McVay Courtyard under construction . BOTTOM : Iain Robertson placing stones in one of the courtyard “ rivers .” ( Photos courtesy Elisabeth C . Miller Library )
IR : That happens very much to designers . It ’ s more than chew on it . It sort of takes over your whole life . Everything you look at , everything you see , everything you talk about relates to the design that ’ s germinating in your mind . And then , when the time has come , it sort of sprouts and starts to grow .
JO : Oh , that ’ s interesting . How did you pick the trees that are outside of the actual swale ?
IR : Well , they were all natives , and the ones in the grid [ the serviceberries , Amelanchier × grandiflora ] are flowery . And we were picking plants , again , that did well in that sort of soil and microclimate .
JO : And with so much water , right ? That ’ s got to be very damp ?
IR : It was totally , totally hard clay . It ’ s awful , awful stuff — and now as we speak , the trees need to be replaced . Not because it was a mistake , but just because things have changed , and the trees have grown too big . I would love to see that grove replaced .
JO : Would you just take one tree out , put a new one in ?
IR : No , this is a case where you would do the whole thing . It was a grove and it was meant to be formal [ connecting the formal plantings of the CUH with the informal native plantings of the Union Bay Natural Area ]. The plants were meant to be similar in age and size . And so , in this case , you wouldn ’ t take out all the shrubs around there , but the plants on the grid would definitely be replaced at the same time .
JO : And then how did you come to choose the site furnishings : the bridge and the rock bench ?
IR : Well , again , we were working with Marenakos , and we designed as we worked with them . They did the walls along the edges of the swale , and we had designed a very small , cheap wooden bridge . And the folks at Marenakos said , nah , let us put our slab there . Because they really got into the design , they donated it without us asking . They were fabulous .
JO : That ’ s amazing . Has the use of the grove been what you envisioned the public experience of it to be ?
IR : Well , I think yes and no . Yes , it fits in with the wilder part … beyond CUH … Union Bay . But we never got to regrade areas beyond the grove . I did a design — a very quick one — but there were never funds for that . And there are still the remains of the old road , which needs to be just obliterated . It would be wonderful to work the grounds into a series of mounds and dips that would allow people to sit in the amphitheaters or whatever the spaces become . And it would help with the drainage .
So , the point was not to do something just for aesthetic reasons but also to focus on function so that we could actually make a usable , useful space — one that would look good , perform an important service , and not be muddy .
Jennifer Ott is an environmental historian and the assistant director of HistoryLink . org , an online encyclopedia of state and local history in Washington State . Her most recent book is “ Olmsted in Seattle : Creating a Park System for a Modern City ” ( History Link / Documentary Media LLC , 2019 ).
Elegant patterns of spaces and views that unfold over time .
Landscape Architecture bergerpartnership . com
Summer 2021 v 23