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Sunday Opinion: The Promise

My life as a professional gardener is very much different than my home gardening life.  When I am at home gardening, I can stop every hour for an iced tea, or go take a nap, if I so desire.  I can make messes that have lifespans. I can leave a pile of sod in the driveway that I need to steer around for weeks.  I can leave a dead tree long enough for it to become a snag.  Once I finally take it down, that empty space might sit and stew for a year; it is my privilege to live with that tooth missing. I can throw around the French word deshabille with authority.

I can skip the fall cleanup; I can let everything lay in the spring and call it a composting day.  5 years running I can look at a clump of daffodils no longer blooming and resolve once again to divide them, and move on.  I can ignore the faded flowers on the rhododendrons long enough that the new growth breaks-shoot.  I can order five pounds of alyssum seed, and save instead of sow it.  I can trip over a brick that has heaved up in the walk every day long enough to be irritated, but never long enough to reset it. I can leave a perennial in its pot, in the spot where I want to plant it, until it perishes from lack of water.  I can leave my tools out, and scattered about, until they dull, rust and splinter-and call it my as yet uncollected vintage collection.

I can rip the leaves off the dandelions, and stuff the flowers in my pocket.  I can leave my roses unpruned-experimentally.  Unplanted cell packs and 4 inch pots of annuals strewn all over the deck in May- I can call that process. I can put my pruners away, in favor of that natural look. Or I can saw everything down to the ground, and call it revitalization. I can advise Buck to consider a new parking place on the street when a maple in the tree lawn is obviously hollow and punk-wooded.  I can count on the new growth of the sweet autumn clematis to cover the tangled mess of last year’s dead stems. 

I can walk by a weed until it falls over into my path. I can step over that fallen weed for a long time thereafter.  I can let colonies of weeds run amok, and put edges to their spread-as if that meant something.  I can walk up hill, and then down hill, and unexpectedly step into a corgi digout-and call that exercise good for me.  I can persist in my unwillingness to get rid of that Russian sage hedge-as no doubt it will be better next year. I can make a note to come back and reassess on a day and a time yet to be determined.

A new fence that needs to be installed in my fountain garden-this is a given.  It has been a given for an embarrassingly long time. On those days I need to blame, I blame the need for a permit for my delay.  Any gardener dealing with a self imposed delay understands this; any blip on the screen will do.  My work schedule is always good for an extended delay.  I work 7 days a week, and have done so for better than twenty years.  This said, no one is questioning me or faulting me about my propensity to delay on my home turf.  My delay days-I permit myself a less than perfect, a less than organized, home gardening life.  

It may be that the best I that I deliver to my clients is not the design, but the promise to help them treat their garden differently than I treat my own.

Posted on: November 15, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

Staying Late

My come early- stay late routine came to a close beautifully.  The shop garden needed some dressing up for our evening event; we wanted the outside to say welcome, and encourage a festive mood for anyone walking to the door.  

Out at the street, an old iron cistern is stuffed with poplar branches, and finished with a groundcover of various sizes of white lights. Holiday light strings in groundcover, or in containers is an easy, portable and inexpensive way to light your winter landscape. This pot-our greeting. 

A pair of cast stone pots atop the gate piers feature steel spheres wrapped in a single ring of pearl lights.  Poplar branches were sunk in the soil, through the openings in the sphere.  The Saturn pots, as I call them, take the every day in ground landscape lighting at the base of the piers skyward.  


Wrapping the lights on the form can be accomplished quickly; we use the smallest zip tie available. This makes the removal of the lights much faster, when you need the sphere to support a vine, or provide a sculptural element in a container. The light ring reads clearly from below.

Lining the driveway with tables dressed in white linens in mid November has the element of surprise going for it.  This very traditonal symbol of a party to come gets a big boost from being placed outdoors.

Candlelight endows any event or gathering with a little romance.  However many candles you set out, a few more would probably be good.  Votive candles are much like the mini light strings-readily available and inexpensive, they can ornament a party indoors or out like nothing else. 

Straight sided votive holders are just as inexpensive, and reuseable-our trick is to put a teaspoon of water into each glass before we light the candles.  This makes popping the used candles out for cleaning easy.  Adding the votives to larger glass containers, pitchers and vases greatly magnifies the light; we did a collection of glass on each table.

The candlelight did much to illuminate the glass icicles in the lindens.  A few white laser cut plastic lanterns with a votive inside contrast with the icicles.  The walk to the door was warmly and invitingly lit.

A pair of garlic shaped steel tuteurs covered in pearl garland are illuminated courtesy of a light sphere at the bottom.  The surface of the pot is mulched in white recycled and tumbled bottle glass. Very dressy. It was a good day to stay late.

Posted on: November 13, 2010 10 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design, Detroit Garden Works, Parties and Events, Holiday Tagged With: ,

Detroit Garden Works

The opening of the Detroit Garden Works holiday open house weekend was last night; much to my surprise, we were ready around 3pm Thursday.  Help from two landscape crews made a huge difference over the past two weeks.  Many able hands make moving a mountain with a spoon easier-yes.   Rob had spent no small amount of time adjusting and readjusting the lighting.  He lit his birch diorama dramatically; the creeping fig on the wall was cast into so many green/black shadows.  The snowballs and snowflakes looked like they were floating. 


You may wonder how someone who knows the spelling, pronunciation, and culture of ampleopsis brevipedunculata could turn around and be so enamoured of the holidays.  An explanation is to follow.  The creation of a landscape, and the creation of a landscape designed for a holiday moment- not so different in intent.  just execution.   My greenhouse roof permits the sun to shine inside 12 months of the year.  Our one evening event of the year comes as the dark time approaches.  Rob set votive candles on the rafters; the greenhouse sky was twinkling.  He thought to attend to this detail.   This starlight was my favorite part of the opening of our holiday weekend.  

I have always had a big love for the holidays.  The idea of neighborhoods, good friends and family- cozying up and celebrating- appeals to me.  Of course, setting the scene is what I most enjoy, as it is what I am able to contribute.  Buck would despair at the thought of my cooking a holiday dinner-but I can generate a little ambiance, and set a mean table.  How my garden, how my life gets dressed for the holidays and delivers-I am on that.  Buck leaves the atmosphere to me.

The shop is comprised of four distinctly different spaces, and one small interior room.  Each space has its own big idea.  The devil is in the transitions.  I am always looking at how a guest will navigate turning a corner, or moving from one space to another.  I approach this in the shop in exactly the same way as I do designing landscapes, and hope this approach works gracefully.  Every corner-softened, simply stated.  

My guests- many of them come;  they to the last seem to enjoy their experience.  I took these pictures just after the last of my guests left.  As much as I try to photograph everything I mean to write about, I like to put the camera away given the moment- in favor of the experience of an event.  No picture I could take of the opening night of our holiday weekend would accurately capture that.  That moment is about in person. 

Should you run that country that is your garden like I do, you know every plant.  Every thriving colony-every disappointment.  You know the definition of gaposis. You clearly understand what needs attention next season.  You work the dirt room with great passion.  Your gloves are stiff with dirt, your boots need replacing; your tulips were mowed down by the deer.  No matter how dull and splintered your tools, and how poor the delphiums were,  you have hope.  The holidays-so much about hope.

Your company does not see your troubles and shortfalls.  They see your singularity of purpose.  They see your energy, your delight, your effort- the imagination, the drama, the humor. They reward the result of your efforts with their hand placed squarely in the middle of your back.  They encourage me.     


I am so lucky.  I have a lot of hands.  Every shred of angst that chases me- I can say with confidence that I have great people who do much to chase away my late fall blues. As much as I hope and depend that my good clients will dispell my worry, they do better.  They show up and do one better.  They support my shop.  They make it possible for me to keep going, keep growing.  Detroit Garden Works provides community to this designer. Our holiday weekend starts tomorrow- I so hope to see you.       

Late last night, I was happy and satisfied with what I saw.  Let me know what you think.

Posted on: November 12, 2010 4 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Holiday

Come Early


I am well aware there have been a conspicuous absence of posts the past few days.  The week running up to our holiday open house is an intense work experience that starts early in the day, and ends late.  Not that I mind this.  The past fews days have been unseasonably warm, so we have had spectacular fog at dawn.  The umpteen numbers of glass icicles we hung in the lindens are a frost white at 5:30 am-it was worth been up this early to see them. I like a project that has a deadline.  This is in sharp contrast to that garden which is always changing, and hopefully evolving. 

Bunches and more bunches of stick stacks of various twig arrived last week. Cardinal red twig, yellow twig, and black twig dogwood in three heights comes to us from a stick farm. Copper willow, fan willow, pussy willow-the salix family and its hybrids have beautiful twigs.  I would not mind farming sticks one bit. Coppicing twigs is a very old art; twigs are judiciously harvested, leaving the plant to grow new twigs. They provide lustrous, linear and colorful interest in winter containers. 


The yellow twig is an especially striking yellow green color.  In mass, they have a graceful and rhythmic appearance that belies their strength.  They will still look great come next April, when most else is the garden is still dressed in winter drab.  We do strap our twigs to a bamboo or metal pole that is sunk deep into the container.  A stick stack out of vertical is not a good look.  
That said, these wire containers of red twig listing by design is exciting visually.  A composition fueled by confidence and deliberation means the rules do not necessarily rule.  The gardening world’s most prominent rule breaker-nature. Snow in early June, the datura in ground that survives the winter, the hen who raises an abandoned kitten-there are lots of examples.    


I am an early person by nature.  I like time, peace and quiet to get ready for the day.  I am not a day dreamer-I am a dawn dreamer.  The prospect of completely redoing the display in the shop puts me to work very early; this is no different than in the spring.  In spring I am thinking about making things grow.  This time of year is about making something of what I have.     


Fog has a way of saying hush hush.  Saturated colors are subdued.  The wet quiet is muffles sound.  The sharp edges of everything are blurred. No telling where this observation might take me once I take it inside. Creating an atmosphere in the absence of weather-difficult. Arranging an interior space-I admire people who do this well.  They take a series of objects and create an atmosphere in which everything lives well together.  A person who can generate atmosphere- no doubt you know a sun maker, a rain maker, a trouble maker.  A well designed landscape is poised to wear the weather well.   

The fog has me thinking about how to soften the sticks-with picks, and preserved and dyed eucalyptus. As much as I like the masses of one color, what would happen if I mixed the sticks?  Maybe three colors.   


This is the last early morning before our holiday open house weekend.  My list is not nearly as long as it has been, but it’s long enough to get me going first thing.     
We are almost ready.

Posted on: November 12, 2010 4 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Holiday Tagged With: , ,