winter containers | Deborah Silver & Co.

The Details: A Story Board

Part 3 of my tutorial about the construction of winter containers has to do with bringing the special details to life. Evergreens stuck into a foam form the base of the winter container. A structure upon which to build. A centerpiece, no matter whether it is tied up tight and of a piece, or stuck individually, provides an element upon which to focus. Up next-the details.

A blank canvas can be lush in and of itself, but it asks for those details that make for an individual design. The third element of any winter pot-those thoughtfully constructed and expressed finishing details. Pistou is a vegetable soup of French origin, , made with vegetables, various beans, and small macaroni. This is an overview- their are many individual recipes. Upon serving, the soup is topped with a large dollop of basil pesto which is showered with grated parmesan cheese. The addition of the pesto and its parmesan is an individually imagined finish. Pistou has no end of recipes, should you look it up on line. Individual chefs individually imagine and cook the soup, and finish it to their taste. The finish of your winter containers should reflect your own particular point of view.

A winter container has several elements, each of which are interpreted by the gardener in charge. The finish is about the fine tuning. The little bits that take construction to another level. Those little bits can be imagined, and sorted out in the shelter provided by the garage. These winter pots included light rings on stands of Rob’s invention, stout cut twigs, garland lights, big C-9 light strands, and glass drops.

Summer topiary forms which provides a climbing venue for mandevillea vines in the summer are strung with garland light vines for the winter.

A thick evergreen garland is wrapped with grapevine. Loose and loopy. The materials are as subtle as they are simple.

This container features one of Rob’s light rings constructed on a stand. The branches we cut from a tree at our Branch property. The glass drops will pick up the light from a string of 50 clear C-9 lights. Part of the story board of these winter container involve light. No, you cannot see the wires or the bulbs. The big idea detailed on this story board-the twigs, the glass, and the light. A story board is a group of images representing an idea. Any creative expression should tell a story-from start to finish.

winter garland

The story? Welcome to winter.

Posted on: November 27, 2013 5 Comments

Filed Under: Holiday, Detroit Garden Works, container planting, Winter Tagged With: holiday decor, holiday lighting, winter containers, winter lighting, fresh cut twigs, the winter garden

All Mixed Up

Gardeners routinely mix plants and design elements up in the landscape. They favor this soil mix over that one. They mix all kinds of fertilizer from manure tea to fish emulsion. Hybrid plants suggest a mix of that gene pool with another. A mixer suggests a party attended by people from very different points of view. This guarantees that a mixer will be lively and entertaining. Mixed reviews on a film suggests there are ups and downs-will you take a chance, and go watch it for yourself? A mix can suggest a special brew, an individual take on a theme. A mix of perennials in a garden can help keep that garden interesting throughout the season.

A mix of evergreen trees on the lot line is less formal, more natural, than a mass planting of a single species. A mix of bird seed will attract more than one species of bird to your feeder. The process of mixing up a scheme is a creative process. Mixing colors results in a visual display that has depth. Mixing a plant with big texture with another plant of a smaller texture can be striking. Adding another or an unexpected element to the mix-glorious.

Oil and water do not mix without enormous effort. A color mix from opposing sides of the color wheel can catch the eye. Side by side color mixes are harmonious. Certain mixes are bound to produce conflict. Thus the art of a seating arrangement at a dinner party or wedding. It is astonishing to think that every color imaginable comes from a mix of the three primary colors. Primary colors mixed together may make for mud. Colors mixed together in other proportions can produce colors of astonishing beauty.

Mix a violin with a voice-revel in the result. Mix a black eyed Susan with a liatris-glaring this. Mix a Sum and Substance hosta with Russian sage-this is horticultural discord for all to see. Creating a successful mix of anything is an art. By this I mean that no college offers courses in how to mix one material with another. Were I to follow a recipe for a cake to the letter, it still might look and taste bad.

For certain clients, we elect to fill their pots with mixed greens. The airy and contrasting textures seem appropriate, for whatever reason. A mix of evergreen boughs can produce lots of volume But just like imagining a mix of greens in the landscape, mixing greens in a winter container takes great skill. The mix involves cuttings from evergreen shrubs that have very different growth habits. How to make those cuttings work together to form a strong and cohesive statement-beyond me. My landscape crews have a hand. What do I mean by this? They have so many years behind them-planting. They have a feel for the natural shape of a bough, and they know how to work with it. Even more amazing is their ability to make evergreens of all types work together in a container arrangement.

No natural evergreen in the landscape has a mix of different types of branches, unless it is a grafted form from the Jean Iseli Nursery. Each evergreen has an identity all its own. Mixing the cut branches to harmonious effect, and a beautiful overall shape, is not so easy.

Most cut evergreens have a signature swoop. White pine and incense have very flexible stems. This means they can be flattened by a snow storm. We either support the weak stemmed evergreens with a neighbor that has a stiff and stout habit, or we stick the branch so they curve up. Gravity will have its say soon enough. Fresh branches have plenty of spring, but as they dry, they will droop. If you are a fan of weeping branches, then perhaps this is the route to take.

If your idea of celebratory is more along the lines of upswept, then stick arrange your branches so they all appear to curve up towards the sky. Before I hang a mixed evergreen garland, I cut in in half, and rotate one side, and reattach it. I hang the garland so the branches face up. As the branches succumb to gravity, the garland looks full. Garlands hung with the branches down look skimpy . Garlands hung with the branches facing up on one side, and facing down on the other will always look lopsided.

Sticking greens both up and down can be a lively choice. These pots are in a very protected location, meaning they will be shielded from bad winter weather. It takes a good eye and a better hand to spot how much liveliness is just enough, and not visually confusing and chaotic. But do not be discouraged in any way. It takes lots of practice to get good at anything. I have no idea how many winter and holiday arrangements we have done in the past 20 years, but a lot is a reasonable number.

There’s plenty of satisfaction to be had from learning how to do.

Posted on: November 24, 2013 8 Comments

Filed Under: container planting, Winter, Woody Plants, Holiday Tagged With: holiday containers, holiday construction, evergreen boughs, cut evergreens, mixed evergreens, winter containers

Holiday Garden

It is no secret that I enjoy decorating the garden for the holidays. The gardening season has come to a close-there are reasons to celebrate. I am not watering, grooming, transplanting, replacing, pruning or fertilizing. This is a long way of saying I have respite from the chores that make the idea of a good garden a reality. Though I was content to haul the hose around, I am equally pleased that it has been put away.

A lot of the work that goes into a landscape is as much fun as a dose of cod liver oil. I have never been invited to a party to celebrate a grading project that eliminated a swampy spot in the yard. Nor has any friend invited me to admire their new drain field. A diehard gardening friend did invite me to admire the pruning on her front yard full of old oak trees-I don’t blame her. I might not have noticed, had she not drawn my attention to it. There is some sunlight in the yard now, and the work was very expensive-she wanted me to see. The pruning was in her mind, just cause for celebration.

A garden decorated for the holidays is a whole other experience. There is the opportunity to add some color to a landscape which has gone as gray as the winter skies. Materials from the garden can be arranged in any configuration or shape without regard to lighting or growing conditions. There is no planting, nor is there any watering. Only at the winter holidays can I have a perfectly lush evergreen and perfectly spiralling grapevine growing over the doorway. There are lots of things not available to me in the garden, but I can have whatever look I want for the winter.

The illusion of the decorated winter garden doesn’t ask for a skilled gardener. A holiday display is not limited to the realm of possibility. It is the one time of year I can have magnolia grandiflora, and sugar pine cones, red bud pussy willow, and winterberry-each stem at their peak. Each positioned in a display, just so. All this garland requires is the support of the light fixture, and strategically placed masonry screws, and enough 22 gauge paddle wire to keep every element securely attached.

Frost proof pots that had summer flowers are an obliging vehicle for an arrangement celebrating the season. There are so many beautiful fresh cut materials available-twigs, berries, branches and greens. The variegated boxwood I grew in a pot over the summer has gone into storage. I worry it is not hardy in my zone, so I will protect it from my winter in an unheated but enclosed space. I don’t have to worry about cut variegated boxwood in a winter arrangement. The understanding is that this material has a shelf life.

Growing a garden is one part skill, 3 parts hard work, 3 parts endurance and patience, and 3 parts luck. Sometimes even that is not enough. Plants routinely refuse to perform, even when given the best and most thoughtful care. The winter garden has no dead branches, or insect ravaged leaves. A boxwood or lavender hedge with a dead plant right in the middle is an ordinary sight in a landscape. No gardener has to put up with that in their winter arrangements.

I have read the predictions that we will have a very cold, snowy, and lengthy winter. That season usually begins in January. I may take the holiday ornaments, picks and bows off after New Years, but my winter pots will keep visual company during those lengthy and dreary months.

My summer garden has little need for lighting beyond what the sun provides. In the winter, every gardener has to fend for themselves.

Posted on: November 23, 2013 13 Comments

Filed Under: Holiday, Winter Tagged With: holiday lighting, winter containers, holiday decorating, evergreen garlands, evergreen boughs

The Dogs At Chase Tower

My company Detroit Garden Works is in the garden ornament business. We buy and sell ornament for the garden – new, vintage, and antique and repurposed, from sources in the US and Europe. What is a garden ornament? Any object deliberately placed in a landscape or garden. This definition would include pergolas, sundials, sculptures, bird feeders, benches, trellises, staddle stones, topiary forms, grapevine or stone spheres. Fountains and water features. Found objects, fencing, topiary plants. Espaliered trees, arbors, and stone cisterns. Tables and chairs. Rain water collection barrels and boot scrapers. Containers are garden ornament. They may be handmade Italian terra cotta, or galvanized buckets. They may be old apple or tulip crates. They may be contemporary Belgian stoneware, or cast stone versions of classical garden urns. They may be lead, or steel containers from Branch. They may be concrete, or wood, or cast iron.

A garden ornament may be as modest as a gazing globe on a steel stand, or as elaborate as a waterfall and pond. No matter the subject or scale, a garden ornament makes a statement about the taste and interests of gardener in charge. The inclination to ornament or decorate a space is natural. People decorate their houses with objects that help to create that atmosphere which feels like home. How a home is furnished says something about the taste, values and priorities of the person who lives there. There may be objects treasured for their history. One person might decorate their place with art, and that art could be sculpture, or paintings, or quilts or hand painted china. Buck collects vintage doll heads, typewriters, scientific instruments, and accordions. His personal spaces are just like him, as they reflect who he is, and how he sees things.

A landscape or garden is no different. A garden endowed with ornament says something very personal about the garden maker. An ornament can infuse a landscape with an atmosphere of history, mystery, or whimsy. There are no end of gardens where roses are growing. But the garden that has roses growing in profusion over a picket fence has a much different feeling than the garden that features roses trained as single ball topiaries, planted in orangerie boxes. A 19th century cast iron bench is not just a place to sit. It is an expression of an aesthetic much different than what is created by 3 rough hewn slabs of granite assembled as a bench.

So why this discussion of decoration? Once the plants in the garden shed their leaves and go dormant, a landscape with no ornament can be bleak place indeed. I am thinking about this, as we have just begun our winter and holiday decorating. Topiary forms, arbors, and pergolas will get lights wound around them. Doorways will be festooned with garland. Containers will get winter coats and hats. Wreaths will be decorated, and hung on the front door. Lights in every shape and color will be hung from the eaves, or stuffed into the pots. A bench will get a cushion of fresh greens. The trees will be hung with grapevine and light garlands. A Japanese maple decorated with glass drops will glitter all winter long. A sundial will get a wreath boa.

As for the dogs at Chase Tower, they have a carpet of greens. The dogs look like they have just paraded through a stand of yellow twig dogwood, their leashes trailing behind them. They have topknots and collars that are one part holiday, and 2 parts winter. Is this really what was in my mind when we decorated these pots? Yes. Decorating that tells a story will have an impact. There is an amusing and charming story being told that will make the winter a little easier to bear.

See what I mean?

I do see the decorating outdoors for the holiday and winter as a form of gardening. A trowel or garden spade is useless this time of year. The sight of them on the shelf, dusty rather than dirty, is irritating. On the other hand, a pair of pruners and a spool of good garden twine might be all the tools you need to decorate the garden for winter.

Woof!

Posted on: November 17, 2013 15 Comments

Filed Under: Garden Ornament, Holiday, container planting, Winter, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: Garden Ornament, winter containers, seasonal decor

The Details: A Story Board

All Mixed Up

Holiday Garden

The Dogs At Chase Tower

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