Holiday | Deborah Silver & Co.

Seeing The Light

Lighting the landscape is not my forte. Everyone does a better job of it than I. Fortunately for me, the light lingers in the summer. All it takes for Buck to abandon the yard is the warning buzz from one mosquito-he is through with the garden once it gets dark. When I am working the landscape season, I am up between 4:30 and 5 am. This means I am often in bed by dark. Landscape lighting is not a big priority for me. I am happy with the daily dose of natural light, the sun and shade created by plants. I do have landscape lighting on the driveway-this for safety and security. Landscape light subtly washes the front of the house. I like how it looks when I drive by on my way to work before dawn. But the winter landscape asks for more light. If it isn’t dark out, it is dark grey out.

Though I go out every night after work with the dogs, I am not out there long. Given how mild our winter has been, I am out with them longer than usual-but a half hour at most. By that time, it is dark, or well on its way to being dark. The evergreens in my garden would be beautiful from inside, if lit for the winter season. I do have 2 containers on the drive ablaze with light. Rob fixes them for me in December-I keep those pots lit until well into March. They are beautifully cheery. I have a cut Christmas tree strung with enough gold and white lights to softly illuminate the entire side garden-I run those lights all winter too.

The process of cleaning and painting the walls of several rooms in the shop has put lighting on my mind again. Landscape spaces are notable for lots of reasons, just one of which is their lack of a ceiling, or roof. Natural light falls illuminates every landscape space-unless one chooses to plant a tree, or build a pavilion, pergola, poolhouse or other cover. These rooms in the shop have little in the way of natural light. The shop ceilings range from 12 to 18 feet tall- this part helps to make a description of how an object might look in a large outdoor space. Rob cannot, and does not try to light the space as if the sun were shining. He lights objects. I am seeing that a lighted object in a dark room pops; every detail reads clearly and dramatically.

Good landscape lighting can features a specimen tree, or illuminate a walk. One of the great pleasures of a shaded spot is that clearing with its pool of light on the ground. An object or painting that is spot lighted garners attention. A dimly lit corner is cozy. Oblique lighting casts long shadows in an interior space. Whether indoors or out, the mix of dark and light is visually exciting.

I know that skillful lighting can so enhance the experience of a landscape. But the experience of these dark interior spaces has unexpectedly provoked a lot more thought about light as a design element. Were you to ask me what is of utmost importance to me at the shop, I would of course say an experience of great service rendered in a personal and knowledgeable way comes first. We meet people, learn their names, we take and file pictures, we remember the kids, the events, and the gardens that go with those names. A passion for gardening always comes with a name and an individual set of circumstances. The vetting, purchase, and availability of beautiful objects would be second-whether that object is a fine antique or a fine looking fiber pot matters not. Great design is great design. Providing a beautiful and thought provoking experience-this would be next.

The shop does have some natural light, via our greenhouse roof, and a small skylight. How we arrange and display things in the shop revolves around creating relationships between shapes, sizes, styles, textures, and color. That arrangement is not finished until it is lighted.

I am experiencing my own shop in a different way right now, given some choices about paint. None of the spaces pictured are finished. They have some major elements set, and await the arrival of our purchases for spring. Once the room is arranged, Rob will light them. We will be another month, getting there. But in the meantime, I am looking at my own dimly lit winter garden as an opportunity to experiment with creating a better winter landscape experience.

A little less gloom, and a little more glow sounds good.

Posted on: January 27, 2012 1 Comment

Filed Under: Holiday, Detroit Garden Works, Landscape Design Tagged With: the winter garden, landscape lighting

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, Holiday, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: winter work

Budded Up

I was in bed long before midnight New Year’s Eve. I never worry that the new year will get held up at the checkpoint unless I am watching. Buck and I had a quiet dinner. I turned in early; that sleep was deep. Did anyone enlist my help or interview me about the a year coming to a close, and a new year on the horizon? Why would they? I am just one person making my best effort to garden my way through a life. Just one gardener in a group of many tens of thousands. Sure enough, the year, the season turned over without a hitch. I had coffee at 5:20 am, as usual. Everything seemed this first day of 2012 as it did the last day of 2011.

It will take two weeks for me to reliably make the change on my check date to 2012. I may spend some time wringing my hands over my one year older age. And then there will be the dreaded winter. But in spite of the cold and the grey, there are signs of life in the garden.

A bud is a protuberance. It is a growth sent forth from a previous structure. Many trees, shrubs, and evergreen perennials put forth budded structures in advance of winter. In early fall, the dogwoods bud up in anticipation of spring. It is easy to tell the leaf buds from the flower buds. I water my dogwoods copiously in the fall in anticipation of that budding, but they respond to another voice. My dogwoods flower heavily every other year. The spring to come will be a on year-a dogwood extravaganza. The buds tell me so.

The forsythia start setting their flower buds not long after they bloom. Late summer or fall pruning means you are pruning off the flowers to come in spring. Lilacs and rhododendrons need pruning immediately after they bloom. The summer and fall they devote their energy to next year’s flowers. The budding-a sure sign of the miracle of nature. These fat buds will swell in the spring, giving rise to large and showy flowering trusses. The flower heads must be 10 times the size of the bud.

The magnolias and pachysandra bud up early in the fall. You can spot their spring intentions in October, should you look. I did walk my entire garden today-New Year’s Day. My holiday obligations are done. I have some time to myself. Though the temperature was barely above freezing today, I was reassured, warmed by what I saw. My garden has made plans for the spring.

All of my yews show signs of budding. Those brown knobs contain the structure and the energy which will open up, and push new growth in the spring. In a good year, 8 inches of growth will begin and grow from each bud. Each plant buds differently. The structures, colors and forms are individual. This means there is a lot to look at, even in the winter. The winter is a tough time for me. It seems to last at least a lifetime. Todays tour tells me different. Every tree and shrub has bet on spring. I cannot really explain this, but I take great comfort from from the buds.

In embryology, the term budding refers to the process by which the living past gives life to the future. So simple, this sentence. So beautifully complex and mesmerizing, the process.

The new year finds sustenance from the compost of the previous year. Every plant has a plan to bud. To emerge, in the spring. It may seem that the winter is a long, quiet, and silent season. But there is plenty going on out there.

The roses look a little worse for wear, but for those bright red buds. How they manage to look so juicy and alive in spite of the winter weather is nothing short of astonishing.