winter containers | Deborah Silver & Co.

Good Bones

The picture above was taken in the early morning of Jan 3, 2021. I remember waking up well before dawn to a landscape whose every surface was transformed by mounds of snow. Giant snowflakes floated downward on the still air like feathers, and stuck to whatever surface they touched first. The quiet was disconcerting. My yard was truly a fairyland – the first time ever quite like this. Every shape in the landscape was faithfully described and added to by this extraordinary snow. Within minutes of opening my eyes, I was dressed, out the door, and marveling. I took photographs for several hours, and several hours after that the snow had completely melted and was gone. This was an incredible weather event of breathtakingly striking and shocking beauty, the likes of which I had never seen before.

That snow dispassionately described the landscape design. I was happy about what that revealed. A good landscape composition celebrates the depth of a space by beautifully revealing its background, mid ground and foreground. Of course a landscape is a sculpture – a three-dimensional object, if you will. Great landscape design explores that uniquely spatial quality created by land and sky-and edges. I can’t really explain what I mean by edges, except to say that everything and everyone has them. Expressing depth in a composition fuels the means by which a landscape space can be wrought and experienced. A design. Depth in a landscape composition creates mystery, and reveals surprising outcomes at unexpected or opportune moments. Some designers describe this as flow. Others describe this as rooms with transitions in between. The background space above is a thicket of tree branches indicating trees that are a ways away. The focal point of that background space is a a centrally located container with a cut evergreen tree inside. That planter box is in the front of the back – ha. The mid ground space is defined by the hedge of arborvitae that is open in the center to permit travel and views through. The gate marking that entrance and exit is overseen by a steel arbor wreathed in a pair of John Davis roses. That gate explains how the end of the mid ground space becomes the beginning of the foreground space. That arbor is centered in the transition between the front and the back. It also separates the public space from the private. The structure of those climbing roses in the snow is every bit as beautiful here as they are in bloom in June. I mean this. The foreground space features Limelight hydrangeas, faced down by hedges of clipped boxwood, and opens up to a widening path of snow covered grass. This composition features layer after layer of plants from front to back. What is it that makes the relationships established by this design so dramatic and clear? The weather.

The landscape here is very simple. Lots of boxwood clipped in various shapes, heights and volumes, and symmetrically placed containers framing the walk to the front door. The containers feature fan willow faced down by cut fir boughs. This view is unexpectedly dramatic, given this rare type of snow. The snow reviewed the design, as it reduced all of the major shapes to their simplest forms. What is usually experienced in varying and often romantically subtle shades of green is presented without ceremony in black and white. A significant snowfall can reveal the bones of the design. Are they good sturdy bones?

Our most recent snow was not nearly as spectacular as the 2021 storm, but it was good nonetheless. The skirt of this container is set with cut evergreen boughs that radiate out from the center. A second set of evergreen boughs are set on end against the centerpiece. Separating the vertical fir from the horizontal is a loosely defined ring of green and white pine cones in a nest of lights. A single evergreen material has special visual interest given its multi-dimensional placement. This simple arrangement with only a few elements is all the more striking given the landscape around it. The snow tells that story.

A different year in this location, the container sparkled with an abundance of lights. An unusually textural snow cover produced yet another visual version of this landscape. Over the course of a year or a gardening season, the weather should play a major role in the landscape design. I am an advocate of landscape design which takes a sweeping bow to that element we call nature.

Rob took this photograph of my driveway near the garage a few nights ago. I have not parked here for better than 15 years, so the landscape has grown in and over the edges of the space. I like that. I have a piazza now, rather than a driveway. There is no real need to shovel the space, as it is for viewing, and not foot or car traffic. It is amazing what an enormous difference it makes visually to make such a simple change in the treatment of a landscape space. The snow revealed this.

That same night, the snow illustrated the transition between the driveway and the fountain garden. The pots, arbor and fence occupy that mid ground. That middle ground space can be the most difficult to define and develop in a landscape. It sometimes involves putting an idea or an object or a plant out there in the middle and building from there. Starting a design at the front or the leading edge or the beginning is not necessarily the best or only way forward. A landscape will speak back, if you give it sufficient time. This mid ground space took many years to establish. There is no substitute for age on a landscape.

This is as close as I have been to that extraordinary snow in 2021. I am happy for it. Beautiful snow is a hallmark of our winter. Having a well designed landscape on which beautiful snow can act makes the winter season welcome, yes. The fence pictured above, punctuated by a gated arbor and flanking pots, is not that unusual a treatment of an outdoor space – but the considerable change of level does give pause. But the simple arrangement of bold and thoughtful forms emphasizes the main idea. The legibility of intent is key to good landscape design.

Most of my landscape is going on 28 years old. That age has enriched design decisions made decades ago. Sometimes it is good to stay the course, and see what grows.

Posted on: February 6, 2025 34 Comments

Filed Under: Landscape Design, Garden Design, Good Design, Lighting, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Weather, Seasonal Tagged With: Landscape Design, winter pots, winter containers, winter lighting, winter, winter weather, winter landscape design, evergreen boughs in containers, wintry weather

Taking the Next Step

It was not my intent to give the impression that the time it took to write my previous post was in any way comparable to the time it took to light up that first vintage steel hoop and end up manufacturing steel light rings. In face I want to discourage that interpretation. That post was written well after the fact and in a matter of hours. The evolution of that glimmer of an idea to light up a vintage tractor wheel and hang it in a tree to shipping light rings all over the US – that took years. It takes loads of time to move off one’s own familiar dime in search of a new way of seeing – or being. Doesn’t it?

It was many years ago that we moved up to making light rings with multi colored light strands. White mini lights were not the only game in town, right? The hoops were fashioned from channel steel the width of which snugly held the incandescent light strings in place. The wrapping of the lights was a very formal and serious affair. Once Rob leapt off the usual and familiar, he abandoned the incandescent light strings for LED’s. The price had come down, and the expense to power them up was dramatically less. That was a crucially important step, but it meant that the hoops had to be redesigned. The ring is wider and the channel is deeper now. The best news of all of that transformation is the cost of running the lights around the clock, and close to all year long, was very reasonable. The interest in the hoops grew.

I recall a fling with LED cherry light strands. Rob does make lots of winter/holiday lighting available to customers of Detroit Garden Works. The cherry lights are just one style of many we have had available to use. We took to those cherry lights-meaning we wrapped light rings with them. The fascination with those luminous sphere lights goes on – as well it should. I also remember a brief bead we had on various mixes of lights large and small. We were hooping it up. Years later, a five foot ring belonging to an adventuresome client now has lighted ornament hanging in that big empty space inside the ring. Hung from an arbor at the far end of her driveway, it lights the way as much as it says welcome home and Merry Christmas. The winter lights have a sculptural intent, but they also shoo away the dark.

Rob stepped up to a version of the hanging light hoop that featured four rod steel legs. The new free standing rings could be placed in pots, or directly into the soil in the landscape. This step forward was liberating. One year a five foot light ring strung with our LED mini lights was wreathed in large galvanized snow flakes – zip tied on to the steel circle – one 3-D flake at a time. I don’t remember how that idea came to be, but it was smashing. Months ago, a client with existing light rings was looking for a fresh iteration. I was fussing a little and fuming plenty about what to do with them – not seeing a clear way forward. It finally occurred to me that her lighted rings could be armatures or structures. Those rings could be the supporting cast. A foundation upon which another independent element could be added.

I found a direction worth pursuing. Pairing a light ring with a 6′ long lighted twig garland proved to be just the thing for taking a sculptural step. This light garland is very different than a typical light strand featuring all of the lights in an evenly spaced row. Once the garland is fluffed out, it added volume to the ring without weighing it down. The sturdily wired and lit branchlets enabled placing them both to the inside and to the outside of the ring. We featured this pairing this past week in the winter containers in the front of the shop. The long wired arms make the lights appear to be floating around the ring. Handsome, this.

Once all of our winter work for clients is done, we dress the front of the shop. This is a project we greatly enjoy, as it signals that all of our booked work is finished. The pace slows down. We take that time to sort out how we want to proceed, as we can. The centerpiece of this garden is a large and substantial cast iron vat. Five cases of noble fir from an alternate supplier sitting untouched in a corner proved to be the largest and longest fir boughs of the entire season. We had no idea that these boxes held such evergreen gold. That robust scale and length was just what this light ring and vat needed to make a winter container where every element is of proper proportion to the size of the space and the container.

The windowsills inside my office are deep. I would say a foot or better. I have long toyed with the idea of making that interior sill space part of the exterior winter display-and vice versa. There is no reason not to. The glass is not a barrier to seeing. We loaded small galvanized rectangles with dry foam and lights, and 4 rows of pussy willow, set them close to the glass.

Those closely spaced sticks provided a simple yet uniformly textured background to the rings. It afforded the vignette some depth. They helped to define the space. They look good!

Making the view of the inside an integral part of the outside also provided privacy from the inside out. Every step we took with this project was a step in a direction I liked.

Filling the 2 planter boxes on either side of the front door solidly with bunches of pussy willow completed the look.

Bring it on, January.

Posted on: January 16, 2025 42 Comments

Filed Under: Lighting, Winter, Detroit Garden Works, Holiday, Seasonal Tagged With: winter containers, winter landscapes., winter lighting, light rings, winter window boxes, lighted steel rings, holiday lighting, Detroit Garden Works

At A Glance: The Winter Pots and Boxes: 2000-2021

2000 To follow is a substantial run of pictures from my winter container arrangement archives-the photo collection and work dates back 21 years. I am as surprised to see this as you are. I did not think there were this many years and that much history-but here it is. I did not compare every picture from a given year, and choose what I thought was the best. Whatever seemed to speak to this moment was included. Some arrangements look in keeping with the year they were made. Some look ahead of their time. Some look great and others are so regrettably so so. Ha. You decide what you think. I have my memories.

2001 Tender We recycled dead Bradford pears from our nursery supplier, and rubbed them down with a copper colored wax. The trees were ornamented with twine pillows and platinum fluff balls.

2002 This light garland was the first of many that Rob would make over the past 20 years. I am sure there are more to come.

2002, part 2 Galvanized pipe wound round with lights, curly copper willow, and greens augmented with light strands and lighted ornaments

2003 Dried and dyed mood moss fitted and glued over urethane topiary forms

2004 Prelit glitter and berry branches hover over fresh cut greens and lighted ball ornaments.

2004 More of those prelit metallic copper glitter branches.

2005 round wood poles, grapevine spheres and lengths of thin wood lath

2005 dried grasses, twigs, faux berry picks and cut pine

2006 stick stack, berry picks, and fresh noble fir over a large huck wreath.

2006 bleached willow twigs, stick stacks, bottle brush snowflakes and gold poly mesh

2007 a first foray into arranging natural foraged branches

2007 at Detroit Garden Works live juniper topiaries, fan willow and mixed cut greens. We have never been able to source fan willow of this size and with this degree of fasciation, again – it was locally grown.

2007 contemporary stoneware pot by Francesco del Re filled with various contemporary sticks and stacks.

2008 red twig dogwood, red berry picks, fresh silver dollar eucalyptus set into cut noble fir boughs

2008 yellow twig dogwood and eucalyptus stems and pods

2009 red twig dogwood, faux red twig picks, magnolia branches and mixed evergreen boughs

2010 magnolia garland, red twig dogwood and red berry picks

2011 un-branched red twig dogwood, magnolia, boxwood, fresh cut winterberry and noble fir

2011 Detroit Garden Works gold deco mesh enlivens fresh cut pussy willow, greens, and pine cones

2012 copper curly willow and magnolia branches – and mountain hemlock all around

2013 Tall red bud pussy willow, red preserved eucalyptus and mixed greens

2013 red bud pussy willow, lilac preserved eucalyptus, magnolia and noble fir

2014 flame willow, magnolia branches and mixed cut greens-

2014

2015 lime green faux berry picks and pale blue gray preserved eucalyptus. The basket planter is Dutch made.

2015 with the Christmas holiday in mind

2016 English made steel topiary form with lights, spruce tips, and snow

2017 flame willow, magnolia and spruce branches

2017 yellow twig dogwood, yellow fuzz ball picks, white eucalyptus, variegated boxwood in a large corten steel planter box

2018 3′ diameter lighted ring over a mix of silver and noble fir

2018 a thicket of “midwinter sun” dogwood branches and mountain hemlock

2019 a sparse arrangement of red bud pussy willow, green and white fuzz ball picks, gold and white berry picks and magnolia

2019 “midwinter fire dogwood branches and a light ring

2019 yellow and green

2020 a winter sculpture made of fan willow, boxwood and noble fir

2020 flame willow and large scale snowball picks awash in LED cherry lights

2020 layered look with tall faux astilbe picks
2020 wool felt stole and gold grass picks

2020 wicker basket pots

2021 bleached sticks of several diameters and heights; white berry picks

2021 the centerpiece: cream berries lining the interior of a 5′ diameter light ring, twigs, picks and magnolia

2021 3′ diameter light ring, alder branches, stainless steel spheres on stainless stems, silver plastic grass
2021 green and white

2021 evergreen branches set vertically

2021 window boxes with light rings, faux lambs ear garlands, silver plastic grass, blueberry picks, white flower picks-and beaded stars. Very keen to see what will come next.

Posted on: January 29, 2022 38 Comments

Filed Under: Picture This, Holiday, Winter, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Seasonal Tagged With: winter pots, holiday pots, winter containers, holiday containers, winter arrangements, Deborah Silver and Co

Recent Work

What is to follow does by no means represent all of the winter and holiday container work that was done this season, but it’s a start. It will take a few more posts to talk about them all. But I could not be happier for the incredible, thoughtful and memorable work of staff from Deborah Silver and Co, The Branch Studio, and Detroit Garden Works. They make it all happen, and I watch their process and their production with great respect and awe. There is a whomping lot of pictures to follow, all in celebration of the 2021 winter season in the garden.