Detroit Garden Works | Deborah Silver & Co.

The Branch Studio In Philadelphia

Jackie A is the outside sales manager for both Detroit Garden Works, and The Branch Studio. If you have ever inquired about getting a light hoop shipped out to you, or a custom pergola built, you have probably had occasion to talk with her. A talented landscape designer in her own right, she has a particular interest in sourcing and placing fine objects for the garden and landscape. In addition to handling a steady stream of sales and arranging for shipping for those sold items all over the US, she is currently managing the payments, collections and shipping to the US of several containers packed with goods purchased by Rob in Belgium, Germany, France and England during his September buying trip for the spring of 2019. She is a very capable member of our staff, and we are lucky to have her representing us. We made a decision some time ago to exhibit at the ASLA 2018 trade show, which closed yesterday in Philadelphia. The American Society of Landscape Architects sponsors a yearly meeting for members which includes seminars and tours of interest, and a trade show. Branch is one of 350 exhibitors at this show. It is worthwhile to take Branch products on the road, so designers can get a look at them in person. Pictures don’t tell the whole story. There is something about being able to see the design, material, construction and finishing up close.
Jackie planned every detail of the trip, from deciding what objects she wanted shipped out to Philadelphia, and how she would arrange them, to a lighting scheme for the booth. As she and David would fly out, a computer loaded with a slide presentation featuring custom work previously fabricated at Branch, catalogues and brochures would also have to be shipped. She gave herself several months to pull it all together. As she is meticulous in her attention to detail, everything arrived as scheduled. As is typical for most convention centers, the uncrating and set up was done by Pennsylvania Convention Center staffers. I was especially pleased about Jackie’s decision to take a fountain to the show. I am sure there was plenty involved in putting a working fountain on display. It had to be reviewed and approved by the convention venue. Planning the electrical was an issue. It was a very good idea, to include a fountain in our display. Branch manufactures a number of styles of fountains. They come equipped with a pump, so once the fountain is leveled and filled with water, one only has to plug it in to enjoy it. In recent years Branch has started fabricating covers for the pumps, so the interior of the fountain is as finished and polished as the exterior. Branch fountains are substantial, and can make a big statement in a landscape or garden. Our fountains are not inexpensive, but clients see the value of them. The action and sound of water in a garden cannot be overestimated.

Once all of the major pieces were unpacked, Jackie and David were able to fine tune the display. A bank of LED lights was attached to the underside of the Stuart dining table. That light made it easy to see the steel base and Ipe feet. The boxes of Branch catalogues, brochures and cards all needed a place to be. Jackie did a great job of designing this small space. She made sure there was plenty of space for people to linger, and engage. Our galvanized steel containers, pergolas, fountains and ornament are unique in the garden ornament business. I am not aware of any other company that hand manufactures heavy gauge steel planter boxes, pergolas or fountains such as these. Each piece is painstakingly finished in a two step process involving commercial hot dip galvanizing in a molten zinc bath – with a lifetime of service in mind. Our steel ornament is weatherproof, and virtually rust proof. A little spot of rust where the galvanizing did not take can be put to bed with a dot of cold galvanizing compound. The design and manufacture of fine ornament for the garden was a dream of mine that the Branch Studio has fulfilled, one beautiful garden heirloom at a time. Not familiar with what we make at Branch? the Branch Studio

By Friday afternoon, our Philadelphia popup shop was ready for company. This is the fourth time we have exhibited at the ASLA show, and if the previous shows are any indication, it will take some time before we see inquiries. It can take a while before the right project comes along that would ask for our boxes or ornament. Designers have a lot of questions. Jackie was prepared with lots of answers.

Exhibiting on a national stage at a trade show attended by landscape architects was a meeting I welcomed. Branch is a grown up company, just barely hitting its stride. Ornament in the garden can endow a landscape with atmosphere. The Branch finish is very reminiscent of the look of that classic garden material, lead. Each Branch box comes with a reference to the history of garden pots, standard issue. That said, we have shipped out Branch products in their galvanized state, for those clients who favor the more contemporary finish that the powder coating process offers.

By no means is Branch an overnight sensation. We have 15 years behind us. 15 years getting our process, and our product line in order. This year, our lead times on custom orders have been at times 12 to 16 weeks out. Would that we could fill custom orders faster, but we work one project at a time. Branch Studio is busy. I am so happy about that. As for our pop up shop in Philadelphia, I thank both Jackie and David for their work putting the Branch Studio on the road. They will be packing up this morning, and heading home tomorrow.

And of course, many thanks to all of those people who have both expressed interest in the work, and spoken for it.

Posted on: October 22, 2018 5 Comments

The 2018 Pumpkins

No fall garden journal of mine would be complete without a discussion of the pumpkins. Not just any pumpkins, but those especially beautiful and select fall fruits that Rob cuts and brings to the shop for sale in October. He is most assuredly an aficionado of this iconic sculpture of the fall season. Were you to engage him on the topic, you might be witness to a passionate discussion of shape, color, stem size and surface. And standability. He favors pumpkins that stand on their own, over the leaners. But for those pumpkin fans that admire a pumpkin on its side, he will have those too. He can converse at length on the history and characteristics of varieties generally available in our area. And their variants. You will run out of patience for the pumpkin discussion long before he runs out of things to say. Normally he is quite taciturn, but he is an unabashed fan of pumpkins. Just ask him.
One year his yearly buying trip to Europe ran long. He came home at the end of September to find not a single pumpkin at the shop. Driving for hours to the grower and field of his choice, cutting the fruits free from the vines, and carrying them to the edge of the field so they can be loaded on to the grower’s tractor and trailer would not be my choice of a day’s work. I made it clear that if he wanted pumpkins, he would need to be available to make that happen. He now plans his European buying trip so he is home for the pumpkin season. It is a good bit of travel, and a lot of work to put a collection together. This year, he, David and Marzela made the trip in 3 separate trucks to pick pumpkins. The field was muddy, but navigable.
His relationship with the breeder and grower spans a few years now. I suspect they enjoy each other’s company. Once he realized that Rob likes to look at pumpkins as much as he likes to grow them, he spent a lot of time talking to Rob about his breeding program, and his growing protocol. I think Rob has a fairly good understanding of what characteristics are of interest to him. A testament to his breeding skill that spans many decades is the fact that seed companies send representatives every year to look over his crop, and buy seed. They get first pick. But once the round of seed buyers have made their evaluation and purchases, the coast is clear for Rob to shop.

He did this year’s shopping in two trips. One by himself, to see what was out there. It was a tough year for growing pumpkins. The heat was relentless, and the rain scant. I can understand that if pumpkins start to mature in late summer, they will be ready for market too early. We wait until the beginning of October to buy. Pumpkins that ripen as the temperatures are beginning to moderate will have a better chance of lasting intact a long time. As we rarely have a really hard frost before the end of October, the pumpkin season can be enjoyed a month or better. In a mild fall, I have seen them survive with no soft or rotten spots until after well after Thanksgiving.

Though the picking is organized, it is still hard work. Rob picks what he wants, and sets them next to the road running through the field. The pumpkins are then loaded on a flat bed pulled by a tractor.

Two trailer loads amounted to about 500 pumpkins. Give or take, about 10,000 pounds worth of pumpkins. The shapes, colors, sizes, surfaces and density look great to the last. What to do with one of these pumpkins? Set in on your porch, and celebrate the fall.

All of these tall oblong and round orange pumpkins with expressive stalks look good to me.

Orange is not the only color sported by pumpkins. Orange, black, bicolor orange and green, cream, white, peach, yellow, caramel colored-take your pick.

The shop is awash in beautiful pumpkins right now; you’ll see.

Rob’s pumpkin collection

white and cream pumpkins

big and small orange pumpkins

a color palette

This is my favorite pumpkin of all of Rob’s 500 choices. It is a subtle choice. I love the creamy gold skin. The oblong shape. The thick stem whose thin green anchors grip the top of the fruit. In my opinion, this is a perfect pumpkin. Should you be of a mind to represent the fall with the pumpkin of your choice, we have lot to choose from. As for the idea of dressing a porch or a terrace in Pumpkins – why not? Beautifully grown pumpkins speak loud and clear to that moment gardeners call the fall season. Once October comes, I load up on the pumpkins.

Posted on: October 8, 2018 17 Comments

Filed Under: Color, Fall, Detroit Garden Works, Garden Stories

Up On The Roof

Those of you who make a practice of visiting Detroit Garden Works are aware that we have planter boxes on the roof. Eight rectangular heavy gauge sheet metal boxes span the entire width of the front of the shop. Designing and maintaining the planting for those boxes is a challenge. The weather conditions up there are extreme. It is always hot, windy, and completely exposed to whatever nature has a mind to dish out. Furthermore, whatever gets planted in them has to make some sort of impression from the ground. How are impressions made from afar? Light or pastel colors always read better at a distance. Large leaves are helpful. But the biggest impression to be made in this instance comes from the mass. This is 40 linear feet of boxes. The mass possible in these boxes is always in my favor, if I take advantage of it.

The design is not the only issue. Growing and maintaining plants on the roof has its own set of issues. It isn’t very practical to drag a hose upstairs, so we do have automatic irrigation in the boxes. You would think that would eliminate all of the water worries, but it doesn’t. The need for water changes all the time. Its very difficult to determine the moisture in the soil from the ground, although I personally can spot wilted plants from a long ways away. We have to get up on the roof to groom the pots, and feed them, so it is easy to check the water in person. Chelsea was up there to dead head the green and white plectranthus, and she noticed that the soil was bone dry in a number of places. It was easy to figure out that some of the micro mist heads had become clogged. Once they were cleaned, the water was flowing again.

The box is planted with two rows. The back row is planted with bouteloua gracilis “Blonde Ambition”. Commonly known as blue grama grass, or mosquito grass, this hybrid of the species has chartreuse flower heads which gives way to blond seed heads. Those seed heads that resemble mosquito larvae hang from only one side of the flowering stalk. This makes for a horizontal seed head that is as beautiful as it is unexpected. Hardy in zone 3, it is happy in dry to moderate moisture conditions. The seed heads hold through the fall, and in to early winter. For the full rundown, see the entry from the Missouri Botanic Garden website: grama grass “Blonde Ambition” Between each grass is the annual blue salvia cultivar, Cathedral Sky Blue. Salvias are not especially showy, but the color of this cultivar is captivating. Mealy cup sage, or salvia farinacea, is notorious for sporting lots of foliage, and less in the way of flowers. The grama grass is a perfect companion. It all but obscures the foliage of the salvia. The airy seed heads hover over the the more dense and static salvia flower spikes. I was not expecting the combination to be so appealing.

The row closest to the street has green and white plectranthus, and white petunias, alternating. The plectranthus has thick juicy leaves, so this plant is fairly well suited for drier conditions. Petunias, once established like the heat, and moderate water. The plectranthus is already cascading over the edge of the boxes, and hopefully the petunias will grow and ride the wave of plectranthus. We usually have our first hard frost late in October, which means we have almost 3 months more time to go with this planting.

It is easy to see in this picture that white flowers have the best visibility of any color in the landscape. That white will help to draw attention to the cloud of seed heads behind them. The salvia is tough to see from the ground, but it does read as a pale heliotrope blue haze.

The plectranthus is beginning to wind its way into the grass. We will edit that, if it seems to be smothering its neighbors. I do not anticipate much of that, as the front of the boxes faces south. But there will come a point where we let it all go, and watch what results from nature’s free for all. The 4th quarter of a container planting can be its most interesting phase. Once a planting reaches its mature size, its overall shape will have a sculptural element, in addition to the color and texture.

This may not be the most showy of my roof box plantings, but it is most certainly my favorite ever. I like how loose and informal it is. I love the color. I have David to thank for these pictures up on the roof-I do not go up there. Climbing up to the roof of the Works on an extension ladder is not for me. How it looks in these photographs makes me think I may want to bring this scheme downstairs somewhere.

There is something about this that makes me glad to be a gardener. And appreciative of the opportunity to plants these boxes differently every year. I suspect Rob really likes them too. the roof boxes

Posted on: August 3, 2018 25 Comments

Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, container planting, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: summer container plantings, planter boxes, Detroit Garden Works

Home For The Garden Cruise

Our 11th annual Garden Cruise this past Sunday July 15 was a success in a number of ways. We sold a record 405 tickets, and hosted 150 people at Detroit Garden Works for our after tour bites and beverage reception. The fine dining part of that reception was engineered and presented by Toni Sova, the chef in chief of Nostimo Kitchen. Her idea to serve Froses- frozen rose cocktails – was a big hit, considering the temperature was hovering around 90 degrees. A client who owns Argent Tape and Label sponsored that reception-thank you Lynn and Fred. The Erb Foundation had pledged to match funds raised from ticket sales up to 10,000.00 I am happy to say we were eligible for the entire amount. A generous donor wrote a check for 5000.00, meaning we raised 32,600.00 for the Greening of Detroit this year. A record. I am very pleased indeed to have sponsored an 11th tour. I am a member of the Board of the Greening, but I never go to their meetings. My contribution to them is to raise money for their projects, as they plant trees in our city. They teach people how to make things grow. Their garden at Lafayette Park is a vegetable garden that produces many hundreds of pounds of produce that is sold at the Eastern Market, or donated to those in need. It feels good, being a fund raising arm of an agency that benefits our city. Will there be a tour in 2019-yes.

I have put my own house and garden on tour for all 11 cruises. That has become fairly stress free over the years. I the early years I fretted about every detail. But it became obvious that visitor gardeners were simply appreciative that I took the time and trouble to garden, and invite people to see it. Visitors to my garden have seen all kinds of things that are not perfectly lovely, and some things that are downright bad looking. I have never had a tour visitor point those things out to me, or ask me what I had in mind to fix them. The 2014 tour, coming on the heels of a bitterly cold winter in 2013-14 that damaged boxwood and killed back roses, was taken by gardeners who had similar troubles of their own at home. What was to talk about? Every gardener had wreckage at home. Inevitably, some plants or spots are not at their best on tour.No stress, being on tour? I have a small and unruly perennial garden that looks its best later in the summer. The hardy hibiscus, phlox, platycodon and bear’s britches begin to bloom at the end of July. The roses will have a smaller flush then. On the tour, that garden is a tall tangle of green with not much going on to recommend it, but no one seems to mind. I also have a company that maintains my landscape. They do the worry and the work of making it presentable. My yard is what it is. Better some years than others. I like to enjoy the tour too. It is the one summer day I spend at home, and I want to relax and enjoy that day.

However, I do fret about my pots. People who have taken the tour multiple times like to see how I have done my container plantings. I do like to do them differently every year, with some sort of point of view in mind. I might be interested in exploring a certain color scheme, or maybe texture is the organizing metaphor. Sometimes I will take a fancy to a certain plant, or a leaf size, and a scheme gets a life from there. In April, I start to think about what direction I might like to take. Well, April was bitter cold this year. Unbelievably, we had snow on the ground for most of the month. My hellebores were buried in the remains of the snow until well in to May. I was not thinking about planting summer pots.

In mid May, the temperatures zoomed into the 80’s and 90’s. We were scrambling to plant our customers pots as quickly and efficiently as we could. The reality that it was spring was overcome by an emotional certainty that the summer had arrived to empty pots. Add a little anxiety to the process of planting pots in very hot weather makes for a planting season that takes even more focus and concentration than usual. I wasn’t thinking about my pots at home then either.

My landscape super finally told me in June that maybe I need to at least get the pots out of the garage. Perhaps that would help push the process along a little. I went along with his suggestion. So for weeks I was looking at empty pots, and still having no thoughts about what to put in them. Fortunately, inspiration finally decided to make an appearance. A client who would be on tour had asked me several years ago to plant birch trees in a pair of very large planters. Amazingly they survived the winter. After under planting them with a mostly green and white annual scheme, I decided I really liked the look. Trees in pots? Why not?

So I decided to forego annual and tropical plants in my pots in favor of trees, shrubs and perennials. At last, a decision. But the real work of it was to come. I still had plenty of landscape work to do, so David did all of the shopping. He is a great choice for that, primarily because he is as good a hort head as anyone I know, and he loves shopping for plants. He also has the patience to text pictures and talk to me on the phone. But neither one of us really anticipated how difficult and time consuming this would prove to be. Planting the Japanese maple in a large terracotta pot on the driveway was easy. It had spent the last 2 summers in that pot. However, it did take 3 people to dig it out of the nursery and lift it up into the pot. The two large Branch pots on the driveway would also get trees.

Suffice it to say we looked at a lot of trees. David found a pair of black gums -nyssa sylvatica – that featured a full head of leaves, and root balls small enough to fit in a 30″ diameter pot. That shopping trip involved 3 nurseries, and plenty of conversation.

David and I were talking non stop for better than 3 days about the plants for the pots. Of course none of the plants I used were available at the shop. It was vastly more work to pick the plant material, as the size of the root balls was as big a concern as the plant itself.

birch and carex

Do I like my pots planted with trees, shrubs and perennials? Oh yes, I do. I am actually surprised how much I like them.

Planting shrubs and perennials in my containers brought the landscape onto my deck. Though I was certain none of the plants would grow, they have. Maybe they have just settled down into their environment. The planting seems appropriate and natural to a Michigan garden environment. Almost everyone was curious about what I would do with the plants come the end of the season. I will plant the trees and shrubs at my landscape yard-we have 7 acres of land there. The perennials in ground in the driveway I will leave, and see if they winter over. Perhaps that hort head who was so instrumental in getting these pots planted before the tour will take some of the plants home to his own garden. A good bit of the fun of planting containers is the opportunity to do it differently every year-so all of these plants will need to find good homes. And for those of you who are too far away to have taken our tour, I hope you enjoy all of the pictures.