The Garden Cruise July 23, 2023


Detroit Garden Works hosted its first Garden Cruise to benefit the Greening of Detroit since 2019. I feel an intense satisfaction in being able to write that sentence. Perhaps some background for those readers who are not familiar with this event should come first. The Garden Cruise is a celebration of a lot of events. The landscape design that has been my life’s work. The extraordinary relationships created with clients culminating in the building of a landscape project. The selection and placement of beautiful and appropriate landscape ornament that physically centers and metaphorically organizes the landscape in question. And those steel boxes, benches, ornament, fountains and pergolas designed and manufactured in steel by my company, The Branch Studio.  The wild shade garden portion of the landscape pictured above, which is part of the upcoming tour, features all of these things.  It was designed and planted almost 10 years ago. The rod steel sphere fabricated at Branch Studio is fixed on top of a repurposed 19th century English stone lawn roller set on end – minus its steel armature –   as a rather contemporary pedestal. That piece was sourced and purchased in England by Rob Yedinak, and shipped to Detroit Garden Works and offered for sale. The wild garden features shade plants that beautifully represent and thrive in Michigan-so hellebores, sweet woodruff, pulmonaria, brunnera, hamamelis-and hemlocks. The big old spruce had seen better days, but why remove plants of such majestic scale and presence?

These clients are extraordinary people. They have diverse interests, but to the last they are united in their love of this house which is turning 100 years old, their love of nature and the natural world, and their commitment to preservation and restoration.  The bricks and limestone slabs were part of a wall in such disrepair that it had to come down and be rebuilt. Those stone and brick elements featured in the walk above were the original wall materials they felt were too beautiful to throw away. They asked me to design something around them. We call this path from the back yard to the front yard “the history walk”. There was story telling. History and artistry. In all my years of designing and installing landscapes, this photograph of my client in his surgical scrubs touring his garden late in the day is one of my favorites.  Gardens are good for people.


They also have a big love for entertaining outdoors in the summer. I drew a 20′ diameter circle on the site plan, and wrote the word POOL in the center. Ha! That ignited a firestorm of discussion, most of which had to do with not wanting a round pool. I was able to persuade them that round entertaining spaces are so friendly. And that it would fit handsomely in their oddly shaped lot. I was able to persuade them, once the shock of the suggestion had faded. A final design featuring the change of grade between the house and the rear lot line looked exactly like who it was for.

That is an essential part of a successful landscape design – a relationship that enables work that looks like it belongs to the client and their property.  This landscape has been on the tour before, but the way in which it is evolving and maturing makes it well worth another visit.


These clients have invested 25 years in the landscape and gardens on their 7 acre property. They went so far as to purchase the house next door, as it would complete and make whole a natural feature of the land. What an extraordinary thing to do! The property is packed with gorgeous mature trees – some usual fare, and some rarely seen outside of an arboretum.

In recent years I have been involved in the landscape design of those areas adjacent to both the main house and the getaway house. This portion of the landscape has a distinctive contemporary feel that is quite formal. The allee of columnar hornbeams pictured above is at the beginning of a very unusual trimming protocol. The outsides of the trees will be pruned flat, and the interior will be a celebration of the natural arching branches of these trees.

Adjacent and perpendicular to the broad gravel pathway which connects the main house to the other is a 50′ diameter circle of liriope spicata. The texture and mass generated by this single plant is stunning. On a breezy day, it is constantly in motion. What is perhaps the most amazing is that these clients maintain virtually the whole of their property themselves. I am not sure how many containers they have filled with seasonal plants, but that number is big.


In additional to small seating areas sprinkled throughout the gardens, there are plenty of places near the house to leisurely sit and enjoy the out of doors.  They have devoted considerable effort to providing a large terrace, pergolas, and furnishings to host friends and family comfortably for meals, parties and celebrations. Plan to spend some time exploring this landscape.

My landscape and gardens have been on the Garden tour every year since they began in 2008. A visit was mostly about how plants had grown.  The only substantial change from year to year was the container plantings. This year is not so much different, except for the deck and fountain garden.

I do have new furniture, and a mix of  of pots. French glazed pots from Terre Albine so enchanted me that I had to have some at home. All of these particular pots were broken from a series of unrelated mishaps. One of the fabricators at the Branch Studio was able to piece them all back together. I like that these beautiful pots still have a place in a garden, and I love them in my garden.
I am not posting any pictures of the fountain garden. Better that you see it in person. It is completely and shockingly different than it once was. Everything has a life span, including a landscape and garden. This part of my landscape has only been in 2 years.

This client has always had an interest in plants and flowers, but he has a fairly new and more substantial involvement. I was able to redo areas of the landscape to feature more ornamental plants and containers. He is watering his pots when they need it, and keeping his eye on all of the plants.

He is thoroughly enjoying what pleasure the outdoors can provide to people.

A large scale pool which is an entertainment focal point for his family and friends now has the ornamental gardens to go with. A mature hedge of Green Giant arborvitae provides a gorgeous backdrop and lots of privacy to the pool deck. In the immediate foreground is a series of three steel planter boxes fabricated at Branch. A section of a boxwood hedge was removed and planted elsewhere in favor of a seasonal flower display.

This landscape features a formal front yard composed of masses of spherically pruned Green Gem boxwood, boxed smaller scale Green Gems, and Venus dogwoods. A hedge of limelight hydrangeas encloses it all.  This pattern of planting encloses a spacious drive court. The house sits high on a rather steep hill, so parking near the house was a landscape priority.

The back yard with literally no flat space has been transformed by a 3200 square foot wood deck made from Ipe. The far end of this deck is 11 feet above the existing grade. Inset in the deck is a three sided infinity edge pool and waterfall. At the far end, a large scale pergola designed with louvered roof panels for shade by Branch Studio provides a shady spot for lounging and dining. The surrounding landscape is informal and lush.

I do hope as many of you as possible who are reading will attend this Garden Cruise on July 23, 2023 from 9am to 4:30pm, and the cocktails and pizza dinner reception to be held at Detroit Garden Works afterwards. So many have asked me to sponsor a tour again, and to write again. I am doing both. It will be an excellent tour well worth the time of any person for whom the garden is a way of life.

All of the proceeds of the ticket sales – 40.00 for the cruise, and 55.00 for the cruise and reception –  go to benefit the programs of the Greening of Detroit – an organization whose work I think is crucially important to the City of Detroit. For further information   www.thegardencruise.org     Tickets can be purchased over the phone or in person at Detroit Garden Works.  248  335  8057.

A Pergola From Branch Studio

 

I am several years into a landscape project with great and ever so patient clients. In 2019 we removed their old dysfunctional driveway, regraded the entire front yard, and added back a new driveway and a landscape to go with. So far, so good. The back yard has been the subject of our efforts for better than a year. As the house is built on and into a steep hill, the rear yard had no flat usable space outdoors. Unless you count the 400 odd square feet pictured in the photo above. A large scale ipe deck with a swimming pool –  part of which is cantilevered over an 11 foot drop in grade –  has strongly addressed that problem. They like to entertain, and they are actively involved in supporting their greater community. They also like spending time out of doors. They were keen to create a place that would be beautiful and functional. The deck and pool were monumental undertakings, due to the sheer size, the difficulty accessing the site, and the extreme grade.  We are very near the end of that part, but for the glass rails that will surround the deck.  I am hoping the project will be entirely finished by the end of May, so they have the rest of this season ahead of them to enjoy it.

One component of that landscape was a pergola to be fabricated at Branch. Those of you who follow this blog know that I bought a 7 acre property with industrial buildings and large capacity bridge cranes in 2004, with the express idea of designing and fabricating heirloom quality objects for the garden in steel. We have been at exactly that over the ensuing years. The years have provided an opportunity to tune up fabrication protocols. And they have provided a framework for the evolution of design. Our original pergolas from years ago were designed primarily to provide large scale, organizing structure to a landscape. Seating areas under them naturally came to mind. They also could support large growing lax vines. Think climbing roses, climbing hydrangea, grapes and wisteria, or sweet autumn clematis. Both the strength of the steel and the permanent performance of the finish made them a great partner for vigorously growing vines that would put on weight, year after year. Those leafy plants that eventually grow over the roof would eventually provide shade.

However, not every location for a pergola is accommodating to in ground plants.  The south end of this deck is long ways away from any soil, and the location is very sunny. We needed a structure with the intrinsic ability to provide shade. A pergola that could provide a shaded area for dining and seating would be a welcome addition to the deck furnishings. The curving louver design was inspired by the art glass sheathing a waterfall next to the pool. Engineering this roof took time. Eventually, 28 individual fixed louver steel roof panels that could be dropped into a framework built in to the roof were fabricated. The structure is 32 feet long, and 14′ deep. The 11′ height of the structure matches the height of a horizontal frame set in a series of 6 large windows on the facade of the house. The columns and corner brackets are beefy, as the roof is heavy.

The pergola is tall enough that its roof does not interfere with the view out the picture windows. Nor does it restrict light coming in to those windows. It looks remarkably light and airy, considering it weighs 4500 pounds. The ipe deck is incredibly strong, but a pair of support beams traverse the underside of the deck to provide an additional level of support to the steel columns.

All of the roof panels are identical. But they cast different levels of shade depending on their orientation. Since the spring season is up next, and the intensity of sunlight at that time of year is subdued, the panels were placed to provide a more open shade from the south side. Being outdoors on a sunny spring day is one of the garden’s most memorable experiences.

Viewed from the north side, the shade is more saturated. As the panels are dropped in, and held in place by the roof framing mechanism, the panels could be rotated to provide more shade from the south side later in the season. The panels could also be alternated one by one, or row by row, for other versions of shade. It would only take 2 people several hours to completely change the arrangement. The louver style means that warm air will be able to dissipate quickly.

Viewed from the northeast, it appears that the  areas of sun and shade will be balanced.

From the north side, the shade cast will be much more pronounced. The sun is still low in the sky now, so it will be interesting to see what level of shade is provided once the sun is directly overhead. In any event, the pergola will go a long way towards providing a comfortable place to enjoy the outdoors.

Everyone’s interest and participation in the landscape is unique to them. I have come to have loads of respect for all forms that expression might take. On a practical level, it means trying to provide whatever direction it takes to get people outdoors. It also means cultivating empathy as an essential element of good design. What could happen next is not predictable, but I have had numerous instances over the years of a tentative interest in nature blossoming into a commitment to the health and well being of a piece of property. Or down the line a garden with which to teach their children how to grow vegetables and flowers. Or a new found love for spring flowering bulbs or fruit trees. It happens.

There is a special personal satisfaction in having taken the design of a structure for the landscape to another level. Our head of design and engineering, Dan Moore, and his fabrication group of 6 do a terrific job of manufacturing our stock line of boxes, pots, fountains and ornament. They do an equally great job of engineering and fabricating something they have never made before. I think they like making those forays into the unknown. All they needed from me was the concept.

It will scarcely be another month or two before this space will be humming with activity. The waterfall will be running and the pool will be open to the sky.The glass rails should be installed by Memorial Day. The furniture has arrived, and is in place; the outdoor grill is hooked up. I can easily imagine this space full of people enjoying a summer evening.

The last part, as usual, will be the landscape. We will be ready to start that in a few weeks. Most of what we plant will be trees. A new generation tucked in to an existing old woodland.

Savoring this moment.

A Perfect Moment

By late January, winter has an immutable grip on my zone. It’s cold, but the cold is not the spirit breaker. Its the gray. All the imperceptibly different versions of gray. The massive and almost daily uni-cloud that covers the entire landscape from the sky on down. We have weeks and weeks of it yet to go. Michigan has an impressive number of cloudy winter days. That day after day gray, on top of the cold and wintry weather, is a serious damper for anyone who lives to be out of doors. Gray days and lengthy nights ask for a little intervention. Just in case you are asking why I still have a lighted tree on my deck January 21, this is the reason. That glow from the tree is warm and inviting. It banishes a bit of the gloom. And it casts what the winter has to offer in a positively beautiful light.

It is not too many for me – having two lighted trees. This one in my side yard illuminates the entire area. People often ask me what kind of lights I use. That doesn’t matter so much, although LED lights are certainly more economical to run. What really matters is using lights in sufficient quantity to provide the quality and extent of light you want. Though this is the south side, it is exceptionally dark in the winter. The surrounding arborvitae are every bit of 14 feet tall, and their foliage turns black/green in response to the cold. They are brooding and monolithic. The tree provides just enough light to bring this part of the landscape into a winter focus. On a gray day, the tree sparkles. I don’t visit this spot so often in the winter, but I see it from inside every day and every night. The light is an invitation to enjoy the landscape from afar. Its no secret that I believe lighting and winter containers are both essential elements of the winter landscape. How and when to provide it may be addressed in November and December, but what they provide is most welcome in January and February.

Lighted containers installed in the landscape in November and December are ready for the winter weather. Containers decorated for the holidays celebrate a specific event, but once those holiday elements are removed, a winter container is set to perform over the long haul. We will have wind, heavy snow and bitter cold along with the gray. Once in a blue moon, we have a snow unlike all others. The wet sticky snow falls slowly and vertically in windless and entirely quiet conditions. The total snow fall is but an inch or two or three. But it sticks to and steadily builds on every surface it touches. The quality of this kind of snow is such that it even sticks to vertical surfaces. I have never heard a weather news caster predict such an event, but air temperature and humidity play a crucial role. The science aside, it is a perfect moment in the winter landscape. No lighted winter container is ever more glorious than when clothed in snow like this.

The same is true for the landscape. A good design is both revealed and invigorated by weather. It is a vital element in the landscape over which a gardener has no control. Some weather is entirely destructive, but there is always the opportunity to re imagine and rebuild.  Whether it be rain or snow or fall leaves, or the drop of spent magnolia flower petals, a fresh coat of weather tells a story. In the above picture, the design elements of line, mass and texture are illustrated in a graphic way. The color of the light is in especially striking contrast to the somber surrounding landscape.

Fantail willow branches sport an infinite variety of curving shapes. The snow, and a strategically placed spot light, feature not only their shapes, the the overall shape created by their placement.

To follow are too many pictures of my visit to the garden that day. I was outside at 6:45 am, and back indoors by 8:15.

 

 

The towering maple in the far left background and the weeping Norway spruce in the right mid ground have probably been there better than 50 years. The arborvitae and foreground boxwood are about 20 years old. The Princeton Gold maples in the far background were planted in 2005. After that, the large container in the side yard. Next, the hydrangeas. The arbor and John Davis roses are probably only 4 or 5 years in. Did those climbing roses look at beautiful here as they did in full bloom? Oh yes. A lot of years came together in preparation for this perfect moment. It was indeed a very brief moment. This extraordinary snowfall melted away within a few hours. The relationship between nature, the landscape, age and the ephemeral keeps me designing.

 

Part 2: The Landscape To Go With

landscape drawingMy last post dealt in detail with the process of relocating a driveway for my clients. It was a huge investment both in resources and time-from early spring until late summer. Good for me that my clients are incredibly patient people. The property features lots of trees of considerable age. There was no interest on anyone’s part to change that. The landscape would be concentrated near the house and new drive court. The open area once occupied by the old driveway would be a sweeping arc of grass similar in shape to the arc of the driveway – but larger.  That grass arc would be punctuated by a few strategically placed specimen trees. Those new trees would have plenty of space to grow to their mature size.

The drive court is of considerable size too. The house is a long way from the road. Though the climb up is at a much easier angle than before, it is still a climb. So a drive court that could accommodate visitors coming and going was of paramount importance to my clients. On the plus side, it makes an admirable makeshift basketball court, and it is easy to park out of the way of the garage doors. The landscape embracing the drive court circumscribes it in a large radius, the size of which was dictated by a pair of retaining walls installed in tandem with the driveway. I can safely say that the only flat space on this property exists inside the walls of the house. All other flat and navigable space had to be created.

I was interested that the landscape have a strong, simple, and largely evergreen accompaniment. The formal nature of it accomplishes two things.  It is in striking contrast to the natural landscape which surrounds it. And it would be fairly simple to maintain. Blocks of buxus “Green Gem” in alternating sizes would need a routine and accurately timed source of water, and a yearly pruning.  Planting these 9′ by 9′ square blocks in an arc created plenty of suspense for those of us who installed it. There was a lot of site work determining just the right plant placement. It has unexpectedly proved to be the ideal nesting spot for a turkey. Green Gem is very hardy in my zone, and it tolerates very cold and windy winters. On the top of the hill, hale and hardy was an important criteria for plant selection.

At the same time, project manager and driveway builder Ralph Plummer, owner and operator of GP Enterprises, was hard at work doing what he loves the best.  The placement and planting of large specimen trees. If you need big trees, there is no better source. I feel sure that there are countless landscape contractors in my area who use his services. He has the resources, equipment, and experience to place large material in the landscape.  As so many of the existing trees were of considerable size, large trees were called for. Though the London Planes he planted for me on this project were 25′-30′ tall, they are still dwarfed by the older trees existing on the property. London Planes are one of the largest shade trees native to North America, and these three will have plenty of room to grow. There is a thought to the future too. Trees, like any other living thing, have a life span. They would be the beginning of the next generation.

A Norway spruce of comparable size was planted in addition to the plane trees. The large lawn area would have all the dressing up it would need. Watering new trees in a lawn area is not so simple. Irrigation meant to water a lawn does not provide the deep soaking required by large trees of recent transplant. A drip irrigation zone for the sole purpose of keeping these new trees adequately watered was installed.  The lawn irrigation zones do not overlap and water the trees. This takes careful planning and installation-just the kind of thing for which Ian Edmunds Irrigation is well known.

Of course I was imagining what the property would look like with grass. But we were a good ways away from that moment, at this moment.

The big trees did provide some privacy to the house on the hill. I took this picture from my car, driving by.

The blocks of boxwood feature Venus dogwoods. Those trees will provide better and better leafy contrast and size to the boxwood as they grow. They like a fair amount of sun, and are hardier than either of their primary parent trees – the Kousa dogwood, and the pacific coast species cornus nuttallii. When happy, they will put on a foot of growth per year.

retaining wall backfilledThe retaining wall created a substantial planting space on the house side of the driveway. We were happy for the good soil and easy planting conditions.  Per the plan, the house side of the drive court repeated the boxwood and dogwood pattern of the opposing side, but added several other elements. A columnar spruce, picea cupressina, will grow every bit of 25 feet tall, with a mature width of but 6 feet.  It will give the chimney a run for its money. This is a large house without so much available planting space. A strong vertical plant will help the landscape keep up.

That spruce is surrounded with a mass planting of the dwarf red barberry. That dark wine red color is very friendly to the color of the brick on the house.

This small area between the front porch and the person door in to the garage was a high visibility spot that lacked any appealing features.

Once it was determined that the only traffic to this door was from the driveway, the new landscape was installed accordingly. The window in this picture is one of the few that look out on to the landscape. That view out is better now.

It was always intended that the retaining walls installed in support of the landscape would be softened by a double row of Limelight hydrangeas. The white flowers on the mature shrubs would provide a stunning backdrop to the boxwood on the upper level drive court. A change of level provides great interest to any landscape, large or small. The fact that they will describe the entire upper arc of landscape means they will read strongly from the road. All of the big trees had generously sized edger strip installed around them. No need for a mower to brush up against them, or a lawn trimming tool to damage the bark. Of just as much visual importance here is the shape and sweep of the grass to come.

By the time that we were able to complete the front yard landscape with plantings at the road, it was very late in the year. A group of white pines that my clients had planted on their property had spent the summer heeled in to protect them.  They were moved to a pair of large beds at the driveway entrance off the street. A number of additional white pines were added to the original group, and all of the trees were under planted with the spreading juniper, “Calgary Carpet”. I am not a huge fan of junipers, but this one has a beautiful horizontal habit, and a lovely sheen to the branches. Culturally, they would be a perfect companion to the white pines.

It was December when we finally got to mulching all of the plantings.  It was the least we could do, given that a rainy late fall meant the grass would have to wait until the spring.

A pair of pots were selected for the front door, and arrangements for the holiday and winter season were installed.

Early this April we were able to sod all of those bare dirt areas. What a relief.

A few months later, the sod has knitted and rooted in. There is no sign of all of the work that went on most of the previous year. All of the large trees seem remarkably good, considering they were transplanted less than a year ago.

The curving beds of Limelight hydrangeas will be blooming soon.

new landscapeThe landscape near the house is thriving.

The entrance beds are taking hold. All of the white pines survived their first winter in this spot with little damage. As for the tire tracks on the grass, I stand by the design of how the drive meets the road. I am sure the damage is from the latest set of trucks and equipment.

Under construction now, the back yard. What you see here is a temporary stone access road. More on this later.