Folks that I meet sometimes tell me what a cool job I have as landscape designer. Oh, it can be cool. Especially in November, when you’re standing on a windy bluff in Mukilteo with the rain coming down in sheets as you stand in a drainage trench trying to locate a driveway sleeve. Cool is the time when the new patio subgrade had to be blasted with a propane torch to get it warm enough to lay the pavers. And really cool is reaching into your client’s pond to pull out the golfball sized piece of granite in a pump intake.
That’s not it though. Not what they mean by cool. What they might mean is backing the semi into the convention center to unload the massive and ancient oil jars to make a special Northwest Garden Show display. Or disassembling the beaver dam from Bear Creek to free up the salmon run and then reassembling the dam for the Lewis & Clark Garden.
They would think it’s cool to layout a pickleball court for the Northwest’s favorite grunge band or to walk a train layout through a forest of dwarf Japanese maples with leaves the size of your thumbnail. It was cool to sit in the famous Japanese outfielder’s kitchen and discuss how we were going to redesign his backyard and it’s cool to be asked to build a volcano, a giant chessboard or a three hundred foot compass rose.
Cool is living in this world of fresh and creative ideas, where the palette is alive and the colors change throughout the seasons, a place where when you build it, wildlife comes, children play and people relax. It’s working with creative people from different cultures that work with their hands, and understanding the complexities of water, stone, wood and electricity, choreographing multiple construction crews and really looking at a property to realize it's full potential. It’s building something that will last and grow and maybe, just maybe - outlive all of the buildings around it.
That’s cool.
(Photo: "La Palabra Pintada" an exhibit prepared for the NW Flower & Garden Show)
