Archives for December 2019

A Reindeer On The Roof

Deer in the garden is a sore subject for those gardeners who are plagued by the destruction they wreak on every plant shrub and tree in the landscape. What they don’t eat, they trample. They even rub the bark off of trees when they are rutting, for Pete’s sake. Preventing deer from demolishing the garden is the subject of page after page of essays on Google, and countless books and videos. But the grapevine deer sculptures that Detroit Garden Works has stocked for a number of years have their fans. The life size bucks and does come in standing, grazing, and seated poses, just like the fawns. They look terrific in any spot in the garden asking for a representational sculpture fashioned from a natural material. The grapevine is wound around a substantial steel armature, and should survive outdoors for many years, providing they get a yearly application of a penetrating oil based sealer.

Who knows what possessed me to put a deer on the roof, but there is a certain Buck that has been near and dear to me for many years. That personal association aside, Christmas folklore is full of references to a certain St Nicholas circumnavigating the globe in a reindeer drawn sleigh, bringing gifts to children world wide on Christmas Eve. It is a story that delighted me as a child. Apparently I can still be enchanted by it. Winter and holiday containers and displays bring an element of delight to the landscape that has gone dormant, and quiet. It was not so far fetched to cast the grapevine deer as a grapevine reindeer.  A holiday diorama in the making, if you will.

The roof at Detroit Garden Works is home to eight planter boxes, each of which are five feet long. They were fabricated from heavy duty sheet metal – there is not one thing fancy about them. These painted metal hold soil, plants, and an irrigation system. The magic is what gets grown in them over the summer. We intended to bring a little magic to the winter season that is at hand.  Our reindeer was secured in the center via steel rebar pounded in at an angle. On an angle? A gusty wind could pull steel rods set vertically out of the soil in a matter of moments.  The steel set on a steep angle is weighted down with a thick layer of saturated and frozen soil. A wind strong enough to uproot that buck would be a rare wind indeed, and most likely would take the box as well. We took every precaution to keep that reindeer in place. Of course we needed lots of lights. And a thicket of twigs. As the soil was frozen solid, we made foam forms, buttered them with lights, and stuck them with medium height pussy willow. Each one of these forms was additionally secured with angled steel rebar and concrete wire. Suffice it to say there is a lot of rebar on the roof right now.

All of the irrigation tubes and emitters were pitched over the sides of the boxes. There was plenty of additional work involved in making it possible to flip the switch on the lights.

A simple evergreen garland, wound round with garland light studded grapevine was attached to the leading edge of the boxes, and down the sides of the building.

My crew was keen for a group portrait. Why not? These pictures do not really reveal all of the work that went in to moving this project along to this point. They were caught up in the fun of it, and committed to seeing it through.

The view at dusk made it clear we needed to do more. The thicket of twigs needed to describe the entire width of the building. We had run out of pussy willow, so what now?

The light burst collar on the deer did not illuminate the sculpture. It spot-lit the neck. The twigs were in silhouette at dusk, and invisible come dark. We regrouped.

Phase two of the fabrication and installation asked for a burlap ribbon collar. The light collar did not read during the day, and was a too strong blob of light at night. Karen obliged with the fabrication, and Joe got the collar attached in just the right spot, and at the right angle. We had to rethink the lighting.

Attaching multiple light bursts to the front edge of the twigs might do a better job of illuminating the thicket at night. It was certainly worth a try.

Lengthening the twig thicket proved to be easy. The last few bunches of black dogwood, mixed with lots of alder branches made a believable transition from the more formal and vertical pussy willow stems to a more wild and natural look. A thicket spanning the entire width of the roof seemed more deliberate and finished.

The multiple light bursts did a great job of illuminated the face of the branches at dusk.

The burlap ribbon collar on our reindeer read plainly and properly, both day and night.

much better, this.I know if Rob is photographing something, he likes it.

Who knows if St Nicholas will require the last minute services of our reindeer buck tonight, but I am sure he will have no problem spotting him from space. The Works is ready.

At A Glance: Recent Work

To follow are some visual highlights of our winter work. I will not fault anyone who cannot wade through them all! My group produced a prodigious amount of work the past five weeks, and I am pleased that every winter project we had is finished. We are better than halfway through the Detroit Garden Works winter garden. Then it will be time to do my pots at home.


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Very pleased with this year’s winter pots and such.

A Lighted Winter Arrangement

A request to turn a limestone fountain into a container for the winter is not the usual thing, but why not?  The dimensions were not overwhelmingly large. Nonetheless, 45″ by 45″ is a lot of territory to cover. The real test would be producing an arrangement of sufficient size to be properly proportional to the container. A fountain, that is. The client was also interested in a substantial lighting plan that would have height, width, and a good deal of intensity. We went for broke with four 140 light count light bursts. The light you see in the above picture would be magnified 20 fold in the dark. Incredible to believe that a lighting device drawing so little power could deliver so much light. And light 3 feet off the surface. Later we added 9 mini light bursts to the mix. Read on for details. The form is 8″ thick-enough to fill the entire watery area of the fountain.  And substantial enough to hold a five foot diameter light ring, and hundreds of cut red twig branches, picks, and greens. The hole in the center of the form? This gives the fountain jet a place to be, undisturbed.

A decision was made about what portion of the form would be twig covered. I do that based on my experience as a landscape designer. Designing landscapes means dealing with space, in all three dimensions. A tape measure and an instinct for proportion is the best I have to offer.

The red twig dogwood stems at the center would dictate the dimensions of all of the other elements. The light burst would be buried in this forest of twigs. The day time appearance of the arrangement is just as important as what happens after dark. David is particularly skilled at setting cut branches in such a way that the overall shape is natural and graceful. Perfectly shrubby. Perfectly ethereal. Love his work. By this time, the stems of the light bursts are beginning to disappear. He works with the lights on. Doesn’t that make sense?

A channel has to be created for the prongs and base of the light ring. Some stems are removed, only to be put back in once the ring is in the proper spot. This ring is 5 feet in diameter, and difficult to handle. We like to install it when the arrangement is partially done. We had a branch road map, if you will. It might seem intuitive to install the ring first, and work around it. But that ring is rigidly geometric – not the look we were after for the branches. We make the forest first, and fit that geometric light element into it. Forest first. Always. We could have used a second foam layer for the ring, but I am glad we did not. The ring is at the right height for all of the other elements, sitting in the main form. A second layer of shorter alder branches faced down the red twig. My client and I agreed that the picks she had chosen for the arrangement should be backed up by the more subtly colored alder. A triple layer thicket of alder created a place for the picks to be.

The stems of the faux picks disappear one by one into the alder. The color relationship between the red twig and the picks is made more subtle, given the transition provided by the alder.  Fresh cut alder branches are beautiful. The brown bark is punctuated by the green and red tips and buds. The branchy structure of these stems contrast with the mostly vertical red twig stems. The relationship in color, texture and mass between these two twiggy materials is a good one. Any natural twiggy material helps to integrate faux materials into the mix. Sometimes the best element to introduce into a winter arrangement is a little congestion. Some integration. Integrating materials in a winter container requires great skill. A patch of this and a patch of that, all over, can be very hard on the eye.

David came in early late this past week to assess how our lighting scheme looked. Four light bursts, and four sets of three mini bursts on the perimeter of the red twig seemed to be creating the light my client was after. The light ring reads strongly.

Once I saw this, I knew David had successfully combined a powerfully wide and tall lighting scheme into an integrated arrangement of both fresh cut and faux materials. I doubt I will ever forget this project. Or this picture. The integration of every highly structured element into a gracefully whole expression is a skill that evolves, one project at a time.

Karen is sticking the last of the greens here.

in the studio

loading the winter arrangement

Of course I was not happy that this arrangement did not fit into our box truck. Some landscape person of note one said, “No matter what truck you choose to buy, it will not be big enough”. The box truck did not have a big enough box.

We did eventually load the arrangement into Dan’s pick up truck. I think he was nervous about transporting this arrangement, but he never said so. It was a work day, as usual. Fortunately we did not have far to go.

the final touches by Karen

hooking up the lighting

The good and happy end of a project, no matter how small or big, is cause for celebration. Am I celebrating?  Yes.

A Tree Of A Different Sort

Not every holiday tree necessarily needs to sport needles, and have a cone like shape, does it?  We did have a request from a client for an alternative and more sculptural version of the traditional lighted tree. I was happy to oblige, given that senior Branch Studio fabricators Sal and James indicated they were willing to give me a hand. The three of us were able to find a pair of young and one sided Bradford pear branches that fit the bill. Once they were zip tied together, I was sure they would provide a holiday twig tree of distinction. What is James doing here? He is holding the tree assembly, waiting for Sal to get our client’s container ready to hold that tree. I call this holding the flashlight. When two or more people join forces to get a project underway, some hands are active, and some hands are on standby, waiting to participate in the next step.  A project like this takes more than one pair of hands.

Our client’s cast iron container on legs was astonishing beautiful. But the open steel ribs needed a liner. Of a mossy type. We do stock moss mat that is perfect for lining pots. But this pot, as heavy and sturdy as it is, was not road ready for a moss liner, much less a fresh cut tree. Sal and I talked over a plan to get the moss mat to sit tight against the pot at great length. In the end, I left it up to him, as well I should.

That liner needed to fit smooth and tight, without any wrinkles. Often what looks effortless and natural takes lots of time and effort to achieve. Sal and James cut the moss mat, and draped it in as best they could –  to follow the contour of the container. They went on to add a layer to the sides and bottom an interior liner of coir mat that we buy on large rolls. The coir is fairly rigid and thick. It would provide some stiffening to the moss mat that would be visible on the outside. The green landscape tape on the outside? Written on it is the clients name. We have a busy studio this time of year. A mix up would not do. We have the notes from the client’s visit to Detroit Garden Works. David visited her residence, and took pictures of the location for this tree. Those pictures were always in view during the fabrication. Making sculpture in the studio for a specific space has inherent problems. Every maker has to keep the installation site in mind. We tag, flag, and review the pictures many times over the course of the making.

The only requirement is a well lighted space, lots of materials and tools, and some time. The form that would hold the tree would have to be built from the bottom up.

The moss mat exterior fabric lined with an inner layer of coir was not going to stand up on its own. Sal cut disks of foam slightly smaller than the interior diameter of the pot. He cut every disk in half, and hollowed out a spot for the tree trunks. Once the moss mat and coir was in place, he drove long wedges of foam into the space between the half discs. This pushed the outside circular edge of his disks tight against the walls of the container. Genius, this. He and James built an interior foam framework that would hold that tree, two inches up at a time, from the bottom to the top.

James injected the hot melt glue that would secure the tree in the foam form inside the pot.

Joe and David and I stepped back, and advised about the tree stems being perfectly vertical. We only had one opportunity to get this tree standing up straight, as once the glue cooled, there would be no moving it.

Once the tree was secured in the pot, Sal and James wound the branches round with lights. Of course a holiday tree needs lights. These cherry lights sport globes of a decent size, but the light is soft.

Near the end of the lighting part of this project, I can clearly see that Sal and James have been spot on with the execution of this project. The size and scale of the tree was good, and the pot looked great lined with moss.

The two of them attached 38 overscaled glass drops to the branches of this tree. That would be the only ornament on this holiday tree. At the end of the day, this twig tree was ready to load up and deliver.

David provided the final touch – a top dressing of short magnolia branches to cover the foam form. His take on how to place and style the magnolia was appropriate to the container. And to its eventual home. Just enough of the trunks of the branches were still visible, giving the impression of that tree form.I will confess I came in very early in the morning, just so I could see how this twig tree would look in its lighted state. In my opinion, the fabrication was perfection in every regard. A natural tree that would dry, and keep as long as the client wished to keep it. The light would be soft and glowing, perfect for an interior placement.

Sal and James made this, and they made it well. The ride in the box truck, tipped over onto a stack of bags of soil, and the ride up a freight elevator was uneventful. Best of all, the client is very pleased.