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A Bucket Shop

On my bucket list-a bucket shop all my own.  I have always wanted one.  The year I spent living in New York City in the mid eighties-my favorite part was the small markets, and beautiful bucket shops.  Every where you could find the and most breathtaking cut flowers, flowering stems and twigs imaginable, many of which were displayed on the street in buckets. My hands down favorite- oak branches studded with freshly set green acorns.  Those stems made the hair on the back of my neck stand up; I have never seen them available since.  What is available in cut flowers in New York City-the sky is the limit.  But I am happy with any bouquet of flowers; fresh flowers are irresistable.  Just about anything that grows is beautiful-can you think of a flower you just don’t like?  Living color-like no other color.  The idea of selecting and offering beautiful and striking cut flowers has been in the back of my mind for years.  I do flowers occasionally for parties and special events, but I am not a florist.  I am so sorry to say that Detroit Garden Works does not own a fresh flower cooler.     

I attended a national peony convention some 35 years ago.  I was very interested in how the exhibitors managed to bring so many cut stems of penies great distances to the show. Growers who exhibit their blooms in competition have this down pat.  A bud showing good color, and a marshmallow soft texture when squeezed, is good to cut.  Bag the buds in a baggie with the stems out, and store them dry, in the refrigerator. Bring them out 24 hours ahead of when you need them.  I was amazed that this works, but it does.  Years ago when I had hundreds of peonies, I would store stems in the fridge, just to extend my bloom season a little.  Some exhibitors brought hundreds and hundreds of buds packed in coolers-hoping that 1 or 3 or 7 would be perfect examples of a given cultivar, and win a ribbon.   

Fabulous cut flowers need not be from my zone.  Sweet peas-how I long to have them in my life.  It is doubtful I will ever grow a decent sweet pea, but they are available, at certain times of the year, as cut flowers.  Sweet they are.  And as if the color and shape wasn’t enough, the fragrance is divine.    

 A bucket shop-not so much in my future.  We are in a way out of the way location; the shop in its first life-a machine shop in an industrial location. My fresh cuts would languish, unclaimed.  I probably would have to take most of them home.  A bucket shop needs shoppers non stop.  The most successful florist in my town, and maybe nation wide-Kroger grocery store.  This makes perfect sense.  Everyone needs to shop for food regularly.  Weekly-maybe more often.  Selecting a bunch of fresh flowers for the grocery cart-easy.  The best part of the flowers at a very successful florist is that turnover means the flowers are more likely to be really fresh.  The downside?  It is less likely you will see the more unusual flowers.  Not that I hold one grudge against carnations and chrysanthemums- even the most ordinary species is still a fresh flower.  

My idea of a bucket shop took a different turn.  In Atlanta this winter, I made it my business to source beautifully made faux flowers.  Every picture you have seen thus far and will see-fake.  Including these daffodil stems.  Are they not the best looking plastic and polyester flowers?  The peonies are amazingly realistic.  Are they a substitute for a real peony-of course not.  But fake flowers have their place. 

Though I have devoted a lifetime to raising flowers of all sorts, I wrote a check for bucket loads of faux flowers.  Why wouldn’t I?  There are lots of people who love flowers and gardens who are not gardeners.  There are some who cannot garden; there are times when no one can garden.  The shop umbrella ought to be big enough for all. Some faux flowers are better than others; the strong simple shape of ranunculus is easy to recreate in a permanent form.  Silk iris I would stay away from.        

Pam made this small arrangement in a terra cotta pot painted white.  It is charming, cheery and spring like, to my eye.  It will be a month or 6 weeks before anything stirs in my garden, not to mention that the last leg of our winter is the toughest to take.  My faux flowers are primarily spring species.         

Would I take one of these home-absolutely.  I have plenty of dark places in my house that would be all the better for a little color.  I am a winter weary gardener who needs some reference to the garden.  Not to smell, or touch-just to look at.  For those days when I do not want to look at pictures of gardens, or books, or a documentary about the Chelsea flower show-just something bright to look at.  

 I do try to buy faux stems that can go outside.  Our spring season can be very short; many gardeners do not plant containers for spring for exactly this reason.  I do plant spring pots for clients; faux branches and grasses in the center of a container instantly creates some scale and presence.  A well done mix of faux and real flowers makes the fake elements very tough to spot. My observation?  People see what they believe as much as they believe what they see.           


These mini pots, furnished with white daffodils, and  finished in dark green reindeer moss-I like them.

Posted on: February 14, 2011 7 Comments
Filed Under: Parties and Events, Detroit Garden Works, Good Design Tagged With: ,

The Painted Border

 

Repainting this concrete floor has gone on for over a week now.  I am hoping to finish up quick.  A container from England is sitting in customs; we need to be ready for that delivery. The four color green ground of this painted rug needed a border.  The base color is a dark chocolate.  Though I knew where I wanted to go color wise, I needed a texture that was unlike the texture of the ground.  Contrast is not strictly confined to color.  Though I had the best time signing the floor with loops of paint in a steady stream from my stir stick, I wanted a different texture for the border.  A clear definition of the edge.

The border is entirely painted with drips.  Those of you who read this blog regularly know dirt follows me around.  It is always under my fingernails, and in my sock tops.  As a painter, I know anything I wear will sooner or later show evidence of the painting process.  I am likely to have paint on my shoes, my hands my face, and my hair.  It is a life condition-I have no other explanation.  Paint drips usually land on me.  My plan-the paint would drip on the floor, and not so much on me.   

I was after a gravelly texture.  It seems like it ought to be the simplest thing in the world to get paint to drip-it happens unbidden all the time.  But regular drips, not too fast drips, not too big drips-this involves paint at a perfect consistency.  Thick enough to permit multiple drops, but thin enough to deposit small and civilized gravel-like shapes.  This part was work.  It will be a good thing when this floor is covered with the great things we have coming for spring.  My globs, lines and blips tell the tale.  3/8 inch and down decomposed granite is remarkably uniform.  My painting is anything but.    

But a paint card laid is a paint card played-there is no mopping up.  I could work another two weeks to erase any evidence of my hand, but why would I want to?  My approach to landscape design is formal-whether the result is traditional or contemporary.  I favor landscape design that emphasizes structure and utility.  Distilled design that makes a clear statement.  But I do understand that the most formal design on paper is subject to wind, weather, grade, hardiness, and all manner of unforseen caprice.     

It may be what I like the best about this painting are those capricious places. A loop of green paint might find its way out there, should the muscles fueling my hand unexpectedly flex.  An inadvertent flex might end up being my favorite part.  My advice?  If you want to paint a floor, make a plan, lay it out, prepare for any eventuality, and then go for broke. The same applies to a garden.  Plan your heart out.  Then go for broke. 


Those irrepressible blips are a personal signature.  When I sign a check, or a document, or a letter; when I design a landscape, I sign my name on the dotted line. My signature on the dotted line is not a guarantee of perfection-it is a vote of my confidence in my work.  What I do confidently is anything but perfect.  But it might be interesting.

Posted on: February 11, 2011 2 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Good Design Tagged With: ,

A Signature


We are into the maelstrom phase of the spring redo of the shop.  It seems like everything has been moved, washed, and otherwise made ready to make friends with what what is on its way here.  Ourt first container from Europe-in customs in Romulus as I write.  Some months ago I wrote about a concrete floor that I had painted to resemble a “tapis vert”.  Lierally translated from the French, a tapis vert is a green carpet.  It is to my mind the most elemental version of a garden.  Every garden bears the signature of the garden maker.  A group of plants are arranged, have a form, that comes from human hands.  Though a wild meadow studded with poplars may not seem to have a signature, it does.  Certain and specific species thrive there.  The placement of the trees has everything to do with how seed is dispersed.  The most natural wild place has a signature, no matter how subtle.  Milo was a baby when I painted the floor with my representation of a lawn edged in gravel; he could not wait for the barricades to come down so he could go lie on it.   

Five years has taken its toll.  Lots of traffic from both people and objects had dulled the colors.  There were places where the paint had simply worn away.  Since spring is all about fresh, a fresh take on the floor seemed in order.  Moving everything to the sidelines was a big job, as was a thorough cleaning.  The paint needs every chance it can get to stick.  Howard decided to pitch in and help Pam with this. 

The floor got washed twice, and hand dried, in an effort to remove as much grime as possible.  The cleaning of this building is a full time job.  Dirt, plants and water get tracked all over.  Last time, I painted with floor with Benjamin Moore exterior 100% acrylic paint in a satin finish.  Acrylic paint is much harder than latex; the paint finish is washable, but not too shiny.  This time, I decided to use the acrylic version manufactured by Porter Paint.  We use this brand on all our painted furniture that goes outdoors, and on the extira board panels in the Jackie boxes we make.  Porter paint is a paint of choice for sign painters.  It is extremely durable outdoors.  This floor gets plenty of abuse-every muddy or wet day in every season, someone is bringing what’s on the ground across this floor.  Durability is important. 

What particular green to use as a base coat-I spent plenty of time stewing over that.  As the previous painting featured a green leaning towards yellow, I decided to change to a grass green.  Fern green.  A green not yellow, not blue.  Just green.  You cannot tell the temperature from this picture; the building is cold this time of year.  Big and drafty and a fortune to heat, we keep the temp down and out coats on-usually somewhere between 50 and 55.  This means the paint dries slowly, but I cannot imagine taking on a project like this any other time of year.   

The chocolate border is a paint color called “afternoon tea”.  How appropriate to the time of year.  Have you ever picked a paint color that had a name you did not like?  I haven’t either.  The person whose job it is to name paint colors-they must be bursting at the seams with ingenuity, and endowed with a stellar vocabulary.  Two base coats were applied-this part took 3 days.  Letting the paint dry enough is essential.  I do like to apply a second coat as the first coat is just barely shy of being dry.  I believe this makes the top layer stick better.   

The texture of the green ground the first time around came from a series of stokes meant to have a grassy feel.  I am sure I applied 3 additional colors over the ground.  Ths time I had something different in mind.  I wanted to apply the paint as if it were being written rather than painted.  This meant thinning the paint down until it ran a bit.  All of the paint was applied with a paint stir stick, not a brush. 

My paint stick was just inches above the surface while I was writing-this was a tough position to maintain for long.  But it was great fun.  That paint stick was a cross between a baton, a light stick and a pen.  Sometimes I would draw, sometimes I would sign.  I shook the stick on occasion like Milo shakes off the snow.

What did I write?  Whose names did I sign?  You will have to decide for yourself, come March.

The border-tomorrow.

Posted on: February 8, 2011 1 Comment
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Good Design, Landscape Design Tagged With: , ,

Good News

 

When Tony B. from Martha Stewart Living Magazine emailed me this past October that they were interested in featuring some objects Detroit Garden Works carries for their March garden issue, my heart skipped a beat.  OK, maybe many more than one beat.  Why wouldn’t my heart pound?  Martha Stewart has done plenty to make gardening mainstream.  I so admire how she connects thoughtful living, decorating, celebrating, cooking, gardening and growing-I read every issue.  I bring the recipes home for Buck.  Why is this?  I have choices about how to live my life day to day.  But I am, like many other people, interested in her take.  She has devoted an enormous amount of time to documenting and inspiring creativity.  In the home.  In the kitchen-and in the garden.  For regular people-coast to coast, and beyond.  She made a gorgeous garden seem attainable. 

 Like you, I have failed miserably to repreduce her gorgeous outcomes-no matter how detailed her instructions might be.  My years ago kitchen never recovered from my efforts to reproduce her spun sugar.  My garden in no way looks like hers.  This has never really bothered me.  The important thing is that she encouraged me to try all sorts of things. She tells me where she shops.  Whom she admires.  She sows all kinds of seeds-she is a teacher.  Regularly and reliably I will run from learning something.  Maybe that’s from worry that I cannot learn something. But I seem to have no problem trying out what she suggests.  I treasure her for this.

I am not always so interested in what is hip, current and fashionable-I have my own ideas about things.  But I respect her take.  I can be fancy-talk to me about hellebores, landscape design, good garden plants, winter containers, garden antiques-and so on.  But I can also be a plain and simple citizen-interested in a little guidance, a few fresh ideas.  Anyone who sows seed gets my respect.  Seed sowers-they are a breed all their own.  They might generate an idea, a recipe, a design; they plant.  They conduct.  They advise.  They suggest.  They connect with you and me and lots of others.  One seed at a time, they make a difference.  One seed at a time, they speak up. 

In any event, I could not be more pleased that Martha Stewart Living reserved a place for three items we carry-in their “Great Finds- Our 50 favorite products, projects and places inspired by the world of gardening.”  I could not be more pleased that Detroit Garden Works was included in their list.  One item, sourced by Rob.  Another-by me.  And the third-a product we manufacture.  I very much like this part.  Many thanks, Martha Stewart Living.

Posted on: February 6, 2011 9 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, The Branch Studio, Garden Ornament Tagged With: , , , , ,