Lighting | Deborah Silver & Co.

The Holiday/Winter Preview Party

Detroit Garden Works throws one evening party a year. It is, in part, a thank you for all of the gardeners that have or have a mind to shop with us. It is, in part, the opening night of our winter and holiday season. It is, in every regard, a party. We serve great things to eat, and a variety of things to drink. We have spent weeks constructing the light sculptures that Rob designs. One of them in a pot, or hung from a tree, or sunk into the ground lights up the night that is our gardening future. Is there more to see? Yes.

We have spent weeks tearing apart the remains of our summer garden vignettes to make way for the winter season to come. It could be 10 years ago that we began stocking materials for gardeners-for winter containers. What seems so logical now is what was uncharted territory then. We live in a gardening zone with a fourth quarter than can be really daunting. Gray skies give way to the dark-early. Morning skies are gray and dark-late. The landscape goes dormant.Why not offer materials for winter container plantings? Some garden based materials to make the winter a little easier to bear? Materials for winter containers include fresh cut twigs and substantially hefty and lengthy greens. Preserved natural materials and remarkably weather resistant and visually compelling picks. Landscape lighting-how do you plan to handle the need for light in the dark season?

The big idea is that the love of the garden can be represented in a celebratory way over the winter. The big sleep freeze that will chill every plant in my landscape into utter dormancy does not apply to me. People do not go dormant. I will experience everything that the winter has to offer, every day, day after day. Though the winter is no longer than all of the other seasons, it can feel longer. I have options about how I want to live through that time. I can construct containers at my front and back door with cut materials from the garden. I can light those pots in such a way that they light my way. I can festoon this and decorate that-outdoors. It is a choice- to make the winter landscape cozy and inviting.

The shop is not quite ready for our opening tomorrow night. It takes a lot of time and thought to create an atmosphere that engages gardeners when the garden has gone quiet. Rob has done a perfect job of sourcing great materials and lighting, and arranging for them to be delivered in time for our opening night. We shop together for the following holiday in January, while the season is still fresh in our minds. Our entire company numbering 21 people have worked long and hard to make the transition from the joy that is the summer landscape, to the steadfast belief that even the winter season is worth treasuring.

Should you decide to attend our once a year night time winter season opening on Thursday night, we will park your car, provide you with something good to eat and fun to drink. We leave the rest up to you. How the materials we have chosen might inspire or intrigue-that’s the fun of it. We like throwing this yearly party. The preview party and holiday open house which runs through Sunday is a lot about giving thanks to all of the gardeners that have enabled Detroit Garden Works to stay viable for going on 18 years. It is just as much about a community of gardening people determined to make a stand-for a beautiful winter.

I so look forward to this night every year. We try our best to make the anticipation of winter an extraordinary experience. Interested? Our winter/holiday open house runs from Thursday night the 7th from 5 to whenever. Yes, we provide valet parking for our Thursday night party. As for the weekend, Friday through Sunday, 9 to 5 all three days, we have a coffee pot fueled by Starbucks coffee, and plenty of treats. Our idea is to make the prospect of the winter season seem all good.

Rob does plenty to make this season happen. He sees that we have fresh cut twigs, fresh cut greens-and spectacular winter lighting. He is the most creative person it has ever been my pleasure to know. He is an ace in the hole-should you need help designing or constructing a winter display.

We do try to cover all the bases. Winter containers. Holiday decor. Parties and events. Wrapping and packaging. Gifts for gardeners. Fresh cut twigs and greens. Lighting. Design. Coaching. Holiday decorating both inside and out. Give us a call.

Tomorrow night, I hope to make the experience worthy of attention. Everyone I know has a busy life. I would not be writing this post, but for the fact that I believe a visit to our shop would be well worth your while.

We view the winter and holiday season from a particular point of view. The garden funds and fuels all of our efforts. Every move we make is with the landscape in mind. Winter gardening-oh yes. The holidays? Any cause for celebration is a cause we support.

If you have a mind, pay us a visit. We promise to make your winter season a season in which you can survive better. Have the prospect of winter blues dead ahead? You have lots of company. You and all of your company-we hope to help make your winter a better winter.

Posted on: November 6, 2013 26 Comments

Filed Under: Lighting, Holiday, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: the holidays, winter containers

The Spring Season

It’s hard to pick a favorite, but the spring season has an aura like no other. Any plant, whether it be a tree or summer flowering shrub, a bulb or a perennial, responds to nature’s call to break dormancy, and grow. From the biggest maple to the smallest hepatica, the plants are growing. There is a lot of commotion in the air. The plants are not pacing themselves, as they do in the heat of the summer. They are not slowing down, as in the fall. Or asleep, as in winter. It’s full speed ahead. The atmosphere in the garden is fully charged, electrified by all that energy being brought to bear-all at once- on the landscape. Rob has been taking instagram pictures the past few days. The options for filtering and electrifying color makes this spring container really feel like spring.

Each of these hellebore flowers tells a story about my collection. I have a fair number of plants. I especially appreciate the form of the flowers. But what I love about them the best is that they make a grand show in the spring. The hellebores coming into bloom are like the bells of spring ringing out. They are quite hardy. Old clumps are large; the foliage is evergreen until mid winter for me.

Sanguinaria, or bloodroot, is a native Michigan wildflower. A single leaf rises out of the ground, entirely curled around a single flower bud on its own leafless stalk. What a story this is, yes? The single white flowers are open for a few days at best, before the petals drop. If you do not check the emerging plant often in the spring, it could be you will miss the flower altogether. The small leaves are strikingly shaped and veined. Soon after flowering, the plant will go dormant until the following year. The spring season can be fraught with icy and windy weather. Though it is the same length as all of the other seasons, spring seems to come and go in an instant. The time of the bloodroot- hours.

The crabapple “Donald Wyman” has bright pink buds, and a profusion of white flowers. A crabapple blanketed in flowers is one of spring’s most breathtaking events. In a cool spring season, they are a delight to the eye for a week or better. The teardrop shaped petals-how do they manage to stay attached on a windy spring day? Crabapples in bloom-glorious.

In swampy areas, the skunk cabbage forms massive leafy clumps that look good enough to eat. However, skunk cabbage is poisonous to mammals. The plants will warn you. The leaves when disturbed smell like rotten meat. This spring beauty has luscious looks, but should be admired from afar.

Today’s pansies and violas look much different than their more self effacing ancestors. This particular bicolor pansy, with its distinctive dark whiskers, is saturated with intense color. This is spring blooming at its most robust. Though the pansies and violas do not really pick up steam, and flower heavily until the beginning of June, each individual face announces the coming of spring in the most cheery way imaginable. They are so unlike any other flower in form and color. Fault me if you wish, but a pansy in August would be out of place. They belong to spring.

Rob’s instagram photograph of a dark speckled hellebore proves that spring can also be moody and sultry . Rainy and chilly. It also makes the point loud and clear that the atmosphere of a landscape can be altered by light and color-to spectacular effect. Creating a mood, or an atmosphere in a garden is one of the most difficult aspects of landscape design. It cannot be taught, nor can it be forced. It can be aspired to. Spring is that season that every gardener can turn loose of the past, and start fresh. The sap rises in the plants and the gardeners alike.

The saucer magnolia features very large flowers of great substance. The queen bee/Sarah Bernhardt of the spring flowering trees, this magnolia likes cool spring temperatures, but not too cool. Warm spring temperatures, but not too warm. A good bloom demands next to perfect conditions as if it were a God given right. It seems like every Michigan spring features some weather element or another which causes all of the petals to fall to the ground in a heap. A thick mulch of magnolia petals on the ground-that would be our spring.

Posted on: May 4, 2013 15 Comments

Filed Under: Spring, Lighting, Color, Picture This, Landscape Design

The Holiday Inside

Rob’s branch trees have intrigued me for a number of years-I had to have one this year. These branches came from some remote location where he walks Larry. It was more than a few trips dragging these a quarter mile out of the woods. That alone would be enough to make them precious, but the color and surface is really beautiful. Old wood, as they say. And certainly perfect for my sole Christmas tree ornaments-3 platinum colored plastic bead garlands. I love the shapes they make when they are draped.

Rob was also taken by battery operated LED lights and sticks this year. He bought them by the caseload. Very small LED lights on fine silver colored wire of differing lengths-what was not to like? By the time I got interested in them, we were sold out. But Restoration Hardware had bought them in by the boxcar load. The picture on their website of birch branches wound round with these lights was all I needed to see.

In more skilled hands, every tiny dot of light would look like it was floating. Not that I didn’t try. But these lights need much different handling than the traditional lights with their garland like cords. I think with enough practice, I could delicately place the wire so every light would seem to float.

I also loved how RH paired these delicate lights with heavy vintage style glass ornaments. Rob was a little taken aback that I would buy Christmas ornaments from another shop, but by the time I was ready to decorate a tree, Christmas was just a few days away. I rarely carry ornaments that weigh this much in the shop. They are too heavy for evergreen branches-a douglas fir with weighted branches is not such a swell look. The primary drawback of most artificial trees is that they are so solid in outline that most of the ornaments lean on, rather than hang.

Steve took multiple branches, and stuffed them into a terra cotta pot to create a tree like form. The wood branches interlocked, making for a very strong structure. The weight of the glass ornaments did not bother these branches a bit. As each branch is mostly vertical, some ornaments I had to hang from very long wires. I wanted the glass to appear to float too.

Buck watched with some interest as I layered ornament over ornament on the mantel. The first groupings of glass had 3 or more ornaments, loosly wired together. These were the ballast ornaments. The smaller ornaments I piled on until I thought there was enough. Next year I may ask for a mantel sized tray with short sides-just so I can pile things up with abandon.

Another pile of glass is keeping Mary Hode’s stoneware cats amused. The smoke and crackled glass looks great with my reticulated quartz spheres.

While I was getting the living room decorated, Buck was wrapping packages. His boxes are impeccably covered with holiday paper. Every seam meets perfectly. He is incredibly consistent with this. I am happy to botch the process, as long as that happens on the bottom. My love is for what goes over the top of the paper.

All of his presents are wrapped differently, many of them with the bits and pieces from a junk drawer, a tool box, or the workroom shelf. There’s this one, wrapped in a piece of black poster paper old enough to have faded to gray.

And there’s this one.

And there’s this one-with that same vintage poster paper.

I am ready, inside and out. I only have to make sure that all of the lights are off at the shop, and that MCat isn’t stuck in the garage. In a few minutes I will load up the corgis, Buck’s boxes, and the wreath for the front door. We will meet at 6 for cocktails, and celebrate our Christmas. I am ready, with 2 hours and 8 minutes to spare.