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The Art of Zen-Landscape Design

A few years ago I was privileged to tour a futuristic house. This house had everything imaginable: automatic doors, intelligent kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, automatic lights and individual room temperature controls.

The food inventory system was fascinating. It could keep inventory on the food reserves and prompt you to order through a message to your email, or your handheld device. If the local store was equipped you could even place an order electronically for pickup.

As an old-school stereo buff that actually remembers when a turntable was something used in playing music not making music, the sounds systems in each of the rooms caught my attention. There was a central program library stored on a hard disk. Each room could have its own music. It could also be configured to permit answering the door intercom, room-to-room communication and even talking on the phone. Of course there were video phone terminals as well. They were tied into the central computer network that controlled everything.

The house reminded me a lot of the Jetson’s cartoon home. Except for the high risers and the air-carport in the basement, it was nearly the same.

As blown away as I was with the interior of the house, it was the outdoor landscaping that left me speechless.

The treatment was deceptively modern. At first glance it appeared all-too-normal. As things were pointed out, though I was flabbergasted.

In that I had some experience in selling landscaping plants and materials I took special interest in how utterly low maintenance the scheme was.

First the beds were ‘mulched’ with a material made from shredded, recycled automobile tires. The landscaping decks and timbers were of a shredded fiber that came from plastic bottles and was fused together under heat, galvanizing the synthetic fibers into a strong composite. The value of both was clear. They would last a very long time. Both the mulch and the timbers were conditioned to be a uniform gray which might at first seem lifeless but with the landscaping relying on progressive bursts of color throughout the season, the primer gray served as an effective canvas for the artistic presentation of nature’s seasonal changes.

While the rest of the tour was moving onward to appreciate the balance of height and foliage density, I lingered behind. My mind drifted. I remembered hearing some of humorist George Carlin’s thoughts on the subject of man’s purpose in the world. He had suggested something to the effect that the purpose of mankind was to provide plastic to the world.

I was amazed at home many problems I could think of that these simple inventions might solve. If the timbers could be made load-bearing, they could replace wood in the frame of a house. Even if they could not be made to bear weight they would substantially reduce the number of wood studs needed for framing. The rubber mulch was ingenious. Not only would it retard the growth of weeds, it would not easily wash away.

As the tour rounded the corner I hurried to catch up with them, seeing yet another example of creative recycling, a fountain made from recycled plastics. As I looked at the base of the fountain, a fairly large and deep pool served as a catch basin for the rain water from the roof and as a reservoir for the irrigation system for the ornamentals and the small lawn. It was a convergence of beauty and utility.

“You gotta see this!” another member shouted. Someone I had spoken to on the tour bus called out to me. He was right of course. It was the reason for my being there. The universe came into a harmonious order as I saw that the lawn seemed to be mowing itself. What had been a personal dream of mine had finally come to fruition.

It was a technological trick, of course. What isn’t these days? The mower was equipped with ultra sensitive feelers and antennae that were programmed to turn the self-propelled, solar-powered deck according to pre-positioned directional signatures imbedded in the landscaping materials.

Whatever it cost I believed that it might be worth it. Then I heard just how much the special landscaping design and all the extra gizmos had cost. “I guess it will be some time before I convert from the old ways,” I told new found friend.

I closed my eyes and cleared my mind of any other thoughts. Someday I might live to see such marvels. Perhaps by the time it was economical there would be some other solution that was even better. Isn’t that the way of technology? Even so I was very impressed. Except that as I walked through the freshly mown grass I happened to step in a pile that someone’s dog had left behind.

Some problems are apparently more difficult than others to resolve.

Maybe someday someone somewhere will come up with a doggie pooper sensor. Whenever a dog enters the yard the position of the animal is tracked and immediately a thermal sensor is engaged to look for the remnant steamer-signature. When located a high intensity laser could be deployed to destroy the foul remnants of the neighborhood dog’s trespassing.

Then again, if that system ever malfunctioned what remained of poor Spot was just about all that his name suggested, and that could trigger a neighborhood arms escalation, as every household sought superiority and that would do no one any good.

E

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posted by Unknown @ 8:35 PM