Archive for the ‘Gardens’ Category

« Older Entries

In my Reader…Slow Love Life

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

So many magazines that have disappeared in the past few years.  One of the ones I miss the most is House and Garden.  Dominique Browning was its editor from 2002 until 2007 when it was shuttered.  Her wonderful blog Slow Love Life is worth the read.  It’s a personal journal of savoring life and slowing down enough to enjoy and rediscover the things she likes, does and experiences.   There are thoughtful and intimate remembrances and ideas, beautiful images, and even recipes. I like the sheer joy (and sometimes sadness) of it.  Try it and see if you do too.

Some links to recent posts with an image from that post…

Floating Meditation

Farmer’s Market

Paradise Found:  LongHouse Reserve

Goodbye Children

So on this last official weekend of the summer I think I’ll try and capture some of my own slow love life.  Enjoy!

Tags:
Posted in Design, Garden Styles, blogs, inspiration | No Comments »

In my Reader…Dirt Simple

Friday, August 27th, 2010

This is one of my favorite blogs about landscape design written by a landscape designer. Its author, Deborah Silver, is also the owner of Detroit Garden Works and The Branch Studio.  Her landscape design aesthetic is traditional as is the shop merchandise and the garden accessories she designs.  She has flawless taste, a remarkable humility, technical chops and a keenly analytical and creative mind.  In other words, she’s the real deal.  In Dirt Simple, Deborah muses on her life, her shop and her design work.  For me, this is a regular read, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.  Her images illustrate most posts–here are a few recent ones.

The shop store front with window planters below.

In praise (mine) of humble materials used in elegant fashion for this potager’s enclosure.

Capturing the view.

A glowing border.  Deceptively simple in fact.

Just in case you thought things were too subtle…the designer’s own terrace.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Garden Design, Landscape Design, landscape designer | 6 Comments »

Monday 29 | A Year of Mondays

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Change.  Within a single day, the mature garden that was here has been cleaned up, rethought and redone.  Within my own gardens this is a fact of life.  Almost as soon as the end of the first season a garden in planted, I want to change it.  Sometimes the change is out of my control.  The wonderful leaning American hornbeam branch that anchors one end of the garden is dead.  It’s been in decline for years but I’ve left it since I liked it–it’s in danger of falling on the house…it has to come down.

No 29

Change is what I love about gardens…they are in constant flux.  I don’t want to know that this or that will be blooming in that particular corner on in that particular month.  I don’t want static. I want to experiment and be surprised.  I’ll take the good with the bad.  The great idea with the one that fails…it’s how I train my mind and eye.

Posted in Gardens, Year of Mondays | 4 Comments »

Garden Renovation

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

For more than half of the past year I’ve been observing and writing about my small side yard garden.  I didn’t know when I started the project where it would lead.  Inexperienced house painters, a severe drought and weeks of  intense heat  have brought me to an impasse.  Try and make do or rework.  Since I am a landscape designer, I’ve decided to redesign and renovate my own gardens.

The front garden c. 2008

In the twelve years since I first started gardening here, times have changed.  Winters are warmer but seemingly more intense.  Water restrictions are in place in the summer.  Spring and fall are still cooler, but spring seems shorter and fall longer.

The original side yard garden

The original side yard garden design

The structure and overall layout of the gardens will not change much–the plant selection and some of the details will.  I’m adding a rain barrel to an area of the yard with no spigot and difficult access, but  is adjacent to the house and has a downspout.  I’m going to relocate some plants, trash others and add new ones.  Anything new will have to be tough to be a long term contender.  Here’s some of what I’ve been stockpiling–you’ll see the combinations aren’t for the faint hearted.  I’ve been struggling with how to use yellow foliage for a while, so I’m taking it on in the home garden.

An experimental combination

I want to combine this Rhus thphina ‘Tiger Eyes’ and grow the Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’ up through it.

Cercis canadensis 'The Rising Sun'

All three foliage colors

A new introduction.  This is going in the front yard in a newly enlarged bed.  I live on a corner.  It will stop traffic!

Supporting players

I want to beef up the late season show.  The gardens have a progressive dominant bloom color from early spring to mid summer.  It loosely ranges  from white to yellow to blue to hot pink, so I’m adding indigo and orange to the late summer show with Veronia noveborancensis (an Eastern native) and Helenium x ‘Dancing Flames’.  The Continus coggygria ‘Golden Spirit’ in the background will yellow up more when it gets its new sunny home.  More to follow as the story unfolds–I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posted in Cercis canadensis 'The Rising Sun', Garden Design, Gardens, plants | 9 Comments »

Monday 28 | A Year of Mondays

Monday, August 16th, 2010

The slowest painters in the world are gone and it’s getting cooler.  There is rain in the forecast so maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to make some order out of chaos–this is what a month or more of total neglect and painters looks like.  I’ve found that I like the disorder almost as much as I like the intent and wonder how to design controlled disarray…or is that an oxymoron?

No. 28

Posted in Gardens, Year of Mondays | 1 Comment »

In my Reader…Dig It!

Friday, August 13th, 2010

I’m going to start off by saying that hackers suck.  Miss R has been down for a week due to malicious attacks and is now back fortified and healthy.  Thank you for your patience.  Now onward.

I’ve written about Dig It! before…when two of my gardens were profiled in it.

This cool garden zine has been around for 7 or 8 years.  Its focus is the mid-Atlantic states, but the content is interesting enough for readers everywhere. Editor Mary Jasch seeks out the sublime, the practical and the accessible for Dig It! readers.  The layout is different than most online publications–its format has been largely unchanged since the beginning.  Straightforward without the bells and whistles of  faux turning pages, copy is in the center and photos are along the right side to be enlarged at the reader’s click.  It gives Dig It! a gravity that many ‘eye candy’ journals don’t have.

Here are links to two recent articles, although all of the articles ever published are easily accessible within DigIt!  Thunder Lane:  A Magical Garden and Native Plants – A Living History.

Enjoy!  Miss R will be back on a regular schedule next week.

Tags:
Posted in Garden Styles, Gardens, inspiration | No Comments »

In my Reader…Recycle UK

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

Every now and again someone will email me and ask me to post something on my blog. I never have…before today. I’m usually fiercely independent and don’t want to have to return the favor.  This was originally sent to me via email.

I have recycler’s guilt.  I still throw away too  much–although considerably less than many of my neighbors if our weekly trash bags are counted.  Although the site itself is similar to the US freecycle sites, this infographic  from England is really worth the read.  Click on it,  it will be enlarged and readable.  Thanks, Claire at recycle UK.

Recycling

Infographic by Recycle – Don’t bin it, recycle it

Tags: ,
Posted in Garden Styles, environment, green, recycling | No Comments »

Miss R was a victim…

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

…of malicious hackers and so was down for a day.   It has been fixed and the reports sent to Google.  It has also been armed with fancy new malware protections.  I apologize for any inconvenience or worry it may have caused you.

Posted in Garden Styles | No Comments »

Sandy Beaches

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Every year about this time I get the urge to drive to the beach.  The waves of the Atlantic Ocean, the cool breezes and the sand between my toes calms and rejuvenates me. I ran across these images of the sand works of Jim Denevan and wanted to share them–his work was previously unknown to me…they are the beach and so much more.

Tags:
Posted in Garden Styles, earthworks, inspiration | 7 Comments »

Monday 27 | A Year of Mondays

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

I never really know what I’m going to write about on these Mondays.  I always have the garden image first and then backtrack.  I wonder, why did that particular aspect of the garden attract me?  I try to be honest in my choice – both from an aesthetic viewpoint as well as being true to the discovery aspects of the project.

Now for the discovery part.  I’ve been foggy.  My brain full of cobwebs.  Mid-summer heat brings me a  lack of focus that lifts with the cooler weather.  So…on this foggy morning these spiderwebs were the moment.

No. 27

Tags: ,
Posted in Creative Process, Gardens, Year of Mondays | 6 Comments »

« Older Entries