container planting | Deborah Silver & Co.

Spring Flying By

It seems ridiculous to be talking about spring container plantings when our current 80 degree temperature is expected to soar into the 90’s over the new few days. But better an ephemeral spring than none at all. April was a very tough month. Scary freezing temperatures and snow hovered over the entire month. Planting this year’s the spring pots required coats, hats and gloves, but we got them all done by April 20. These Branch Studio boxes pictured above were planted with lavender, rosemary, lavender mix pansies and alyssum, and have grown considerably since our early April plant date. The spring is all about a celebration of the first to emerge, and endure. Simple and satisfying, filling planter boxes early on with chilly soil, and plants that shrug off the cold.

Rob planted lots of pots and baskets for spring. Most of them are gone now. Who could resist a basket full of lettuce? Cold tolerant vegetables make great container plants. There is something so fresh and juicy about spring green.

I have a number of clients for whom I plant spring pots, and to the last, they all like something different. This client has a decidedly contemporary point of view. We planted accordingly. Tall and short pussy willow in several distinct layers speak to an architectural arrangement. Taupe dyed eucalyptus all around provides some weight in the midsection. The light and dark pansy mix-sparkly. The contemporary Belgian pot is a beautiful shape, and has a subtly textured surface. The planting features the pot. The selection and arrangement of plants in a container adds the evidence of a point of view. That point of view provides another layer of engagement to the viewer. The color of the pussy willow and eucalyptus echoes the color of the container in a succinct way, and it helps to greatly animate the color of the pansies and violas.

That giant cast iron cauldron at the end of the Detroit Garden Works driveway gets dressed up every season. We mean it to say hello, and welcome. The previously pictured container would be too tailored and austere for this spot. I like containers in which every element is intended, and has a reason to be. The end of May, these pansies are blooming profusely. A spring container can be enjoyed from the moment it is planted until summer arrives July first.

These citrus mix pansies planted weeks ago have grown in, and are still growing. The centerpieces are fake and fanciful, to my client’s delight. The pot in the background has a sweet pea captured inside a tightly configured ring of pussy willow. Sweet peas are notoriously sloppy growers. The pussy willow will support this lax growing vine. The placement of the sweet pea next to the bench insures that fragrance is part of the enjoyment of the container.

This early spring pansy planting underneath a multi trunked birch is the first breath of spring in this landscape. Comprised primarily of trees, shrubs and ground cover, this under planting of pansies and alyssum previews what is to come in this park like setting. Spring can never come soon enough in our zone. The hellebores in my yard were buried in snow until late April. It seemed like the flowers bloomed and matured in the same breath. Many of the spring flowering trees were very slow to come on this spring, but for the redbuds. I suspect that as they bloom before they leaf out, the flowers came at their usual time, and lasted for weeks. The crabapples leaf out, and then bloom; they were fleeting in flower. My dogwoods had 6 days of glorious bloom, and then faded fast in the heat of the past few days. I may have missed the lilacs. Who knows what 90 degree weather will do to the spring container plants, but they have been glorious so far.

pale yellow and red violet in a spring garden

Columnar rosemarys inside a quartet of steel obelisks. The cool wave pansy mix “Peaches and cream” has a gracefully trailing habit.

Daffodil mix pansies and romaine lettuce at the end of May

Cut pussy willow branches, cream eucalyptus, and bicolor pansies

4 spring pots with concord eucalyptus and lavender mix pansies.

pussy willow, pansies, and ivy in a shady location

pussy willow, rosemary and pansies framed by a hedge of Ruby Queen oakleaf hydrangeas – this is a very good spring look. I am sorry to report that our spring is rapidly fading. I am happy to have some pictures.

Posted on: May 27, 2018 9 Comments

Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, container planting, Spring

The Big House

A Michigan spring is a big fluid situation. We have cold days and cold nights. We have hot days and freezing nights. Every day is a new weather drama, with a new cast of characters. We have a glass roof over one room inside Detroit Garden Works. Once we start buying in seasonal and tropical plants, it feels like a little house. During those cold spells, we jam no end of cold intolerant plants under that glass roof, to keep them happy. For years we have moved seasonal plants in and out of our garage, given the night time temperature forecast. That in and out is a a huge chore. So late last winter we made arrangements to purchase a big house for our plants. A 60′ long by 30′ wide gothic styled house that would put all of our seasonal plants under cover. The house got delivered on a flatbed truck. Seeing the boxes and pieces on the ground made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This is a greenhouse?

Of course I asked Buck to take the lead. He was reluctant to take on the big house, but he did. The worst part of getting it aloft was the fact that we could not dig into the ground to set the posts. I suspect this part of our property was formerly a road bed. It was full of asphalt, big rocks, and giant pieces of concrete. It took a week, 4 people, and a jackhammer to dig all of the holes for the posts. The landscape crew took on that thankless job, day after day. The Branch crew saw to setting every post in concrete in a perfectly vertical position. This may sound easy, but it is not. I have never seen so many levels and so many measuring tapes in one place in my life.

Once the posts were set, we were ready to set the ribs aloft. We had willow branches in the way that had to be cut, and a lots of work to be done in the airspace. The willow that had to be pruned back provided material for a tool the Branch fabricators needed. I will say this tool took my breath away. I like simple solutions.

One person on the ground held the rib in the proper position with the willow tool, so the person on the ladder could bolt the support bars in place. The greenhouse came with directions that were very unclear. Given that this was Branch’s first greenhouse, they proceeded cautiously. But once the ribs were set, the structure was rock solid.

I had no idea how a 2000 square foot piece of 6 mil plastic would go over the house, and be secured, but it turned out to be fairly simple. We had to wait for a windless day, with no rain. Apparently wet plastic is very difficult to slide over the ribs. After laying out the plastic next to the house, ropes were secured to the edge of the plastic with the help of small rocks. Rocks? The plastic was bunched up over a rock, much like the paper wrapper over a tootsie roll pop, and then secured with rope. Of course it is done this way. The plastic would slip through a loop of rope, no matter how tight it was tied. The rock secured the plastic to the rope. This is how greenhouse people do it. Ingenious.
Each rope was thrown over the top of the house, and handed off to a person on the other side.

8 rope pullers and two wrinkle reliever people made quick work of getting this giant piece of plastic over the top. The plastic keeps heat in the house, and wind, rain, hail and other weather events off the plants.

Once the plastic was in place, it was secured on both sides in a channel with a locking cap that runs the entire length of the house. This was a very cold day. Instantly it seemed warmer inside the house than out. Seasonal plants hail from tropical climates. They dislike cold temperatures, and cold soil even more. In mid May, the best place for annual plants is under cover. Planted out in our cold soil too soon, they sit there. Inside, they grow.

The short ends of the house are rigid polycarbonate panels. We will install the polycarbonate sliding doors later. Right now, the house is open to promote good air circulation, and to permit carts to come and go.

The final layer over top of the house is a shade cloth. It blocks 40 percent of the sun coming through the plastic. This will keep the house much cooler when the weather gets hot. This means less stress to the plants that are in small pots. And a more comfortable place for people to look at plants. The long sides have separate plastic panels that roll up, so when its warm, some of the heat is able to escape.

We are by no means a business specializing in seasonal plants. Nor are we a nursery specializing in trees, shrubs, perennials and ground covers for the landscape. We specialize in pots, tools, ornament, sculptures, fountains, furniture and interesting objects for gardens. Rob sees to making the Works a place friendly and engaging to those people who garden. And those people for whom the beauty of a garden is a way of life. Those objects around which a garden or landscape can be organized is just a part of the equation. Of course we treasure the plants, especially plants that can be grown in containers.

It seems fitting and reasonable to have a plant house. What I had not planned on was how much I would enjoy it. Thank you Branch for putting up a big house.

Posted on: May 17, 2018 28 Comments

Filed Under: flowers, container planting, Detroit Garden Works, Spring Tagged With: annual plants

Some Good Reasons To Plant Pots For Spring

Our spring has been an exasperatingly wintry sort of gray and cold. April has been a last of the winter month. But today April 30th, we have blue skies. That blue is a giant step towards spring. Every gardener in my zone is on that plane that promises to leave our wretched April weather behind. The sun drenching my landscape with warmth and promise-that promise could not be more welcome. Was this worst April of my gardening lifetime? Yes.

No one is happy looking at empty pots. It has been too cold to plant anything except the most cold tolerant plants. Can you hear me sighing? Not that my memory of past Aprils mean much. I know that the weather cycles in years vastly bigger than my time on this earth. The theys who keep records say this is the coldest April we have had for 134 years. We’ve all been living that scene. Sitting out a few nights ago after work made me wish I had a coat like Milo’s. Today we are slated to hit 80 degrees.

Today we will plant the last of our spring container plantings. Do I plan to post pictures of what we have planted this spring? No. It will take weeks for what we have planted to grow on and look like something. Spring container plantings are at their most beautiful the first of June. Perfect timing, in my estimation. My spring pots coming in to their own later in May prevents me from rushing to plant too early for summer. Nature, and gardeners, abhor a vacuum. The sight of bare dirt is instantly followed by the urge to plant. The urge to plant this year is especially strong. To follow are pictures of some of my favorite spring container plantings. Most of them were taken in late May.

pansies and violas

variegated lavender

orange osteos, heuchera, and orange pansies

curly pussy willow and sweet peas

spring pots featuring pansies, violas, dill, and fan willow

Marguerites, pansies, violas and cream alyssum in a basket

Bok Choy, osteospermum, mini marguerites and alyssum

White osteospermum, chrysanthemum paludosum “Snowland”, yellow petunias and blue salvia

daffodils

carexviolas and angelina

lettuce and alyssum in a basalt pan

Variegated lavender, cream alyssum and strawberries in mid AprilThat mid April at the end of May-striking.

Posted on: May 1, 2018 8 Comments

Filed Under: Color, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, container planting, Spring

Okra Pods

We were able to finish all of our 2017 projects last week, save one, by last Thursday afternoon. That final project needs a decent sized block of time, so we will do it this coming week. This meant there would be time for me to get some pots done at home. Finding materials would be a challenge. Given that the supply of fresh cut greens is all but depleted, my only hope was 8 9 foot Frazier fir Christmas trees purchased to chop up for our last project to come. There would be enough branches from those trees available to do my two pots on the driveway. The Frazier fir would shake off all the cold and snow a winter season would have to dish out, and still look great next March. The skirt of green was available.

Our supply of fresh cut twigs was equally skimpy, but for two bundles of red bud pussy willow we put on reserve for our last project. I toured the shop at least three times before I focused on a pair of steel topiary cones that we had Missy cover with grapevine and brown corded incandescent lights. These topiary forms are 5.5 feet tall. The scale of them would be perfect for my 30″ tall and 30″ diameter Branch Hudson tapers, given that we had no branches available for the center. I had no use for those incandescent lights. There had to be another idea. While David was removing those lights, I toured the store for the 4th time. We had a case of 10′ long LED rice light strands on silver wire still available. These lights would need their transformer and plug protected from the elements. We could do that. As the lights seemed so minuscule (each light is truly the size of a grain of rice), I doubled up the strands. David and I took a few minutes to wind them around each topiary form in an informal spiral.

What next? The intersection of that vertical topiary form with that horizontally oriented bed of greens was bare, stark and dry. Awkward. An intermediary element that would soften spot and provide visual interest would be a good idea. This part of the container would be at eye level, as my tapers are set on tall steel socles. I knew I would want to load up that interior level with Lumineo cluster lights, but those lights needed something at eye level to illuminate besides the bare legs of the topiary cones. Successful containers, no matter the season, need to be designed and planted as a complete and literate visual world unto themselves. The spring, summer and fall plants, and winter materials, play a considerable role in this. But it is the overall sculptural quality that makes a container garden complete.

We had plenty of bunches of dried okra seed pods on slim wood stems in the shop greenhouse. I love these pods-we always have them. We usually use them in fall and winter interior arrangements. The numbers of bunches available were sufficient for my pots. OK, bring on the okra. David and I faced all of those curving pods inward. Like a chrysanthemum flower, or an artichoke. We left the pods tall, so they would represent entirely above the level of the greens. The slight wood stems on the pods would not in any way obstruct the light at the center. Setting the levels for all of the materials for these pots was all about creating sculpture. Those stick bottoms are not visible unless you walk right up to the pots, and look over the greens. Okra? Few on my crew had ever heard of okra. Over the course of building these winter pots, there was a discussion of okra the vegetable, as well as placing dry pods in a pot.

Though I spent much time melding a design to the available materials, I was not prepared for this outcome. The rice lights were anything but shy. The four strands on two pots illuminates my entire driveway. The okra pods set tall on wood skewers both absorbed and reflected the bright light.

These winter pots are by far and away the best I have every had. That best had everything to do with an unusual choice of materials. The design and fabrication of these pots is all about creating relationships with unfamiliar materials.

The pots are at their best at night. I had no idea that the okra pods would so dramatically provide the much needed weight to the bottom of these pots. These pots glow from top to bottom, and are fiery in the midsection. Having the fabrication of these winter pots scheduled next to dead last has its advantages. There was time to tinker. Time to dream up something different.