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Pruning The Boxwood

boxwood hedgesThe day that Melissa and her crew comes to prune my boxwood is my favorite day of the gardening year. First and foremost, their pruning is extraordinarily true and square. So precise. It takes a while to set up all of the level lines that will serve at a cutting guide. But beyond the string lines is a skill that is astonishing to watch. The coordination between the eye, and a heavy pair of shears held either horizontally or vertically takes strength, patience, experience, and talent. Loads of talent. I so admire their skill, concentration and resolve. Pruning my boxwood takes the better part of a day.

Secondly, that pruning is a natural extension of the intent of the design. The pleasure I derive from my primarily evergreen landscape is a simple one. I like what weather does to the landscape. Weather acting on the landscape changes the look and experience of it, day after day. The sunny days create shadows that highlight the forms. Overcast days emphasize the contrast of the leaf texture with the volume and mass of the shapes. The random leaves falling from the trees in October provide as much fresh interest as a dusting of new snow. Rain makes all of the evergreen surfaces sparkle.

The boxwood is the most formal element of the landscape, as both the placement and pruning is formal. That hand pruning makes all of the forms clear. That snip snip snip goes on all day long. The sound is regular, and musical. The painstakingly trimmed boxwood is a beautiful contrast to the big wild growing hydrangeas. Boxwood left to its own devices has a beautiful and gently shaggy appearance. That look can work well in a variety of circumstances. But I favor a look that is orderly and defined. I find that clean crisp look relaxing. It is the feeling I want, when I am in the garden.

Melissa and her crew take what I have taken great pains to grow, and prune them into distinct shapes. It is amazing how much they grow out in a year’s time. The pruning timing can be tricky.  I do not like to prune before the spring flush is finished. Pruning too early means it will take another round later on to keep them neat. So later in June, in my zone. I also like to prune before the weather gets too hot.  Pruning on a 90 degree day will insure that the tender growth underneath that has been completely shaded will burn in the blazing hot sun. Pruning is a call to grow, so I try not to prune later in the season.  Evergreen plants should begin the shutting down process in August, so when the winter comes, they are completely dormant.

Most of these boxwood are better than 20 years old. Clearly they cheerfully tolerate this type of pruning. Not all evergreens like this.  Yews especially can die out on the interior if they are pruned into densely formal shapes.  They need some air and light to penetrate to the interior.  All of the spreading yews on my property have a natural look to them, for exactly that reason. A healthy plant is a beautiful plant. If I am looking for a hedging yew with a formal shape, I choose a cultivar that grows that way, naturally. Taxus media “Mooni” is a formal grower, and rarely needs much pruning to keep it in shape.

At days end, I still like the composition decades old. And I know that, as Henry Mitchell once wrote, great gardens are the result of the intensive care of the present. The care my landscape gets might easily be more important than the design. Well cared for is always a good look. Mow the grass, pull the weeds, and prune the shrubs.

I drive Milo and I here every day after work. For several years now, I have parked in front, and ushered my dogs up the front steps. Howard needed help going up even a single step. This was the easiest way in for him. I could lift him over the two sets of two steps. He passed away in late May, but Milo and I still enjoy coming home, and walking up to the front door. How this looks after the trim makes me happy to come home.

I do have a secondary entrance to the side garden. Trimmed boxwood hugs the grass ramp up. The design here makes much of the foreground boxwood, the midground hydrangeas, and the far ground container in the side yard. In the background is a glimpse of the Princeton Gold maple trees. This is a good summer look, but it looks good no matter the season. And no matter the weather.

The side yard boxwood is accompanied by an old hedge of thuja nigra, and a stand of Princeton Gold maple trees to the east on the lower level. I like all of the green. From the trees down to the grass. Peaceful, this.

These side yard boxwoods are at least 20 years old. All trimmed up, they do my head, heart and eye a world of good.  The edger strip enclosing the gravel at their base has been in long enough to go wobbly. But the boxwood is as level straight and true as can be.

See what I mean?

Buck, Milo and I come up here every night to talk over the news of the day. This years news? The boxwood has grown out enough to be flush with the raised steel edger strip. It has taken many years to get to this point, but I am loving the look. The big idea? Those simple pleasures in a landscape can mean so much. Simple is good for the three of us. Well maintained makes every garden maker feel better.

As a designer, I take a good bit of time trying to find out what clients want from their landscapes. That is key to providing them a good design. This client has some big boxwood in her future.

 

Posted on: July 16, 2019 38 Comments
Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Plants, Woody Plants, Landscape Design Tagged With: , , ,

Cornus Kousa

From the Missouri Botanical Garden website, read the following about the kousa dogwood. “Cornus kousa, commonly called Kousa dogwood, is a small, deciduous flowering tree or multi-stemmed shrub that typically grows 15-30’ tall, with a vase-shaped habit in the early years but eventually maturing to a more rounded form. Bloom occurs in late spring. The showy parts of the Kousa dogwood “flower” (3-5” across) are the four narrowly pointed petal-like white bracts which surround the center cluster of insignificant, yellowish-green, true flowers. Flowers are followed by berry-like fruits (to 1” diameter) which mature to a pinkish red in summer and persist into fall. Fruits are technically edible, but are usually left for the birds. Oval, pointed leaves (to 4” long) are dark green, but usually turns attractive shades of reddish-purple to scarlet in autumn. Mottled, exfoliating, tan and gray bark on mature trees is attractive in winter.

This matter of fact description does not begin to address the beauty of a kousa dogwood in full and glorious bloom. I doubt I have ever written about them in the 10 years I have been publishing my garden design journal. Primarily as I have never ever seen them so spectacular in flower as they are right now. The kousa dogwood is native to Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan.  They are rated as hardy and thriving in zone 5 to 8, but my experience suggests they can act a little hostile towards our baking summers, and heavy clay based soil. They seem to favor thin compost rich soil on the acid side that drains in a twinkling of an eye. I do find they perform better than American dogwood (cornus florida) in general.

My theory seems to have some support. This has been the rainiest and coolest spring I can ever remember. We have had many more rainy than dry days. It was 48 degrees this morning, and barely 60 degrees this afternoon. The ground is completely drenched. I make an effort to stay out of the garden, even if it means the foot tall weeds are getting closer to 2 feet tall. The grass is squishy. For the Kousas to put on such a rare show of extravagant bloom says there is definitely something in the air that they like.

The actual flowers are small and insignificant.  All of the show comes from the four stiff bright white bracts that surround the flower. In a stellar year, those thousands of bracts overlap one another to produce a solid sheet of white. Even at maturity, a kousa dogwood is small enough to comfortably place in an urban landscape. Sited with some afternoon shade, a routine source of water and great drainage, all a gardener has to do is wait for that one year when all the stars align for a super bloom.

Should you be one of those people who drives the neighborhood to look at holiday lights, a cruise might be in order.  You can spot them for at least a block away. Out of flower, they have handsome foliage, and even more handsome exfoliating bark when they are older-but the star of the once in a blue moon show are the flowers.

In 2009, a hybrid of Cornus Kousa, and the Pacific coast dogwood, Cornus Nutallii, was introduced from the breeding program at Rutgers University. Again, from the Missouri Botanical Garden website:  the dogwood “Venus”  These four trees planted in the tree lawn at my house are young, but they will grow. Even at a 2″ caliper size, I can spot the flowers from several blocks away.

This hybrid is hardier than either parent.  They thrive in full sun, and grow fast when they are happy. The flowers can easily reach 6″ to 7″ in diameter. We have probably planted better than 100 of them since 2011, with only a few losses. They are a little shy to bloom until they have been in the ground for a year or two, but once they start, they are stop you dead in your tracks gorgeous.

They rival the magnolias for the showiest spring flowering tree.  As with Cornus Kousa, Venus flowers in June, avoiding late spring frosts that so often damage the flowers of magnolias.

A pair of small trees I planted 3 years ago are covered with flowers this year.
This shade garden planted some 4 years ago for my clients features a pair of Venus dogwoods. They are especially happy to have them this year.

Posted on: June 17, 2019 46 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design, trees, Plants, Woody Plants Tagged With: , , ,

Spring, Detroit Garden Works Style

Rob decides when we will have spring. Ha. He knows just like every other gardener that the arrival of spring is attended by many false starts and deceptive signs. And at just that moment when you feel you might black out from the last of the miserable weather, nature switches on the light. But when you have a shop devoted to fine, entertaining, antique, vintage, contemporary and irresistible ornament for the gardening season to come, you do what makes sense. You pick a date, and be ready.  We go on hiatus mid January to fix up, repaint and restyle. March 1 is our first day of spring. Containers from Europe jostle their way in between a steady stream of freight shipments from all over the US. The spring collection takes weeks to display. Rarely do we dot the last i and cross the last t in time, but we are ready for company.
Nature takes her own sweet time deciding when to finally pull the plug on winter. Nature is the queen of false starts. The change of the season-a big fluid situation.  Every gardener I know stays tuned in to that station. We are having bitterly and unseasonably cold temperatures this week. But Rob says spring is here, and we believe him. Not to mention all of our clients that have braved the cold to come in anyway, and shop.  We have a greenhouse chock full of gorgeously grown hellebores in bloom. David and Karen took a trip south in February to load up plants from a number of growers. They are perfectly happy in flower in our greenhouse at 50 degrees. Their blooms are a sure sign that early spring is nigh. They handle the cold and blustery March and April weather with aplomb. Until it is safe to plant outdoors, they are perfectly happy on a sunny window sill.

A room full of hellebores does more for the winter weary spirit than anything we can think of. So our spring opening is marked by the coming of the hellebores. But a look at Rob’s spring collection is a close second. As I have been arranging what he has purchased for weeks, I know what is there. The best part of this work is watching someone see it for the first time. For those that read my essays that are too far away to experience our spring collection, I took pictures.

The dovecotes and bird houses are English made in a classical English style, and are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes.

The skylight environment is home to plenty of pots that Rob has planted up featuring hellebores, cyclamen, primula denticulata and obconica, and the Barnhaven series of double primrose.

A new collection of lead sculpture and fountains and English stone spheres are kept company with a group of classical urns in stone and iron.

Three English handmade and hand painted pears would be terrific on a covered porch. Iron urns stuffed with faux grasses are destined for spring pots.

I did have to spring for a vase chock full of ranunculus for our opening.  How so?  Hellebores are a member of the family ranunculaceae .

White tulips seemed appropriate for a room that features more contemporary garden ornament.

This stack of stainless steel drawers is just waiting for that gardener who has a mind to make them a feature of a contemporary garden. The very large pots are vintage fiberglass. The swallows welded to a 1/4″ thick steel rod come in a five foot, and 11 foot length. Birds on a wire. They are fabricated in France, and come with the mounting hardware.

We paired round mirrors with garlands comprised of heavy duty fish line and stainless steel spheres. The chartreuse faux grass is a welcome punch of spring color.

The French company Perigot is known for their iconic buckets. These buckets, available in three sizes, are perfect for a wide range of uses, but I am most fond of the shape, and that beautiful chrome surface. It was a project, hanging them from our ceiling.  They are so heavy that we had to thread concrete wire through galvanized pipe to provide a hanging mechanism that would not bow from the weight. The Belgian made teak tables come in four sizes. The zinc framed mirror is a very strong design, and is well made to a fault.

Vintage zinc grape gathering baskets are a favorite of Rob’s.  We have a beautiful collection of them on hand. The smallest of the Perigot buckets look great stuffed with faux grasses. The miniature white painted metal butterflies only require a small nail to hang.

These wood presentation trays are a perennial favorite with our clients.  Fashioned from vintage French wine barrel tops and hand forged iron handles by a company in the US, they speak to the idea of the garden as a place to entertain.  Our better than life size vintage fiberglass cow came with a name.  Rob named her Lucy, after a French dealer who was not so interested in letting her go. Rob’s first clue? She was situated in a thriving bed of stinging nettles. How he persuaded Lucy to part with this incredible sculpture is beyond me.  How Lucy and her husband got her out of the nettles is unknown to me too.

But we are very happy to have her.  This is an example of an ornament for the garden that is eminently capable of organizing an entire landscape around her watchful eye. Lucy has an aura. I did fill a collection of spherical vases whose spouts are set on an angle with white stock. Lucy had a fragrant meadow at her feet for our opening.

Vintage English chimney pots and milk buckets have beautiful shapes and surfaces.

Big baskets woven from thick rattan have a great texture, size, and presence.

Pardon this poor picture! Serviceable English made bootscrapers are a contrast in form to the hedgehog bootscrapers. Both are made by the same company. If dirty boots are a way of life for you, we have choices.

Danish designed pots made in Italy-these are beautiful. The creamy peach color of the clay is beautiful.

This is just part of Rob’s collection from his shop fest in England. The vintage bootscraper with a stout stone base and rusted iron scraping mechanism-a one of a kind.

These locust wood casks are made in Belgium. They come in four sizes.  Impervious to weather or rot from water, they invite any gardener to plant away. For now they are home to a collection of English made iron garden stakes in various sizes set with glass globes at the top. I predict we will not have these for long.

The orange table and chairs are manufactured in Portugal.

Though the winter weather still has all of us in its grip, there is a taste of spring available at the shop.

cut pussy willow stems for spring pots

strikingly beautiful and tall fan willow

Yes, the spring branches have snow at the base of their pots. They are weathering this late winter blast as I expected. They shrug it off. We can too.

Posted on: March 5, 2019 44 Comments
Filed Under: perennial plants, Plants, Detroit Garden Works, Spring Tagged With: , , , ,

At A Glance: The Library

My last post about the restoration of the paper mache cherubs included the above picture.  The cherubs aside, I had a number of comments about my library, and requests for more information about it.  As the last time I wrote about it was in 2009, I think it is fine to address it again. I have loved books my entire life. My Mom saw to that. The gardening books I bought in my twenties were focused on the horticulture of perennial plants. The library in my thirties expanded into woody plants and shrubs. I have a well worn copy of Michael Dirr’s book “The Manual of Woody Landscape Plants”. I am quite sure I read it cover to cover multiple times. And I still use it as a reference. Landscape design drove my book purchases in my forties, and in my fifties.  I collected books about landscape design, both historic and contemporary, in countries other than my own. The additions to my library from my sixties are dominated by monographs of specific landscape designers whom I admire. Don’t get me started on the names of those designers. It would be a written wave.

But that is what a library provides. Volumes of the printed word and photographs that can answer questions, inform planting schemes and teach good horticultural practices. They tell the story of the history of the garden, and their designers. Books are a window into history, and the work of others. My library informs my practice, but better yet, it informs my life. Landscape and garden design is my profession, and my clients have the right to expect that I have a well rounded education. I find that what I read informs my work. A good garden book is a busman’s holiday for me. I make a point of researching and buying new books every year. Reading the printed page is an absorbing and compelling activity I would not do without.  Yes, I have read all of the books in my library. Some several times over. Ursula Buchan’s book “The English Garden” I have read at least 4 times.  She is a great writer.

I have arranged my library as follows. All of my books are organized by topic. The very top shelf is populated by garden reference books. I have been gardening long enough to not need those books so often. But a ladder can get me to any volume I want to consult. I go up there more often than you would think. That said, I do use the internet to research horticultural topics. That was a source that was not available to me when I I first started collecting books. I can say that a good many articles on line are poorly thought out and barely skim the surface.  I like my books.

All of my books are organized by topic. The plant reference books are at the top of the bookshelf. Other reference books? Stone in the landscape.  Brick in the landscape-and so on.   I have other sections organized around gardens and landscapes by country.  Pictured above, a slice of my books on Italian gardens.  That section includes books referencing medieval Italian gardens, villa gardens, historic gardens-and contemporary Italian gardens.

The French section is wide. For obvious reasons. French landscape design, from formal French gardens to French country gardens is a force to be reckoned with.

The English landscape design section is long enough to acknowledge it is an important precursor to American landscape design.  Jenny Blom’s book “The Thoughtful Gardener” is outstanding.

I do have a shelf section devoted to design with a particular point of view.

A run of shelf space for American gardens and landscape designers-of course.

This lower self is as much about botany as it is about nature photography.

A library is a good place to spend time. All of those pages can inform a life. Can you tell I love my library? Of course I do. Read on about the value of a library, if you wish. February is a gardener’s reading month. Yes?     A library    

Posted on: February 23, 2019 27 Comments
Filed Under: Good Design, perennial plants, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Plants Tagged With: , ,