BSLA Fieldbook BSLA 2015 Spring Fieldbook | Page 78

BSLA

/ MEMBER

TOM WIRTH, ASLA
LESSONS

G a in e d an d g ive n f ro m 20 ye a r s wi t h WGB H’s
T h i s O l d Ho u s e an d The V i ctor y G ard en

I had been working at Sasaki Associates, when
in 1980, one of the principals approached me
and said his neighbor, Russ Morash, director
of This Old House, was in desperate need for
a landscape architect to help on their second
project—The Bigelow House. He said there were
significant landscape issues, they did not have
a clue where to begin, and he thought I would
be good at the task— especially as an avid do-ityourselfer with hands-on experience renovating
a barn in Sherborn for my family. Hideo Sasaki
gave his blessing on the basis that it would be
a great opportunity to educate the public about
the benefits of good landscape architecture—and
I was on-site and on-air the next day. It was not
without total trepidation, but it was the beginning
of a 20-year ride doing landscape architecture for
all the This Old House episodes for featured homes
in the Boston area, and many Victory Garden
programs as well.
In fact, it was during the taping of one of the
Bigelow House episodes that I was approached
by the WGBH literary agent responsible for The
Victory Garden series of books written by Jim
Crockett, to author a new landscape book . I recall
him saying it will be a breeze—“just write it the
way you say it.” It was supposed to be written
over a year’s leave of absence from Sasaki , and
ultimately it was clear that although I was able
to outline the structure and pen the content,
I failed horribly as a writer—the paragraphs
and pages I had written were bone dry. An exeditor from Little,