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Next To The Last Look

I finally got back to check out and take pictures of the last of the holiday and winter work we did this season.  Some time and the dispassionate light of day can reveal a detail not quite right, but by and large I was happy with what I saw.  This contemporary version of the traditional red and green holiday is vividly colored.  The tall thin steel topiary forms are strung with chartreuse and white lights, and chartreuse glass ornaments.  I will have to go back at dusk to take more pictures.


Lots of red picks, and lots of oregonia makes for lots of pop.  Their collection of Italian pots from Francesca del Re is beautiful.   

A concrete pot at the corner of the garage features an elongated steel topiary form dressed in a swirl of similar lights and ornaments, a pair of red and chartreuse ornaments and chartreuse glitter picks.  Sassy, this. 

This creamy taupe house and front door gets quite a visual boost from these winter containers.  That vivid splash of color is a great chaser for the winter blues.

I landscaped this newly renovated house last year.  The window box centerpieces are a deliberate play on the form and color of the PJM rhododendrons below the box.  A little white pops the merlot colored eucalyptus. 


This closer look at a companion window box on the side tells the same tale.  Just simple and amply proportioned.

I posted some cell phone pictures of this project which were probably just fine.  But I especially liked the look here.  It is a substantial walk from the drivecourt to the front door; the “welcome to our home” is equally substantive.  The green sinamay affixed to the arch looks like pistachio meringue.  

The brick face of a garage is a narrow, but important spot.  This client drives out and up to this every day.  A combination of materials that will withstand the winter weather, and entertain the eye was the order of the day.  There are better than great odds that these pussy willow stems will bloom in the spring-willow has a very special will to live.  

A giant limestone wall and fireplace mantel is greatly warmed by a holiday expression.

 Winter is a dark time in my zone.  This picture was taken at 4:20 in the afternoon.  The douglas fir reads every bit as dark as the chocolate stained concrete pots. The tallest stems-flame willow.  The shorter stems-pussy willow.  The combination is is subtly celebratory.  If you have not filled your pots yet for winter, you are not too late to the party.  A celebration can be any time you choose.

Posted on: December 30, 2011 Leave a Comment
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An Addendum To That Celebration

This Christmas tree decorated with vintage ornaments, garland, and tinsel is stunning.  Their living room, a discussion between the austere and the abundant.  Treasured topiaries made an appearance for Christmas, set in the windows.


Their packages are wrapped as beautifully as their table is set.

They are simple, elegant, and lavish, all at the same time.

Their choice of holiday flowers –  green and white cabbage florets, and white hydrangeas.

I would have had no idea what I was looking at here, but for M’s explanation. Buche de Noel is a classic French dessert served at the holidays. This seemed a natural choice, given the French heritage of one side of this family. The cake is “prepared, presented and garnished to look like a log ready for the fire used in an ancient fire festival of the winter soltice”-this from Wikipedia,  Additionally, this from The Oxford Companion to Food:

“[In France] where the buche de Noel, a roll of light sponge cake, is covered in chocolate or coffee buttercream textured to resemble bark. The conceit is carried further by mounding the cream over small pieces of cake stuck to the main roll, to represent trimmed branches. The ends of the roll and the cut faces of the branches are finished with vanilla cream, imitating pale newly cut wood, and the whole is decorated with leaves made from icing, or meringue mushrooms.”
—Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 184)

I learned from my friends that the creation of this dessert occurred over a period of three days.  Is it not spectacular?   

I am sure every one of their Christmas Eve guests enjoyed themselves.   

To my friends: thanks again for inviting me to your holiday.

Posted on: December 28, 2011 2 Comments
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A Christmas Eve Celebration


You may recall a post I wrote just before Christmas entitled “Gifts That Gardeners Give”.  I pictured a wreath I had made as a gift for two very good friends.  They live on and love a big wild piece of property in what I call “the country”.  They were very enthusiastic about the gift-enough so to suggest they would make it an integral part of their traditional Christmas Eve dinner celebration.  Of course I asked for pictures.  I got more than that.  I got the story of the evening in pictures.   

The mercury glass candlesticks I had seen before.  Their 19th century stone house features generously deep window sills that are perfect for collections.  The simple wood bird sculptures I had not seen.  How elegant they are, each holding a sprig of holiday greens in their beaks.    

The candlesticks and birds dressed for the occasion ran the length of the holiday table.  I like that height that captures one’s attention and sets the mood upon entering the room.

They would do little to obstruct the seated views across the table.  I was delighted to see that the wreath was most definitely part of their holiday celebration. 

The table setting was exquisite. The silver and linens, quite formal.  The arrangement of all of the elements, rhythmic in a purely personal way.

Arranged around the bases of the birds and candlesticks, an assortment of fruits, ornaments, and bits from the garden. The nest in the wreath was handmade by some unknown bird with various grasses, twigs, and other natural detritus. I added a lining of milkweed seeds still attached to their fluff.  The surface of the table was similarly decorated with an assortment of like-spirited objects of their own choosing. 

I think their table was breathtaking.  The rickrack over the mercury glass calls to mind the string that could easily be part of a bird’s nest.  Fruits, nuts, and ornaments in various colors and shapes are the unexpected underplanting to the silver, white and glass dinner service.

The photographs are as beautifully composed as the table. 

 

 

 

 

 

Many thanks to my friends for permitting me to share the photographs of their Christmas Eve dinner table.  It is gorgeous, is it not?

Posted on: December 28, 2011 5 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday, The Natural World, Garden Stories Tagged With: , , ,

Home For The Holidays

I finished the last of this season’s landscape work, and the holiday decorating today.  This feels really good.  Tomorrow and Wednesday my crew will sort out a few minor glitches (this has mostly to do with errant timers, and a centerpiece that needs extra special reinforcement against a windy location) and put the shop yard to sleep.  All of the stone and concrete pieces outdoors will be put up on pallets.  The stone cisterns will spend the winter on pallets, upside down.  A pair of old boxwoods in terra cotta pots will come into the garage, as will the few small espaliers left over from the summer.  We still have warm weather in which to work-this has been the longest and mildest fall and early winter that I can remember. The work is winding down.

  

I can think about my own home for the holidays now.  The pots and lighting outside were finished a week ago.  My four iron pots out front have flame willow, fresh magnolia, and mixed greens.  The centerpieces are lit with garland lights.  These old iron pots came with the house.  Yes, they were very much a part of the decision to buy and move here.   

 

My crew installs fresh magnolia garland all across the entry and down the sides.  The magnolia has garland lights spiralled through it.  The two men who owned this house before me made a specialty of their holiday lighting.  There are hooks and screws placed in a very orderly fashion everywhere.  I could outline the entire house with lights, should that idea ever strike my fancy. 

This makes any holiday display easy.  For those of you who are afraid to put a brass screw in a wood front door for a wreath, I promise you will not undermine the integrity of that door, nor will you notice it the other 10 months of the year it is not in use. If you take the time to make it easy to decorate, you will decorate. 

 

 

 The architecture of my house is a hybrid betweeen Mediteranean style, and arts and crafts style.  I love every detail.  That architecture makes certain demands-from the landscape, the choice of plant material, color and mass.  I am fine with that.  Whomever designed this house, and the piazza style driveway, I respect. 

 

Richard’s blowmold figures would not work here.  The yellow brick and iron detail does not like white anything.   I would have a hard time making a contemporary holiday display work with a house of this age.  I have no problem with that.  I like a holiday display that is warm and traditional.  I like the smell of history better than any other smell in the world.

I have a pair of resin cherubs that I adore-Rob rolls his eyes every time I talk about them.  I have had them over the mantle, framing a mirror.  I have moved them all over the house.  I look at them all year long.  This is the first year I took them outside. 

My landscape crew and I figured out how to do the lights such that these cherubs have a hand in holding up the light garlands.  I am happy about how this looks.  It makes me happy to be coming home.

 I do much and many different things for lots of other people.  My pleasure is in creating and delivering a look that feels like home to them. What I choose for my own home I choose with the same care that I choose for others. It is important to me that my garden, my landscape, my walkways, my terrace, my hellebores, my evergreens, and my holiday decor look like home. 

Home for the holidays is a good place to be, indeed. I have a few more days to get ready.

Posted on: December 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Holiday Tagged With: ,