Pottering Around

The King's Speech and a stroll in The Regent's Park gardens.

This week we are doing something different. Our search for local creativity will continue and we've found some interesting art and design that we are looking forward to sharing soon. However, being new to this online endeavor, we are still pulling bits and pieces together and want everything to be just right. So here is what we will call a Garden Diversion.

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in The King's Speech.

Marina and I made it to the cinema just in time to see The King's Speech before last night's Academy Awards Show. Like many people, we thought it was a beautiful movie and deserved the Oscar. Impeccably acted, crafted and produced and despite us all needing a break from the weather right now, it also perfectly captured the cold and damp of winter in England. So to jolly things up and bring a little color to the ongoing gray outdoors, we've dug up this photo showing a garden location from the film in a much warmer light!

The Avenue is a formal garden area located in the Southeast corner of London's Regent's Park. Tree lined paths were part of the original landscaping design and plans by John Nash in 1812 but were not built at the time because the Royal Prince lost interest when he turned his attention to some remodeling improvements he wanted to do around Buckingham Palace!

About 1850, the Royal Botanic Society stepped in and commissioned garden designer William Nesfield to rework the park plans. By 1864 new planting schemes, fountains and ornaments were installed and it became The Avenue,  a Victorian-style garden in full glory.

We've posted a few more landscape photos we found to help brighten your day along with some links to information about Regent's Park history and the making of The King's Speech.

Click on any of the garden photos above to see more of each photographer's work on flickr. There's a lot of history inside Regent's Park, but we found a few gaps in the available information. For example, very little seems to be written online about the park during and just after World War 2. Maybe this is another future diversion for us to go on!

Here are the two best websites we found on the history of the gardens. One is The Royal Parks site and the other is The London Parks and Garden Trust.

This is a great article in The Daily Mail if you are interested in all the locations and the making of The King's Speech.

The Tropics, Oak Park, Illinois

The Oak Park Conservatory

This week we made the fifteen minute journey to the warmer climates of The Oak Park Conservatory. Even though we live near by and do a lot of work in the area, this was our first visit. Usually we are either too rushed to take in local sites after meetings with Oak Park/River Forest homeowners to present designs and plans or just too exhausted to walk another inch after overseeing (and pitching in) on landscape construction projects in the area.

We are delighted to have finally discovered this glass gem along the Eisenhower and will be stopping back often.

Plenty of snapshots and stories from the trip follow ~

Local artists. Local art and people.

This is a quick follow up to our last post about Riverside, IL. While visiting Grumpy's (itself a local landmark) we sadly missed the coffee shop's former location in the Arcade Building which is currently undergoing renovation, but were pleased to find some attractive and appropriately themed paintings on the walls.

Both Susan Hong-Sammons (above) and Walter Monastyretsky (below) have immortalized the ice cream monger in oils.

More about the artists and see Monastyretsky's painting of the Riverside Water Tower after the jump.

The cold and lonely art walk begins.

Historic Train Station and Water Tower, Riverside, IL

Well here we go and not a moment too soon. At the beginning of the year, when we decided to set off on this treasure hunt of creativity in our backyard and beyond, we were very interested in the idea of exploring the real world and sharing it in this online journal. Unfortunately, it was not as easy as just strapping on the old snow shoes, grabbing a camera and heading out into the frigid landscape. Nope, we had to actually first build a virtual world where the stories and pictures of local creative people and places could live.

Happy to say the main geeky work is complete and now we are off. Please join us after the jump for a quick trip through historic Riverside, IL!

Finding inspired places under two feet of snow.

Swinging Bridge, Riverside, IL

Northern Illinois, what a place to be landscape garden designers. Winters are always longer than summer and this year it looks as though we will be getting bonus weeks of bitter cold and record snowfall. However, if weather was going to stop us it would have long ago and our new online journey has begun. We’ve ventured out, the first pictures are in the can and fingers have thawed out just enough to poke away at the keyboard.

We hope you join us on our journey to discover the very best in creative design, art, craft and style in our local areas. Everything will be experienced in real life and shared here online.

Finding inspiration is crucial in the work we do as professional designers. Yes there are infinite places on the web to view beautiful design but it’s no substitute for actually seeing, touching and experiencing the true objects or meeting the real people behind the work. This is what we plan to do.

Starting in Chicago’s western suburbs, Riverside, Illinois to be exact, but who knows where we might end up once the temperature climbs above 10 degrees! The main focus will be design for home and garden but we’re also looking forward to finding exceptionally creative and stylish people, places and businesses of all kinds.

This journal may be new but we’ve been pottering around for quite a while. We are Jamie and Marina Berger and have operated a landscape garden design studio called Pottering Around for 8 years come this spring. Our landscape studio website has just been spruced up. Please have a look around and stop back here this Thursday for a wintery look at Riverside.