Larry DeMartino Interview, Part 3 of 3

DT: We've talked a little bit about your training and the tradition of landscape architecture before, but we haven't really talked about how you've applied here in your own garden around your house. And maybe some of the techniques you've used here and dealt with, the dry climate you're in, and using native plant materials. Perhaps you can talk about that.

LD: Yeah, well, architects, if they're smart, have somebody else design their houses for them. But it's tough because you have to sort of put your money where your mouth is. And, but I've, I did my garden, and a lot of the gardens in the neighborhood.

And they don't really have any kind of visual identity to them as being done by Larry DeMartino. But they have certain basic principles about them.

And if you're going to look at gardens and, in and around San Antonio, you really have a couple of basic things to look at. You're either on limestone real close to the surface, like the White Cliffs of Dover, and much of Austin, or you're in these black clay soils whose parent material is Ingleford shale, and has high expanses and shrink characteristics, which means when its wet, it compacts and raises in elevation, when it's dry it cracks and splits in crevices.

The limestone ones are are are are tough because most of them have been grazed and goaded to the point where there's no soil to plant anything in. But in these low-lying areas, such as here in River Road, we have these deep expansive intractable clays that are a real challenge.

Over here we have the problems of the high density and the alkalinity of the soil being such that it greatly limits the plant vocabulary in terms of the stuff that you can go to a local nursery and buy. We also have the problem of being near the river where you don't want to pollute that river, so you want to be really careful about it.

And you don't want to increase the surface runoff to the point where you contribute to the flooding. In other words, one of the principles might be is when it rains, try and hold the water on your land as much as possible.

As we already indicated, clipped lawns have a very high runoff coefficient contributing to flooding. It isn't quite as bad as asphalt or concrete, but its pretty close, especially if its clipped.

And so I don't like lawns unless they're Bluestem and four or five feet tall. Most of our grasses here are very that are what I would call environmentally sound, are pretty, pretty tall. Although I guess there's quite a bit of work being done by Ladybird and and the people there in Austin, on closer clipped grasses that you don't have to cut, and don't use a lot of water.

Unfortunately, here, when it rains, they rot out. So we have to be very careful about that. So I've limited myself to trying to solve, or do a few of the things here that I've done on much larger projects.

The first being minimizing impervious cover, which means that you infiltrate the soil with the natural rain as much as possible, and build up and actually store water in the soil where the roots are. And so I've done a couple of things here wh which which augment that.

First, almost all of the pavement is decomposed granite, which is a wonderful median to walk on underfoot, and enriches the soil. And that material is local from Llano, Texas, not too far from here. Makes a good surface to walk in. And it gets away from the need for slick surfaces.

Decomposed granite will store enormous quantities of water and transfer that water to the roots of plants and into the soil underneath it. So a lot of my gardens have extensive use of decomposed granite, or granular material that actually traps and stores water.

Also, one of the things that I did in that median between the sidewalk and the curb was to raise the height of the curb with some broken concrete, and make a berm full of dirt and, and plants so that when the water runs off my dri off my property, its stored over the top its stored on top of the sidewalk. And you cant walk on the sidewalk for maybe half hour or so during a heavy rainstorm.

But that water instead of going over the curb and into the San Antonio River, finds its way into the roots of my pecan tree. And so I've done that on several projects.

I got in trouble with that, actually, at Our Lady of the Lake University because the city code says that you must have a certain fall between the base of a building and the curb. And I I alienated that with some berms to store the water on the campus instead of dumping it in the street, and the city didn't like it, and was refusing to grant a building permit for whatever it was we were doing out there until but sanity prevailed finally out there.

So we we we we do have rules and regulations still on the books in San Antonio and other municipalities that discourage us from doing things the right way.

And no matter how well-meaning these people are, that everybody's lot ought to drain, there's issues of, you know, drain completely while its coming down six inches per hour, or you know, be free from standing water, you know, an hour after a rainfall.

Here, in terms of the plant selection, I like to collect plants. And I'm not only interested in native plants, but I'm interested in anything that'll grow. And, so this is a collection of stuff from all over the world. Some of its experimental and comes from China, some of it is tropical and its supposed to be too cold to grow here, but I've done a lot of work in the tropics.

I think for a long time I was probably the only American landscape architect that worked in the tropics. It's amazing that landscape architects in America except for one or two when Florida became temperate plant landscape architects, but I think educations changing, that people have to if they're going to be a landscape architect, they have to learn how to work all over the world.

DT: How would you (?) plants that'll use little water? I know that's always a concern here in San Antonio.

LD: Well, plants don't use that much water. Basically, most of the water is lost to evaporation and runoff. And the poor little plant doesn't use that much water. Most of its wasted through evaporation, watering at the wrong time, spraying it into the air, or...

The the the soil here absorbs water. This clay absorbs water very slowly, so the water virtually has to stand on the soil for a certain amount of time before it will be absorbed because the molecular particles of these clays are are cul they're so fine, they're colloidal. And they're very, very tight, particularly when they're dry. And the water has to stand on them for a certain period of time to to be absorbed.

If you've got a granular soil with a lot of sand in it, you know, it'll go right into it. But this stuff is very dense. If you have a a jar of sand and you poor water in it, you don't have to stir the sand and the water to mix it.

But if you've got something fine, like flour, and you pour the water on top of it, you usually have a layer of flour, a layer of flour and water, and a layer of water. You have to either wait until it for it all to go down to the bottom, or stir it and mix it.

So here we can stir it and mix it by adding enormous amounts of organic material to the clay. Or you could just let the water sit on the top. Now what we've done here is really kind of interesting in that we've, we've delayed the time that the water goes to the street by building this berm along the sidewalk. And then we've tipped the driveway so that its tipped not to the street, but to the side yard. And we have no lawn. None at all.

The rest of the pavement is all decomposed granite. The house is up on piers, so, and it has a very small square footage. This house looks huge, but its only twenty-seven by twenty-seven feet, and its three stories high, so it has minimum land area coverage.

What we've tried to do is to keep everything mulched so that there's no bare dirt, so that there's either a plant, very densely planted, plus being mulched with a good thickness of mulch.

And so so what happens is that when the sun hits the mulch, if the sun hits the dirt, the all goes up to evaporation. But if you have that layer of mulch, it insulates and keeps the moisture in. You've got to mulch your, in terms of adding organic matter to the soil so that it absorbs the water more easily, and so that it acts as a buffer to the to the sun.

In some cases, I've completely covered yards with these arbors like you see, just because there's a need for for instant gratification. People want shade, but you go and plant a a tree out there, and maybe their children or their grandchildren will enjoy the shade from it, but they're certainly not going to. So

sometimes we've gone in and covered yards completely with lat structures and put the planting underneath. And by the time the plants have grown, the lat structured rotted, and you just take it and, you know, use it for mulch.

DT: Speaking of the long run, and children and grandchildren, do you have any advice that you might be able to hold out for future generations about some of these problems you've been working on?

LD: Well, yeah.

DT: Either in landscape design or in some of the political work you've done?

LD: Yeah. I think a couple things have happened. I think this Ens Enron scandal has scared the hell out of a lot of people. So I think the moral compass is starting to change.

Locally, we've had three city councilmen hauled off in in cuffs for taking bribes. You know, that does more good than all the proselytizing that anybody like me can do. People's moral compass gets out of whack. And you can write all the ordinances that you want.

But I think were getting to the point now with the Internet and with the availability of information, that a lot of people can't argue, can't use the argument of ignorance anymore. I think were getting to that point, where you just can't say I didn't know the gun was loaded, because there's too much information out there and its too readily available.

And if people would use the information that they've got, and act in a moral way, thinking about not instant gratification, or what they want, or what their ego wants right now, but think about what they're doing in terms of their neighbors, and in terms of the world around them, in terms of taking care of the land and their communities, these are the kind of values that are really important in professionals, for professionals to have.

You know, it's tough for an architect to say, well, that building shouldn't be there, because then he's out of a job. It's tough for an engineer to say, well, it's the wrong thing to do to to to to pave that creek with six miles of concrete liner, its y y you know, because you're out of a job.

But a you know, at some point, we have to quit worrying about the commission, and start worrying about each other, and and and and and what we're going to contribute when you st when you look back on your life, and what kind of regrets you had about the things you did, and what kind of a person you were.

And you know, all that stuff piles on you after a while. And, so I w I w I I I would tell young people to be absolutely unabashed in their activism, in there manifesting their beliefs. They've got to do this, because by bouncing this off of other people and off the society, you find your own place, you know. Tempers your own will.

The most intelligent people are those who last the most, lost the most battles because what that does is pre-disaster you for the future. And, so I'm invig I I I I I believe in a society that's invigorates itself. Invigor invigor we've invigorated our society here in America through immigrant immigration that has invigorated our society and kept it alive.

We have invigorated our society by continuing to reinvent ourselves over and over again through education and through giving. Giving of information freely to those who come after us, you know.

They didn't do that for years. There were trade secrets that people took to their death. Now everybody seems to be eager, except for Bill Gates, to give away everything that he knows, because, you know, he doesn't know that that's the smartest thing to do is to give it all away because it comes back and and and and and and and and and it that's the essence of free trade, you know. And that's our future. So I

I would tell people, young people particularly, that they need to embrace the feel the future. They need to be very honest with themselves and other people, and enjoy the journey of life. The journey. You know, the most important thing is not starting or completion, its enjoying the now.

Enjoying the now, enjoy the journey of life. And you can enjoy it if you're open, and honest, and sharing, and willing, and eager, and excited. That's what I would I would say. And I hope my daughter, you know, that's what I would want for her. And that's what I would want for, you know, for students or for young people coming up.

We have a unique opportunity in this country because of of of of of what we are and how we've solved our problems. And what we solve, and how we solve here, will solve eventually the problems of China, well eventually solve the problems of Africa because we have tried them on ourselves first, and we know what works and doesn't work.

But we have to be very open and free in helping these people, assisting these people solve their problems. Now some of them are going to make the same mistakes we have.

But if we've solved problems, eventually they'll come around to to to to to the ways and the means that work. You know, this country during the industrial revolution lasted a long period of time we've destroyed vast areas of America.

But China has had industrialization for a short period of time. And already, within the short period of time, these people are starting in the government, they're starting to become concerned about environmental issues because they live now in a place that in a short period of time is the worst there, the this, the worst that, the you know.

So they're beginning to look to answers which we have. And so I'm I'm hopeful a a about the future and I I think a lot of young Americans, free of prejudice and free of a lot of constraints would e ea eagerly attack the world, and do a good job at it.

DT: Good advice. Thanks. Appreciate it. End of Reel 2352 End of Interview with Larry DeMartino