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More On Winter

holiday container arrangements

This past week was devoted to getting a lot of clients ready for the holidays and the winter to come.  Every client’s take on the season is different.  How I love that.  Every project we do involves different materials, different emphasis, different style, different execution.

There are those landscapes that are very spare-they ask for seasonal company in the same vein.  There are those who love sparkles, and those who want anything but. 

The architecture makes its own demand.  Ignore that, and your winter container arrangements will look jarringly out of place.  These containers look in keeping with an idea that was established by the architecture.

There are those who delight in the light.  I will confess I am one of them.  The daytime look here-sumptuous.  The night time look-electric.

This client has small children.  The mudroom door-this is their front door.  A dog, and a few pots dressed for the season-appropriate to the occasion.

We had occasion to obtain a number of French made baskets with leather handles.  Not that you could spot those handles here, but they finish this basket in a very beautiful way.  I am sure the original intent never involved a winter container arrangement. 

How beautiful and comfortable they look at this front door.  Though the arrangement is simple and subdued, the overall shapes are generous and clear.

This 19th century white painted wirework planter is a garden ornament/container that organizes this entire garden.  For the winter, an arrangement that is just as serious as the planter.  I am particularly pleased about how this looks-and will look-all winter. 

These mossed topiary sculptures in French pots add a graceful note to this massive stone fireplace.  They will be a welcome and personal note-all winter long.

The shape and size of a container, and the location of those containers, provides plenty of clues about how to shape and size an arrangement.  

This client has beautiful terra cotta pots that sit on this porch during the summer months.  In the winter, we fill fiber pots with twigs and greens.  Very simple and uncomplicated, yes.  What would be complicated would be the idea of living with this massive porch all winter long-bare.

Michigan winter weather adds its own touch to every winter container arrangement.  This is why we construct them to withstand whatever nature has to dish out.  We might get a dusting of snow.  We might be buried in it. 

Eucalyptus is a plant whose stems and leaves are amenable to absorbing color, and preservative.  I would not want to do without this material over my winter.  A winter container stuffed full of eucalyptus-not too dressy or dramatic.  Just warm.

Another material not native to my zone-southern magnolia.  I buy the branches by the caseload.  The glossy leaves hold up over my winter beautifully.  The leaves dry the most gorgeous shade of pale platinum green you could imagine.  The cinnamon brown felted backs of the leaves-this color is persistent.  Winter long.  The color and shape of the willow-a great companion.

The relationship of the color of dried limelight hydrangea flowers to the willow and magnolia-pleasing. 

Whitewashed eucalyptus is a material of choice for those clients that swear by white.  Interested in pairing materials?  Noble fir has that blue white cast that makes it a natural companion for whitewashed eucalyptus.  

That very same eucalyptus is a gorgeous companion for the containers we make at Branch.  Steely blue.

Any container that sits empty over the winter bothers me.  I like the idea that no matter the season, the spirit of the garden goes on.  I know my trees, shrubs and perennials are sleeping.  Fine.  It is about to be winter.  But if I have anything to say about it, I fill the pots.  To overflowing.  Welcome, winter.

Posted on: December 9, 2012 2 Comments
Filed Under: Winter, container planting, Holiday Tagged With: , , ,

The December Better Homes And Gardens

 

February last, Jane McKeon, garden editor at Better Homes and Gardens called-would we be available to host a photo shoot of my winter containers?  Why wouldn’t we?  Better Homes and Gardens reaches an astonishing number of homes all across the US.  Even better, they have been publishing, and encouraging great design for many decades.  BHG came every month in the mail to my house when I was a child.  My Mom poured over every issue.  Home, garden, design, health, food-a compendium of articles and pictures about daily life, touched by design. 

I am not sure I read any of the articles as a child, but I am quite sure I studied the pictures.  BHG has evolved over time, but a few things are quite the same.  They have the idea to share, explain,  teach-and support.  What could be more American in nature? The magazine had run an article about my spring container plantings, but I was excited about this article that would feature containers in winter.   

I have to credit Rob for the seminal idea that no container should be empty over the winter season.  Many years ago he described a plan to offer materials in the shop that could be placed into containers, and not only survive, but enrich our winter season.  What a gifted idea!  The containers that make a home for summer annual and tropical plants could be a home for cut greens, preserved and dry natural materials during our long winter months.  We take such great pride that this idea has spread, both to other designers, and to clients who like to do for themselves.    

No gardener loves the winter.  The frozen ground, the deep freeze, the dead stalks and the gray skies are daunting.  If you are like me, you are longing for spring.  But spring is an impossibly long way off.  Every gardener needs a big idea to occupy at least part their winter.  Seed catalogues, plant research, forcing bulbs, design planning-these things help.  But dressing the garden for the winter season takes such a lot of thought and effort- this extended activity helps to keep the fire burning through the end of the year.

 Our winter 2011 was anything but ordinary.  Warm.  No snow.  BHG wanted a little snow.  The shoot-on hold.  We considered fake snow.  Once that idea was nixed, we held our breath-hoping for snow from the sky.   

At the first sign of an inch of snow, BHG put Chicago based photographer Bob Stefko on the road to our place.  We had but a moment to record the winter pots, in an environment that looked momentarily wintry.  One of my landscape crews was most obliging-moving pots, snow and lights. 

I will admit that both my crew and I about froze,  styling Bob’s shoot.   I was amazed by him-he shrugged off the long hours of cold, and focused on the work.  His photographs-each and every one of them-were beautiful. A great photographer creates opportunity and invention despite trying circumstances.  Bob was no exception. 

Though we had no idea what he was seeing, we kept him company. 

We have had lots of calls and emails from many places, about the materials and techniques used in the creation of these winter arrangements.  All of the excitement, discussion and expression generated by those 5 pages in Better Homes and Gardens-such fun.  

This year’s winter containers-I try to post pictures as soon as they are done.  Any gardener interested in yet another expression featuring the garden needs a timely nudge.  You see it when I see it.  I try to keep up.

Our work is just about non stop this time of year.  No matter that the time frame is short.  We plan to give every project its just due.  All of our clients rightfully feel as though their project is a one of a kind.  No matter how busy we are, we take the time to make every holiday and winter container specific.            

Your winter containers and holiday decor is specific to you, and your point of view.  An original and personal winter display enchants-your family, your friends-and your neighbors.

The creative process is very hard to describe, much less document.  What I like is the idea that so more creativity goes on than I could possibly absorb.  Great winter displays and design are world wide.     

This client came in for a consultation.  In the end, she did all of her own work.  Her holiday display on top of these pillars dating back to the 1920’s-personal.  Singular.  Swell.  Gorgeous!  What we do every day at the shop, Better Homes and Gardens made available to every gardener everywhere.  Many thanks for your confidence and interest, Better Homes and Gardens.   

Posted on: December 3, 2012 13 Comments
Filed Under: Picture This, container planting, Holiday Tagged With: , ,

The Shop Winter Garden

 

The shop landscape is very simple.  A rectangle of boxwood set in a generous plane of decomposed granite, a pair of Techny arborvitae bookends, and a pair of lindens is about all there is.  These plants, almost 20 years old, occupy a modest percentage of the overall space.  This means there is room for a temporary, ephemeral, and seasonal garden expression.  Gardening in a zone which features four distinct seasons is a challenge and an opportunity I would never want to do without.  The chance to start fresh given the change of the season-love that.  The holiday/winter garden is no different.

The inspiration is almost always driven by a natural material that catches my eye.  This year, the curly copper willow branches are incredibly beautiful.  The color is rich and saturated.  The stems are fat and juicy-there is no hint of stress from the drought they endured all summer.  They have a distinctly fresh fragrance.  Each stout stem was topped with a cloud of delicate branches-breathtaking.  I ordered extra, so I would have enough to do the garden in front of the shop.

What would I do with them?  Fresh willow is incredibly flexible.  One could make baskets, fencing, wreaths-just about anything the eye could imagine, and the hand construct.  But I wanted a structure that would permit those thousands of tiny branches to make their own statement.  I use these steel forms at home to give my asparagus some support-I knew they would be perfect.  Attaching the thick stems, one stem at a time to this form, would provide stability without interfering with the natural form and inclination of the branchlets.   

Zip tying each branch was time consuming, and not so easy.  Each stem needed a friendly neighbor.  My landscape crew does a superb job of all of my landscape installations-their seasonal winter work is no exception. They are not only incredibly talented and willing, they have an understanding of natural forms that comes only with many years of exposure to plants.  They never force anything to be.  They let the material dictate the construction, and the overall shape.  They use whatever they need to make the overall shape complete-even if that means I need to order more.  

The douglas fir boughs have been stuffed into dry floral foam, some 6 inches thick.  The bottom 3 inches are wedged into the rim of the pot.  The six inches above the rim are a home to all of the boughs that are set horizontally.  A form this high off the rim of the pot needs reinforcing.  4 pieces of steel rebar are driven through the corners of the foam, and into the soil in the pots.  Once the soil freezes around that steel, it will take gale force winds to dislodge the curly willow. 

A cloud of copper willow and a low wide base of douglas fir- this year’s holiday/winter expression.  The time it takes to construct what will go on in these pots all winter is time I don’t spend moping about the closing of the garden.  Should everything come together, these pots will make a statement about what is good about the winter season.  A customer in the shop yesterday lives in San Francisco.  He tells me the climate and weather is the most consistent and unchanging of any city in the US.  Though he misses the change of the seasons, he does not miss the gray skies.  He is right.  Michigan is one of the grayest and gloomiest  of all of the states in the winter.

So a good part of our winter garden is about turning the lights on.  The light garland draped over the empty window boxes is comprised of three different strands of three different types of lights.  The weight of multiple light strings twisted around each other makes them drape gracefully-they are heavy.  Inside each willow cloud is a spot light, wedged into the floral foam.  A collar of dry limelight hydrangeas flowers conceals it from view.  The spot light illuminates the willow from within.  How I like this idea, and and how it looks.  A light garland would around the base of the willow illuminates them from the outside.  A pair of ball and cone topiary froms are wound solid with ordinary garden variety mini lights.  Ordinary materials do not have to be used in an ordinary way.  

Having turned the lights on, I have no idea what I will do with this next.  Part of the joy of a winter garden is having the time to tinker with it.  The spring and summer garden-I am always running to try to keep up.  This and that always needs something.  Though I have a lot of work yet to come helping clients with holiday and winter containers and decorating, there will be time to figure out what else this garden might need.       


Early this morning, a first dusting of snow.  As my winter is most assuredly on the way, I would rather like it than not.

 

Posted on: November 25, 2012 12 Comments
Filed Under: Winter, Lighting, container planting, Holiday, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: , , ,

Homing In On Winter: Part 2

 

 

Growing amaryllis in glass jars on a window sill is one way to keep the spirit of the garden going on in the winter months.  That said, gardeners like me are hard to persuade.   Those who insist that the garden is over at that moment we have a hard frost are selling their inclination to garden short.  Very short.  A gardener’s point of view is strong-all year long.  It doesn’t much matter whether you garden in Austin or Olympia or Chicago or Miami-a love of the garden can electrify a life.  Garden on-everyone.  If you garden in my zone, there are those “other six months”-like them or not. 

This might be my most favorite container I have ever planted at home.  For sure, it is my most favorite photograph of one of my containers.  How I loved how this looked, and how I regretted watching it succumb to the cold.  These Italian pots are in the basement now.  It is a quiet time for them.  Time for me to move on.

The winter season has its opportunities.  Winter arrangements in frostproof containers not only help stave off the off season blues, they are a delight to the eye.  Our shop is very busy-constructing winter gardens that reference the garden.  We produce an enormous amount of work for clients between mid November and mid December, but this post is not about my work.  I am interested in in passing along what all of that work, and all of that contact with people keenly interested in the garden, has taught me.  The upshot- every gardener has options.  All year round.  Every season.    

The moment any gardener decides to make something -and by this I mean envision, create, construct, edit, and install-is a good and satisfying series of moments.  As heartbreaking as it is to watch the garden go dormant, it is equally exciting to have a winter gardening season asking for a gardener’s best effort. Feeling low?  The best counter to that is to make something.  Make something be.  Make something happen.    

Winter container arrangements speak the language of the garden.  More importantly, they scoop up, engage, and occupy the heart of any serious gardener.  Be generous.  Go large.  

Those topiary forms that over the course of the summer that provide a form for hyacinth bean vines or mandevillea can provide a structure for winter lighting.   Lighting in the winter-essential.  Should you garden in my zone, the dark at 4pm is soon to come.  Light up the night.     

These pots are stuffed with greens.  Fresh evergreens.  In the center, variegated English boxwood.  The steel topiary forms are detailed with lights.  The time it takes to create a winter arrangement like this is time very well spent.  The process of coming to grips with the winter is every bit as important, maybe more important, than the passing of the summer garden.  Change is not so easy, but change is essential.

How do I handle the garden going dormant?  I get busy.  I decorate for the holiday-and the winter.  It helps sooth the sting that begins with the first hard frost.

Fresh boxwood is available at your local farmer’s market.  This 54 inch wide boxwood wreath-a request from a client.  Hew plans to decorate his client’s home in a big and positive way.  Spend more time making your winter season beautiful. 

Whenever I am making something, I am happy.  My advice?  Get busy.  Make something.  Make something beautiful.  I promise-the winter will fly by. 

 

 

 

Posted on: November 20, 2012 9 Comments
Filed Under: Winter, container planting Tagged With: ,