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The Grapevine Deer 2012

We have offered these life size grapeview deer sculptures at Detroit Garden Works for many years now-I never tire of them.  Unlike the deer that can devastate a bed of hostas, or chew the bark from treasured trees, these deer sculptures are beautiful in almost any landscape or garden.

On the inside, they are heavy gauge welded steel rod.  This makes them incredibly strong and sturdy.  If we place one in a landscape bed, we drive steel rebar deep into the ground next to each leg, and wire the steel frame of each foot to the rebar pins.  This keeps them in place and upright, in all kinds of weather.

In spite of the steel inside, the sculptures are very graceful, and capture the spirit of the beast.  The long legs and overscaled ears of this pair instantly identifies them as fawns.

The grazing doe has a long graceful neck and petite sized legs.  The doe, buck and fawn are life size, and can be sculpted in a standing, grazing, or lying down position.  Whether a single deer, a trio,  or a herd, they are beautiful in a garden.  Some of that beauty has to do with the material itself.

Vitis, or grape, is hardy in many places in the US.  Wild concrod grapes are common in my area.  The vines, harvested after the leaves fall, are the basis for many natural sculptural forms.  We have had grapevine cones, spheres, garlands, baskets, trellises, plant climbers, rustic fencing and wreaths.  The vines dry a beautiful cinnamon brown color, and are amazingly durable.

We recommend sealing these sculptures once a year with WaterLox, or a similar sealer.  Properly sealed, they will give many years of service in the garden.  Only one client of mine has had one long enough to send it back to be redone

But the real beauty of the sculptures is the hand of the sculptor.  A small group of perople make these deer.  Once you see enough of them, you recognize the hand.  I do not know their process, but I would guess the vines are soaked until they are pliant, and then applied and worked around the forms one strand at a time.  Once vine section is parallel to the next, and very densely woven.

I feel sure the vines are sorted and graded.  The larger vines form the body of the deer.  Much smaller vines are used to finish the legs, and fashion the feet.  The forms are sinuous and rhythmic.

I am not sure what is so compelling about them, other than to say they are a story about nature in form, material and narrative.  They are not a graphic representation-they capture a certain wild spirit that is hard to ignore.

I still remember the year of the Christmas buck.

 

Posted on: November 12, 2012 9 Comments
Filed Under: Winter, Garden Ornament, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: ,

Buck’s Charisse Box

I am so very pleased that one of our Branch boxes is featured in an article written by Marian McEvoy in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal.  Even though I have already written about it on the Detroit Garden Works facebook page, there is a story behind the design, development and fabrication of a container for a garden that might be of interest.      

First off you need a building-a studio.  That studio needs tools both big and little.  A few five ton bridge cranes have turned out to be very helpful.  But most of all you need people who can turn an idea into an object. I have always wanted to design and fabricate beautiful containers and ornament for the garden.  A container that can withstand any climate or season, from the salt air in Florida to the heat in Texas and the cold in Minnesota, is a container that can provide many years of service.  Given that lead, that classic material for garden ornament, sculptures and containers has become incredibly costly, steel with a finish that brings the color of lead to mind seemed like a good idea.  The Charisse box is not so easy to fabricate.  The frame and handles are made of both tubular and solid round lengths of steel.  Welding one section to another requires a lot of cutting and precise fitting.  Sal, Dan and Buck fabricate for Branch, but these were Buck’s to make.    

Each box is assembled from a lot of pieces that need to be cut fairly close to perfect.  Mistakes in the length and angles of a piece, times many pieces, can add up to a box that bears no resemblance to square. The only square stock in the frame is a diamond, welded from curved lengths of steel.  Buck’s other boxes have a simple and solid design.  I was interested in making one box that was a more graceful.  Making steel look graceful is not so easy. 

It took quite some time just to get the frame together, square and true.  Since the original Charisse boxes were made in 2005, changes have been made.  Though Buck does multiple CAD drawings for everything he builds, the finished box tells the tale.  Certain dimensions have been altered.  It takes more time than I ever thought it would to get the size and proportion of a box just where it should be     

The scrolled steel handles and diamonds came next.  The tops of the tubular steel has small steel shperes welding to them as a finishing touch.  Steel straps are welded to the bottom of the frame, to hold the steel box that would slip inside the frame.

The legs have an inverted flower detail.  Each leg has several of them welded together, for strength.

The bottom of the leg has a sleeve of thicker and larger steel, for stability.  This is a very heavy box, supported by very slender legs. 

There are plenty of details, and lots of curves. 

handle detail

snail scroll handles

the Branch Studio tag

The article is a very interesting and well written discussion of containers in the garden, and garden containers that will withstand fall and winter weather.  Containers filled with plants in the landscape in all of the seasons sounds appealing.  Something in the landscape to look at besides snow on the ground and gray skies is a good plan.  That Buck’s Charisse box would be on her list of beautiful and weather-worthy containers -all of us are really thrilled about that.  

WSJ.com – Hot Pots For the Chilly Lot

 

 

 

Posted on: October 14, 2012 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: container planting, The Branch Studio, Garden Ornament, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: , , , ,

A Small Space

Everyone is plagued by it.  An awkward or small space.  The space that is what is left over after the invention of a more important space.  A closet, or a kitchen cabinet that is deeper than your arms are long, or way over your head.  The airspace underneath the stairs that asks for a piece of furniture that has yet to be imagined, much less made. The above picture details the problem.  A portion of the driveway on the way to the detached garage maroons a small space.  The overscaled bluestone walk to the side door chops the small space in even smaller bits.  On view, the dryer vent, the automatic gate mechanism, a hose bib, exhaust pipes, and a roof drain.  The windows are both high and low.  The two story house looms over this little space, as there is nothing going on at grade that would ground the eye.    

The view in the opposite direction tells the rest of the the story.  An L-shaped covered walkway to the garage that wraps around into a covered rear yard porch has produced this small but highly visible space.  No doubt this is a daily drop off or drive by.  The bottom of the garage window barely pictured on the left, is within 12 inches of the ground.  Given the numbers of different materials and angles and shapes, no wonder my client grassed over the ground. 

A driveway is a utilitarian gesture meant to easily accomodate motor vehicles coming and going.  It is rarely the most beautiful part of a landscape.  It is a necessity that frequently follows the fastest and most direct route from the street to the garage.  That does not mean that short trip cannot be a visually interesting one.  Given that the driveway comes so close to the house, it seemed like a good idea to pave it with a more architectural and beautiful material.  The proximity of the driveway to the fence line behind it presented another problem.  What landscape gesture could possibly be made in a space this shallow? 

Sandwiching plant material between the driveway and the fence seemed like a short term solution at best.  Anything large enough to screen the property and garage in the neighboring yard would not like growing in such a restricted space.  The space directly opposite the porch steps was the narrowest spot.  We would try some multitrunked yellow magnolias.  But for the narrowest space, we built a car stop.  A smaller and more handsome version of a bus stop.  The steel lattice would screen the neighboring yard from view.  A bench would be built that oriented the view towards the house. 

 

This existing asphalt drive was removed in favor of a brick drive in a herringbone pattern. A herringbone pattern interlocks securely, and can handle vehicular traffic.  But the big move was to remove the grass and bluestone walk, and build a brick terrace that exactly matched the new material and pattern of the driveway.  This stubbornly unlovely spot has become a rather spacious terrace, thanks to the square footage added from the driveway.

An oak bench was installed inside the car stop. 

A brick landing for the car stop was built at the driveway grade.  A low dry stack stone wall would  permit the maximum width and depth of soil space for a pair of shrubby magnolias.  Amazingly, the house and driveway had been originally set below the grade of the perimeter of the property.  There were water problems.  Quite a bit of drainage work had to be done here.     

An English lead fountain with all of the supply lines running under the terrace was centered in the space.  The view of the neighbor’s car is not quite so prominent.  Once vines grow over the car stop, it will fade even further from view. 

The perimeter was planted with a row of large taxus densiformis, and nothing else.  They seemed to work well with all of the varying heights of the windows.  The bluestone from the walkway was repurposed to provide an edge for the brick terrace. Immediately, there was a good spot for another bench.  Who knows what other ornament or pots might be added later.  What once was an awkward space has become a market square of sorts for this family’s comings and goings.    

 

Posted on: September 2, 2012 5 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Ornament, Garden Design Tagged With: , , , ,

One Man’s Garden

galvanized wire bracket

We had dinner over the weekend a the home of a good friend.  Barry Harrison is a design principal with Art-Harrison, a interior design studio well known in my area.  In addition to their interior design practice, they manufacture a line of fine furniture.  Each piece is meticulously hand crafted and carved from fine hardwoods.  Interested to read more?  www.artharrison.net.    Barry is a highly skilled designer, cabinetmaker and wood carver, as evidenced in his own garden.  Years ago Barry spent some time at Ford Motor Company-he could draw an entire headlight assembly for a owner’s manual-free hand.  Think this part through-a freehand drawing of a headlight assembly?  His talents are extraordinary.  As much a designer as he is an artist, one part of Barry’s garden began with this simple part-a galvanized steel hook that would hold clay pots.

Barry lives in an urban neighborhood on a very small piece of property.  Every gesture he makes has to work-there is no room really for unresolved design.  This corner of his driveway is just a few feet from the garage doors, meaning he visits this spot every day, both going and coming.  The distance from the edge of his drive to the lot line at this back corner is 12 inches at best.  There was no option for screening plants in such a small space, but there was an option for a screen. 

cedar fence posts

This ingenious green screen began with four cedar posts, the tops of which he carved into a pair of guinea hens, and a pair of ravens.  There was enough space to sink the posts deep into the ground.  He engineered a series of galvanized metal plates and rods, which would hold the galvanized hooks shown the the previous picture.  

The terra cotta pots were planted with succulents, and hung on the galvanized steel rods.  The watering takes some time and attention, but the plants seem to be doing just fine.  He’ll store the pots in his garage, or bury them in leaves for the winter.  I admire this inventive and low tech screening that is also so great looking.  The plants seem to be perfectly happy-spilling out of the downside of each pot.   

His succulent wall is beautifully engineered-and beautiful to look at.  Once he waters the top row, the drain water serves to water the row below, and perhaps the row below that.  Given that the screen is only 6 feet tall, it can easily be handwatered.  The succulents are not asking for much.  

 

The rear yard is dominated by a gravel terrace, completely surrounded by water.  Though the width of the water is slight, the pool is 24 inches deep on 3 sides, and 36 inches deep at the far end.  This water depth, and the ability to swim in long runs, around and around, keep his koi happy.  Youy would never know that a city park was just the other side of the bamboo screening.  The structure at the far end of the pool serves a dual purpose.  From this side, the wood and copper fountain with copper jets does a great job of aerating the water for the fish.  This large, architecturally striking feature organizes every other element of the landscape.

garden sculpture

A single stone sculpture on the gravel terrace keeps a small space from looking cluttered. Easy maintenance perennials such as baltic ivy, petasites, angelina, creeping jenny and ferns makes the garden easy to look after.  The koi?  Barry has a 220 acre farm in Kentucky-the koi he raises there are cared for by his parents, and shipped to dealers and koi afficianados all over the country.

garden fountains

The fountain recirculates the water in the pool.  The placement of this feature on an angle to the corner of the property creates a small niche garden which features a series of pots, and some of Barry’s geode collection.  But the star of the show, at the end of a stone path-a cast iron cow. 

Even the smallest space in a garden can make a big impact.  An inveterate collector of vintage and antique objects, I am sure he spoke for this sculpture without hesitation.  This vignette is almost all of the way to another space-the garden shed.

gardenshed

Barry’s  fountain doubles as a garden shed, which holds most of his tools, pots and soil, in addition to the filtration system and fountain assembly.  This very utilitarian space is completely hidden from every vantage point in the rear yard landscape.   

screening an air conditioner

At the opposite end of the garden-the air conditioner.  The air conditioner is under this painted wood obelisk, yes.  One panel is hinged, and folds down, making service a snap. In the top of the obelisk-long handled gardening tools. 

The view out of the back yard-another view of that succulent wall.

evergreens in containers

The house and garage meet at an angle in the back, near a pair of doors.  A giant painted oak box with a steel tuteur is the only nod to the garden in a fairly large paved space.  Only Barry would think to faux shrink wrap an arborvitae in plastic, and place the steel tower over it.  Not one branch got broken when the pot was planted.  At some point, the plant will grow through the steel, and be trimmed flat.  Clearly he is fond of making a few big gestures on his small property, rather than lots of little ones.   

There are as many great ideas for a beautiful garden here as I have seen on on properties many times this size.  Unlike a property which is defined by its boundaries, it’s hard to tell where unlimited creativity and imagination of this caliber might decide to go next.     

 

Posted on: August 20, 2012 7 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design, Garden Ornament, Good Design, Garden Design Tagged With: , , ,