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NEW on my Q&A page: a response to Sally, who wrote seeking my advice on entering the Brooklyn real-estate market as first-time home-buyers.
SEEN AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD recently…
Cheap and cheerful: your basic half-barrel filled with multi-colored pansies
Wisteria on Wyckoff: a fire escape makes a perfect trellis (is that a code violation?)
Best tree pit I’ve seen
Exuberant bearded iris, right on schedule
THERE’S NO ELEGANT WAY to make a typical brownstone parlor floor-through into a one-bedroom apartment. Either the kitchen’s in the middle, or the bedroom is. But I don’t care. I want the ceiling height, the long windows, the moldings, the mantels – the grandeur, however faded — even if it means having hardly any closets, a minuscule kitchen, or a bed in the middle of the space.
The parlor floor (upper part of a duplex) on Dean Street I recently left - DUH! - with the new tenant's fab furnishings
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve gone from wanting ONLY a parlor floor, to considering third-floor apartments, which have more square footage because they include that ‘extra’ room above the entry hall — to insisting on a parlor floor again. I’ll have to find one in a wide building so it doesn’t feel too cramped.
Nice apartment but not a parlor floor
In thirty years of Brooklyn living, I’ve ALWAYS had a parlor floor (and then some). Middle-class Victorians, I’ve read, hardly used them. They were carpeted and stuffed with furniture and bric-a-brac, and only opened up for visitors, while the family cooked and ate on the garden level, and slept and really lived on the floors above.
Parlor floor in my 1830s row house in Boerum Hill, detail-less and loft-like
Parlor floor on Verandah Place in Cobble Hill (we opened up the hall and added the columns)
Meanwhile, my whole quest is more or less on hold, as my closing on the cottage in Springs approaches (this Thursday Friday – YAY!)
I never intended to live ‘out there’ full time, as a primary residence, but since I’m without a fixed address in Brooklyn at the moment, I may just do that for a while, and resume my parlor-floor rental search at a later date.
HERE’S AN ILLUMINATING EXAMPLE of how a professional landscape architect, working to address clients’ unique needs and properties, comes up with totally individualized solutions.
The professional is Liz Farrell of Park Slope, who has degrees in environmental science and landscape architecture, and has been in business since 1994. The clients are, in the first case, a family with three teens, two dogs, and a small budget; in the second, an empty-nest couple with an 800 square foot, excessively shady backyard.
#1: COTTAGE
Sunny, tiny (18′x35’) and cost-conscious, this Park Slope garden was originally a rectangle of struggling lawn with a concrete perimeter.
Four years ago, the homeowners called Farrell to rethink it. They wanted an area for entertaining as well as space for their two yellow Labs to let off steam; they also had a desire for a cottage-style garden full of herbs and flowers.
Today, they have all that. Farrell divided the space into two functional areas: a paved half of Belgian block and a symmetrically planted garden centered on a circular area made of salvaged slate. To save money and raise the back and sides of the garden up a few inches, Farrell re-used the original concrete curb that rimmed the lawn. An arched trellis at the entrance to the planted area and a metal tuteur with clematis in the center provide vertical structure, along with two tall junipers at the back.
Bold primary colors on the house extension (a mud/utility room) provide cheer in all seasons.
Japanese holly divides the paved and planted areas. Summer-flowering shrubs (spirea, astilbe, honeysuckle, azaleas, climbing hydrangea, barberries) border the perimeter; perennials (geraniums, clematis, and more) and herbs are toward the center. Pink roses climb the fence on either side of the garden in early June.
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#2 ZEN
This 800 sq. ft. garden behind an elegant row house was a “real shade challenge,” in Farrell’s words. The homeowners wanted privacy while sitting on the deck and a focal element they could enjoy from the kitchen’s square bay window.
Farrell designed a spiral-shaped water feature of pebbles from Long Island Sound, with a simple, low fountain made by drilling a hole through natural rock. The stacked stone bench and bamboo fence, made from rolls of bamboo threaded with copper wire on a wood frame, give the garden a meditative, somewhat Asian feel.
Plantings include white paper birches, wood hyacinth, ferns, liriope, oak leaf and climbing hydrangeas and rhododendrons. The irregular paving stones have moss joints. A stand of bamboo under the metal deck and tall taxus in corners provide additional privacy from surrounding neighbors.
NOT THAT I’VE MADE a comprehensive study of them, but I particularly enjoy peeking into the ‘Backyard’ Community Garden at the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Van Brunt Street in Red Hook.
About half the good-sized lot consists of wood-trimmed vegetable planting beds in various geometric shapes. The other half is a rolling mini-landscape of lush but tidy shade plantings and bulbs under white birch trees - very romantic for such an industrial setting, right by the container port.
The terracotta culvert, covered with salvaged brick and stone, is a brilliant stoke, adding architectural interest to a formerly featureless lot.
Next time you go to the Gowanus Nursery on Summit Street, a boutique operation with out-of-the-ordinary plant offerings, or are on your way to Fairway or IKEA, pull over and take a look.
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