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New Dirt

It is a much easier job to keep Milo clean than the shop.  Once he dries, the dirt falls off.  Once a month, he gets the works from Lexi from the Aussie Pet Mobile.   The shop, however, is 10,000 square feet that is likely to get very dirty-daunting, this.  My work life grew out of a love for dirt. The soil that comprises the earth beneath my feet-life giving.  The dirt that goes into any container sustains all manner of visual dialogue.  Who was it that said dirt is soil in the wrong place?  Though we spend lots of time sweeping, vacuuming and dusting, the end of a season means some part of a season’s worth of dirt has accumulated. 

We close (but are open every day by chance or appointment) from January 15 until March 1st.  We move every object we own out of the way, in order to thoroughly clean the shop.  Once we have vacuumed and dusted and wiped every surface clean, we repaint.  Though we are about to enter our 16th year in business, there is nothing about Detroit Garden Works 2012 season opening that will prove dusty or thoughtless.  Just like every other new season, we will be ready and fresh.  My shop spring cleaning takes from mid-January until mid-February. In the same spirit as we imagine, acquire and assemble a new collection, we sweep out all of the dirt.  The fresh paint is a given.  How we choose to redecorate the six rooms of display space has everything to do with the spring collection on the way.  

That chocolate color that reminds me of the darkest and richest compost-it was on my mind.  These bracket fungus engage my interest in beautifully natural textures, and my enchantment with that color I call dirt. That dark dirt color seems just right.    

I will admit I own a fleet of ladders.  They enable me to clean and redo, to look at what I have done before from a different perspective.  I have been up and down the ladders for a week now.  I will admit committing to the intensity and saturation of this deep chocolate worried me some. But I am more than pleased with how it is shaping up.   

We have no end of antiques and great vintage ornament.  Great contemporary ornament.  We manufacture our own garden ornament, and represent many other fine makers.  I so enjoy this yearly ritual by which we integrate our existing garden ornament with all that comes new.  Each season has its own distinctive flavor and emphasis.   

I do have pictures of most everything on the way, whether it is coming from France, Belgium or Biloxi.  But photographs are a representation, not the real thing.  Everything that Rob has ordered will need an introduction to the shop.  Taking the time to completely redo every space is a considerable and satisfying undertaking.  Rob has spent over 2 of the past 16 years travelling and buying objects for gardens.  The presentation of that work of his takes time.  

We have a pair of containers from France due in a few days.  How long they will take to clear customs is anyone’s guess.  But that process will buy us a little more time to get ready.   

I should have named him Hoover, considering all the dirt he manages to pick up.  Hopefully we’ll make quick work of the shop dirt, and move on to making the shop an experience we’ve not yet had.      


The shop front spring will not look like it did here in 2010. Something new and fresh will be coming from that dirt.

 

 

Posted on: January 24, 2012 6 Comments
Filed Under: The Natural World, Garden Design, Good Design, Detroit Garden Works, Garden Ornament Tagged With:

Travel

Travel is a well known noun that people recognize.  Travel take us to new places, new experiences.  Travel enables us to reconnect, visit friends and colleagues.  Travelling is a verb that suggests what it means to go away from home, and rethink.  When I want to move away from all that is familiar to me, I travel.  I never travel during the gardening season-only in the winter.  Winter travel can be dicey-witness this view from my hotel parking lot last week.  I never travel in search of leisure.  For that, I stay home.  I travel to meet new people, see new things, be exposed to new things. I travel to be challenged; the rain and fog we had all week was certainly happy to oblige in that department.  Like it or not, successful shopping demands travel.  An image of a bench is not the same as seeing that bench, and trying it out- in person.    

That I travel in winter is a big part of why I drive a Chevy Suburban.  It is a very heavy vehicle.  The seats are incredibly comfortable.  The tires are glued to the road.  I have first class windshield wipers.  Some of what I have a mind to buy fits in the back.   When I am driving in challenging and gloomy winter weather, my Suburban shines.       

My digs on the road are not so fancy.  But invariably they are sincere.  This Hampton Inn was set into an impossibly steep hillside-the fences were many.  Where do I travel? That is not the important part. I am sure that I could travel anywhere and find beautiful and interesting things.  Rob is a veteran traveller.  His trips abroad are very carefully researched and planned.  As a result, his collection of French garden ornament for our spring season will be as visually coherent as it is beautiful.  This winter shopping with him is a rigorous experience, tempered by his unfailing enthusiasm and energy.  Drive for hours, walk for hours, look for hours-and talk about it.  Did we shop?  For sure.

The Appalachian mountains run northeast to southwest-I zig zagged around their peaks, drinking in a big dose of Americana.  We are just as interested in American made as any other made.  But shopping the USA takes lots of time and committment.  Ours is a very large country. Sooner or later something good comes of the travel.      

This landscape of many different species of deciduous shrubs and evergreens was punctuated with vintage farm implements set in detailed pressure treated lumber frames. What do I make of it?  I am interested in all sorts of expression-one never knows what will strike a cord, or a train of thought.     

 Nothing to see here?  On the contrary, there is everything to see everywhere.  I spend lots of time designing.  Given that, I find something fabulous about real places. 

 

Posted on: January 18, 2012 4 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works

Zero At The Bone

 The first week of January for me is all about a certain dormancy that comes with the finality of season coming to a close. If you are old enough to have fallen asleep in front of a tv, and woken up the static that came after the day’s programming was over, you get the idea.  My pause button is engaged.  I am still putting the last of the holiday half and half in my coffee, and dreaming.  That phase will come to an abrupt end, the first of next week.

Next week, Rob, Steve and I will be scouting and shopping in the US for what we need to add to the spring of 2012 in the shop.  The end of January we will clean and repaint as usual.  This year I have a hardscape installation scheduled for the same time. 

The Branch studio is in the middle of a fabrication project for a client in Fort Worth. 

 Another local client’s iron work is scheduled to be ready for installation in two weeks.  We will have steel garden ornament from Branch at the shop this spring very different than anything we have done before.

 

 

 Rob will be on his way to Italy towards the end of January, until mid-February. 

 A pair of containers are scheduled to arrive from France in mid February.  Are my winters sleepy, like my garden?  Not especially. 

 

The garden is quiet over the winter.  This means there is as much time to drift over ideas, as there is time to concentrate.  As much as I dislike the winter, I could not do without it.      

 

To the best of my knowledge, Roland Tiangco, a graphic designer about whom I know little except that he lives in Brooklyn, created this interactive poster in 2009.  I never feel so much at home as I do with my hands in the dirt.  I look at this work of his from time to time-regularly.  This work of his is extraordinary.  Every time I see it, I feel that zero at the bone.  Zero at the bone?  Shockingly good. As in the bouquet of butterfly weed seed pods Rob assembled pictured above.  Shockingly provocative.  If you missed it, take a look.  http://havenpress.com/projects/roland-tiangco/

A much different zero at the bone event?  The house Richard Meier designed and built for Howard Rachofsky. I live in a 1930’s Arts and Crafts house of which I am quite fond.  But this house challenges my eye in every way.  Love the landscape-a lawn interrupted by what looks like corten steel.  The photographs by B. Tse are great:    http://www.flickr.com/photos/b2tse/2219686720/in/gallery-43355952@N06-72157622884919368/

Such is the winter work.  Providing for a spring that is zero at the bone.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on: January 7, 2012 7 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design, Detroit Garden Works, Holiday Tagged With:

Full Circle

Yes, this is the third time that I am writing about the light rings.  I think I have good reason.  Any design idea begins in a seed-like form.  There are no specifics or details-just the idea.  That idea has to grow, develop, and mature.  Any design idea that that annoys me by the third pass, I try to let go.  The annoyance means the idea was not big enough to begin with.  After writing yesterday’s essay, I thought I might want to take my own advice.  Was there a place that those light rings might add to the shop lighting in a substantial way?  

It was not that tough to figure out.  The idea had been looking me in the face for weeks.  The rings in the window help to fully illuminate the asparagus stems.  They light the underside of the medallions above the window.     

The circular form frames the asparagus, and is a distinctly contrasting form.  Does all of this go through my head?  It does.  Understanding your own visual process is important to creating a clear and strong expression.  It may take longer than one or two or five passes.  I like to take the time, even when I have no time, to let a design project speak back to me.  What you imagined has to all be there in plain view.  If it isn’t, the project isn’t finished.   

Though I may have an idea which organizes a project, I rarely am able to design start to finish in one fell swoop.  My clients are by and large patient people.  If they are not, it is just part of my job to explain how patience can make a satisfactory project supremely satisfying.   

I did not mention the greens around the lights, which I added halfway through the project.  They are cozy looking, and they repeat the green in the boxes in another place, and on another level.  The greens mediate between the lights, and the sticks.  They frame the door in a friendly way. They have a circular, wreath-like shape.

The shop holiday decor now has a level of finish that keeps on pleasing my eye.  This is my view, many times over in the course of a day, or a week.  This makes the resolution of that view important to me. Those light rings, as simple as they are, add a lot to the view.  The steel topiary forms in the pots to which the willow is attached, and the steel topiary forms in the windows add as much to this winter garden as any other element.  I wonder how I might apply the same idea to a summer garden here. 

The structure of the light rings echo the wreath over the door, and the circles of greens around the lights. circular forms.  The lights have pompom tops-I have never really noticed that before.  The emergency light inside of the wreath-I notice that all the time.  Maybe it is time to paint the housing the same color as the wall.

The light rings in the window have greatly improved the view from inside-this I did not anticipate.  The windowsill behind my desk has a totally different look now.  It is a look, with structure.

What began with the willow over the topiary forms has now come full circle. 

 

Posted on: December 23, 2011 7 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design, Detroit Garden Works, Holiday Tagged With: ,