Landscape design is my second career. I ran into a friend from my first career (commercial real estate) at the gym today. A great thing about bumping into old friends is that thereís no point in being shy. She got right to the point. "I can't believe you've been in business ten years. Is there anything you like better about this new career?" "The difference between commercial real estate and landscape design," said I, understatedly, "is that every job is collaboration." "Way to go." she said.

An unexpected benefit of working in a collaborative industry is attending design conferences. At a recent conference in Toronto we had the opportunity to see the Yo-Yo Ma Music Garden, a collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist and Julie Moir Messervy, a prominent landscape architect. The garden was inspired by Bach's First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello.

She told us how an unexpected letter from Yo-Yo Ma arrived one day in the dead of winter, that time of year when landscape designers wonder if they will ever work again. The letter was accompanied by a CD of Bach's suites. A plan ensued, and the garden was to be installed in Boston. At the last minute entitlement snares delayed the project. As it happened, a six-part video, detailing collaborations by Mr. Ma and five other artists was an integral part of this project. The series was to be filmed by a Toronto based film crew, who happened to be in Boston when plans got de-railed.

The film crew suggested that they consider installing the project in Toronto, where Yo-Yo Ma was scheduled to perform the next day. They all flew to Toronto, and they met the mayor, who just happened to have a waterfront site ready to become a park. At the patron's room before the concert, a patron volunteered to head the fundraising effort. Many extraordinary people contributed their talents to this garden, and this summer, one year after its installation, we were all together at a tour led by Julie Messervy. This garden is extraordinary, and you can wander while listening to Bach on handheld audio sets. Butterflies abound, and in one part of the video, a butterfly lands and spends quite a bit of time on Mr. Ma's cello while he was playing a concert in the garden.

While we were touring, we asked about maintenance. Many buildings adjacent to the park have been converted to condominiums and local businesses and condo associations are volunteering to maintain specific parts of the garden. The project has truly become a community collaboration.

This beautiful site reinforced my conviction that the best work comes from collaboration between a client and a talented team, encouraged and inspired by the vision of the project, and a practical, can-do attitude about getting things done. Think big, find the right team, value-engineer the project.

Article by Rosalind Reed published in The Weedpatch Gazette