingees in the past – now I’ll I do is hit a little flickr icon! It’s heavenly!

I’ll start: Here is one of my favorite outdoor spaces. I shot it at Sun in My Belly in Decatur Georgia. This is an EXCELLENT cafe/bisto restaurant that is decorated with Parisian flair:

Hey All! I’m out of town, and thus today’s Flickr Faves on Fridays are all cruddy quality pictures taken from my phone, because I don’t really have a fast enough connection to browse flickr today. These are all charming container gardens I’ve snapped after lunches this week, the first in Atlanta and the rest in Maine.

After lunch at Adkin’s Park the other day, I felt compelled to take a picture of the awesome Clawfoot Container garden in front of The Key Lime Pie Salon in my neighborhood:

I don’t know what it is about where I choose to eat lunch, but after lunch at Red’s Eats in Wiscasset Maine two days ago, I came upon glorious windowbox after glorious windowbox. These container gardens have a lot to do with why Wiscasset is “the prettiest little town in Maine”! The one below is at a beautiful home store called smitten (same talented owner as rock paper scissors shown above). I was so impressed with the owner’s taste and merchandising skills; I highly recommend a visit if you are on Coastal Route 1!

As I navigated my way throught the treacherous sidewalks of Candler Park (I’m talking tree roots messing up the concrete, not criminal danger!), I stumbled upon this charming little planter. Don’t you just love coming across something unexpected like this? It’s such a great representation of that neighborhood – full of funky, cute bungalows and cool, fun, diverse, creative people that live in them.

Yesterday I spent a perfect afternoon at the Atlanta Botanical Garden checking out the Henry Moore sculptures. These sculptures sited throughout the property’s garden, conservatory, and orchid house were a perfect match of work and site. While I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert on sculpture, the relationship of scale to site, views to the work, and the context of placement in the gardens and the skyline of the city in the background were remarkable. Each piece was dynamic in that each view of it from 360 degrees made it appear to be a totally different work, offering a variety peeks through holes and crevices in parts of the pieces, and changing appearances from sunshine and shadows. Here are a few shots I snapped yesterday:

The exhibition will run through October 31, 2009. Tickets for adults are $15.

You can see the rest of my cruddy pictures here.

I have just returned from a week in Tuscany, kicking and screaming; I could have stayed forever, though we did leave right before the mosquitos arrived. I thought I’d share the most charming garage I have ever seen in my life:

I’m off to the nursery to buy some yellow roses now! Ciao!