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Another Perennial Garden

 

I did plant a second perennial garden this week-however many days ago I posted about the prep.  Steve did a great job of prepping the soil-we usually add plant mix, a mix of topsoil and compost- to garden soil.  I like perennial beds to be pouffy.  Crowned in the center.  So many perennial plants are extremely hardy, given good drainage.  A perennial bed that sits lower than the grade of the lawn will have problems.   This picture makes clear how this perennial sits higher than the lawn.  Perennials swimming in waterlogged soil will give up without much of a fight.  If I had my choice, no ground in a landscape would be perfectly flat.  Every surface would have positive drainage, in addition surface drainage.  The best part of landscaping a new house-I have a good relationship with that person on the bulldozer that sets the grades. Raised boxes specifically built to grow vegetables-this is all about drainage.   Lest I spend too much time on the obvious, I will simply state that water runs downhill.  Sculpt the ground accordingly.       

The photograph of this phlox Nicky is courtesy of the Crownsville Nursery.  The darkest carmine/purple of all the summer phlox, it resists mildew and disease such that you would want to grow it.   The smell of phlox in the summer-divine.  I like the color, and I like the vigor.  This phlox is going into this perennial garden.    

We refined the curve on the edge of this perennial bed.  Perennial beds without edger strip ask for an edger/gardener of great skill.  Any bed edge that curves needs a long slow curve with no flat spots.  If you are having trouble determining a curve, get your hose out.  Play with that hose until you get graceful curves-and then cut the edge.  Alternately, but a stake in the ground, and tie a loosely tied string to it, and mark an arc as long as you need.  Finding the right spot to put the stake just takes a little experimentation.   

The Vision series of astibles are amazing.  They are vigorous growers.  The colors are clear, and striking.  This pink, purple, lavender and white perennial garden got a big dose of these astilbes.   Should you have some part shade areas, consider Visions pink or red. This garden begins and ends with some shadier spots.  I plan to mass both areas with lady’s mantle, Jack Frost brunnera, and this astilbe.   

I have never been convinced that Gaura is hardy in my zone, but here I am planting them.  They are willowy, and beautiful in a very understated way. 

My love affair with lilies is at least 30 years old.   That is a story appropriate for another post.  But this week, the Oriental hybrid lily known as Acapulco got my attention.  Where the idea came from to plant lilies in this garden was driven by the small space in question. Bulb lilies take up  very little space, but add lots of color to any perennial garden.  They require good drainage to persist; they sometimes need to be staked.  The Lily Garden offers a wide selection of lily bulbs by mail.     

The Magic Fountains delphiniums made a big statement the day they got planted. They are fairly easy to grow, and are quite vigorous.  Their shorter stature makes it easier to gracefully stake the heavy flower stalks.  Double pink knockout roses alternated with white hardy hibiscus and planted behind the delphiniums.  Pink platycodon, and pink echinacea are alternated with Russian sage.  On the border, Blue Mist scabiosa, Geranium Rozanne, and lady’s mantle.    

The Oriental hybrid lily Tom Pouce flowers are orchid pink with lemon yellow streaks.  This is a very showy flower indeed-not at all for the faint of heart.  Flowers that are attention getting are good in gardens viewed from a distance.  Who would not want to walk up to insepct a flower like this at close range?  Subtle flowers are best up close, where they can be better appreciated. 


Though the perennials have not been planted yet, it is easy to imagine what the garden will look like once it begins to grow in.  The white flowers of the Annabelle hydrangea we left in the garden will draw the eye towards the back of the garden.  The very large existing clump of Sum and Substance hosta in the foreground provide wecome green relief to the mix of colors all around this.  My client likes pink, purple and white.  I think this garden will provide her with a summer garden she will really enjoy.

Posted on: July 16, 2011 3 Comments
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A Favorite Place

I have my favorite places.  What makes for a favorite place?  A client with an eye for beauty and a committment to the garden.  A client who is always willing to try something new.  That said, an ancient and sparsely foliated scotch pine flanks the front door-Mr. will not now, and not ever,  let me touch it.  This too makes for a favorite place-strong feelings.  The Australian tree ferns I have wintered in a greenhouse for them for about 10 years.  We cut them back to the main trunk in the fall.  By spring they are leafing out vigorously.  This year I underplanted them thickly with maidenhair ferns.    

A pair of chimney pots got planted with an unknown begonia-I like the leaves.  The rusty colored hairs on the stems and backsides of the leaves look great with the rusty brown pots.  Lime licorice grows anywhere for me-sun or shade.  That pale chartreuse color will highlight those deep green leaves.

Planting day was a sunny day-so my pictures are not very good.  A lime, lavender, purple and yellow color scheme is enlivened with an occasion burgundy potunia-just for emphasis. Vinca maculatum will trail dowen long on the far side, as will the misty lilac wave petunias.

The small box got cactus flowered purple dahlias, purple angelonia (new this year) lanai blue trailing verbena, white petunias and lime licorice. 

A pot nearby has a yellow and peach bicolor dahlia, and a skirt of dark red violet trailing verbena.  I like the forms of the plants together as much as I like the color.  I like the contrast of the big dahlia leaves to the slight-sized verbena leaves.  Plants have visual relationships on a lot of levels.   

The centerpiece of this pot is a double (also known as hose in hose) datura.  I caution anyone who grows them-every part of a datura is poisonous.  The plants smell poisonous.  If you cultivate this beauty, wash your hands after you touch it.  Beyond the warning label lies a gorgeous big leaved plant with giant flowers.  A diminuitive white and lavender veined mini petunia against lime licorice is a cooly tart, and small textured mix.  The datura will be the star of the show.

The perennial garden at the pool is just coming to life.  The peonies are out, and the roses are not far behind.  The purple alliums show well from the second floor deck; this is a garden primarily viewed from above.  We add some nicotiana and verbena bonariensis between the tall perennials, and plant an annual border to soften the edge of the pool brick.  This year, showy oregano, appleblossom petunias and heliotrope will fill in and cover the soil.   

When my client asks for herb pots, she is really asking for basil pots.  I did a pair.  Leeks in the middle, and everbearing strawberries with pink flowers at the corners. Lots and lots of basil.  This I understand.  Its pungent smell and taste-irresistable.

This trio of pots feature an old variegated ivy topiary, and a single ball boxwood topiary.  The boxwood got an underplanting of variegated licorice; the third pot is stuffed with a dahlia.  The pots are from Francesca del Re in Italy.  The are very simple, handsome, and frostproof.  The clay is so loaded with minerals that the pots are very strong.  We make sure no water collects in them over the winter.  Freezing water expands as it becomes ice-this process can damage pots.  These terra cotta pots have been outside for a good many years.

This wildly natural rosemary has belonged to my client a long time. The only thing we prune is the rootball; this plant has a life of its own going on.  This year, we underplanted it with white polka dot plant-I think I am going to like this. 


My first project with this client many years ago involved digging up every plant she had, and rearranging. This took 2 days.  There were lots of projects after this-not the least of which was the most romantic garden wedding I have ever been involved with.  My client-she drove that bus.  The story of the driveway?  The drive needed to be enlarged; the original brick was no longer available.  We took up all of the old brick, and reused it with a new brick in an entirely different pattern.  All of the pale brick you see here is original.  The two colors of dark brick are new. It looks entirely believable; the mix of old and new reads as one thought.  The 12 year old waxleaf privet topiaries got planted back in their summer home-they are just about to bloom.  Most every bit of this garden-swell.

Posted on: June 4, 2011 1 Comment
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The Front Door

I never use my front door-unless I am outside after work, watering my pots. If I am out there watering, the chances are very good that I will exchange hellos with people walking the neighborhood.  When company comes, I am on the inside looking out.  Why I would care how the landscape at my front door looks-simple.  My friends are walking up that walk.  We have a visit or a dinner planned.  I have every interest in making that walk welcome them.  It takes a little time to get to my front door from the street; any visitor has time to see what I have going on.   The front door pictured above-my clients were interested in making a change. 

Making friends feel welcome is but one of the ways that my landscape gives me pleasure. My clients had the same idea.  They changed the door and sidelights for the first time in twenty-some years.  Their choice of a new door and sidelights-a beautiful update.  Part of that update was a new pair of containers for the front porch.  A porch generous enough in size to accomodate both pots and guests; I like the size of the porch.  These chocolate stained concrete vase shaped pots, much larger, and much more emphatic-they make a statement.  Purchased just in time for the winter season, we filled them with twigs, dyed eucalyptus, and a wide densely constructed nest of cut greens. The scale of the planters and plantings frames the front door in such a way to make the invitation read from the street.  This also makes friends knocking on the front door feel welcome. 

Just today, we planted these pots for spring.  The winter centerpieces we kept.  The height of the twigs, and the mass of the eucalyptus, are scaled properly with the size of the door, and the size of the porch.    Guests approaching have a sense of the landscape at eye level-this is a friendly gesture.  How I landscape places in my yard where friends come to visit-I like that landscape to put its arms around my friends, and say hello. 

Some city gardens are built on very small properties.  A conscious choice was made here-to block the view of the front door with a luxurious square of boxwood, dominated by an antique urn.  I planted that urn very tall. How that planting obscures the front door makes the walk to the door an adventure.  Front yard landscapes have much to do with the relationship between the public presentation from the street, and the welcome issued to family and friends. 

This front walkway behind that urn planted very tall is actually an extension of a drivecourt.  A shallow porch benefits greatly from its overscaled width.  I so like the decision to do four pots on a narrow porch.  Everything about the numbers of pots, the placement and the planting influences to what extent you say hello, and welcome.

Some front doors are not symmetrically placed.  A tall portion of wall existed to the right of this front door.  A tall pot, barely visible here, is home to a planting of zebra grass and variegated plectranthus.  The planting is at eye level from the street.  The landscape successfully frames the front door. 

This client loves the big statement that her limelight hydrangeas make-they are glorious.  The view from the street to the front door-a long view.  Her contemporary faux bois selettes from France-they still read from a long ways away.  Up close, a mass planting of white New Guinea impatiens is complimented by lime green creeping jenny-the creeping is almost  4 feet long, come mid July.  There is no walk from  here to there-but there is a view that engages the eye in a lively way.

Not all porches permit pots placed symmetrically.  One planter at the door can be every bit as strong as a pair.  In this case, one giant planter is balanced by a substantial planter box.  The landscape obscures the walk.  This makes for a public presentation of the landscape separate from the private experience.  I live in an urban neighborhood.  This means I have concern about what I want to contribute to the beauty of the neighborhood, and how I might want to more personally welcome my guests. 


The back door of my property sees lots of action.  I load and unload the dogs every day-I park just 15 feet from the back door.  We take the trash out.  We come and go, and park here-all the time.  Treasured friends come in the back door regularly.  But my front door-the landscape and the pots-I have a thing about this special place.  It is my obligation and pleasure to present as beautiful a presentation as I can.  To the neighbors walking by.  To casual visitors driving by.  To special guests.  On my mind is what people driving by, and guests coming up the walk-what do they see?  What have I been so well mannered to put at their eye level.

Good manners?  Any guest of mine, I do try to consider their experience first- before I consider my own. Beautiful pots, overflowing with plants, at the front door-this is no doubt a gesture of respect, and affection.

Posted on: May 3, 2011 5 Comments
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Susanne’s Roses

 

My post earlier today featured the best that there is going on outside here-that best is not so great.  It is still winter where I live.   So I went back into that stack of old pictures and projects looking for something a little less chilly and off-putting.  This landscape and garden I worked on intensively between 1986 and 1994.  A client with a beautiful house on a small piece of land-I cannot remember how we met.  But I do remember that she decided that a garden, and a great garden at that, was just what she wanted.  Though she was always clear about what she liked, she had not so much knowledge.  I not only designed and planted for her-I taught.  She wanted to know everything I knew about wildflowers, perennials, meadows-and most of all, roses.  I had a history with roses, fostered by Al Goldner.  A highly regarded landscape designer with a degree in floriculture-he put up with a young employee (that would be me) who insisted to him in 1985 that tea roses were overbred, disease prone, and marginally hardy prima donnas.  He had the confidence to allow me to order roses of my own choosing for Goldner-Walsh.  I knew he was giving me just enough rope to hang myself.

I placed an order for roses with Hortico in Canada.  I bought antique roses. Climbers.  Rugosas.  Species roses.  And a line of English roses-the David Austin roses. Everything and anything that was not a tea rose.  I vividly remember the day I pulled a company pickup truck full of bareroot roses up to the Canadian/American customs booth-of course they pulled me over.  Who knew I needed a phytosanitary certificate?  I spent hours on a bench next to a man in handcuffs-it was terrifying.  Eventually they let me go.  This was some years before Wayside Gardens began offering David Austin roses.  I potted up just short of a thousand roses, and brought them on.  I learned plenty about them, just taking care of them.  Though I was by no means a rosarian, I had a client who wanted any and all of them.  Susanne.    

There are those people you meet.  In the course of business.  In the neighborhood.  In the grocery check out line.  They encourage you to be better than you ever thought you could be.  This perfectly describes Susanne.  She lit a fire under me the likes of which happens only rarely.  Some days I would come to plant, armed with hellebore species I had stood on my head to obtain-and she would still be in bed.  I would march right upstairs (I had the run of the house by then) and roust her out.  Years later, her front porch was dwarfed by mature David Austin roses-Mary Rose to the left here, and Heritage, on the right. 

Her rear yard had about 15 feet of flat ground, before the earth dropped precipitously to the Rouge River.  That 15 feet of space-stuffed with roses.  They were lush.  She was lush.  My gardening life had an operatic quality to it, thanks to her.  Her entire property smelled of roses.  We grew roses with perennials.  We grew roses with asparagus, and grasses. We grew roses wherever we could. The we part was important there-the two of us gardened as if we only had 10 minutes to live.

Every walkway, every staircase-redolent with the blossoms, the smell, and the habit of roses.  Not one of them was a tea rose.  I could go over the names and the classifications, but that is not my idea here.  Though we also planted no end of unusual perennials, wildflowers, grasses, trees, espaliers and shrubs, the organizing metaphor of this landscape-for the love of the rose.    

The driveway garden-a mix of Rosa Rugosa Scabrosa, rosa glauca (formerly rosa rubrifolia) miscanthus gracillimus, and artemesia.  Petals on the drive-how I loved this. 

It has been so long ago that I designed and planted this garden, I cannot perfectly recall specific varieties from these old 35mm pictures.  But I do know my knowledge of roses burgeoned.  Susanne wanted to know everything she could about them-from me.  We both learned.

Her architect in Chicago built this rose arbor for her-I planted it.  This picture does little justice to that day some years later when I took this photograph.  Her passion-that’s what I see here.  I forget everything routinely-but I remember this day as if it were yesterday.   


Her home sat on a very small piece of level ground.  The back yard dropped off precipitously to the Rouge River.  I gardened this entire steep slope-species and wild roses, grasses.  Perennials.  Weeds.  The anchoring trees-yellow woods-Cledrastis. This garden on a steep slope about did me in-but it was wildly beautiful.  


All over that slope-Rosa Complicata. How lucky I was to have met Susanne.  This garden changed my my life.

Posted on: March 24, 2011 5 Comments
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