(Old information - thank you to all who attended!)
Please stop by, walk through the garden and say hello! We've spruced the garden up for the Hardy Plant Garden Tour, and would love to share. Our garden is open to any and everyone interested, but the larger tour is for plant group members, by prior reservation.
We hope to see you tomorrow!
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!
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.
The photos below show just one part of a multi-phase project that we think is fast becoming our best garden so far. Our goal for this entry garden was to create a serene, simple design that allows focus on the beautiful trunks of the Oregon White Oaks and the clean, contemporary lines of the house and entryway. From the driveway, visitors pass from a bold, colorful street planting, through hedge of golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea) into a quiet, sweeping, sword fern garden, with a few small trees and some Fargesia rufa, a clumping bamboo. Our favorite hardscape feature of the garden may be our drystack stone wall along the driveway (see a slideshow of its construction here). An ipe deck and boardwalk float over the fern garden, past a huge basalt bowl, to the front door. While other areas of the garden feature diverse plantings and bold foliage, this garden focuses on the essentials. Although, this garden is largely a passageway, as opposed to an area to entertain, it seems to have a profound effect on visitors. Rather than rushing through the garden, the simple design encourages people to pause for a moment and enjoy a quiet moment, appreciating the view.
This is another garden that will be included on next June's Study Weekend tour. For more information, stay tuned here or contact the WVHPG.
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.
Buell took some terrific new photos of our garden last night. What do you think? Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Open Garden! We had a lovely day and were delighted to meet so many new friends. If you missed the event, stay tuned to the journal and Facebook for future events.
Saturday, July 9, 9am - 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, July 9 for an Open Garden! The plants are loving the long, cool spring, and the garden is gorgeous this year. It's a small, diverse space that has been featured in Sunset, Fine Gardening and Garden Design magazines. There's a little something for everyone - sun, shade, dry stack stone walls, seating areas, mature plantings, new additions and lots of design ideas. Buell and Rebecca will be on hand to answer questions about the garden and Mosaic, but, introverts, never fear, we're happy to let you wander on your own.
If you don't know our garden, this photo history is a fun place to learn more, and our press page includes several articles about the garden.
We hope to see you on the 9th! Drop by anytime between 9 and 2, and feel free to bring friends and family. We'll have limeade and shade if it's warm (or even if it's not), and space to explore or just sit and enjoy the day.
The Watershed is a mixed-use commercial/residential building and a rare exception to our residential garden focus. We can't say enough good things about the structure (green materials, local artisans, just fantastic inside and out), and we couldn't be more grateful for the trust that the owners had in allowing us to design and plant their garden. The plantings at ground level and on each of the many terraces are diverse, super resilient, and require very little water from the rainwater catchment system. We think that the courtyard and rusting metal water feature are a strong, grounding center to an unusual, beautiful space. Buell took a few new shots of the garden yesterday, and we'd love to know what you think!
(More info on the July 9 Open Garden coming soon!)
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!
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?
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"]
Phew! Yesterday was a scorcher, and it looks like we're in for another hot day today. The plants are a little shocked, but we wonder if the long, slow early growing period might have toughened them up a bit. While we wait and see, here are three tips for beating the heat... in your garden, anyway:
Enjoy the heat, if you're a heat lover, and happy hiding if you're not! We're still working on your newsletter. We're sharing some tips and ideas for selecting and working with stone, and we think it will be worth the wait.
Our trip to Northern California was brief, but we are so glad that we made time to visit one of our favorite gardens. The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA is a mecca for hortitexturephiles and garden lovers of all stripes. We wrote a short post about the Bancroft Garden last year, but we may not have been emphatic enough in our praise. It is magical. You should visit. Soon.
As you probably know, a sunny summer afternoon is less than ideal for photographing gardens, but Buell managed to get a number of fun shots and (we think) a few pretty darn good ones.
Enjoy!
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Howdy!
We hope our last newsletter was helpful in your spring garden work. If you haven't checked in since then, we expanded on our spring cleaning theme with a little about gardening tools, ideas for growing food in busy lives and tough spaces, and tips for making a beautiful garden scene. Beyond those ideas, we've posted some neat photos, a winter post-mortem and more, so be sure to scroll through the journal when you're done.
In this newsletter, we'll discuss how we use color, texture and form to select and place plants in our gardens. The terms color, texture and form are used together so often in articles, books and lectures about planting design that they are almost cliche, but what do they mean for your planting design? Even a quick survey of online articles shows a huge variety of ideas for designing with those terms in mind. While one designer may prioritize flower color and structure, another focuses primarily on the texture and shape of leaves.
In our work, color, texture and form carry equal weight, and we have strong ideas about the best way to see and use each one. We select our plants to create a cohesive palette, sometimes subtle, sometimes high-contrast, that reflects the desired style and mood of the space. Because the possibilities are endless, and the results should reflect you and your aesthetic, we will focus on how we think about color, texture and form, leaving the nitty-gritty fun of building a palette to you.
Foliage first - While flowers are fun and part of almost every garden, foliage color is the foundation of our plant color palette. We use foliage to create sweeps of color throughout the year, or at least the growing season. The colors vary from bold, contrasting spots of yellow and purple to accents of silver and burgundy to shades of green.
Know when to hold 'em - Even in a bold palette of strong, bright colors (restraint does not mean boring), restraint is key. We intentionally leave out some colors or save them for another area. If you love every color, or are the sort of person who can't leave a good plant at the nursery, try using different palettes in different areas of the garden. As you can see in the first photo, our front garden has lots of bright, hot color, while the side garden, at right, tends toward gentler pinks, blues, creams and whites.
What are we talking about here? - What we mean by "form" is the overall shape of a plant - upright, round, conical, weeping, arching, and so on. Sometimes form and texture overlap, as in spiky plants, like iris and Phormium, but for the most part, form has more to do with outline than texture.
Round, rounded, roundish - Every plant has a form, and some are stronger than others. Not all strong forms are geometric, but those are the easiest to discuss. For example, lots of plants have what we call a "roundish" form, where the outline more or less radiates around the center. Other plants have a more perfectly rounded outline. Picea sitchensis 'Papoose,' for instance, is almost spherical. A stronger form makes a stronger statement in the garden, and can be used as a structural, almost sculptural element in planting. We will shear some plants, like boxwoods and fine foliaged conifers, to tighten and perfect their form.
The dance - In many of our gardens, we select a plant with a strong form and "dance" three to seven of them through a layer of lower plantings. The repeating, usually evergreen, forms have room to shine, while the lower plantings add seasonal contrast and interest.
Not all designers think alike (thank goodness), and if you are seeking a different, nuanced, and perennial-savvy take on color form and texture, we highly recommend designing with plants by Piet Oudolf with Noel Kingsbury. Oudolf's sensitivity to tiny differences in, say, flower shape helps him create ever-changing, intricate, romantic plantings. What an inspiration....
That's all for now, folks! We'll be back over the coming weeks with more ideas and, everyone's favorite, new photos, so please check back soon.
We don't have much time to post this week, but we thought we'd post a couple of photos of the coast project. These were taken last spring. It's almost photo season, so there should be lots of new images coming....
We'll be back soon with a newsletter and more!
In this final follow-up to our Spring Cleaning newsletter, we offer ideas for creating compelling scenes or views in your garden, with the goal of making the space more attractive and engaging. In keeping with the theme of developing gardens, we'll focus on ideas that work with smaller additions and changes here, but a taste of the larger possibilities of this concept can be found in our newsletter about features, among other places.
The most important part of creating a view or scene is to consider the viewpoint. Whether we're working on a new or existing garden, on a large or small area, we return over and over again to the pathways, windows, doors and other areas from which the space will be seen. We can all get lost in our own perspective while working in the garden, looking at a planting or other element from right where we're standing - even if we're in the middle of a planting bed! Take a walk around the area you're working in, pausing at the important viewpoints, considering how changes will appear from each location, and prioritizing the most used points and pathways. Be sure to repeat this routine often through design and layout, as the view will change with each new element (or sometimes just a change in light).
Creating or enhancing a central focus is the first tangible step in creating a view. Whether you're adding a hard element, planting, or hardscape, consider that any of them will be balanced by your plantings. Substantial, simple elements will ground your view, where smaller or fussier elements might be lost. A few ideas for eye-catching elements for your scene are:
Even small changes deserve a solid foundation. Building a base of compacted gravel and leveling your hard elements will make a big difference in their effect and usefulness. Don't hesitate to move or remove plants or other elements that will detract from the long-term goal.
Whenever possible, we like to bring the finishing plants for a space after the primary elements are in place. Often the best ideas for finishing the scene we're creating comes late in the process. Although the urn in the photo at right was a beautiful element on its own, we didn't think of the forehead-slappingly obvious addition of a big, blue hosta until after it was in place. You can contrast or echo the color and form of your central elements, but be sure not to bury them in oversized plants.
We hope our ideas for spring cleaning have brought a little fun and inspiration to your garden this year. We're working out of town this week, but we'll be back soon with the next newsletter and more ideas for your space.
In our most recent newsletter, we promised to offer ideas to make gardening more fulfilling. For us, nothing is more fulfilling than bringing in the harvest from our orchard and veggie garden. The size of the harvest - buckets of apples or a handful of fresh herbs - isn't as important as the connection to our garden and our food (although the food itself ain't bad). We talked about designing veggie gardens in an earlier newsletter, but not everyone has the time, sunny space or inclination to devote to a full-on orchard or veggie garden. Whether you're a serious veggie gardener or an aspiring gardener in an apartment, here are a few ideas for incorporating food into busy lives and small spaces.
Herbs - Anyone with sun can grow culinary herbs, many of which are pretty ornamentals. Trailing rosemary and thyme can spill over borders, walls or the edge of a container, and other herbs, like upright rosemary can be sheared into cones or other shapes. Bay is an attractive broad-leafed "foundation" for an herb or veggie planting (ours even survived the single digit temps!). Consider foliage texture and color in placing your herbs, and you may find that your herb garden is a year-round beautiful corner of your garden.
Alliums - One difficulty with growing vegetables and fruits is that so many are high-maintenance plants. The little divas want to be staked, watered, thinned, and otherwise coddled more often than many busy people can handle. Alliums, such as garlic and onions, on the other hand, are low-key, low-maintenance, and low-water. They only require attention two or three times a year, and they rarely or never need additional water. They can be harvested throughout the season and dried, letting all of your "hard work" last into the winter! (Question - Has anyone planted edible alliums around deer? We know ornamental alliums are rarely, if ever, browsed by deer, and we've heard that edible alliums are often ignored as well. What's your experience?).
Containers - Some veggies and fruits make beautiful container plantings. The striking silver foliage of artichokes and cardoons, for instance, are beautiful with annuals (as in the photo at right) or with trailing herbs, nasturtiums and purple basil. If your sun or space limit you to a container veggie garden, consider arranging your pots with an eye towards foliage combination, and perhaps add a few low herbs or annuals to spill over the edges. One of our friends had a container veggie garden on the deck of her second floor apartment. With peas climbing the railing and lettuce in hanging baskets, she packed a lot of food and beauty into a tiny space.
Thanks for reading! We hope you're enjoying your gardening (veggie and otherwise) and the nice weather. We'll be back with a post-mortem from the hard winter freeze and another spring cleaning idea.
We often turn to our favorite designers for inspiration. We discovered the work of Ron Lutsko in Page Dickey's amazing book, Breaking Ground. If you've ever visited the wonderful California Native Plants Garden in the San Francisco Botanical Garden, you have walked through his work. His studio is known for creating projects that balance clean lines in hardscape with flowing, drought tolerant and native plantings. A few minutes spent browsing their website reminds us of the importance and potential of simplicity.
Good tools can make developing a garden a joy, rather than a chore. Through years of work in gardens, we've developed our ideal tool box, as well as some strong opinions. It seems like sharing some of our favorite tools, as well as some tool-keeping advice is a great follow-up to the last newsletter's ideas for improving not just your garden, but your gardening.
Before we get into lists and suggestions, we should stress that the most important part of selecting tools is how they feel to you. Take the time to handle the tools and move them more or less in the way that they will be used. The best tools for you will feel balanced, comfortable and relatively light in your hands. A heavy, unbalanced tool will cause you more fatigue in repetitive tasks, which means the job will take longer and be less fun.
The shovels, rakes and implements of destruction at right are just a few of our favorite long-handled tools. We have selected each one for its dedicated use, hand feel and sturdiness (given proper use - more on that in a moment). We find that wood handles offer the best balance of comfort and durability for our home gardening.
Note that the t-handled tools in the photo are not for the sort of multi-taskers who are likely to pry at rocks or stubborn roots with whatever tool is most handy. They are perfect for their jobs, but they will break under improper stress. If you're a pry-er, look for indestructible versions.
**Special request - if anyone finds this (exact) compost fork or flat shovel, please let us know! We have other versions, but these are our favorites.
Smaller tools should be just as tough as your larger tools, so choose wisely. Our small tools get many, many "miles" in a year, but we can't recall replacing any of them. And, just in case it's not obvious, we never use power cutting or hedging tools to shape or prune plants.
Of course, the list goes on and on, but there are a couple of other tools that we use too often not to mention.
The right tools are a wonderful asset, and with a little TLC, they will perform beautifully for years, if not decades.
We hope these ideas will help you make the best of your gardening toolbox, and, in turn, make gardening a little more productive and fun this year.
The weather can't seem to make up its mind right now, which must mean it's spring.... Clear and warm! Wind and rain! Snow in the hills! Hail and sunshine! No matter what the weather brings, lengthening days and budding plants draw gardeners outdoors. Once we've caught up with the weeds, pruning and other chores that keep our garden and our clients' gardens tidy, we turn our minds to improving the spaces. In this newsletter, we offer a few of the core concepts that help Mosaic develop, rather than just "maintain," new and existing gardens. Over the next few weeks, we'll post more ideas that might improve your garden while making gardening a bit more fulfilling, so check back at the journal! [Edit: Idea #1 - Tools of the Trade]
For many gardeners, spring brings opportunity to add to their gardens - all those colorful, promising pots at the nursery, a piece of garden art, or that new idea from Sunset. For us, it's the perfect moment to subtract. We look for plants that are overgrown, declining in old age or are just-not-right, and off they go to a new home or the yard debris bin. One of our greatest design assets is our willingness to start over, on one plant, a whole bed or a whole garden. There are almost always better solutions waiting to earn their place in a garden.
Subtraction doesn't need to stop in your planting beds, Our clients are amazed at how much better their yards look after the demolition phase, when we've removed not just non-performing plants, but low borders, unnecessary hardscape, and crumbling garden art. While "demo" doesn't need to be extensive, an empty palette is a relief and an opportunity to create a better, simpler, more beautiful space.
"Sometimes you have to think and think to get something simple" - Ron Lutsko
Filling a hole in a bed can feel a little daunting. In our plantings, we've don't look far for our first ideas. We consider what plants in that bed, or similar nearby beds, are thriving, and work from there. Often, we're able to incorporate and expand on a nearby success story.
In new beds or just filling in, planting in groups of three to forty creates a coherent, rich palette with the added bonus of lower maintenance. You can create waves of year-round color and texture by selecting the best performing plants for your space.
Beyond planting beds, we believe in simple features and clean, strong lines in the hardscape (a concept that needs its own newsletter or three). Simplifying the "hard" elements of a garden doesn't require a complete remodel, however. Most spaces have elements in which a little simplification would go a long way. The edges of lawns are one place to consider. Could a straight or curved line make the lawn a simpler, more pleasing shape? What if you were to cut out that peninsula of sod, and connect the surrounding beds?
Consider paring down or reorganizing anything that adds clutter to your space. From pots to garden ornaments, we sometimes just have too much stuff. Did you know that some good gardens never make it past the magazine editors, because they have too many little distractions in the beds, around the seating areas and everywhere else? Removing a few things and concentrating others into an higher impact feature will focus attention on the best parts of your garden, rather than distracting from them. The collection of pots in the photo of our bench, below, "works" because we clustered them together at an important spot.
We often describe ourselves as a garden design/build company, but we really think of ourselves as creating outdoor spaces for people. Building a space that lets you, your family and friends spend more time in your garden is our primary goal. Of course, building a comfortable, human scale space can be a major undertaking, but it can also be as simple as improving a path, so you walk through the garden more often, or adding a bench with a pretty view. We have many ideas about creating seating areas and other people-friendly spaces, but the fundamentals are simple:
When we first planted our garden, we gave our plants a running start with great soil, a little food and plenty of water. As the plants established good root systems, most showed little stress in hotter, drier periods. A few plants, however, would wilt and crisp at the tips if we didn't increase the irrigation. For awhile, we watered enough to keep those plants, if not happy, then not miserable or dead. But somehow it didn't feel right to irrigate an entire garden to accommodate a few plants.
Eventually, we decided to water less frequently. If an established plant couldn't handle the drought, it died or found a new home. Today, our garden is full, diverse and lush, and we're thrilled to use a little less of a precious resource.
We wrote about using less water in another post, which we hope you'll read, but the concept is simple. Most of us water more often than most of our plants require. Try waiting an extra day or two between watering cycles this summer. While a few plants will decline, you will probably be surprised at how many plants are up to the challenge. You may even find that some plants, like ornamental grasses and some conifers, prefer less water.
We hope we've offered a little inspiration for your spring cleaning. Over the next few weeks, we will share a few more ideas for developing your garden, so stay tuned. If you're ready for more ideas now, take a look back at our fourth newsletter. Spring always brings lots of ideas, photos and news, and we look forward to sharing them with you!