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Sunday Opinion: The Four Alarm Garden

I am swamped with design work, landscape installation projects, planting the flowers,  particular issues with different clients needing time and thought when time is in short supply, plant material and soil arriving, the store busy, the fabrication of custom pots, pergolas and sculpture via Branch-lots of work. Lots and lots of work, all jammed into that brief season we call spring.  This is not to mention dealing with the day to day life of three related but different businesses.  Some days I feel like I am manning the gardening desk at the Library of Congress. Other days seem like I am a garden traffic controller with too many projects needing to land all at the same time.  I got to work at 6 am today, took pictures of that great foggy weather we had early, posted the pictures, got the corgis squared away,  picked up a truckload of plants, helped offload another van load of eighty flats.  I have a big job to install tomorrow. When they figure out how to beam plants from one location to another, I will be the first to sign up.  Now I am writing and drinking a little morning coffee-its 10:30.  Most of the time, I would not have it any other way.  The spring rush around challenges me, and keeps me sleeping soundly at night. 

Warm days bring gardeners and non gardeners alike out of hiding. High temperatures last week near 80 that will persist through this week is too hot for me, but I do not get to choose.  That bed that needs revamping, the front door asking for larger, more welcoming pots, a spring event, a new addition, a rear yard landscape renovation, what tree for this spot, people with new homes needing a master plan, what flowers to plant-the phone rings regularly.  I am in a business that mostly makes people happy. Great outdoor spaces at home are welcoming, relaxing, interesting, companionable, interactive, personal-I could go on about how I feel the landscape and garden industry in this country helps make people’s lives better.

Designing and planting require some involved parties, and some time. Time to cook something up, time to let it grow.  No matter whether you plant an oak tree or grow alyssum from seed, there is a process involved that demands time.  Pots planted May 16th for a May 23rd party will, oh yes, look juvenile. If juvenile but beautifully planted works for you, then a summer garden planting for a spring event will look great.  Ready for company.  The expectation of a mature summer planting the end of May is asking for something no gardening person can provide.  I do not have the ability shift a planting into 5th gear, or engineer time travel.  I am a gardener; I know how to design and make things grow.  This is as close as I get to sitting on the right hand side of Mother nature.

It is my opinion that emergencies are limited to sick or endangered living things.  I will sound an alarm if a planting is threatened by too much water, or too little. Any living creature deserves my immediate attention if they need my protection.  This has to do with a belief in the sanctity of life.  There is nothing tough about figuring out what constitutes an emergency.  When a design and installation of a landscape or garden is important, it is not an emergency.  Things that are important, you take the time for.  People unwilling to put time to their garden-I suspect it is not all that important to them.  There are those requests for gardens, or pot plantings, that are not so much about making something grow.  They are much more about a moment.  Garden books have helped to foster this nonsence moment notion.  A photograph that depicts a garden on the one day a year when everything is perfect-that is the stuff that movie sets achieve.  The day the delphiniums are all in their glory does not take into account what comes the preceding months-as in replacing, staking, feeding, and so on-and even less about what they look like the five months after they are done blooming.  That one day of glory might not be repeated again for years.    The four alarm garden invariably has that look of having too much of everything put to it except time and thought.  They are fueled by an effort to create a crowning moment by artificial means.  To my eye, they are gardens noted for the fact that their slip is showing.  What slips, or slips away in a garden has everything to do with a lack of respect for place, season, and nature.

I take my job very seriously.  No small part of it is about explaining, educating, referring, counseling, interpreting, understanding.  The best part of my effort is that the landscape within my reach might be a fraction better.There is not much mystery to any of this; it is easy to see what is not important to me.  I have a tuna salad every day for lunch, and have for at least 3 months now.  I do not subscribe to Popular Mechanics or Vogue. I did watch my fountain being rebuilt, but I cannot sit still long enough to watch a tv show from start to finish.  Others who do not care about gardens how I do-they don’t bother me one bit.  Its just likely I have little to offer them.  My design advice-figure out what is important to you, and be sure you aim for that.   Should you need a moment, ask for one-do not ask for a garden.  If you like lifelong projects guaranteed at some time or another to be mired down by failure, weather, bad luck, frustration, and disaster that requires just about every ounce of energy you have, a garden will be the perfect thing for you.  When your best laid plans for your garden are crashing down around you, take some comfort in the fact that your thoughtful time and effort to create beauty benefits all.

Posted on: May 23, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

At A Glance: Rain and Fog

Posted on: May 23, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: The Natural World, Picture This

Loathe To Let Go

May weather in Michigan is likely to be too cold, or too hot.  As in, one extreme or the other, irregularly and unpredictably.  Yesterday saw the temperature reach 80 degrees, for Pete’s sake.  This untoward weather was attended by lots of phone calls from clients worrying that the summer was about to pass them by-could I plant their flowers right away?  We do try to get everyone planted as quickly as possible-most people understand this, and are good natured about it. I tell clients the best thing I do for them is to isolate all the world noise, and concentrate on their place.  I schedule plantings in an order suggested by the cold tolerance of the plants that need to be planted.  I have some clients for whom I have been planting for 25 years-these clients are first up.  Those clients aside, I change up plantings dates.  If you were so kind as to be planted the second week of June last year, you get an earlier date this year.  I grew up in and love a democracy-enough said.    My crews are great.  They unload the trucks, fill the pots, prep, plant topiaries and centerpieces-they do this rather than talk to me.  They wait until we are done, to talk to me.  I am crazy about them for this; they know how to set up and get ready-and leave me be to sort everything out.  I myself like to plant late, in thoroughly warm soil.  I am loathe to let go of the spring.  My tulips at the shop have been so beautiful-for at least a month.  But they are fading fast in the heat.   

The spring pots are just beginning to hit their stride.  Improvements in pansy and viola breeding has produced plants with great heat tolerance, and vigorous blooming.  I am personally still stuck on the violas, and not yet focused on the summer season.  I like the seasons-each one, in turn.  The rhododendrons outside my office at home are breathtaking right now-pale pink blooms with a flush of yellow at the throat. Those impossibly long stamens-what an elegant flower graces the rhododendron.  They speak to spring.   I am listening.

We planted up a number of galvanized troughs such as this one.  Spring plants have distinctive color and shapes that are all their own.  The kale will eventually bolt and go to seed when the hot weather arrives and stays.  Peach melba heuchera and Citron alyssum make a fine spring pair.  Lavender violas blushing peach-I know of no other flower that has coloration like this.  For the moment, the spring season maturing has my attention.

Spring white, lavender and purple-I am not ready to trade this in for a more summery look. I tour the pots and plantings at the shop every day, first thing.  I tour my own garden, last thing, every day.  It is not enough to see something briefly in a garden.  I like every bit of it to settle around my bones, and take hold.  Repeat trips in conjunction with my stubborn point of view; an unexpected change -this best describes my gardening life. 

The lettuce pots are beautiful right now. I know this will sound hopelessly archaic, but I eat iceberg lettuce and tuna every day at lunch.  Any lettuce, any mesclun roadside weed lettuce mix-a treat. The water that endows all the lettuces-I especially enjoy that which is crunchy and juicy.  Spring-eminently juicy.  Spring flowering plants are a treat to all of us who are winter weary.  Thus lettuce figures prominently in my spring container design work. Juicy and fresh-lettuce is just about the best thing spring has to offer.  

I like telling time by what is in bloom.  I have no need for an armillary, or a watch.  I have grown and tended many perennials-what I like about them the best is how they represent the season.  In spring- the hellebores, phlox divaricata, epimediums, European ginger, Solomon’s Seal-the simple violets.  Harbingers of the spring season. 

I apologize-the light at 7am is dim, and I thought I could skip hauling the tripod outside.  Though this photograph is not the sharpest, the idea is clear.  These tall thin long tom clay pots are home to burgeoning spring violas-delightful.  Spring like.

Spring in Michigan is short and sweet.  Very sweet.  The tulips-what could be better?  This tulip mix-so celebratory of spring.  Though I am racing miles ahead of the late spring season to design for summer, I so treasure our spring season.   


This pot-a strong arrangement of purple faced pansies, white violas and scotch moss in a very beautiful low bowl-this kind of spring statement sustains me.

Posted on: May 21, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Spring, Garden Design Tagged With: , , ,

Carter

The saga of the rebuilding of my fountain begins and ends with Carter. The man with that short scruff of a white beard, the navy shirt, vest, and cap-that’s Carter.  A combination of considerable brains, even more experience, patience and exacting craftsmanship-he and his crew have been my pleasure to observe for the last three days.  They tore my leaking fountain apart, and rebuilt its foundation some three weeks ago.  The stone for the coping had not been delivered two days when he picked it up; time to finish.

For pools and fountain stone, I specify a stone native to and quarried in Wisconsin.  This particular limestone is dense, and has few pores.  Indiana limestone is so porous, that pool copings and decks absorb too much water-a perfect medium for moss and algae.  Though I would as soon look at moss as anything nature provides, I do not want to walk on it around a pool-too slippery. This stone is as dense and smooth surfaced as marble-and weathers my climate without a problem. 

Buck did CAD-computer assisted design-drawings for the quarry-each piece was cut to his exact specification and dimension.  Communication is the art of life, a client once told me. I could tell Carter thought it was very cool that he did not need to cut or otherwise modify any piece of stone.  I do not think I have ever seen a crew of  four measure and remeasure like Carter’s group did; when a piece of stone was laid, it was laid in the right spot.   

Each slab needed to be set in precisely the right location.  OK, once located, each slab needed to be set exactly level.  Watching Carter level a piece of stone is exactly like watching paint dry.  Each piece took an incredibly long time. My eyes were crossing, and I thought I might black out-watching him tinker and tap.   

He has a tool-a gizmo-that helps him determine if a slab is set level.  The laser level-I could tell by looking at its battered casing that he uses it non stop.  But make no mistake-I could see him using, and trusting his eye.  I am very interested in the history and practice of fine craftsmanship.  I have been watching the real deal, in my own back yard, for three solid days. 

The Wisconsin limestone is so dense, Carter directed that each piece be buttered with thinset mortar before he placed it in the mortar bed.  The mortar bed was levelled and relevelled.  Think of the foundation, and finish stone as a cookie-the thinset, and the bulk mortar-the creme filling.  Unlike a sandwich cookie, the filling needs to grip both the foundation and the stone, and stay stubbornly stable in spite of stresses from up above, and underneath.   

A client remarked recently that small spaces need to be designed just so-there is little margin for error.  Any mistake in the layout or execution is all the more obvious in a small space. I did have occasion once to deal with a pool that had been dug, and shot with gunite-out of square.  Needless to say, the pool coping stone, and its pattern had to be modified.  Luckily, the pool terrace stone could be modified and recut in such a way that makes this mistake almost imperceptible.


We had quite the event going on.  I larned quite a bit about the technology and properties of concrete and mortar-not to mention the science of making something lay flat, and stick tight, for good. 

Last night at 7 they finished the last of the mortaring of all the stone joints.  I will need to wait 5 or 6 days before I can repaint the pool interior; all the work needs time to cure.  I should have running water in no time.

Posted on: May 21, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design, The Natural World, Garden Ornament Tagged With: ,