Landscape Observatory: The Work of Terence Harkness by M. Elen Deming (review)

Landscape Observatory: The Work of Terence Harkness is a survey of the life and career of Terence Harkness; an observer, a recorder, a plantsman and a teacher-designer. The book illustrates his holistic thought process, his attitude to the interrelatedness of regionalism and formalism, and his unique passion for landscape education. Edited by M. Elen Deming, the book incorporates numerous commentaries by contributors including Molly C. Briggs, Brenda Brown, Frank Clements, Kathleen Harleman, Doug Johnston, Ken McCown, Robert B. Riley, Amita Sinha, James Wescoat and a forward by Gary Hilderbrand.

The first section, Landscape Observatory, An Introduction, is about Harkness’ career from graduate student, to teacher, to practitioner, and finally to teacher/practitioner. Harkness’ MLA thesis is discussed and by all accounts it is an ambitious and enduring history of the Central Illinois landscape, one which informed his future regionalist design approach and “focused a lifelong enquiry.” His ensuing professional and teaching career, which spanned forty years, made him a beloved professor and garnered him several prestigious teaching awards. The second section, Portfolio, is an exploration of five of Harkness’ most significant projects, ranging from an East Central Illinois Garden to the Taj Mahal Heritage District plan in Agra, India, with essays by close friends and colleagues. These projects are exemplary of Harkness’ philosophy and working method as well as the development of his practice. The final section, Reflections, focuses on stories about Harkness from collaborators and friends, based on years of knowledge and the gift of reflection. The stories are intended to give the reader a deeper understanding of Harkness as a person. Although retired, Harkness, at age eighty-nine, is still active on the University of Illinois campus and oversees several gardens.

Deming, along with individual authors, has woven throughout the book Harkness’ own voice through interviews and writings, thereby allowing the reader a glimpse of a modest man who loves plants, nature, and above all, a person who loves to teach. These interviews are illuminating and entertaining, and the immediacy of Harkness’ own voice gives us a feeling of intimacy. At the same time, the placement of the interviews, mixed within the text of a given page, can be distracting, leaving the reader torn between which text to read.

Perhaps best of all are Harkness’ deceptively spare and simple illustrations and diagrams, a signature of his teaching and design process, which appear throughout the book. In his process, he used graphics to tell a story and to stimulate conversation. I am impressed by their delicate power, elegance, and consistency. His colored sketches have depth and vitality, while the black and white sketches have an equally strong graphic quality. The accompanying photographs are interesting and support the text, but many lack the resolution they should have, which is disappointing.

I was interested to learn that Harkness grew up in southern California, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, and then moved to the prairie region of the Midwest to study at the University of Illinois. I grew up in New York at the foot of the Ramapo Mountains, in the midst of Eastern hardwood forests, granite outcroppings, Canadian hemlocks and flowering dog-woods. As I expect it was for Harkness, moving to the Midwest was a dramatic change for me, but I immediately fell in love with the subtlety of the landscape; the colors, the relative flatness, the staghorn sumacs. I confess that since I went to the University of Michigan and not the University of Illinois, I missed the opportunity to have Terrence Harkness as a teacher. This book then is a revelation to me.

I admire Harkness’ long view, his ability to see a site or landscape in its entirety, its “cultural and natural, managed and spontaneous” aspects, its different communities, its precedents. I respect his ability to engender in other people the ability to know that landscape through a more meaningful understanding. Having had my...