November Sun – Cold Color Celebration

Sunny November days in Seattle are a pure unadulterated bonus. Our gardening climate is alternately dazzling and maddening at the same time. The depth of gray in winter seems to last forever and the utterly outstanding glory of summer here fall at the opposite end of our horticultural universe for an exquisitely painful short period of time.

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
–   Emily Dickinson

We can grow such wide array of plants here that it makes many in other parts of the world green with envy. So, on a crystalline blue-sky day like today, it feels like we are COMMANDED to get outside and document its glory for everyone to see. I did just that in my robe and jammies this morning for you! If nothing else, it may just be to document it for us so that when we are nearly suicidal on the gray days in January and we want to hop a plane to Las Vegas, we remember why we live here.

Fatsia Japonica blooms

It occurred to me as I took this shot that the years of the heaviest Fatsia bloom, we’ve also had the hardest winter. Hmmmmm……..

We rely on many a Huechera for some November color here in the Northwest because we don’t really have too many flowers at all. So the WIDE variety of foliage colors are a very welcome sight here in gray land.

Note the Fuchsia near the bottom still doing her thing! I scared the (bleep) out of a poor local Hummingbird trying to get this shot. Ooops!

Another plant that “tolerates” our wet cold winter climate, is Phormium, or New Zealand Flax. You need to understand that I do say this somewhat tongue in cheek today. I lost about 27 of them a few years back after an ice storm. When the cold almost 2 inches of thick ice melted off of them, they actually looked fine until they succumbed to Crown Rot.
That was about 5 years ago now and I have recovered from my cynacism toward them, but only enough to have two. So, far. I just refuse to fall in love again and have my gardeners heart and wallet broken again. 🙂

Having said that, I do have a torrid love affair with my Fatshedera. If I have to buy a new one every year, I’m cool with that. This variegated one was particularly lovely with cold weather color and the light of the morning coming through her.

“If I’m ever reborn, I want to be a gardener—
there’s too much to do for one lifetime!” 
–   Karl Foerster

Like this post? Come and visit me on Facebook too at The Personal Garden Coach!

 

Snippets of Foliage and Winter Garden Art

Making good use of January indoor time is important to me as a gardener. I like the creative momentum that builds up after the fall garden clean up is over, the holiday distractions are finished and I’m really ready to get going on something nature oriented. Ogling the seed catalogs and various juicy pictorial based websites are the creative outlets I rely when digging or designing are not a palatable option. But, it’s still not actively DOING something, or CREATING and THAT is what energizes me.

So, I went out into the garden and took little snippets and bits of plants that were looking lovely and decided to have fun with them. I played Portrait Studio! I did this once a few years back when I entered the Gardening Gone Wild Photo Contest and learned an invaluable little photo trick from David Perry, one of my photography idols.

I had loads of fun creating these foliage based shots (no blooms here just yet). I hope YOU enjoy them too! 🙂

This was a sampling of one style of the artwork I created over the weekend, I’m saving the rest for later. Now, to figure out what  else is going to keep me busy for a while…. Oh ya, I have a book coming out soon!!! 🙂

Wordless Wednesday – Givin Me the Stinkeye

Winter Math in the Landscape

January in the landscape is about math. Yes, you read that correctly, I wrote math. Not like the kind of garden math in The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. And not in the lovely “Fractaliscious” way either. I mean in the more relatively mundane, yet none the less important way that we’re all calculating what happened in the garden and what’s about to happen.

The addition is normally where I start in the dark days of winter. Right after the holidays, I’m already thinking, plotting, and strategizing my purchases. I want more shrubs this year, I added lots of trees last year, so shrubs are next….adding. How many packets of seeds do I want to order this year? How many yards of compost do I want to spread this spring? Some of my tools are getting old and in need of replacement or maybe I’ll FINALLY buy one of the tools I’ve had my eye on for SO long…adding.

The subtraction is at the forefront too. That perennial I have loved for ten years but have grown bored with, is SO yesterday, subtract. The super sale plant that was 50% doesn’t look like it’s going to make it…subtract. I bought and planted 24 tomatoes last year and 22 of them got tomato blight…subtracting. The matching pair of containers sitting at my front door are no longer a pair now that one has succumbed to a crack, subtracting (and maybe adding too.)

It’s too early for division yet. But soon… 🙂

FINE FOLIAGE due out in March of 2013

 

Garden Designer’s Roundtable: Ideas for Adding Texture to Your Landscape

Texture is my thing. Let me say that again LOUDER so there is no doubt in your mind. TEXTURE IS MY THING!! I adore it in the garden almost above all else. I see it everywhere, it dominates my design sensibilities in every conceivable way. The fact that I tend to see almost everything through the lens of a camera whether I’m holding one or not helps me to focus my design esthetics so that I see textural vignettes everywhere.

Bellevue Botanical Garden

Since all of us at The Garden Designer’s Roundtable are tackling this topic for June, you are sure to get some seriously great tips and techniques on the actual step by step of adding texture into your landscape. As is my way, I am not going to do the expected, but rather, I will give you a pictorial of what adding texture to your landscape means to me through a collection of photos. I feel strongly about learning visually on this topic, reading the actual variables is handy, but sometimes you have to just see it to know and understand it.

Bellevue Botanical Garden

Bellevue Botanical Garden

I am also sprinkling in some EXCELLENT links for you to go and visit as well as referring you to my fellow Lords and Ladies of the Roundtable and their collective expertise.

Bellevue Botanical Garden

Here is the first link that I stumbled onto the other day while doing a bit of research. This is one of the very best explanations of Adding Visual Texture to the Garden that I have ever read. Writer Doug Skelton, lays out the principles of adding texture expertly.

1. Form
2. Space
3. Color
4. Balance
5. Man-Made
6. Combinations

FORM – Bellevue Botanical Garden

SPACE- Bellevue Botanical Garden

Margaret roach explains “underplanting” here with great expertise, but even more, look at that TEXTURE!

From Margaret Roach’s Blog Post “10 Thoughts on Successful Underplanting” from http://awaytogarden.com/10-thoughts-on-successful-underplanting#more-540

This beautiful and simple post from LIVE PRONTO! shows the appreciation of taking a walk to admire the textures and breathe it in a bit after a long day at work.

BALANCE- Bellevue Botanical Garden

MAN-MADE

I love the glass ground cover in this link!

One of the assignments I give my clients when I am Coaching is to have them take a photo of the anything in the landscape and look at it solely in black and white. This is a fabulous exercise for designing with texture in particular because it forces the eye to look at the shapes, balance and details in a completely new way.

Adding structural plants is a focus in this blog post called “Rooting For Ideas”, very well done by Designer/Blogger Don Statham in a post about “Texture in the Garden”.

Sometimes adding visual texture to a landscape can mean adding focal points that might be rare and unusual collectors plants or literal texture too!

Distinctive and Unique

I love the idea that sometimes you need a seemingly basic plant that has a high degree of textural interest simply to set a backdrop for pure drama in the garden.

Bellevue Botanical Garden

At other times the focus can be very macro on the texture of one plant in particular as blogger Matt Mattus explains in this post from his blog “Growing with Plants” about Pulsatilla and his love of the texture when they have those fluffy seed heads.

In this shot, the take-away is the literal texture and impact of the subject matter on the container and how it’s so balanced with the amount of detail on the foliage of a fairly common Caladium. Also, note the balance of the tone in colors here as well, if the pot was the same pattern in another color, this might not work at all. This combination takes both pieces to new heights.

Houzz.com is getting a lot of Buzz lately for their take on the “Idea Book” that people have fallen in love with lately- check out this post about adding lushness to the garden with layers, by Amy Renea.

And simply because I love these shots and ALL the texture they conjure, my beloved coleus cannot be ignored.

I love this post from “Not Another Gardening Blog”. This blogger does a masterful job of defining texture as it applies to the winter garden.

The many other talented Designers of the Garden Designer’s Roundtable await your visit, they have been working hard on their “Texture” posts for you to enjoy- so GO- ENJOY!! I left the links for you below:

Thomas Rainer : Grounded Design : Washington, D.C.

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Deborah Silver : Dirt Simple : Detroit, MI

David Cristiani : The Desert Edge : Albuquerque, NM

Andrew Keys : Garden Smackdown : Boston, MA

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Focal Point Trees

My tiny back yard has recently undergone a massive makeover this spring. I’m still finishing up a few details before I share it with all of you. But, I wanted to make a point about Focal Points and Focal Point Trees in particular. A small or large-scale tree placed strategically in the landscape for its shape, texture, color can add an immeasurable amount of artistic flair and drama with very little effort.
This brand new Larix pendula, ‘Weeping Larch’ does just that here at the end of my path as it opens into the main yard. In fall when the needles turn a warm gold and drop, then I will have that incredible weeping structure to look at all winter. WIN WIN!
Frequently, I have customers and clients who are SO bloom focused for the few weeks of a flowering tree or shrubs blooms in the year that they forget the rest of the season. I’m all for flowers, but don’t forget that a focal point plant of any type needs to bring more to the party than a pretty hat. 🙂

String Gardens and Terrariums Win Crowds at Philly Flower Show

This jaded, cynical designer has a short attention span for the same old same old. I am frequently yearning to see something new and inspirational in the world of gardening. So, one of the things I look for when I spend time at a large garden show like the Philadelphia Flower Show is a creative new discovery. I was fortunate to have stumbled on more than one AND HOW, at this show!

The “String Garden” or “Kokedama” was one of the hottest  trends that I saw at the show. To be accurate, anything you could hang with a plant and a string was HOT!

One fantastic vendor, City Planter is a very popular urban garden store in Philadelphia. They had a funky booth selling this latest whimsical trend among many others that made them a hot destination at this impressive 10 acre sized show.

The City Planter shop featured these stylish string gardens for customers to see right out at eye level. Essentially, these are a moss ball with a simple single plant featured on top and wrapped to hold together with fishing line or wire then simply suspended with a strand of string. I’ve seen them hung from jute twine, wire or a waxed twine as well.

Plants options in the string gardens were varied to accommodate your light and moisture requirements, from succulents and herbs to ferns and polka-dot plants. If you would like to see a demonstration of how these are made, this post has some great directions.

String Gardens were originally brought to us by Dutch artist Fedor Van der Valk. You can read more about the artist and see some fantastic photos of his creative suspended gardens in 2 articles from Garden Design Magazine written by Claire Lui. The first article posted in January of this year and then highlights posted again here in March 2012.

I was impressed at how varied the options were in the plants that they were offering in the string gardens. String Gardens are a fun and creative option for a plant craft to try that won’t cost a fortune. Imagine the possibilities of plants that you could try!

This popular show shop also offered some of the most sophisticated little glass terrariums I’ve ever seen. A rectangular glass box with an opening at the top for planting and a tiny hole in back to hang from a nail. They had added some decorative rock in showy layers, some ornamental moss and a few air plants, voila! Any beginning gardener could easily keep this alive and in style too.

Also among the fashionable offerings from City Planter were the extremely popular Moss Rocks by David Spain, as seen on Martha Stewart recently. Irregularly shaped, small ceramic rock shapes, glazed in trendy colors, sport a little tuffet of moss on top like a miniature crew cut. These charming, colorful living sculptures are an adorable little bit of Zen for your desk, counter top and coffee table.

Chive.com offered a beautiful and sophisticated booth featuring simple design that shows off the beauty of the flower. Hanging vases on a string were a very popular item as well as the ceramic 60’s style throwback hanging vases.

Cloches were also everywhere at the show, next to Terrariums these were one of the trends at the show that would draw the most passionate response that I would over hear from attendees. Cloches are easy to create and change a look on a table top in moments on a whim.

This lovely little cloche display was on only a small part of the charming and popular shop at the Philly Flower Show set up by Jerry Fritz and his team from Linden Hill Gardens in Ottsville, Pennsylvania.

Possibly one of my favorite finds at the whole Philly Flower Show however was the booth from Twig Terrariums. They not only had the String Gardens but the Terrariums and Miniatures were literally the ONLY ones in the whole market/vendor portion of the show and they were simply WOW!

Each little world was depicting actions and characters not only in a terrarium environment, but in a completely new, contemporary light. I have truly never seen anything like it. It was enchanting to say the least. I’m not sure the pictures do it justice. Yes, I LOVED them THAT much. 🙂 If you want to read a great book about Terrariums, this one is beautiful!

Small wonders were abundant at this ginormous show in the unusually warm spring of 2012. Even this old designer found out that there really ARE new things out there that still make this gardener’s heart flutter. 🙂

Glass + Art = Landscape Jewelry

Art in the garden is just one way to express your own statement of style and personality. As a designer who is like a cat attracted to shiny objects, glass is very difficult for me to resist. Many of my clients have budding collections of glass garden art and I have to admit my jealousy. I endeavor to have my own collection someday too. 🙂

Luckily for me, I have a friend, Barbara Sanderson of Glass Gardens NW and she graciously allows me to have fun designing with her glass frequently. Barbara’s art has been recognized across the country in magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Fine Gardening, blogs and at large shows across the country including the Northwest Flower and Garden Show.

This year at the 2012 Northwest Flower and Garden Show, Barbara created a custom design for an award winning display garden, created by Sublime Garden Design where she made a flickering glass fire, one of the focal point pieces in the display. They were gorgeous!! I could see those in someones home where a real fire might not be feasible, but the ambiance is desired.

Here is what it looked like in the display- very elegant!

The Glass Gardens NW booth was bedecked in garden jewelry! Here are some pictures of what was being snapped up during the four day extravaganza where gardens and art collide.

Glass Flowers

Glass Flowers

Icicles lit up from within and Glass Leaves

Truly Garden Jewelry! Water Features- SO pretty

Birdbaths, Flowers and Water Features

HOT sellers- Birds and Cattails!

Containers designed by The Personal Garden Coach with Glacicles and Leaves

Below is a slide showing the “Fiddlesticks” that are so popular for Glass Gardens NW in a container that I designed.

Fiddlesticks in Spring fresh colors!

Here is a peak at some glass art from Glass Gardens NW in containers by The Personal Garden Coach. 🙂

Left is a brand new design for 2012 "Glacicles"

Colorful glass leaves!

 

Glacicles in the snow!!

Now THAT is some winter color!

 

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of Garden Jewelry, for more information, you can also reach Glass Gardens NW via Facebook too. Go “LIKE” the page!  Be sure to look for more great Garden Art ideas coming soon from my visit to the Philadelphia Flower and Garden Show!

 

Northwest Flower and Garden Show – Symphony of Flower Bulbs

The Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle just ended and as I spend the countless hours editing my numerous photos, I realize that I have much too much great color, design ideas and details to share with all of you for one simple blog post. And far be it from me to ever be simple!

How will I be able to share as much of the show as I possibly can with you, without short-changing any of the fabulous elements that make up one of the biggest shows in the country? (Our Seattle show is 2nd in the US only to the Philadelphia Flower and Garden Show- where I will be in about 2 weeks!)

My plan is to show you parts of the show by thematic element rather than by designer, vendor or big garden display, in a number of posts over time. Hopefully you will follow along and maybe even feel like, if you couldn’t attend the show, that you got a great sense of what you missed. Maybe you will even be motivated enough to attend next year. With a theme for the 2013 show like “Hollywood” there is bound to be some serious fun. I can’t wait – maybe I will even decide to jump into the spectacle once again! 🙂

If you want to delve yet even deeper into the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, you can Tweet with other #NWFGS fans on Twitter here or you can “Like” the Facebook page here, and chat with all the other devoted show Followers.

Today’s post will focus on flower bulbs which were more than voluminous throughout the entire show. From basic to exotic, spring was definitely filling the air with fragrant bulbs. I found bulbs in almost every single corner of the show, so it’s as good of a place to start as any!

In later posts I will cover Orchids, Lighting, Miniature Gardening, Terrariums, Water Features and so much more. We ought to be able to get some of our spring groove on well into the warm weather to get you going!

Still can’t get enough of the show? I know, I understand that you need your fix, here is a short list of Blogs and Articles that have also posted about the Northwest Flower and Garden Show to give you even more variety at a glance. In the next post I will share some other ones too:

http://bggarden.com/blog/

http://www.valeaston.com/

http://turnerphotographics.com/blog/2012/02/11/northwest-flower-garden-show-2012/

http://www.jpetersongardendesign.com/2012/02/northwest-flower-garden-show/

http://desertnw.wordpress.com/

http://nextgenerationgardener.blogspot.com/2012/02/2012-northwest-flower-and-garden-show.html

http://inthegarden.marthastewart.com/2012/02/06/northwest-flower-garden-show/

http://www.gardenhelp.org/garden-show/northwest-flower-garden-show-2012-its-a-wrap/

http://www.gardenfreshliving.com/2012/02/2012-northwest-flower-garden-show-highlight-video.html

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/02/08/2017056/paradise-found.html

http://reddirtramblings.com/?p=19357

http://bwisegardening.blogspot.com/

Please comment and share this post and if you are on Pinterest feel free to Pin these photos! If Pinterest is new to you, take a peak at my “The Personal Garden Coach” Boards to see what all the fuss is about- be warned it’s VERY addictive!

Snippets of a Winter Garden Under Glass

Heuchera, Heucherella, Pansy and Viola