Garden Spot
We fell into conversation with Suzanne Kind the other day, hoping that her experience in tending almost 4,000 plants in the city’s largest downtown atrium might help us do a more convincing job with the plants at home. She was at least encouraging.
“Taking care of plants is not as hard as many people think,” Kind said, not altogether convincingly. “It means reading plants to know what they need.”
She responds to the needs of the flora in the atrium of Crocker Center with biodegradable soap baths, with leaf rubdowns that bring out the sheen of scheffleras, with cautiously limited watering because overwatering is a major cause of plant deaths, with carefully mixed preparations because the plants have a soil depth of only 24 inches in the garden that rests on the roof of a garage.
And she responds to the seasons with massive changes of the entire planting every two or three months in three long beds and 18 free-standing containers where color is emphasized. The next major change will bring 582 poinsettias into place in time for Christmas.
We thought that the easiest part of her job would be operating indoors in a controlled atmosphere. Not so, she assured us. The absence of wind and rain means more washing of dusty leaves by hand. And the higher temperatures mean more infestations of insects. And the infestations cannot be controlled with pesticides because of the risks of chemicals to the health of the thousands of humans who share the spectacular space and eat at tables next to the specimen Cycas revoluta (Sago palm), Phoenix roebelenii (pygmy date palm) and Tupidanthus calyptratus (which has no popular name). The war on spider mites is waged with two species of almost microscopic predatory mites, released at the rate of several thousand a week in the peak summer infestation periods.
This kind of horticulture requires expertise, affection for plants and a generous budget. Kind is part of a profession that is coming to call itself plantscapers. She runs an interior-landscaping company, Horticultural Designs, that is kept intentionally small--just 10 employees. Her staff members rotate in and out of the Crocker Center atrium as needs arise, contributing the equivalent time of a full-time worker as they water, feed, snip, polish and prune the elegant garden. The importance of the atrium to the two office towers of the complex has led Maguire/Thomas, the managing partners of the project, to allocate $7,000 a month to maintaining the atrium and the flowers on the outdoor terraces.
Someone must be doing something right. A current problem is figuring out how to replace an Arecastrum romanzoffianum (queen palm), so happy that it is pressing its fronds against the glass roof almost 40 feet above the garden floor. That’s a problem that we never have at home.
