Detroit Garden Works | Deborah Silver & Co.

Opening Day

It was the middle of January that we began repairing and repainting Detroit Garden Works. It was a long process which got finished just two weeks ago. The building dates back to 1940, so with age comes some maintenance. We had issues with the roof, and some deteriorated sections of our concrete block wall that needed repair. We repainted the entire shop, one room at a time. This meant that every room had to be cleared, the loose paint scraped, and the new paint applied-all by hand. The walls are now a warm white, and the trim is a pale blue gray that reminds me of galvanized metal. This day, Owen and LaBelle were rehanging the strings of lights attached to the steel beam that holds the glass roof aloft in our greenhouse. Those pale gray roof rafters look so good against the sky.

Many weeks later, the room is filled with racks full of Danish designed terra cotta pots manufactured in Italy that Rob ordered last fall. Buck’s group from Branch came to reinforce a pair of large vintage wood shelving units that Rob bought in Atlanta, so they could handle the weight of over 500 of these great looking pots. Once the pots were in place, Owen and LaBelle hung a collection of Plant Belles topiary forms from the roof rafters. We began repopulating the shop for spring.

Looking through these vintage wirework cloches, you can see that our greenhouse space is filling up. The empty tables will see service in just a few weeks. The weekend of March 20th is our annual hellebore festival. This greenhouse will be filled will hellebores, topiaries, and other spring plants in just a few weeks. What any gardener wants to see the most as winter comes to a close is plants, and lots of them. We agree.

We potted up lots of heirloom daffodils this past fall. Detroit Garden Works will be celebrating their 20th year in business the end of March. We have the idea that this space will be beautiful, filled with daffodils blooming for our 20th. We just brought all of the pots and baskets out of our unheated garage for a warm up to 50 degrees.

Our 20th year in business is a big occasion for all of us. First and foremost it speaks to Rob’s collections that have kept every shop season for 20 years fresh and captivating. His talent and passion for the garden is truly extraordinary. Every object that has a home in our 10,000 square feet of space, both on the ground, in the air, and on the walls was an ornament or tool for the garden chosen by him.

The shop has an incredible collection of ornament for the garden. Pots we have. Antique, vintage, modern, contemporary-the range is wide. Rob favors the handmade, the unusual, and most of all, beautiful pots. Homes for plants as in baskets, urns, vases and buckets – made of terra cotta, galvanized metal, wood, stone – even paper. What we have available is much wider in range and depth than this list.

Our tool room features an extensive collection of handmade Dutch tools. They are beautifully made, and sharp as blazes. Rob’s choice of handmade corn brooms and whisks with cherry wood handles are handsome indeed.

Sunne and I displayed a lot of our new Dutch hand tools in glass cubes. Why so? These tools are very sharp. They will make quick work of any small digging project. We thought to make the view of every tool easy. The glass will inspire caution to anyone who wants to pick one up and look it over.

This past fall, Detroit Garden Works had a group of Italian made washable paper bags in stock. I thought to load up the bags with daffodils and miniature bulbs. The zip lock bags made a perfect liner for the paper jardinieres. Though it was convenient that the bulbs did not need any water over the course of the winter, I was worried that plastic would keep the soil too wet. Not so. The roots look healthy, and I see no signs of rot.

Once they had been moved into greenhouse, we cut down the top of the plastic so it was no longer visible. It only took 2 days exposure to natural light for the leaves to green up.

The room with the painted floor is just about ready for company. The most dramatic feature of the space is how Rob did the lighting. He took every light down, and redid them in such a way that features that floor, the collection of Italian terracotta that just arrived, and of course the galvanized buckets and baskets that are his idea of a gardening staple.

The Italian pots are all simple in shape, and have no decoration but for a rolled rim at the top. They would look as beautiful in contemporary gardens as they would in traditional ones. I have so many requests from readers far away to post pictures of the inside of the shop, so what is to follow should give you a good idea of the big picture.

the daisy lawn room

from back to front

in the window

vintage steel desk and wall hung cubby

looking towards the front door

from south to north

Belgian bowl pots

pair of fire escape wall wall mounted plant stands

This was always our darkest space. The new paint, and the white French glazed terracotta has made the room so much more inviting. Inviting-that’s what we want to be, this opening day.

Posted on: March 2, 2016 29 Comments

Some Details On The Floor

The first order of business is to thank each and every one of you who took the time to write a comment on my post about the finish of the floor. It was an extravaganza of a day for me! I had no idea so many of your comments were forthcoming, but how I loved them. All that good will was rocket fuel for my day. Again, thank you. All of your energy and enthusiasm was the talk of my entire staff. I did want to address some of the questions posed in some of the comments.

As for the possibility of painting this rug on canvas – I would not have considered that. This space may not look very big, but it is. I am guessing at least 25 by 40 feet. No canvas comes this size; it would have to be pieced, and sewn together. This room is the Detroit Garden Works railway station. It is our most highly trafficked space. People bring wet plants and bags of soil with holes in the bags to the counter. Carts get wheeled through here. Sometimes we need a pallet jack in this room. Kids drop the remains of their ice cream cones on the floor. The dogs drag in everything from outside. On a rainy day, everyone coming in has a mix of mud and gravel on the bottoms of their shoes. A canvas rug in a retail setting is a trip worry, if the edges do not lay perfectly flat. This is not a good place for a floor canvas. This floor painting is firmly glued down, and can be washed.

All of the daisies have a yellow center. I think our track lighting washed out the yellow in my pictures. I did paint the rug with semi gloss finish, as it is so durable. We do have a glare coming off the floor both from those lights, and the paint. The yellow reads loud and clear, if you are in the room. The yellow was an essential element. Bellis have yellow centers.

It is a pleasure that this painted rug will get a lot of use. I like things for the garden that go on to last long enough to look worn. If this painting wears to the point of no return, it just means I will have a chance to paint a floor another time. This is the 3rd painting in 20 years. I wonder how I might repaint this floor when I am 72. Maybe when I am 70, I will simply be ready for a change. I was in a commercial building last week whose lobby was filled with potted poinsettias. Though they had had perfect care, and looked wonderful, their time had passed. I will not put a sealer coat over the painting. It will just have to endure, as best it can. Should it ever need replacing, I will paint again. I am not thinking of the future now. What is there now is enough.

What Rob has placed on the painted floor tells me he likes it. No big things sit flat on the floor, obscuring the paint. Everything sitting on the floor in this room has legs.

Painting this floor was 9 days well spent. February is a bleak month in Michigan. I scarcely thought about the cold and gray.

This room is starting to come together. MCat, that dark blob in the back center of this picture, has walked across this floor as many times as all the rest of us have the past few days. It will be great fun next week to have people come in and see it in person.

Again, my thanks to all of you for taking the time to write. And I promise, no more posts about this floor.

Posted on: February 27, 2016 24 Comments

Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Picture This, Spring Tagged With: Detroit Garden Works

Early Fall

The beginning of the fall season is a beginning to treasure. All of the hard work growing from the spring through the summer of comes to fruition. Literally. The tomatoes ripen. The farmers market is bursting with racks of brussel sprouts, giant rosettes of cabbage, and fresh and fragrant onions. Home vegetable gardens yields such that there is plenty for neighbors and friends. The spring planted perennials have put on a lot of weight. The trees planted in the spring seem to have weathered the transplant shock, and look happier – more settled and comfortable. The memory of insults dealt to the landscape and garden from the hard winter past fade. No need now to remember them. The beginning of fall can be the last chapter of a very good short story, or the last quarter mile of a long and exhausting run. Or both. There is a good amount of time before the fall sinks and sets in, to enjoy the fruits.

Fall is a favorite season for Rob. He endures the heat of the summer. Every plant gets watered as it should. He good naturedly tolerates the glare. Once the season begins to shift to fall, he is energized. He is back and forth across every square inch of the shop, making changes appropriate to the season. Materials he has ordered for the fall season at the shop months ago arrive every day. Much to my delight, he tracks back and forth across a 100 mile radius from the shop, selecting pumpkins and gourds for his fall collection.

There are those gardeners who collect day lilies, or hostas. Or perhaps they focus on wild flowers, or native plants. Some love all manner of hardy ornamental grasses. Some nurture their collection of African violets, or Japanese maples. There are the rosarians, who keep the interest in great garden roses alive. When I had five acres of land, I lined out peonies in rows, like crops. The alpine plants, the lilies, the dahlias-every plant has a coterie of aficionados. The fans of gourds and the pumpkins are many. Illinois is the nation’s largest producer of pumpkins-over 12,000 acres of crop land are devoted to growing them. Though dwarfed by the Illinois production, Michigan is still the second largest producer of pumpkins and gourds. Though many carve the traditional orange pumpkin for Halloween, or use the pulp for pies, there are those who appreciate the sculptural shapes and colors.

About that color. My favorite part of the fall is how the low light saturates the color of everything it touches. In summer, the sun high in the sky interrogates everything it touches. Sunny summer days are bright, and shadowless. The slanted and softer fall light brings saturated color back into the landscape. I suspect that Rob’s enchantment with the pumpkins and gourds is as much about color as the forms, textures and shapes. Fall color is term every gardener is familiar with. The leaves turning means a landscape ablaze in yellow, orange, red and purple. An overcast summer day in a garden means any color will more intense. Never is any color in the garden more intensely representing than in the fall. The light from the sun highlights every plant from the side. The fall garden appears as though it were on fire.

Every pumpkin or gourd that Rob chooses for his collection at the store has a story about color, texture, and shape behind it. He will not buy any fall fruit that cannot stand up on its own. He treasures the stem every bit as much as the fruit. He is as great with subtle fall color as he is with those those colors that blaze away. He probably has other criteria I am not aware of. Rob curates his collection. Every pumpkin and gourd could stand alone, and look great. A grouping is a pleasure to be enjoyed throughout the fall.

The low fall light reveals texture in a spectacular way. This week was my first look at peanut pumpkins.

Equally astonishing is Rob’s collection of long stemmed pumpkins. He knows a grower who has been hybridizing pumpkins for 55 years. A long stem was a trait he sought. This was a friendship that has taken years to establish. Rob will visit him multiple times in late September.

I am so enjoying this warm late September sun.

at the shop

pastel pumpkins

orange

red, white, and wood

a saturated experience of orange

contrast

so orange, and so green.

red and white

pumpkins and gourds

fall light

Last, but certainly not least, those big stems that come with pumpkins attached.

Posted on: September 27, 2015 18 Comments

Filed Under: Color, Fall, Detroit Garden Works, Picture This Tagged With: fall harvest, pumpkins and gourds, Rob Yedinak, Detroit Garden Works

Monday Opinion: Labor Day

More than once have I had reason to expect that the warm and sunny momentum established by my summer season would blast by Labor Day in a hot fit of defiance. Given that the forecast for today is 90 degrees, might Mother Nature forget that today is Labor Day? Every year I hope nature will be distracted by some warm September weather, and fail to note that the season is due to change. Have my hopes of a summer that streams on for 4 months instead of 3 ever been fulfilled? No. This bout of hot weather aside, there are signs that the summer season is slowing.

We’ve had a few cool and foggy mornings. The sun is lower in the sky. The morning light is coming on later, and the evening darkness earlier.The seeds on my dogwoods are ripe and red; the leaves have a considerable red tinge to them. The hardy hibiscus have more seedpods developing than flowers. The Rozanne geraniums look the best they have all season – typical. The lily of the valley leaves are singed with their usual end of summer fungus. The Limelight hydrangea flowers are showing some pink. The flowers on the hyssop have gone gray; the plants are dropping their lower leaves.

Some of the plants in my containers have moved past the thriving stage to the tired place. They have that pale foliage color that speaks to exhaustion. Some plants have gone limp from a summer’s worth of exertion growing. A week ago I cut back all of my nicotiana, and fed them. They have been lackluster all summer; I am hoping for a fall flush. The dahlias have not been happy this summer either. I am not sure if I will get a decent bloom before the mildew takes them down. My other containers are so root bound they need soaking, not just watering. The laurentia around the fountain grew too tall in the heat, turned yellow, and flopped over. I took them out. The fountain is turning green with algae, right on time, in time, for Labor Day.

But there are plenty of containers which are right at what I call that “super nova” stage. Like a star that glows prior to imploding, they are at their most beautiful best – right now. They are as glowingly good as they ever will be. All of the plants have grown out, and matured. Each container has an overall shape-like it or not. Some plants have engulfed their containers. Rob’s container of Russian sage, lamb’s ear and several thyme varieties-any ideas about what the container looks like? Me neither. This planting, right now, is at its most glorious best. Our window boxes stuffed with silver foliaged plants are looking just about as good.

These angel wing begonias are bowed over from the weight of all of their flowers. They have been beautiful all summer, but now they are at that very big and beautiful stage that foretells summer’s end.

But no summer container plant can come close to that Labor Day super nova size like coleus. The range of colors and leaf types is astonishing. Their willingness to grow is unparalleled. I enjoy growing them, partly as it is possible to shape them by pinching. I find this entertaining. If you think I am a dull girl, you are probably right. This coleus Wasabi was grown from 3 4″ pots. Given a benevolent September, it will reach the ground. This pot I have not touched. All the joy in it has been watching it grow.

These chocolate coleus feature a brown and cream cordyline that is almost invisible now. Were you standing directly over them, you would see that I had pinched out the top to reveal the cordyline.

This modestly sized Italian terra cotta rectangle is home to a hedge sized coleus. We pinched the bottom out, to give the impatiens some breathing room, and some light. chocolate coleus, Kingwood Red coleus, and pink polka dot plant

This pot with an orange and green phormium at the center, pink polka dot plant and heuchera bears no relation to coleus, except that it has been thriving in the same vein all summer.

coleus peaking. the petticoat below-maidenhair fern.

coleus Amora, coleus Alligator, and a subtle dash of pink polka dot

a coleus “Tilt a Whirl” standard, under planted with hens and chicks. The accompanying lemon cypress grown on from a 6″ pot-looking good.

So what am I thinking about this Labor Day? That Labor Day usually signals the start of the end of my summer gardening season, of course. But more importantly, that a working American gardener named Rob has gone the distance every day, day after day, since the middle of May to bring all of these container plantings along to this moment. If you live nearby, and haven’t seen them in person, they are well worth the trip. As for you, Rob, have a happy and well deserved Labor Day.

Posted on: September 7, 2015 16 Comments

Filed Under: container planting, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: Detroit Garden Works, summer container plantings, Rob Yedinak, coleus

Opening Day

Some Details On The Floor

Early Fall

Monday Opinion: Labor Day

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