Tag: CalHort

Olivier Filippi speaks to CalHort

olivier-in-his-garden

Our friends, Olivier Filippi and his wife Clara, owners of a well-known nursery in the South of France, were to visit us in California during the month of June.  While here, I asked if Olivier would like to speak to our local California Horticultural Society.  He was very happy at the opportunity to meet so many gardeners and address them regarding his ideas and the plants he was growing in his nursery.

There was enough lead time to get him onto the speaker schedule and the society was pleased to be able to feature someone traveling from so far (they bumped up their normally very modest stipend).  Everything seemed so easy to arrange . . .

I was asked to introduce Olivier to the group – most of whom were unfamiliar with his work and prestige among European gardeners.  I thought this would be simple, that is until I mounted the stage and started to describe my friend, who was sitting right in front of me.  Stage fright was not a problem – I had addressed this crown many times before and was already a seasoned speaker myself.  No, it was trying to find the appropriate words to describe the important work Olivier was doing.  I suddenly felt I would get it wrong, miss-speak, or I might even offend him!  I nearly froze!!  I was so surprised!

How I managed to get through it, I am not sure, but Olivier thanked me later so I must not have messed up very badly.  It was interesting to see these California gardeners reacting to Olivier talk (he spoke mainly on Cistus species and cultivars that are good garden subjects).  He showed many beautiful slides of his test garden where he evaluates plants.  The audience was clearly impressed with how well these plants looked, so compact and well-formed, and interrupted him about what horticultural techniques he used to get them to look that way.

Olivier was confused at first – he did not understand the questions: “When do you prune?”, “What sort of fertilizers do you use?”, etc.  I smiled in the dark, understanding the problem.  Finally, he caught on also.  “Oh!  I don’t water this garden.”  “What do you mean?!” several audience members said all at once.  “I don’t believe in watering gardens.  I just let them grow and if they fail to thrive on natural rainfall, then we do not carry them in the nursery.”  Suddenly there was a lot of mumbling around me.  Clearly this was hard to many of them to comprehend.

Many gardeners don’t even consider for a moment that plants would be able to fend for themselves after being planted.  This was one of the messages I had been trying to convey to the group for some time now and here they were hearing it from an important nurseryman with an international reputation.  I know many of the society members found ways to discount Olivier’s statements, but it does seem that at least of few started to think in this way at last.

CalHort ad art

In 1992, I was asked to come up with a new Pacific Horticulture ad for the California Horticultural Society.  The society was getting ready to celebrate their 60th anniversary (in 1993).  As an active member during this time, I created new ad art as a member gift to the society.  I still have the Pacific Horticulture issue where I apparently took notes on the creation of the new ad – text to be modified, additions, subtractions.

calhort-ad-smaller

Looking over other current ads in the magazine, I considered an approach that would cause the new add to distinguish itself in relation to other page content.  The old add was relatively nondescript with a mere bulleted list of reasons to join the group.  While this was not to change, I wanted more graphic appeal.

I chose a stylized representation of Sollya (now Billardiera) heterophylla, which was a relatively new plant in local gardens at the time.  I made the flowers white – there is a white form of this species – and the foliage black, to increase the graphic contrast.  This ad art was done in the old style of cut-and-paste, with the text produced using a computer mark-up language and pasted right onto the drawing.  The line border with rounded edges was done by the magazine’s ad art group using their standard template.

This ad ran in Pacific Horticulture from 1993-2003.  I recall that it was assumed to contribute to a rise in membership during the beginning of the period.  Even during its final year, it was always easy to spot in the publication, in spite of many neighboring ads having been ‘improved’ during that time.

CalHort poster art – 1991

During one of the CalHort meetings, I heard that they were looking for someone to take over the job of producing posters for the monthly meetings.  These posters were then sent to various nurseries, libraries and other public place throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to publicize the upcoming speaker program.  Having done a lot of graphic design in the past decade or more, I thought it seemed like something I could contribute.

This kind of event announcement might seem strange today – in the age of the online event calendars, e-mailing lists, Facebook events – but that is how we still did things during the early 1990s.  Google and the internet as we now know it did not even start until later in the 1990s, and even then most people were still unaware of the emerging online world.

After I volunteered, I learned what else apparently went with the task!  Not only was I to design and create the poster, I also had to chase down the information for each speaker program – usually directly from the speaker.  This part I actually found interesting – it was an opportunity to connect one-on-one with someone who had something valuable to share with others.  For the most part, all of them were relatively pleasant to work with, though occasionally their busy schedules made contact difficult.

The other part of the process I only became aware of after I finished my first poster.  It was only then that I was informed that I was in charge of the printing of the poster and mailing labels, preparing them for mailing, and then actually mailing them using our non-profit USPS code at a specific post office in San Francisco!  Managing the mailing list was unexpected, but again, it gave me the location of many nurseries I had never visited.  I also had the opportunity to update this list with many other institutions that I knew would welcome information about these meetings.

The artwork for this posters was largely done by hand.  I was able to produce most of the text (except the large font left sidebar CALHORT SOCIETY, which was hand-drawn) using a mark-up language – i.e. you had to send it to a mainframe computer to process and then it had to print before you knew if it was what you wanted.  The artwork was executed using various forms of cut-and-paste (it the fully literal sense!) methods I had been using for years.

Below are two of the early posters I did at the end of 1991 (I continued producing and distributing these speaker program announcements through 1992 & 1993).