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The Holiday/ Winter Preview Party 2018

Rob and his group did an incredible job of getting the shop turned over to the holiday and winter season to come. I know there are those that are grumpy seeing this in what rightfully is the fall, but it takes many days and many pairs of hands to get this all ready. Our one evening event of the year featured Rob’s lighting as usual, and pizza cooked up fresh on the driveway. The description doesn’t sound all the great, but sitting on the driveway in 40 degree weather, eating pizza right out of the oven – perfect.  To follow are pictures of the before during and after of that event, for those readers too far away to attend.  Our season kickoff open house goes on all weekend, and is a perfect prelude to the season to come. If you are nearby, we are well worth the trip.

antique bottle rack, lighted on the interior and decorated with green glass globes

picks and such

Dutch made artificial tree with 11,000 lights

fresh cut magnolia bunches

wood cheese boards and deer

red and white

swan cart

gold colored metal ornaments

rustic look

amaryllis in glass forcing vaseswood ornament

the shop

shop window with swan sleighs

lighted starbursts

a party

shop at night

lighting on the pergola


And this morning-our first snow!


A perfect day for a winter open house, don’t you think?

Posted on: November 9, 2018 30 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Winter Tagged With: ,

The Snow March First

It is not so noteworthy for us to have a snow the beginning of March. Though every gardener in Michigan is winter weary, we know March is not a spring month. It is the last of the winter blast month. So a forecast for snow did not get my attention. What did get my attention was an early day snow with golf ball sized flakes that stuck to every surface outdoors. Those sticky dripping wet flakes kept coming for hours. That wet snow clung to and described every tree trunk and twig in its path. I could not keep my eyes off the transformation of the landscape.

Eight inches worth of snow later, every element of the landscape was draped in the most gorgeous blanket of snow. I have long been a proponent of landscape design that features the weather. I also like a landscape with clearly defined bones that represent the design idea, no matter the weather. This winter weather provided ample evidence of that idea.

To follow are too many photographs of this snow event. I have never ever ever ever seen snow as beautiful as this. Nor have I ever seen my landscape look quite this. It is easy to understand the fascination with nature. There is always something new to experience, even in the most familiar places.


picea mucrunata

magnolias and parrotia overhead

winter pots, still beautiful in March

wall untouched by snow

hydrangea flower heads

view to the street

snow struck flame willow

landscape composition

It was easy to tell the snow was coming out of the northwest.

second story terrace railing
The dogwood tree out the kitchen window was dressed to the nines. Last of all, a short video of our early March weather. What a special and unprecedented experience.

snow movie 

Posted on: March 4, 2018 22 Comments
Filed Under: Winter, nature, Weather

Bringing The Outside In

Given that the inside and outside are very different places to be, it is no surprise that designers who are equally at ease whether inside or out are the exception rather than the rule. I know a few, and I admire them for their ability to move from inside out and back in again without skipping a beat. A client asking me for interior design gets referred to someone else. I know enough about interior design to know I would be seriously out of my depth. Several years ago I made major changes to the interior of my own home, with the help of a very well regarded interior designer. She happens to be a friend, so we fought like cats and dogs more often than I want to admit. None of that difference of opinion is visible. She had an overall vision of the project from the beginning, and the results, happily for me, reflect that. She stuck by her ideas. One space flows into another. There are visual and spatial surprises. My interiors do not look like what she would would have for herself. They look like me, only better and more finely tuned than what I could have ever done on my own. The fact that she is at her best inside, and I am at my worst inside, made for an interesting relationship.

Though I would rather be outdoors than anywhere else, it seems natural that a thoughtful balance between in and out is a relationship worth cultivating. Cultivation churns up a lot of dirt. More on that to come! A dwelling is a place to be out of, and protected from, the elements. I like that the water comes out of the faucets in my house, rather than from the ceiling. My house is a getaway from extreme heat and cold, wind, pelting rain, snow, mosquitoes and so forth. I am appreciative and interested in all manner of wildlife, but a mouse in the house is a no go. Windows are just that-a view to, rather than an immersion in the natural world. Being inside has its value and charm.

That idea in favor of separation and distinctly different experiences between inside and out has been challenged in recent years. Exterior grade furniture upholstered in exterior grade fabric makes an outdoor living room possible. That furniture can be placed on an exterior grade rug. Exterior kitchens that mimic and rival a well equipped interior kitchen further blur the line between the inside and out. Exterior grade is a fancy way of saying weather resistant. My outdoor furniture is resin wicker. It is lightweight, and impervious to sun, rain, snow and ice. The cushions are specifically designed to drain quickly after a downpour. After 8 years outdoors, the fabric  is a wee bit faded, and moss and lichens have begun to grow in the seams. I do not mind plants growing on my cushions outdoors; that seems appropriate to the place.

An ancient roof at Detroit Garden Works was showing strong signs of age.  It was not doing such a great job of keeping what was outside on the outside. Every rain would produce drips from one end of the building to the other. It only took a week or so to install a new roof. And another 2 or 3 weeks to track down some trouble spots. But one significant trouble spot needed attention. In 1995, we installed a 3′ by 3′ skylight near the entrance doors to the shop. It was a way to bring the light from outdoors into the interior. But the wood framing had deteriorated over the years such that we had more than light coming through that hole in the roof.

A decision was made to replace the skylight with a bigger skylight. This 8′ by 8′ domed skylight is technologically vastly superior to our previous version, and its great size floods the area with light. We even have views of the trees on either side of the building.  I would think a banana plant would be very happy under the dome. The size was a bit of a shock, but this is a dose of the outdoors inside I am sure we will enjoy.

Given how much work we had already done to introduce more light into the shop, it was decided to repaint the ceiling. The last time we had painted it was in 1996. That job was rather easy, as the space was empty. Our general contractor sprayed the ceilings while Rob pushed him around on our rolling ladder. I still remember the name of the color-Winter Pear. Once the skylight was in, we realized how really dark that color that ceiling color was. Repainting this was not a job any of us wanted to take on, so I called Wayne.

We moved every object in both rooms to the garage. We gave Wayne a hand covering the walls and floors with plastic and painters tarps, picking up paint, and renting the scaffolding he needed. We primed the raw steel beams with iron oxide primer. Every square inch in the airspace got repainted the same color as the walls-Dove White, from Benjamin Moore. We had entered into the churning up dirt part of cultivating better light inside the shop. Though we had covered every surface, paint dust managed to get on just about everything.

Wayne ran the heat at 65 degrees to get the paint to dry more quickly, so the blower from the furnace did a good job of pushing the paint particulates everywhere. The painting went very fast, the cleanup took some time.

We are happy with with the outcome.  We have just enough of the outdoors inside now to make our garden shop feel more like the garden. You’ll see.

Everything will move fast now.  We are beginning to put the store back together.  A 40 foot container from France will be at our door this Friday morning. And March 1st, Detroit Garden Works will be back open for the 2018 gardening season. We have had time to make all of these changes, courtesy of the great outdoors.    The February garden

Posted on: February 14, 2018 10 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Winter

The Amaryllis Crop

February in a northern garden designer’s life ought to be snoozy. 25 years ago, my landscape design work finished up in mid November, and did not resume until the snow and cold looked to be waning the following March. I can’t remember what I did with those winters now, so it couldn’t have been much. How fun, to not have much to do. Oh to have those quiet winter baby days back. Now there are requests for design year round. Some late 2017 projects are inching slowly towards the drawing board now, as I reserve the right to indulge in a little bit of horsing around. Even though the engine is running, the parking brake is on.

It takes an entire winter to re imagine Detroit Garden Works for the season to come. That process is still in process. If you follow Rob’s instagram page DetroitGarden you know the walls, fixtures and floors in the largest part of the store are swathed in painter’s plastic. Wayne is here spray painting the ceilings, a job that was last done in 1995. Yes, they were due. Moving everything our of those rooms, dusting and scraping the loose paint, and repainting all of the shelves and trim took most of January. Two containers from overseas have arrived. A container from France should be docking in NY shortly, and two more will arrive from Belgium and Vietnam towards the end of the month. The shop is due to reopen March 1. February is a busy time, ready  or not. Most annoyingly, part of my winter has involved some involuntary babysitting. If you read this journal regularly, you know I am not a fan of plants in the house. I love having a plant free season. Like most houses, I have a house which is notable for a lack of natural light in the winter. My house is dark (by plant standards), hot and the air is dry- an environment that plants don’t want. Well I don’t want them either. The bugs and dirt don’t bother me. Nor the fact that tropical plants hardly look like they belong inside a house in Michigan. I could live with those things. The fact that they need regular care and attention leaves me cold. Enough of my time gets absorbed by the needs of the plants for a good portion of the year. I like the time off from that group of living things that have no problem dying on you despite a huge effort to keep them happy and healthy. The phalaenopsis orchids pictured above are a gift scheduled to be delivered the end of the week. That I can live with, as the end of my responsibility for them is near. After having them for one day, a new bud is withering.  I can’t get rid of them fast enough.

The amaryllis are another story. Rob sells scads of them in the shop at the holidays. Invariably, there are a few left over. Some bare root bulbs I gave away to good customers when no one was watching. I knew anything left over would come to me, as my office is warm. Karen potted up and watered them liberally, and moved them to the utility room near my office. Then she went on break. There they sat. I have a little frig for my milk and a spot for cereal, so every morning making breakfast I had to look at them. Not one was making any move to come on. Not one was looking like it was shriveling or dying. They were in a state of suspended animation.

After three weeks of scowling at them every time I walked in that room, I looked up their culture on line.  I did not read anything that I did not already know. Popular lore suggests that after potting and watering, the bulb so be left alone until it puts forth growth, either in the form of flowers or leaves. By mid January these bulbs had been watered only once in the 6 months since they arrived. Another article (which of course I cannot find now) suggested that watering the bulbs normally, but sparingly in advance of any growth was fine.

Tired of looking at their expectant bulb faces, I had a decision to make. I had to either throw them away, or see if I could get them to grow. I knew I would feel guilty, and face ridicule from Rob if I didn’t try to grow them on. So I soaked the pots thoroughly, and moved them to an all plastic Rubbermaid tabouret in my drawing studio. The tabouret has tall sides, so I could slosh the water and dirt around with impunity. The industrial windows are 6 feet tall, and face south. At least if we had no sun, there was still plenty of light. The tabouret also has wheels, so I could move them away from the windows when the temperatures dropped into the single digits.

You see what was happening here? My carefree February became an obsession to get those bulbs to break dormancy, grow and bloom. I  scrutinized them every day. I had to come in on Sunday to be sure they didn’t need anything. I was certain that the bulbs that had been potted in non-draining jardinieres would rot if I wasn’t especially careful with the water. And the one’s planted to larger fiber pots would come blind from having been over potted. None of this happened. One by one, they began to grow. One bulb threw a pair of stalks at once, and is in full bloom on my conference table right now.  I have to admit The big showy white flowers are a welcome contrast to that other kind of white blanketing the entire landscape.

One hapless bulb had been left behind by shoppers as it one bloom stalk withered and rotted from the cold in the greenhouse. So I cut it back, and watched to see if another bloom stalk would emerge. After sulking for a few weeks, I could tell something was afoot. It is February, so I had time to turn the flowering stalks leaning towards the light away from the window.

My amaryllis crop, which I never sought or wanted, had me in its grip. The attention it took had expanded to an alarming amount of time. I was going in there 4 times a day just to look things over.

The second bulb to bloom had red flowers – not my favorite. So I took it in to Dave and Heather so they could enjoy it. Now I have 3 stops to make every day, checking on the amaryllis. And to make matters that much worse, I have made a list of suppliers of unusual amaryllis bulbs and the varieties I like available to Rob, as well as a source of heat mats so we can provide them with the heat they want and need to come on. And finally, the time it took to take pictures and write this post-hours more.

Now you know why I do not like having plants in the house.

 

Posted on: February 7, 2018 48 Comments
Filed Under: Plants, Winter, flowers Tagged With: