Waterworks: Azalea Pool Overlook
Your reward for coming down the hill? A combination of a waterfall, a reflecting pool, and a maze made from clipped azaleas.
Central Garden, 1997, Robert Irwin. © Robert Irwin
Transcript
Narrator: Walk from the bougainvillea bowers, toward those descending steps. Look out over the ledge.
[SFX: stream/waterfall]
Water features in gardens are in a way, like fireworks. There’s a sense of awe when you experience them. And here, there’s not only a waterfall and a reflecting pool, but an entire garden of flowering plants.
Irwin borrowed elements and motifs from gardens all over the world—what he called the “vocabulary” of gardens. That “vocabulary” can be anything from water features to plant trellises to the overall style of a garden ...
Get to a spot where you can clearly see the waterfall. See how the wall beneath it is at a slant? Landscape architect Charlotte Frieze talks about its unique design, which includes ridges of texture right above where the water cascades down.
Charlotte Frieze: A chadar is a steep and rough surface, creating fast flowing white water and splashing sound. The water just hits all the little ridges. Chadars were used in Persian and Moghul gardens.
[SFX: waterfall]
Narrator: Above the waterfall, and in the pool below, you see glints of sunlight hitting coins that visitors have thrown in to make wishes. The reflecting pool is an element that’s also steeped in the history of gardens.
Charlotte Frieze: In the Renaissance, the whole purpose of them was to connect the garden with the sky. Here, the reflection has been interrupted by a maze.
Narrator: The clipped hedge that appears to float in the middle of the pool echoes the embroidery-like patterns of French formal gardens, such as Versailles ... although Irwin, apparently, was inspired instead by a Japanese garden’s intricate design.
The hedges in the pool are azaleas. Most of the year, they’re just green, but when they bloom in the spring with pink, fuschia, orange, and red blossoms, it’s stunning—another form of fireworks. From this view, you can marvel at the design of the maze’s interlocking circles. Sometimes you see visiting ducks navigating it, traveling where our eyes wander.
Mindfulness expert Diana Winston offers a way to contemplate the maze:
Diana Winston: Mazes and labyrinths have been used for centuries to walk and reflect. Sometimes people go into a maze with a question. They turn around and come back out, and an answer reveals itself to them.
What if you were to allow your mind to wander through, tracing the maze. Do you end up in a dead-end; do you come out the other side?