[Michelle Derviss]

Check out the new green roof at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.
From there you can walk across the concourse to the museum or the Japanese Tea Garden.
Also within a stones throw is the Botanical garden right across the main street.

There are lots of iconic landscape architectural sites to visit such as Levi plaza, , Ghirardelli Square , Alcatraz Island( Halprin) , The Presidio , and the Embarcadero. If you hit the Embarcadero at the right time you’ll might catch the weekly farmers market which is terrific, it is in the ferry building.

[Michelle Derviss]

Hello Emily,
I work in Marin, Sonoma, Napa and occasionally The Sea Ranch. It is pathetically dead up here in regards to mid range to high end residential design. I don’t do much if any commercial work except for the occasionally winery.
Work load for my small atelier is about 65 to 75 percent down from the boom years.
The last firm that I heard was hiring was Blasen Design , a high end residential design firm located in San Anselmo.
You might want to see what Pete Pederson or George Girvin has for openings or even EDAW in Sausalito.
Good luck, it sucks out there now in regards to landscape design project works.

[Michelle Derviss]

My particular professional interest lies in innovative residential and resort landscape design so I tend to have my eye geared towards that end of the profession.

I find a tremendous amount of cutting edge talent in Southern California and try to visit S.Cal. as often as possible to view innovative new works of sculptural landscape architectural design.

LA based firms such as Jay Griffith, Nancy Goslee Powers, Mia Lehrer, Marmol Radiznier, and many others are small to modest sized firms and may not have a dedicated public relations marketer sending out marketing information in the way that the behemoth firms do.

Or possibly these fabulously talented firms aren’t competing in the arena of high profile civic projects so these LA firms are not recognized in the same way as the tried and true big dog regular contributors ?
Let’s face it, the way to get recognized is to have your firm profiled in the media repeatedly and that is usually after the firm has be recognized for an award winning project in the urban civic arena.

[Michelle Derviss]

I’ve been in business about 27 years and have weathered other recessions with ease. I have never lacked work.
What we are experiencing is not a recession. It is a crash.
Compare it with the Great Depression and you’ll see some staggering similarities in regards to market statistics.

I have only 2 projects on my board right now and they are almost finished. I don’t have any new work coming in.
The projects that were planned for this year ( Napa and Sonoma Valley Vineyard Estates ) have all been indefinitely put on hold.

To make ends meet I contacted several of my high end residential clients and offered my services as a horticulturist/ gardener.
I haven’t done any serious horticultural work in over 17 years but I’m out there again pruning roses and calibrating irrigations systems.

In the past this would be the time of year that I would be hiring additional help and welcoming back regular free lance employees.
But that is not going to happen, unless they want to share time with me shearing some Rhamnus alaternus.

Michelle
http://www.dervissdesign.com

[Michelle Derviss]

No, I don’t agree that it is a good thing when you consider how devastating it has been for millions of families who are now without the basic human needs of adequate shelter and food.

A crisis is never a good excuse to ‘retool’ it’s social fabric.

If you are concerned with urban sprawl and the loss of farm land then this is your opportunity to work as a city and urban planner and try to make a difference.

The construction slow down is tied to the overall economic crisis. This crisis has put mothers, fathers and their children on the street with no place to live and little to eat.
So , no. I don’t think it is a good thing.

If you see this crisis as an opportune time to make a positive change in our land use issues, our loss of wild life habitats , increased energy consumption and environmental pollution than I can support your viewpoint that now may be the time to instill some drastic changes in urban and regional planning and development.

[Michelle Derviss]

Native California Poppy.

[Michelle Derviss]

The College of Marin teaches Vectorworks.
Cost of the class is about 80 dollars.
The teacher is very good and the class is always filled ( and overfilled ) to capacity.
The majority of the students are older practicing architects and landscape architects returning to school.
Vectorworks offers a student copy of Vectorworks when you sign up for the class.

[Michelle Derviss]

Portland must be the up and coming ‘it’ place for those interested in landscape design.
The APLD is planning their yearly meeting there this summer and my design guild, The Hortisexuals, is planning a weekend
garden hopping soiree there this coming June.
I’ll check back in with you as soon as I get updated with some haute hort trips to take while in Portland.
In the mean time you might want to contact local Portland garden artist Jeffery Bale to see if he has any public or private gardens that he has designed that you can see.
His work is fun, funky and very stoney. – http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/design/articles/create-pebble-mosaic.aspx?nterms=74924

[Michelle Derviss]

Eric,
I spec a lot of furniture for our projects.
Over the years I have come to appreciate the quality construction and the exceptional warranty that Brown Jordan offers.
They have a wide variety of styles to choose from too.
I suggest that cushions be taken indoors during the winter and properly stored and the frames that are left out doors to be covered with a high quality pvc based cover.

My own outdoor furniture is Indonesian teakwood. I lightly sand and oil it every spring.
Most people would find this too arduous but I find it relaxing and like the oiled wood look.

photo attached : Napa Valley Pool project

[Michelle Derviss]

Palms . Love ’em.
A fave is Bismarckia nobilis but I’d take a plain old lovely Phoenix canariensis or settle for a Licuala grandis any day.
Photo attached : Bismarckia nobilis taken in Bali Indonesia

[Michelle Derviss]

Love the lyrical tempo of the cascading images.
Emotionally moving.

[Michelle Derviss]

Money.
Nobody likes to talk about it.
I/we try to get an idea of the clients budget ahead of time, like at the first meeting or the inception phone call.
I don’t want to give my clients a rolls royce design if they only have a toyota truck budget.
Sometimes you have to resort to psychological gamesmanship if your client is not forthcoming about their budget.
Show them some images in your portfolio and state the overall design and installation costs.
Often times you can read their body language whether they seem comfortable with the costs or not : ( Recoil in financial horror or nod approvingly at one another )
I will ask them if they find this cost estimate within their comfort zone.

I am constantly updating my ‘cheat sheet’ list of material costs , time and labor.
I have a rough square foot unit cost for most installation tasks that we do.
Some costs have to be further researched more than others due to the frequency of that particular task.
For example we do ( we’re a design and build firm ) a lot of stone work daily so we are up to date with all the costs on that type of project but we don’t do a lot of wood decking so I have to call around to some of our woodworking contractors to get recent pricing.

Cost estimating can amount to a full time job, one that I do not care for very much, but it’s an important and necessary element to the process.

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