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Sunday Opinion: Shopping

I will be the first to admit that I shop for holiday gifts via the internet.  It is an amazing convenience for a working person like me.  Not that I take the easy way out.  I do try to make the effort to research for those things that are out of the ordinary. I read most every day the Canadian blog Poppytalk-I so love how they provide a market for independent and small business people who create distinctively individual and enormously creative objects. Check out www.tinytoadstool.com.  Is her work not astonishingly inventive and beautiful?  I found her via Poppytalk.       

I can explain further why shopping on line is a big help to me.  Anyone involved as I am in a retail store is incredibly busy this time of year. The shop gets outfitted for the holidays between October 15 and November 15-this takes every bit of 30 days.  My landscape company does an astonishing number of winter and holiday projects between November 15 and December 20th. Most of those projects I have not photographed yet-no time yet. I design,  run a crew, and fabricate.  I make things for the store in my spare time.  It seems like I am working in the spaces between the days too. The shop grounds need dressing  for the winter-I plan to finish that up tomorrow. I am late on the finish-I didn’t have an idea I liked until 3 days ago.  My Sundays are a mix of planning the week ahead in the morning, and working the shop in the afternoon. The Sunday opinion post-over a slow weekend, I write it Sunday morning.  Over a fast paced Sunday, I do it Sunday night or Monday morning-as in now.  Even the weekly/daily posts get behind, though I try my best to keep up.  This leaves me not so much time to shop.  I have a brother I adore, and a sister in law I adore even more- in Colorado.  Shopping for them, and Buck, and my close friends is a serious business.  I fret and fume over locating the perfect thing for each of them.  Not that I mind this.  All of them are worth every minute I spend.  Should Christmas get too close without a clear sign, I err on the side of being on time with something.  They never seem to mind if a special holiday gift arrives just after New Year’s, but a gift on time counts for much.  I never shop my own shop for for the people I love-I doubt I need to explain this.

Shopping for Deborah Silver and Company, or for Detroit Garden Works is a much different kind of shopping.  Were I able to make internet inquiries and purchases for materials for my landscape company and store in the time it takes to click, I still would not do it.  In fact, sourcing great materials involves much more than an email enquiry.  But more importantly, we are known for a collection you will not find elsewhere.  A collection based on the eye and experience and aesthetic point of view of our group.  Rob travels overseas and all over this country to auctions, antiques markets and shows. He shops local markets.  He drives places he has not been, with the express purpose of maybe meeting people who make or collect interesting objects and plants. Over the past 18 years he has met no end of small independent business owners who have very special products to sell.  On occasion, he will be able to convince them to produce their glazed terra cotta pots in a color they do not ordinarily do.  Or in a sized they have not done before.  Their willingness to accomodate his special requests has a lot to do with the fact that he made time to go and meet them in person, and cultivate a relationship.  We may reorder from a vendor once we have established a relationship with them, but in the beginning, all of our buying is done in person. 

My landscape superintendent Steve Bernard travels extensively over the winter, sourcing plant materials, tools, new techniques, and landscape materials.  This means he visits nurseries and growers all over this country. He reviews their material, and their growing practices.  When he buys, he buys specific plants. Viewing in person-there is no substitute. Some of my relationships with growers date back to the 1980’s.  When I worked for Al Goldner, he insisted that everyone travel to meet growers and hybridizers.  He taught me to do this, and I have done so ever since.  Shopping like this takes lots of time, effort and committment.  Plane tickets.  Meals and lodging.  Car rentals, phone charges.  Days away from home.  Some trips prove fruitless, but no matter; we keep looking.  Our interests evolve. One thing can lead to an intriguing another, should the effort be made.  I do this so my clients get the benefit of our collective eyes.  I do this so both the shop and my landscape company stay fresh and vital.  I also really enjoy it; it’s satisfying to find something new and beautiful.  There are lots of beautiful things out there-it just takes some effort to find them. 

I cannot buy ribbon for the holidays via the internet, or a catalogue.  I need to see it in person-I need to put my hand and my eye to the spool, and decide if it represents our idea of useful, interesting, and beautiful.

Posted on: December 13, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

At A Glance: The Workroom

Posted on: December 12, 2010 3 Comments
Filed Under: Picture This, Holiday Tagged With: ,

More On The Fruits

You may be bored witless with what I have had to say lately about delle robbia wreaths and faux fruits-but it appears I am still talking about them.  Humor me, please.  The fresh fruits-I love all of them.  I relish the apples, the peaches and plums-the cherries.  Watermelon-what could be better?  Musk melon-delicious. The grapes-so many different kinds of grapes-from champagne grapes to green grapes-all of them taste great.  Plums, apples of every different sort, an embarrassment of riches in varieties of pears-fruits taste great. But like most natural things, they also have great shapes, textures and colors.  A bowl piled with fruit on the kitchen counter delights the eye, as much as the taste buds.            

The faux fruits enable a visual discussion about color, shape, and texture. How each fruit is placed in relation to the others, and in relation to the whole makes a composition.  To compose sounds like a fairly serious activity, but it seems like what it takes to compose a letter is much like what it takes to compose a painting or a symphony.  This is big talk coming from someone that has never composed so much as a melody, but there are times when the way certain things go together makes music to my eye.  The pleasure I take in this is why I keep composing in one form or another, over and over. The geometry of this staircase is compellingly strong.  One could decorate it for the holidays by simply repeating these rectilinear shapes.  The garland could have run below and parallel to the railing.  Swagging the garland introduces curvy shapes that contrast with that severe geometry.  So how do I choose this composition over any other?  A client who says she likes natural things for the holidays.  I interpret that as not only natural materials, but a more natural way of displaying them.  The mixed cedar garland is doubled up.  A single strand of wired garland can have an awkwardly wired appearance.  Adding the weight of a second strand permits gravity to make graceful and continuous swoops.     


I did use some of the faux fruits in the wreath over the fireplace, but they are mixed with dry fan willow, fresh red bud pussy willow, pine cones, acorns and reindeer moss.  The mixed concolor and douglas fir wreath has a strong and lively texture and color that pairs well with the stone surface.  The gold bow?  I usually ask a client should they see some metallic element, what would that be?  This particular ribbon is a dream come true for anyone like me who has trouble composing a decent bow.  A translucent and thin green organza has a feathery god stripe down the middle.  The edges and center of this ribbon are all wired.  Even I can poof this.  

The garland is attached to the stair rail with zip ties. We tied garland whever there was a break in the glass sides of the staircase.  A branch of noble fir, wired with fruits, pine cones and cinnamon sticks covers the zip ties, and provides a little punctuation and a sense of rhythm to the change of direction.   

A family room fireplace is faced in a very beautiful stone.  A pair of simple fiber pots stuffed with red twig dogwood and greens sit on either side of the hearth.  The greens are done in a half round, so the pots do not intrude on the living space.  Beaded coppery bronze acorns are a nod to the holiday-and to the bronzy color in the stone floor. 

The natural garland over the windows is complimented by a garland of gold and bronze oak leaves.  Bronze brown glass pine cones and pine cone ornaments are an element in the composition that speaks to festive.      


Pam fussed at me for taking this picture before she had trimmed the bow streamers into swallow tails.  The finishing touches that come after the big gestures are important.  I check to be sure there is no evidence of the construction.  Every element of the composition needs to be securely, but not visibly attached.  The ribbon tails need to be recut.  There should be no evidence I was ever there-beyond the decoration.  That is a major reason why I do as much of the contruction in my studio as possible.  The 14 faux fruit medallions for the staircase garlands were made at my work bench, and taken to the job, ready to be attached. Even so, there is vacuuming to be done at the end.  Even when I design and install a landscape, one of my favorite moments is when the sidewalks and driveway gets washed off.  Once everything is cleaned up, there is time to look over what has taken so much work to compose.  By no means am I suggesting that things will not need adjusting or reworking-that is more the norm than the exception.  I am suggesting that making things is satisfying and fun.

Posted on: December 12, 2010 4 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday Tagged With: , ,

Day And Night

Though I designed and planted this landscape, and did the outdoor holiday display some years ago, it still is one of my favorites. I like how it works in the winter. The shortest day of our year is looming; soon it will be dark before 5pm, and not light again until 7:30 the following morning.  14 hours of dark in a 24 hour period is the second most daunting aspect of a Michigan winter.  The most difficult-the endless number of grey days, one after another.     

It does not necessarily follow that what looks great during the day looks just as great at night.  I have had occasion to work with some really talented landscape lighting professionals.  They manage to design lighting for the evening hours which is soft, engaging and believable.  I have no gift for this whatsoever-I cannot stop longing for the dawn, daylight and dusk long enough to put my best foot forward in the dark. A great lighting designer can make a huge impact on a Michigan landscape.  I do love holiday gardening, and I have the sense to incorporate the materials Rob buys.  I can be assured of a good look at night.   

This year he bought birch stems that were wrapped vertically with lights, and then flocked with some concoction that was barely a reasonable approximation of moss. The winter was looming-I bought in.  During the day, those mossed branches looked fine-provided you were better than 5 feet away.  Some very very tall faux red berry stems added considerable interest. But my favorite-the light covers.  Some company manufactured frosted plastic spheres in green and red. Slipped over a mini light, they glowed.  Weatherproof holiday ornaments of foil spheres wrapped with grape vine wired to the evergreens in this arrangement-a Christmas tree of a different sort.  Though these Belgian wood planters were a long ways from the road, they read.   

The night time version of these holiday was just as strong.  The lit mossy branches glowed-every one of these mini lights had moss flocking.  The light covers diffused and spread the light.  These small lit spheres cast a glow in strong contrast to the dark, the dormancy, and the snow.

Glowing spheres, ornament, and cut evergreen branches dusted with an early snowfall-I’ll take this. The coming of the cold, the garden going down-what gardener adjusts to this very easily?  But the holidays have some very good things built in-friends, family, celebration, tradition, innovation-did I say celebration?  The seasons changing-I would not trade this for anything.  The process of change does not appeal to me much.  But once I am forced to move on, I like that I have options for the garden.  

This landscape dusted with snow-this is what I like about it.  The frosty stone on the house never looked better, than right now.  That texture in the vertical plane, and the texture of the boxwood in the horizontal plane-a good relationship.  Those lit moss-flocked branches, the light covers,  and the lights in the garland-substantial.  A landscape endowed with lots of visual interest-these landscapes I fall for.  


Every gardener across this country is thinking about how to express the holiday day and night.  I like being just one of many.

Posted on: December 11, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday Tagged With: ,