A DAY OF GARDEN DESIGN & MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Each year Longhouse Reserve schedules a day-long seminar matching modern architecture and landscape design. This year the program is called Modernist Landscapes – Visionaries and Their Gardens.

The invited scholars are Barry Bergdoll, a professor from Columbia University; Caleb Smith, a professor from Yale and William Whitaker, the curator of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. The day will be divided into two parts.

Mies van der Rohe’s Lafayette Park, Detroit, where green space flows out of built space.

Morning will be given over to “Abstraction and Nature,” Bergdoll’s discussion of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, and how they expected gardens would extend their vision. A special price of $50 for students and young design professionals covers a reception at 9:30 and this program, which starts at 10 and ends at 10:45. Guests for the early morning program are invited to enjoy a garden walk and nibbles. Deborah Nevins, the vice president of Long House Reserve, says that the definition of “young” is on the honor system.

DeboraH Nevins, vice president of Longwood Reserve and a partisipant in the day’s program.

For those buying the full day package, which goes until 3 pm, the program continues at 11:30 with Bill Whitaker’sdiscussion of the work of on Harriet Pattison (1928 – 2023). Pattinson studied acting at Yale Drama School, piano in Philadelphia with a woman who performed at the Curtis Institute, then moved back to Chicago, where she was born, and had a relationship with Louis Kahn, 27 years her senior, who suggested she might put her artistic talents to work in landscape architecture.

Harrier Pattison with her “mentor” Louis Kahn on the cover of her memoir

Her memoir with letters from Kahn, “Our Days Are Like Full Years” has a photo of the two of them on the cover. Together they had a son, Louis Kahn, who became a filmmaker.

Pattinson began work with Dan Kiley in Vermont. And her brilliant career proceeded from there. Like most l andscape architects, she lived a very long life, dying at age 94.

Next, Caleb Smith will discuss “A Modern Mystic: Art and Nature in the Gardens of Russell Page.” Caleb Smith has written a raft of books, the most recent of which, “Thoreau’s Axe,” has received rapturous reviews. It concerns the desire in America hundreds of years ago to turn away from the distractions of everyday life and seek quiet and contemplation. In essence it is an exploration of man’s search for the healing value of meditation, within and without religion.

Caleb Smith, deep thinker, fan of Russell Page

He and Deborah Nevins are in a race to see who is more gaga about Page. Nevins with join Smith at some point for a fanboy-fangirl chat about Page.

Smith has described Russell Page (1906-1985) in a magazine article as “a brooding, chain-smoking loner” who became a darling garden guy on four continents. Today Page is better known for his memoir/advice book “The Education of a Gardener” (in three editions: 1962, 2007, 2023) than for his gardens, which have mostly been lost. Gardens tend to do that.

Deborah Nevins argued with that idea in an interview. “A lot of people don’t know the work of Russell Page, but he did the Frick Museum, PepSiCo, great houses in England and the United States,” she said.

When Page designed the garden at the Frick, in the 1970s, on the suggestion of Bunny Mellon, his work was of such general interest that he wrote about it in “House & Garden.” In doing so, he shared the kind of insight that gardeners love: “…rules are good servants but not always good masters…” he opined. He died at age 78, in 1985. As noted, he was rarely seen without a cigarette in hand.

Russell Page, in Italy

The long day of considering modern architecture, and the work and lives of Harriet Pattison and Russell Page will conclude at 3 pm. Lunch is included in the price as is the opportunity, always available, to walk Longhouse Reserve’s 16 acres.

Nevins reminded me, “Longhouse Reserve is the largest public garden in Suffolk County.” Tickets for the full day are $250. — Linda Lee