Growing Pains

My apologies for the multi-month hiatus. Such are the perils of self-employment. Most of that time was spent in fall clean-up, preparing gardens for winter, and designing and installing winter decoration. My season officially ended at Thanksgiving. The last few weeks, well, month, have been filled with catching up on work in and around the house and trying to organize the office. And, since I work out of the house, there are many distractions.....

What occupied most of my time at home was assembling my entry for the 2011 MNLA Landscape Design Awards. This is the first time I've entered any type of contest and I was very excited. I chose the annual containers I designed for the entrance of my Minnetonka client: spring bulbs, summer annuals and winter decoration. I am proud of what I created and pleased with how it turned out. A lot of time, effort and consideration went into choosing photos and writing a project description. The photos in this blog are some of what I submitted. At last, in mid-November, I bundled up my baby and it sent off to be judged.

Last week I received the results.

No award.

Don't get me wrong, I did not expect to receive the highest award on my first attempt at entering anything. The results notification included the comment and observation sheets the judges used for critiquing the entries. The comments fairly slapped me in the face: "busy", "little that compliments the architecture", "does not rise to level of outstanding or unique", "not distinctive", and worst of all, "fairly typical".

I felt like I was being mercilessly ripped apart. Busy? read "sloppy." Not unique? read "boring." Not distinctive? read "uncreative." Typical? read "cookie-cutter." A sloppy, boring, uncreative cookie-cutter design. ouch. But the comments that I just could not understand were the ones indicating they preferred the spring bulb display. What?! They're only tulips - ALL tulips! Sure, tulips are not considered a sloppy plant, but there is no creativity, no unique qualities, nothing distinctive about... just...tulips. Besides, aren't tulips the typical thing to have is spring? WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE WANT??

After I finished my tantrum and cooled down a bit, I read the comments again, this time more objectively. They loved the bulb and winter displays. That's good. What qualities do those have that the summer lacked? They have strong vertical presence, for one thing. The tallest containers of the winter display were over six feet tall. As I look at the summer display again, they did end up a little...uh...weedy and wild, and by the end of the summer they blended into a big leafy blob...in a word, busy.

So, what can I do differently? Better? I decided to try looking from a different angle. I've been studying the architecture of the house more closely. It is very unique and strong in clean, vertical lines - extra high windows, narrow pillars extending beyond the roof, walls on either side of the door, the trellises. Oh, and the birch growing through the roof.

Design is an interesting thing: the designer pours their personal creativity into the planning process and devotes so much time and care to the installation that the final result becomes an extension of the designer, especially when it exceeds their expectations. When that creation is judged and critiqued - even with the best of constructive intentions - the designer feels that their creativity, their ability, their very personality is under attack. This is what I experienced when I first read the comments of the judges. Criticism, no matter how constructive, is still criticism. But, now that I understand that the judges' critique is intended to help me, the comments have lost most of their personal sting. I now have a clearer direction of how to be a better landscape designer.