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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: Detroit Garden Works, perennial plants, Plants, Spring Tagged With: , , , ,

Spring Flying By

It seems ridiculous to be talking about spring container plantings when our current 80 degree temperature is expected to soar into the 90’s over the new few days. But better an ephemeral spring than none at all.  April was a very tough month. Scary freezing temperatures and snow hovered over the entire month.  Planting this year’s the spring pots required coats, hats and gloves, but we got them all done by April 20. These Branch Studio boxes pictured above were planted with lavender, rosemary, lavender mix pansies and alyssum, and have grown considerably since our early April plant date. The spring is all about a celebration of the first to emerge, and endure. Simple and satisfying, filling planter boxes early on with chilly soil, and plants that shrug off the cold.

Rob planted lots of pots and baskets for spring.  Most of them are gone now. Who could resist a basket full of lettuce? Cold tolerant vegetables make great container plants. There is something so fresh and juicy about spring green.

I have a number of clients for whom I plant spring pots, and to the last, they all like something different.  This client has a decidedly contemporary point of view. We planted accordingly. Tall and short pussy willow in several distinct layers speak to an architectural arrangement. Taupe dyed eucalyptus all around provides some weight in the midsection. The light and dark pansy mix-sparkly. The contemporary Belgian pot is a beautiful shape, and has a subtly textured surface. The planting features the pot. The selection and arrangement of plants in a container adds the evidence of a point of view. That point of view provides another layer of engagement to the viewer. The color of the pussy willow and eucalyptus echoes the color of the container in a succinct way, and it helps to greatly animate the color of the pansies and violas.

That giant cast iron cauldron at the end of the Detroit Garden Works driveway gets dressed up every season.  We mean it to say hello, and welcome. The previously pictured container would be too tailored and austere for this spot. I like containers in which every element is intended, and has a reason to be. The end of May, these pansies are blooming profusely. A spring container can be enjoyed from the moment it is planted until summer arrives July first.

These citrus mix pansies planted weeks ago have grown in, and are still growing. The centerpieces are fake and fanciful, to my client’s delight. The pot in the background has a sweet pea captured inside a tightly configured ring of pussy willow. Sweet peas are notoriously sloppy growers. The pussy willow will support this lax growing vine. The placement of the sweet pea next to the bench insures that fragrance is part of the enjoyment of the container.

This early spring pansy planting underneath a multi trunked birch is the first breath of spring in this landscape. Comprised primarily of trees, shrubs and ground cover, this under planting of pansies and alyssum previews what is to come in this park like setting. Spring can never come soon enough in our zone. The hellebores in my yard were buried in snow until late April. It seemed like the flowers bloomed and matured in the same breath. Many of the spring flowering trees were very slow to come on this spring, but for the redbuds.  I suspect that as they bloom before they leaf out, the flowers came at their usual time, and lasted for weeks. The crabapples leaf out, and then bloom; they were fleeting in flower. My dogwoods had 6 days of glorious bloom, and then faded fast in the heat of the past few days. I may have missed the lilacs. Who knows what 90 degree weather will do to the spring container plants, but they have been glorious so far.

pale yellow and red violet in a spring garden

Columnar rosemarys inside a quartet of steel obelisks. The cool wave pansy mix “Peaches and cream” has a gracefully trailing habit.

Daffodil mix pansies and romaine lettuce at the end of May

Cut pussy willow branches, cream eucalyptus, and bicolor pansies

4 spring pots with concord eucalyptus and lavender mix pansies.

pussy willow, pansies, and ivy in a shady location

pussy willow, rosemary and pansies framed by a hedge of Ruby Queen oakleaf hydrangeas – this is a very good spring look. I am sorry to report that our spring is rapidly fading. I am happy to have some pictures.

Posted on: May 27, 2018 9 Comments
Filed Under: container planting, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Spring

The Big House

A Michigan spring is a big fluid situation. We have cold days and cold nights. We have hot days and freezing nights. Every day is a new weather drama, with a new cast of characters. We have a glass roof over one room inside Detroit Garden Works. Once we start buying in seasonal and tropical plants, it feels like a little house. During those cold spells, we jam no end of cold intolerant plants under that glass roof, to keep them happy. For years we have moved seasonal plants in and out of our garage, given the night time temperature forecast. That in and out is a a huge chore. So late last winter we made arrangements to purchase a big house for our plants.  A 60′ long by 30′ wide gothic styled house that would put all of our seasonal plants under cover. The house got delivered on a flatbed truck.  Seeing the boxes and pieces on the ground made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This is a greenhouse?

Of course I asked Buck to take the lead. He was reluctant to take on the big house, but he did. The worst part of getting it aloft was the fact that we could not dig into the ground to set the posts. I suspect this part of our property was formerly a road bed. It was full of asphalt, big rocks, and giant pieces of concrete. It took a week, 4 people, and a jackhammer to dig all of the holes for the posts. The landscape crew took on that thankless job, day after day. The Branch crew saw to setting every post in concrete in a perfectly vertical position. This may sound easy, but it is not. I have never seen so many levels and so many measuring tapes in one place in my life.

Once the posts were set, we were ready to set the ribs aloft. We had willow branches in the way that had to be cut, and a lots of work to be done in the airspace. The willow that had to be pruned back provided material for a tool the Branch fabricators needed. I will say this tool took my breath away. I like simple solutions.


 One person on the ground held the rib in the proper position with the willow tool, so the person on the ladder could bolt the support bars in place. The greenhouse came with directions that were very unclear. Given that this was Branch’s first greenhouse, they proceeded cautiously. But once the ribs were set, the structure was rock solid.

I had no idea how a 2000 square foot piece of 6 mil plastic would go over the house, and be secured, but it turned out to be fairly simple.  We had to wait for a windless day, with no rain. Apparently wet plastic is very difficult to slide over the ribs.  After laying out the plastic next to the house, ropes were secured to the edge of the plastic with the help of small rocks. Rocks? The plastic was bunched up over a rock, much like the paper wrapper over a tootsie roll pop, and then secured with rope. Of course it is done this way. The plastic would slip through a loop of rope, no matter how tight it was tied. The rock secured the plastic to the rope. This is how greenhouse people do it. Ingenious.
Each rope was thrown over the top of the house, and handed off to a person on the other side.

8 rope pullers and two wrinkle reliever people made quick work of getting this giant piece of plastic over the top. The plastic keeps heat in the house, and wind, rain, hail and other weather events off the plants.

Once the plastic was in place, it was secured on both sides in a channel with a locking cap that runs the entire length of the house. This was a very cold day. Instantly it seemed warmer inside the house than out. Seasonal plants hail from tropical climates.  They dislike cold temperatures, and cold soil even more. In mid May, the best place for annual plants is under cover.  Planted out in our cold soil too soon, they sit there. Inside, they grow.

The short ends of the house are rigid polycarbonate panels. We will install the polycarbonate sliding doors later.  Right now, the house is open to promote good air circulation, and to permit carts to come and go.

The final layer over top of the house is a shade cloth. It blocks 40 percent of the sun coming through the plastic.  This will keep the house much cooler when the weather gets hot.  This means less stress to the plants that are in small pots. And a more comfortable place for people to look at plants. The long sides have separate plastic panels that roll up, so when its warm, some of the heat is able to escape.

We are by no means a business specializing in seasonal plants. Nor are we a nursery specializing in trees, shrubs, perennials and ground covers for the landscape. We specialize in pots, tools, ornament, sculptures, fountains, furniture and interesting objects for gardens.  Rob sees to making the Works a place friendly and engaging to those people who garden. And those people for whom the beauty of a garden is a way of life. Those objects around which a garden or landscape can be organized is just a part of the equation. Of course we treasure the plants, especially plants that can be grown in containers.

 

It seems fitting and reasonable to have a plant house. What I had not planned on was how much I would enjoy it. Thank you Branch for putting up a big house.

 

 

Posted on: May 17, 2018 28 Comments
Filed Under: container planting, Detroit Garden Works, flowers, Spring Tagged With:

Early May

Our bitterly cold and record breaking April gave way to an early May that has been too warm, too windy, too rainy and very stormy. Of course it has. Every plant that hunkered down in April was shoved into bloom and leaf by unseasonable heat. This is anything but a cool and slowly evolving spring. This isn’t springtime.  It is boom and bust time. Daffodils began to wilt with the heat at the moment they came in to bloom. The magnolia petals were falling as the flowers opened. Even the grape hyacinths looked unhappy. This is the natural course of events-nature ruling over all in a rather capricious even cruel way. That rule is not especially friendly and certainly not fair. The only thing to do is to pay attention. The Secretariat of all springs is zooming by and already heading into the home stretch. Yesterday and today the temps are hovering around 45, and are accompanied by torrential rains. Every gardener is blinking, just like me. Are we up or down?

This does not mean that the experience of the beauty of the garden and landscape waking up is lost. It is just fleeting. In a spring like this, it takes effort and concentration to capture the moment. Not a one of my hellebores bloomed until the very end of April. Snow and ice buried them until quite late. It was an event when they finally sallied forth. This green flowered hellebore is a cultivar from Pine Knot Farms, and it was well worth waiting for.

May visits every property equally. The coming of the growing happens everywhere. Even those places where there may not be a gardener on staff. The new growth on the weeds is just as beautiful as the new growth on delphiniums. Truly. A patch of daylilies fresh out of the ground is my favorite time for them. The flowers on the maples are the most exquisite shade of chartreuse. There are a few spring days when even the roadway is green. The violets may not be welcome in some lawns, but I love them. I would have them everywhere, in every color, in the spring.

Seasonal spring plants have the same vibrant aura as the spring landscape. The color is clear and brilliant. Spring rains wash all of the dust and pollen out of the air. Spring sunlight is like no other light. Everything grows for broke. What a delight to be a part of that! This window box has pansies, strawberries, annual phlox, bidens, osteospermum, parsley and alyssum.  Seasonal flowers have the ability to handle unusual cold and heat better than the ephemeral spring wildflowers, spring flowering bulbs, shrubs and trees. Anyone who has ever known the pleasure of a stand of double bloodroot understands keeping a close eye on the approaching bloom. A day away from the garden means you might miss it altogether. This window box will prosper steadily, even in the warmer weather to come.

There is nothing particularly extraordinary about creeping jenny, but a mass of it under planting white daffodils is a May moment worth savoring. Later in the summer, that chartreuse will harden, and take on an orange cast unless it has afternoon shade. Right now it looks good enough to eat.

Forsythia is an ordinary spring flowering shrub, but the late day May light makes the color glow. This gardener had the good sense to just let it grow. A shrub in full spring bloom, a wheelbarrow, and an sidewalk-this is the stuff of which great spring days are made.

My old clumps of Royal Heritage hellebores all feature downward facing flowers. This means I need to get down on the ground and look up into their faces. Any perennial that can make this 68 year old gardener do that has something going for it. Oh yes, the hellebores are a feature of the spring season, no matter the weather.

This PJM rhododendron came with the house I bought 24 years ago.  It has had its ups and downs, but I can count on those dazzling flowers in May. This year’s display began to fade in the heat, but my memory of this moment, given my experience of it for more than 2 decades, is a forever memory. I have had 48 springs as a gardener. Each one is different.  But the sum total of all of my Mays is worth my attention.

I do not travel much outside my route to and from work, this time of year. So much of my experience of May is in my own neighborhood, driving by. This Bradford pear, branched to the ground and in full bloom, is an experience of spring that delights my eye.

A single shoot of variegated lily of the valley, after 3 years in my garden, has decided to branch out. I could not be more delighted. May has a way of surprising even the most veteran gardener. I cannot really explain how this plant settling down and spreading has been such an important part of my spring. Yes, I was paying attention.

The Princeton Gold maples in my back yard are leafing out. Those giant chartreuse leaves say spring in no uncertain terms. This year’s spring green may be fleeting, but a beautiful moment is a moment to be treasured.

The tulips at the shop are not their usual size, given our freezing April.  But they are blooming. I admire their effort.

My pansies have taken the worst of the cold and the heat, as they always do. This spring is not the best we have ever had, but any spring is a moment worth cherishing.

I have had this picture on my computer for ages. It is spring photograph, featuring spring blooming trees, in Japan.  Astonishing, this. Although my spring does not look like this, it feels like this.

 

 

 

Posted on: May 12, 2018 11 Comments
Filed Under: Color, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Spring