The Davey Garden's moment in the Sun(set)

There comes a time in every good garden when you can stand back and recognize that all of your hard work, planning and, yes, frustration is paying off.  Joy and Steve Davey's garden has been a learning process (see our earlier journal article), but now that we've balanced the aesthetic goals with reality and a little time, the results are fantastic.  The garden is having its first moment in the limelight in the current issue of Sunset (page 48!), and there is more to come.

Congratulations and thanks to Joy and Steve, who have given us the gifts of patience and inspiration in building and developing their garden.  It will only get better from here!

Best-ever Coastal Garden?!?

(The Sunset Fresh Dirt Blog is, unfortunately, no more.  Apologies for the broken link.)

Have you seen the wonderful post about the coast garden on Sunset's Fresh Dirt?  I spent a lovely morning there with Jim McCausland, while he shot the photos you'll see in the article (there must be 2000 more!).  The Tersignis' garden has been a delight to develop, and we couldn't be more grateful to have such terrific clients and wonderful backdrop.  More photos and notes on that garden can be found in some of our earlier posts, many of which are here (be sure to scroll down).  And, of course, there are more photos and notes to come!

Four Views of the Coast Garden

Isn't it amazing how physical perspective can change a garden?  Below are four views of the same section of the garden we built on Coos Bay.  

A Romantic Deer Garden?

Our artist client, Joy, wanted a romantic, flowery, soft planting, in cool and pastel shades.  Her original planting  - largely thuggish ornamental grasses and traditional landscape shrubs - had never been quite what she wanted, and when she called us, she was hoping for something more in keeping with her craftsman house and painterly aesthetic.

We've built the garden in stages, learning the site and its voracious deer as we work our way around.  A large Vietnamese urn and basalt pathway in front are two of our rare hardscape additions, as Joy and her husband were happy with the existing patios.  As we've moved to different areas of the property, we've adjusted our planting style to accommodate lessons learned and changing preferences.  Where spring color was her first priority in the beginning, Joy came to love plantings that provide year-round impact.   In addition to our construction work, we develop the garden over monthly visits, through which we've gradually amended our original plantings, creating a garden that looks fabulous in every season, while still reflecting our original aesthetic, and that accommodates the unusual and ever-changing tastes of the local deer.

This garden owes a debt to trial-and-error, and we could not be more grateful for Joy's trust in allowing us to bring the garden to its current successful state.  We think we've found an elegant balance point between floral color, year-round impact, and, of course, deer resistance.  Our highest compliment is that we often find that many of our monthly chores are complete when we arrive, and Joy, who had never been a gardener before, eager to talk about the latest developments and future opportunities.

Joy's garden is one of four or five of our gardens that will be included in next year's Study Weekend tour, June 1-3.  The Study Weekend is a gathering of gardeners that rotates between Vancouver, BC, Seattle, Portland and Eugene, features talks from some of the planet's best plantspeople and designers, and a tour with the areas' best gardens. We'll post more here, as we learn more, but if you'd like to know more soon, please contact the WVHPG.

Sunset Garden Anywhere!

Just saw a big photograph of Joanne and Peter Alba's garden in Sunset's Garden Anywhere!, a "bookazine" that will be on store shelves until early June (I found it at the Woodfield Station Market of Choice).  You may remember the Alba's garden from this post about their photo in the April '08 Sunset, or this post about gardening with deer.  Cool!

Sometimes these photos catch us by surprise.  If you know of a photo of our gardens that's not mentioned on our press page, please let us know where you found it, so we can spread the word!

Q&A - photo request

Have a question? Want more frequent updates? We’d love to hear from you! Read more here and write us in the comments or at mosaic@mosaic-gardens.com. Our last post prompted a great comment from Jennifer:

"I check out garden blogs mainly for the pictures – the more the better!"

Point taken!  It's a bit early and rainy for great new photos of our gardens, but your words will inspire us to start shooting sooner rather than later.  For now, we hope a scroll through this link to some of our biggest and best photo posts might bridge the gap.  And, thanks to Jennifer, here's a view of the coast garden we haven't yet shared.  Enjoy!

Bigger and Better Coast Garden Photos

We brought out the big camera this time.  Here are a few of our favorite potential portfolio shots of the Oregon coast garden.  What do you think?

Coast Garden Snapshots

We took a few photos of the S. Oregon coast project while working down there this week.  It's coming along!  Hope to get some portfolio shots soon.  Click on the images for a closer look. [gallery link="file" order="DESC" orderby="title"]

Picture Postcard Gardens

Greetings!

Our newest postcard features a few photos of our work (learn more below) and addresses for our website and this journal.  If you're new to the journal - welcome!  Once you've learned about the photos on the card, we hope you'll keep reading.  The newsletters are a great place to start, or you can take a quick scroll through our last fourteen months of photos, ideas and news.  We update every few days during the growing season, so we hope you'll check back soon.

To learn about our Mosaic-designed, 100% recycled-paper postcards read more here.

But for now, on to the pictures!

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This rusting metal wisteria arbor shades our clients' west-facing seating area.  We designed the steel frame to be sturdy enough to support a mature vine, but aesthetically light enough not to overwhelm the plant's beauty or the view.  When the vine drops its leaves for winter or the vine is cut back hard, the arbor provides a clean and (we think) attractive structure on its own.  If you like the arbor, you might enjoy this post with photos of some of our other custom metal features.

A little courtyard makes the perfect outdoor dining room for clients who love to cook.  The garden is just outside their kitchen, where they spend much of their time, and screened from their semi-busy street by a redwood fence.  We built the redwood fence and stone patio, installed the plants, and even designed the cool metal furniture!  Learn more about this pocket garden in our  6th newsletter, Sit. Stay., where we share some ideas for designing a great seating area, and in a post about our furniture designs.

A big, hand-coiled, Vietnamese urn and rustic basalt path anchor this pretty garden.  Our client requested a cottage-style planting with as much pastel floral color as her voracious deer would allow.  We balanced the seasonal color with bold foliage for year-round impact.  This garden has some great ideas, and we've discussed different aspects of it in a recent post about "making a scene," a newsletter about garden features, and a post with photos of three of our favorite deer gardens.

Thanks for reading!  We hope the card and journal provide inspiration for your garden, or at least a few minutes of fun.  If you would like to learn more about Mosaic and how we can help you create your garden, visit mosaic-gardens.com or call 541.434.6467.

Mosaic Q&A - Sunset April 2008 Border

Have a question? Want more frequent updates? We’d love to hear from you! Read more here and/or write us in the comments or at mosaic@mosaic-gardens.com.

A question from colder climes:

I cannot tell you what an inspiration the border [featured in the April 08 Sunset] has been for me! I am writing you to find out what the other plants are besides those listed in the article. I live in Northeast Wyoming do I imagine some will not work in our zone, but I will try to find similar color or texture matches for our garden.

Thanks! We've included a scan of the article and a plant list below. While some of the plants shown are not hardy in a cold climate, your inclination to focus on texture and color will definitely help you create your own striking border. When designing with plants, we focus on creating a palette, rather than a plant list. In the border shown in the Sunset photo, purple, silver, cream and white create a simple color palette. The playful feeling of the border comes mainly from the contrast of foliage texture - big Hellebore leaves, arching grasses, spiky iris, soft lavenders - while the spherical forms of dwarf Sitka spruce anchor the space through all seasons. One final idea worth noting is that we used small groupings of plants to create waves of foliage, rather than a jumble of individual specimens. This simplifies the visual effect, as well as the maintenance!

Sunset April '08 photo plant list (all deer resistant in our area):

Helleborus x sternii Iris sibirica (not sure which variety, b/c so many are similar) Cotinus 'Royal Purple' Lavandula stoechas Picea sitchensis 'Papoose' Carex m 'Aureovariegata' Miscanthus s. 'Variegata'

We very much enjoy hearing from you, and we look forward to more questions!

Mosaic Q&A - Picea pungens 'Globosa Nana' and other dwarf forms

[Edit: Hi!  This page gets a lot of traffic, so we thought we'd make sure you knew about the rest of our journal .  We update regularly during the growing season and hope you'll check back in.  Thanks for stopping by!  Mosaic]

A journal reader from California had a question about the "gray/silver plant in the left foreground" of the photo at left. The photo originally appeared in Newsletter #4, in which we discussed how to create lower maintenance gardens. The plant is Picea pungens 'Globosa Nana,' a dwarf form of the Colorado Blue Spruce, and it is a soft-looking, deer resistant, drought tolerant, low-maintenance all star. We use a variety of Picea pungens dwarfs, whose silver to blue color and compact, rounded forms add form, color and texture to our gardens throughout the year. We will use single large specimens or let three to seven pungens dwarfs dance through lower plantings. Below is a gallery of Picea pungens at work in our gardens - click for larger images.

Thanks for the question! Look forward to reading more!

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Allium

For those of you who are already (or always) thinking about next year's garden, there's still time to plant Allium bulbs - ornamental relatives of onions and garlic - in your sunny beds. The flowers of the most common ornamental Alliums are a whimsical, spherical burst of pink, lavender or white at the top of a tall stalk, but there are low varieties with gorgeous foliage, as well as bizarre starburst and hairy flowers for those of us who can never have enough weird plants. Alliums show their stuff right after the big spring show and before the summer flowers are in full swing.

We love to tuck Allium bulbs in small spaces between plants. You only notice them at their best, and they seem to disappear after they are deadheaded. A dozen or more look terrific sweeping above and through lower plantings.

If that's not enough to inspire you, Alliums are deer resistant, drought tolerant and make great cut fresh or dried floral arrangements. Cool!

Take a moment to gain a little additional inspiration from the Google images pages, and add a few Alliums to your fall garden to-do list!

Two photos of the coast project

We spent three months each of the last two years building a garden on the S. Oregon coast. The plantings are filling in fast, and we were able to get a few good shots before the sun came out yesterday. Below are two of our favorites. We hope to get more photos over the next month or so, so please stay tuned. The view really makes the garden.... Oh - and for those of you who share your garden with deer, this garden has a few hungry does and fawns that come through daily.

Deer??? Deer!

We are rarely visited by deer in our part of Eugene. In fact, the hungry boogers haven't browsed in our garden for a few years now... until today. Fortunately, the damage wasn't bad - just the tips of a rose and some raspberries - but it was enough to remind us of how much damage some uninvited guests can do.

Many of our clients' gardens can seem like deer superhighways, however. With a lot of experimentation and a little help from our friends, we've developed a broad deer-resistant palette. Of course, there's no such thing as a "deer proof" plant, and every garden is different, but these photos of frequently visited gardens might surprise anyone who thinks they can't share a great garden with deer.

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The below page from the April '08 Sunset fails to mention that the garden in the photograph is one of our best testing grounds for deer. The photo features two of our favorite types of deer-resistant plants: dwarf conifers (in the photo - Picea sitchensis 'Papoose') and hellebores (Helleborus x Sternii).

Do you have deer? Have you discovered any plants that aren't on the conventional lists? We're always searching for new ideas, and we hope you'll leave a comment with your "finds" below.