News July 2021

Portion of restored landscape at Textwipe/Earthcam offices in Upper Saddleback, NJ. Photo courtesy Earthcam.
Part of the path system, Texwipe/Earthcam corporate garden, James Rose, 1985. Photo: courtesy James Rose Center
Partially restored “teahouse," Textwipe/Earthcam corporate garden, 1985/2018. Photo: courtesy James Rose Center

James Rose landscape in NJ threatened

July 26, 2021

A James Rose-designed corporate garden that won a Docomomo 2020 Modernism in America Award of Excellence is threatened. The landscape, located in Upper Saddle River, NJ, and completed in 1985, is situated in an Orange and Rockland Utilities (ORU) transmission line-of-way, with a 100-foot easement that runs across the campus’s northern end. Citing a New Jersey Board of Public Utility (BPU) regulation requiring vegetation or trees be removed from the right of way, ORU continues to aggressively remove trees and other elements from the site threatening the integrity of a rare and recently rehabilitated James Rose work.

Ongoing removal of trees from this corporate garden landscape has been reducing the site’s aesthetics and character. Current owner, EarthCam, a webcam technology and services company, has worked to preserve Rose’s work over the past eight years by restoring many elements of Rose’s original plan such as timber walls and benches, reconstructing blue-stone paths and zig-zag pools, and horticultural rehabilitation. These efforts earned them the Modernism in America award and an Honor Award from the New Jersey chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Public support is needed to preserve the site’s trees and woodland views and the integrity of an important work of landscape architecture. More details about the garden can be found in the Cultural Landscape Foundation articles below.

Please send comments or letters of support to EarthCam for inclusion in their upcoming appeal to ORU and the BPU.

Email letters to: bill@earthcam.com
Send printed letters to:
Bill Sharp c/o EarthCam, Inc.
650 East Crescent Avenue
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

“An Important James Rose Landscape At-risk,” The Cultural Landscape Foundation, July 16, 2021.
“A Rare James Rose Landscape is rehabilitated,” The Cultural Landscape Foundation, September 28, 2018.