Landscape Design | Deborah Silver & Co.

The 2019 Garden Cruise

On Sunday July 21, Detroit Garden Works will host its 12th Garden Cruise to benefit the Greening of Detroit. If you have never taken or heard of our tour, it began in 2009 when I became a member of their board of governors. Not being one to happily participate in meetings and such, I decided to put my effort into raising money for them. Since 2009, the tour of gardens and landscapes of my design or influence has raised close to 156,000.00. I could not be happier about this. Both Detroit Garden Works and Deborah Silver and Co pitch in to make the cruise and reception a reality. 100% of the proceeds of the ticket sales goes to the Greening. We pick up all of the expenses. And the project pictured above? It has been under construction since July of 2018, and yes, it will be on this year’s tour.

Nothing helps to to bring a landscape project to a close faster than a deadline. I like deadlines, actually. They provide a framework around which to work. All of the contractors involved, myself included, have a personal interest in seeing this particular project come together. The client has everything to do with that. GP Enterprises handled the planting of all of the large trees, and an extensive drainage system and grading project. Ian Edmunds Irrigation is responsible for a very thoughtful watering system largely based on a network of drip zones. Mountain Pavers Construction, owned and operated by Mike Newman, built all of the terraces, retaining walls and steps and steppers, and a beautiful exposed aggregate driveway. The Branch Studio built a number of structures, containers, fencing and rails especially designed by me for this project. The landscape design was the first in, and the close of the installation of that landscape will be the last out.

We are in the process of sodding all of the grass areas. That dirt you see in the above picture has a drain field and irrigation system underneath it. Countless yards of soil were added to make the grade flat. All of the landscaped portions of the yard are enclosed with aluminum edger strip. Over the course of several very hot days, all of the annual weeds have been scraped off, and the ground raked. My crew comes in at 7am when we lay sod. As much as can be done before the heat of the day sets in means the work of it is a little easier. I would think it would take every bit of the next three days to finish laying in all of the grass. We will have it down in enough time for it to root in before the tour.

Much of the landscape was installed late last summer, and throughout the fall. A collection of roses was custom grown for this project at Wiegand’s Nursery farm, and delivered 6 months before the installation date. A rose arbor from the Branch Studio will provide support for four Canadian Explorer roses known as John Cabot. This very long lived and heavy blooming climber will give this arbor a run for its money. All of these other roses are fairly large growing shrub roses, thus the double wide border of Green Gem boxwood. Green Gem is incredible hardy in my zone. It will eventually be box pruned in a traditional and formal shape.

A quartet of steel boxes from Branch will hold flowers for cutting. That plant palette may change every year, depending on my client. This year’s plants were my choice. A new tall angelonia cultivar called Steel Blue is accompanied by the bicolor angelface angelonia and perfume white nicotiana.

What is my superintendent Dan S. doing here? He is digging over a drain line so he can cover it with landscape fabric, so the drain never clogs up with soil, and quits working. A landscape plan that includes a long range plan for watering and maintenance is a good plan. I always give my clients the option to prepare today for the future of the landscape. I know from my own experience that it will not get easier to tinker with my landscape as I get older. Planning for its care means I will always be able to enjoy it.

This mass of flowers will thrive in these raised beds. What gets cut for a vase in the house will hardly be noticed. The 5′ by 5′ boxes were set in a graveled spot to make cutting the grass around them a breeze.

The first round of grass transforms the look all of the work we have done on this landscape since last August. This curving grass swath is a very wide path from the driveway, through the rose arbor, and over to the cloister pergola fabricated by the Branch Studio. Anyone who is interested in what the studio is capable of should take the tour, and see for themselves. This very large and complex structure is an incredibly beautiful anchor to the landscape.

The circle is a dominant theme in the landscape. The major landscape bed lines in the rear yard are portions of circles. Those three radiused curves contrast and complement the rectilinear shapes of the cloister and raised planters. The center curve ends in spherical Green Gem boxwood of considerable size. A boxwood dot. Behind the boxwood? Limelight hydrangeas on the side curves, and Oakleaf hydrangeas in the center curve. The rear yard landscape is in large part evergreen, with a nod to a summer garden. Roses, hydrangeas, and more roses. The shadier parts of the garden feature perennials, dwarf shrubs and groundcover. Fragrance played a prime role in the selection of all of the plants. Roses, Peonies and phlox will perfume the garden. Even the pink snakeroot has a distinct fragrance, as does the sweet woodruff. Dwarf button bush, lilacs, Viburnum Juddii and mock orange will add scent to the air one season after another.

That wood structure in the middle of the cloister? A fountain pool lies at the center of the cloister. The wood structure is overlaid with a tarp when there is a threat of rain. My client brought photographs of this house for me to see, after I designed the pergola and fountain. The original house had a reflecting pool, and wooden arbor in this location. In 1920. What a pleasure to see that what was on my mind had been expressed on this property close to 100 years ago.

This area was a grassed ditch when I first saw the property. The ground sloped down sharply from the foundation of the house and garage. This area now has two levels, both of which are flat and usable. Though I have previously posted about the fabrication and installation of the cloister,this picture provides a glimpse of how that structure will be integrated into the overall landscape. It also illustrates how the double walled structure with a roof overhead with create shade on the perimeter. Though the structure is comprised of many tons of steel anchored to 32 individual footings, and shadows cast are delicate and airy.

The fountain is tiled in its entirety. The walls, steps, the bench, and the floor. The color variations are reminiscent of fountain tile of this era. The top 3 courses of tile have a strong geometric raised profile. I could not imagine this fountain coated on the interior with pebble tec, a common to swimming pools. This tile respects the architecture and era of the house. Gillette Pools has done an incredible job of installing a state of the art fountain/spa with the craftsmanship required to echo a previous era. My client and I fussed and fumed over the tile selection. What I see here seems just right.

The John Davis climbing roses are small yet, but they obligingly bloomed. Each John Davis has a Guernsey Cream clematis to go with.

Yes, the tour is less than a month away, but this new project will be ready. I think the newness of it will enchant visitors in much the same way as I am enchanted. The beauty of the moment, and the hope for the future-every gardener knows about this. This is by far one one of the most exciting and rewarding landscape projects it has ever been my privilege to design and install. Thank you, H.

French pots on the upper terrace planted with braided ficus and white New Guinea impatiens

side yard curving landscape

Branch Studio planter boxes on a terrace

the front door

My photographs of this project do not do it justice. It will look very different on the 21st. As in finished and ready for company. If you are interested and intrigued, buy a ticket, and see it for yourself in person. It will be worth the effort, and the Greening of Detroit will appreciate your support. The 2019 Garden Cruise has 5 other really terrific landscapes and gardens to visit as well. Hope to see you on the 21st.

Posted on: July 1, 2019 19 Comments

Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, The Branch Studio, Garden Design, Landscape Design Tagged With: thegardencruise.org, the garden cruise, The Greening of Detroit, Landscape Design

Part Three: The Pergola

If you have been reading this series of posts, you will recall that my landscape design called for a rectangular cloister style pergola to be built off my client’s sun porch and garage. That shape was dictated by an L shaped space established by the sun porch, and the long back side of the garage. The center of that cloister would be a fountain pool. My drawing, pictured in the previous post, was schematic, meaning that drawing was a generic structure, just holding a place on the page. Once she indicated an interest in a pergola surrounding the fountain, I went to work to actually design that structure.

So what is a cloister? A cloister is a covered walkway, frequently surrounded by a building or buildings on all four sides. Historically, it was an architectural feature common in monasteries and courtyard spaces in universities. The design for this pergola is predicated on a 6 foot wide covered walkway which would provide overhead structure to the fountain pool. The photo above shows Buck’s CAD drawing of the long side, which is almost 47 feet long. The design revolves around a series of elongated diamonds of different sizes, and steel spheres of 3 sizes. Buck added some figures to his drawing, so I could see what the relationship would be between person and structure. A good part of the reason it is 11 feet tall is its placement. Standing at the bottom of five steps from the sun porch grade, it was important that the roof did not appear too low from that vantage point. That height will also give it some presence from the upstairs windows, and the balcony which is on top of the sun porch roof.

This drawing of the roof panels makes clear the idea of a covered rectangular walkway. And that the interior space would be open to the sky. It was almost a year ago that we ordered the John Davis roses that would be planted on the pergola columns. I still have hopes of putting them in the ground yet this year, but if not, we can winter them over in our landscape building.

The drawings are useful to a designer, but maybe not so much to a client. Buck figured out how to scale the three drawings the same, and I built this model from sheets of copy paper. Buck drew the schematic for the pool on the roof plan. All of the white spaces on the paper will be open spaces.

This model came months after the presentation of the original plan. Once my client approved it, there would be much more work to come. Not only were there engineering issues to sort out, all of the dimensions would have to be coordinated with Mike Newman, as his steps and walls were an integral part of the installation. The following drawings were passed back and forth between Buck and Mike, so all the the locations and dimensions could be mutually agreed upon before anything was built.

This plan view of he steps, walls, and pergola show the relationships between the various elements. The walls would have 2 12′ wide openings that would provide access to the back and side yards. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, there would be 5 feet of open space before reaching the pergola.

These drawings do the best job of illustrating the fact that there are pairs of columns that would hold up the roof. There are 32 in all. And the columns are round. I designed as much of this pergola to feature round shapes, as opposed to square or rectangular. The round shapes seemed less industrial, and more fitting to the period of the house. Buck said this decision made the engineering much more difficult, but I think it will prove to be well worth the trouble.

view from above

view from the far end

the view of both exits

Pictured above is a group of the roof panels, after the galvanizing process. The round rods are captured in a square steel channel. The solid steel spheres, welded at the juncture of every other diamond, will face down. There are 2000 of them, in all.

These fascia panels feature a larger gauge steel rod, and 2″ diameter solid steel spheres. These are finished panels in their raw steel state.

The pallet in the foreground is stacked with the pergola entrance panels. These have the largest diamonds, and 3″ diameter steel balls. In the background, pallets full of columns.

Branch limited the weight of every pallet so it would be easy to offload them at the site.

Prior to loading up the pallets, Buck had his guys pick random pieces from each stack of parts, and had them put together one 12′ by 6′ section. He wanted to be sure all of the parts would go together easily. Putting a pergola together in the field is a much different operation than putting it together in a warm dry shop, with a bridge crane overhead. The install will be lengthy, as it is a big structure. Maintaining the precision with which each piece was fabricated was a challenge. That precision is what will make the install go smoothly.

This view from the mezzanine at Branch shows a roof panel set in place.

Jackie arranged for a dedicated flatbed truck to transport the pieces to the job. Even so, there were 6 pallets left over that my landscape crews loaded in their trucks. None of the pallets could be stacked.

We had our loader on site, so we could offload once the truck arrived.

There was one part to the story we did not anticipate. 3.5 inches of rain fell in the area where the boom truck would be located, and those pallets would be staged. We had not gotten to a finished grade in this side yard. The ground was very low here. Our original delivery and installation date came and went. I was not pleased with the prospect of having to waiting until the ground froze. I put in a call to my large tree contractor, and asked if there was anything he could do.

Ralph brought in 80 yards of sand, and 100 sheets of 3/4 inch thick plywood, with the intent of building up the grade such that we could access the site.

He built a road in that would be able to handle the weight of the pergola pieces, and trucks. Fortunately, this side yard is still so low, that all of that sand will eventually become part of the finished grade. He is estimating he will need another 200 yards of soil to bring this space up to grade.

The boom truck is an incredibly heavy piece of equipment, featuring a large arm that will pick up each piece in the proper building order. That truck has huge steel arms that come out, and rest on the ground, to stabilize the truck. Plywood and sand would not be enough to keep that truck stationary. The construction mats you see in the above picture weigh 1000 pounds each. Ralph assured me that they would stabilize the ground for any truck we needed to get back there.

finishing up the road in

Sheets of plywood were all we needed to stash the various pallets. The boom truck operator will be able to pick up any part he wants, when he needs it. It took 3 days to get the site ready. Templeton Building Company will do the actual installation. Buck will be there the first day, to advise.

Everything is ready. The boom truck is scheduled to arrive this afternoon. I hear the scaffolding is going up now. Each column will be bolted to the footings that Mike poured some time ago. The structure will be bolted together, one piece at a time. It could take a week, from start to finish. For now, I am just very happy to know we are in the home stretch.

Posted on: November 13, 2018 14 Comments

Filed Under: Landscape Design, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, The Branch Studio Tagged With: Deborah Silver and Company, cloister, steel pergola, the Branch studio, Landscape Design

One View At A Time

The rear south side of this yard is the last leg of the landscape renovation that has been going on here for a number of years. It is a good way to work-tackling one view at a time. The time to let the landscape speak back is time well spent. It is very hard to visualize what a two dimensional design drawing will look like, fleshed out into the third dimension with plants. After 30 years, I am able to visualize what is to come fairly well, but I have been surprised plenty of times. The surprises that dismay me are equal to the surprises that delight me. No one who keeps a landscape bats 1000. Nature can and does throw a wicked fast curve ball. But in this case, the curve ball was a new 2 story garage on the neighboring property. The building is located very close to the property line. My client realized she would have to add screening, to make her view of it less prominent.

The only plant of any size on that side is a beautiful older tricolor beech. That tree is providing a lot of shelter from the neighboring view up high. Some of the lower branches have died, or been cut back out of the way of the grass path. In an effort to provided some screening at a lower level, we added a pair of 2 1/2 inch caliper tricolors. All three trees will eventually will grow together as one. The original tree had a decided lean to it, so the new trees will help to provide some ballast on the back side. Deciduous trees are a great choice for providing screening that needs to be tall. The trunk of a tree takes up next to no room at the ground level, and the branches, twigs and leaves filter out an unwelcome view up high.

We planted four columnar katsura trees on either side of the beech conglomerate. Planted as fairly small trees, they will grow skyward at a fairly fast rate. The upright heads will grow together, and make a handsome hedge high above the ground. Why the upright yews near the fence? This variety can easily grow to six feet tall. The color and texture of the yews is quite similar to that of the neighbor’s arborvitae. Once the yews reach the height of the wood fence, the two evergreens will take over some of the screening job in the winter. Why yews instead of the matching variety of arborvitae? The yews will be much more tolerant of the shade cast by the katsuras.

Emerald Green arborvitae do grow quite tall, but once they get to fourteen or fifteen feet, the growth slows down. They also become susceptible to damage from heavy snow loads. It is easy to compare the height and scale of the deciduous trees to the Emerald Green arborvitae in the above picture. Only a deciduous tree will completely screen that two story garage.

From the opposite side of the yard, it is easy to see how prominently the neighbor’s new garage figures in this landscape. The katsura trees will fill in the gap between the beech, and a maple in the neighbor’s yard. Small urban properties present a particular challenge to the landscape design. The ground space is limited, and the views to neighboring properties are many. Some years ago we addressed the screening on the east-west axis. The six foot tall hedge of Green Mountain boxwood pictured on the left of the photo above, was planted directly adjacent to the leading edge of the terrace. A screen that is planted near to the space to be screened does not have to be that tall. If my clients are on their terrace, that space is private. From inside and upstairs, a hedge of Venus dogwood screen the view into the rear neighbor’s yard.

Venus dogwoods top out at about 20 feet tall. Tall enough to blur the view of the power lines, and the next door neighbor’s yard. Note that the tree closest to the lot line in in the curve still sits proud of the power lines. There are few things more discouraging than having the power company trim a tree away from the lines. They are concerned with keeping the power corridor clear, not making artful or judicious pruning cuts.

The dogwood has a loose and graceful habit of growth. They do not provide a solid green wall. The property to the west was fairly well covered within 3 years of planting.

The boxwood provide a solid screen six feet off the ground plane. The high and low combination of the dogwood and the boxwood do a great job of providing a small yard with some privacy.

We did plant arborvitae at the end of the driveway. They extend into the rear yard the length of the garage wall opposite to them. This place is not a place to linger. It is a hallway connecting one place to another. The solid and lush evergreen wall makes for a simple and quiet transition from the driveway to the private part of the landscape.

One day, many years ago, an effort to provide for screening and privacy for another client via the landscape looked like this. The neighbors house sits quite a bit higher that this property. The row of large round yews behind the new trees were transplanted there from the front yard of the client’s house. A group of densiformis yews were planted on the slope above the stone wall.

Not so many years later, this side garden is entirely private, courtesy of a group of the columnar carpinus “Frans Fontaine”. The neighboring house has just about disappeared from view. Even in the winter, the densely twiggy structure of the trees provides good screening. Deciduous trees, especially of the columnar form, are a great choice for creating a walled garden.

Posted on: August 29, 2018 12 Comments

Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Woody Plants, Landscape Design Tagged With: columnar katsura, columnar carpinus, screening, screening trees, Landscape Design

A New Landscape

A client who built a new house was not so enamored with the landscape that resulted. I understand that what it means to be in that spot, as I have watched it happen plenty of times. Building a new house calls for lots of decisions, and incredible focus. The decision making on the landscape for a new house comes at a time when the client is exhausted from the effort of getting the interior spaces built and liveable. It is hard to maintain that concentration and energy to the very end of any project, much less a project of this scale. It can make sense to stand pat with a landscape until you have lived there long enough to figure out what you want from it. Once her house was built, she was interested in revisiting the landscape. I think she was surprised by how keen an interest she had in the out of doors. She walked out to meet me with a set of plans a year ago March.

The landscape in place was simply not to her taste. She wanted a much more formal design, with plantings in multiple layers. She wanted some punctuation with less formal elements, like roses and hydrangeas. I was fortunate in that she had spent a good deal of time collecting pictures of landscapes she liked. I client who can articulate what they like in one way or another is a good client. To my mind, there were two issues that stood out. It is a very large house positioned very close to the driveway. And the grade dropped dramatically from the front door to the drive, and from the south end to the north. The house was uncomfortably perched on top of a hill. The driveway location was a given. I thought the landscape needed to provide an ample space for the house to sit, and create a sense of depth.

My plan called for a pair of long rectangular parterres on either side of the front walk. The right hand parterre would dead end into the angled garage wall. To my mind, this creates the illusion that the landscape came first, and the garage second. An additional landscape planting on the far side of the drive court would repeat that linear run of evergreens from the house side, and would include a large sweeping bed of Little Lime Hydrangea. But the most dramatic change would be in the installation of low brick retaining walls with limestone caps. These walls would enable a flat space in front of the house, upon which a formal landscape could be built.

It is tough to spot those walls in the drawing, but this construction picture explains it. I very rarely design projects that we do not build, but my schedule was already booked out for quite some time. Her landscape and maintenance contractor is a very well respected company that I was confident would build the project with the same care and precision that I would. I was also interested in her interest and commitment to a beautiful landscape. So I took on the design portion, and turned the plans over to her contractor. I actually was surprised to find how much I liked having a project that I could watch come to life, without having to participate except in an advisory way. Schecter Landscaping did a terrific job of the layout, construction and planting.

I did go by on occasion, and I did draw some of the smaller areas with greater detail that I would have were I doing the installation. But all in all, I was delighted having a design only role. I took my crews several times to see the progress on the installation. The retaining wall on the lower left in the above picture is almost 3 feet tall. The house no longer feels like it is sliding down a hill.

Once the block wall was up, the planting was able to proceed. I like the preponderance of evergreens in the front, as the landscape will read every month of the year. The house has a number of complex shapes and angles, so the locations of the vertical arborvitae were determined by the shape and size of the parterres. Those trees are far enough away from the house that they do not obstruct views from the inside out.

The steps were replaced with rock faced limestone slabs, and the existing paver bricks were taken up and reset.

The evergreens read just as well from the house side as they do from the driveway. The empty space on the right in this picture eventually got 48″ by 48″ brick landings for a pair of large pots. The rest of the space has a single row of roses.To the bottom left is the walkway and steps which bisect the right hand parterre, and lead to the side door entrance.

The walk to the side door culminates in a small radiused terrace, large enough for a bench and a pot. The trio of wood boxes sit in a bed, which now has been planted with a collection of small stature summer blooming perennials.

All of the planted elements of the landscape were in place last summer. She was very pleased with the outcome, and so was I. We did install a collection of pots, which we planted both for fall and winter. But it would take a year before she would see anything of the hydrangeas.

They came in to bloom just a short time ago. The parterres are planted with hydrangea “Incrediball” – one of her favorite varieties. The opposite side of the drive is planted with Little Lime hydrangeas. It is already possible to see that the landscape has multiple layers.

The car park is flanked by 2 rectangles of ground reserved for seasonal plants. Elements of the landscape from the house side are repeated here, so the overall volume of landscape exceeds the volume of paving.