Search Results for: Latest updated CDCP Test Topics Pdf Spend Your Little Time and Energy to Clear CDCP exam 🌗 Open 【 www.pdfvce.com 】 enter ➤ CDCP ⮘ and obtain a free download 🔊Test CDCP Assessment

Photographing The Garden

A camera is one tool a gardener should not be without.  You will not remember what your garden looked like on June 2, when it is the following March and you are trying to put a plan together for the new season.  No matter how simple the device, a camera provides a valuable record of that which is by definition ephemeral.  No landscape has a pause button.  It is always changing. Some things I do differently every year. I want to remember what was. I am not a photographer; I take snapshots of projects under construction.  I try to photograph all the annual plantings-although this year I am way behind getting that done.    

I do believe that gardens are never wonderful every day, day after day, but they do have their moments.  Ursula Buchan’s book “The English Garden” is chock full of the most amazing photographs of gardens at their perfect moment.  I don’t always know when one might present itself, so I drag my camera everywhere.  The camera is a monocular machine, and records nothing of my emotional investment in my garden.  There are times when it can see better than I. It helps me to see what I may be missing, or figure out what I do or so not like.  If you are like me, it takes a while to sort out what you would want to do again, and what you might not want to repeat.      

These two irisine topiaries are very different shades of green.  One gets a little more sun than the other.  How plants grow is very much dependent on their siting.  Growing perfectly matched pairs of plants even under conditions you would think were identical is difficult. If you go back to my previous picture, you will see what I mean.  Uniformity of growth is an important issue to hybridizers for exactly this reason. These are the kinds of things that occur to me when I look at my pictures.  

Color in a garden is delightful.  Light colors read well and stand out against the dark greens that dominate the landscape.  Pale yellow, lavender and white is a subtly elegant combination, and is repeated in these containers in different ways.  It is hard to do any photographing on a sunny day.  If you are an accomplished photographer, you will know what to do to get your camera lens to squint-this is a skill I do not have  An overcast day will permit pictures in which the color is saturated, as the light is even all over.   

Window boxes that are up high benefit from a simple planting, as you see a mass from a distance, not individual plants.  Vinca maculatum makes a great trailer.  They grow very long; their chartreuse variegated leaves are large and interesting. When I look through the lens of my camera, I see things in a different way.  As a picture has four edges, it can help force me to compose.  There is something interesting going on at every level on or against this very tall wall. I have a picture of that. 

This wirework urn was planted with a single 10 inch basket of mini-petunias.  The plant is obviously happy with this location, and the amount of water is it getting.  I am also certain they are getting a regular feeding.  The vinca will reach the ground in another few weeks. I would plant petunias here again.

This iron cistern placed in a corner reds on its own, as it is isolated from the main terrace.  I have planted darker versions of the yellow and lavender.  On a whim, I added some orange bullseye geraniums.  Not everything needs to match.  The dark foliaged cannas look great with the stone and the trim on the house-this was not at all in my mind when I planted.  I have my camera to thank for bringing this to my attention. 

The planting in this Italian olive jar is pleasing in its overall shape, and growing robustly.  Set in a very shady pot, who knew the moss growing on the side of the pot would play such a big roll in the planting.   

Dahlias have dramatic flowers, but they come with with a lot of green leaves.  This picture suggests to me that maybe dahlias are better planted low, where the tops of the plants are the main view.  Or perhaps they need a plant will grow up in front of all that green without jeapordizing the health of the dahlia.  The flowers look like they are floating.  I have time before next season to figure out what would work better.  All of my snapshots will be a big help.

Small Spaces

 

The dowager queen French vase from yesterday’s post has a home waiting for her-but not the home I expected.  An object of this size would need an even bigger space, wouldn’t you think?  What evolved was anything but.    

My clients bought a house that had never really been finished.  The landscape was much the same; unfinished.  My client referred to the property on the side of the house as “the music room mulch garden”.  It was bleak.  This very small space functioned as a transition space between the front of the property, and the rear-a sheer 8′ foot drop in grade. A boulder retaining wall at grade barely visible in this picture was punctuated by a staircase down with 16 stone steps-maybe more.  This left the area with an edge that was in fact a precipice.  At the base of the precipice, multiple air conditioning units, and a collection of meters apparent in this picture.     

My first design, they flat out rejected; I had missed some important information. My first design did not take into account that they spent their summers at a home on the East Coast.  OK, my plan for a cutting garden and whatever went with that was way off the mark.  Plan 2-a landscape that would function and look beautiful early and late, and especially over the winter.  A small landscaped area that would have big impact. A healthy hedge of Thuja Nigra sporting one lone out of place Thuja Pyramidalis was a starting point.  

Three linden espaliers of great age would form a backdrop to this small garden.  The green wall they would provide would take up little space, and would screen the clunky boulders and grade changes from view.  Enclosing a small space makes for a feeling of intimacy.  And the room would need some furnishing.  

Three linden espaliers, each about 10 feet wide, completely covered the back.  It would be up to my client to decide whether to maintain the horizontal pattern of the branches, or let the the twiggy growth make a solid wall of leaves. Green velvet boxwood organizes the ground plane.  The precipitous drop to the rear yard is shielded from view by a hedge of Thuja Nigra that matched the hedge already in place on the street side.  Flat and safe spaces are friendly to people. As for the mulch pile we had scraped up-that would be used to mulch the new plantings.  

Decomposed granite walkways make it easy to navigate the space. The color is easy on the eye, but provides strong contrast to the green elements.  There is no reason a small space cannot be a lively and interesting space.

A simple arrangement of plant material and gravel finishes the landscaping portion of the project.  Now what? 

From inside the house, a generously proportioned bench makes the space look inviting. The placement of the bench implies there will be something of interest to see.  I thought that old French vase might be just the thing.  

The colors of each compliment one another. The placement of a large element in a small space can be dramatic.


The view from the bench side is in scale with the size of the house.   Should I plant very tall? Short and wide? With what? It will take some time and thought to get the planting just right.

Unfinished Sculptures

My last Sunday opinion post I entirely owe to Nanne-she made me think long and hard about the relationship of imagination to precision.  Unbeknownst to her, she waded headlong into one of my stuck spots.  I had this idea to make models of gardens I doubted anyone would ask me to build.  Who knows where that idea came from, but when I have an idea, I try to play along. Fine so far.  After clumsily trying to build them out of foam core, Buck waved my story off, and  asked for drawings.  Pretty soon, basswood in thicknesses between 1/16th and 1/32nd of an inch and in varying widths, began arriving via UPS. 

He wanted to build the models on a birch plywood base, finished on its four edges with molding.  They could be set flat on a table, or floor-or hung on a wall.  This construction reminded him of the slide wire potentiometers he collects.  As you are probably a gardener, and not a collector of old scientific instruments, I will elaborate.  Buck collects vintage instruments which were used to measure voltage; he thinks they are beautiful objects.  Many of them were finely finished and presented in mohogany cabinets or cases; his office wall is covered with them. Some instruments were part of university laboratories.  Some were commissioned for industry.  To the last, they are very finely calibrated scientific instruments which were extremely expensive to purchase in their day.  He buys those the looks of which interest him, takes them apart, cleans and restores them.    

These instruments interested me when I saw them, but they did not enchant.  Years later, I understand and appreciate his enchantment.  There was some astonishingly imaginative person who designed and made a beautiful object which would in addition precisely measure volts.  Very precisely.  My garden models, and his love for old scientific instruments-an interesting mix.  My drawings were about to be transformed from lines into shapes.   Each model he painstakingly reproduced in basswood, from my drawings. His bench-littered with pieces of wood light enough and thin enough to float.  They are clearly not landscapes-they are sculptures.   There are four unfinished sculptures to date, each 24″ by 36″. 

He fussed and fretted about the construction-much like I do, when I have a landscape project underway.  When I am at home gardening, and have a problem or a full blown impasse, I back up, and fix myself a lemonade.  When I am working, I fuss and fret, and fret a little more.  It does not help to fix a lemonade, or go home. I have to stick with it. It could be a video about how Buck constructed these models is of vastly more interest than the sculptures themselves.  Why? I am having trouble trying to figure out where to take his work next.  

I imagine a landscape as a three dimensional sculpture.  Everything about that sculpture occupies me like an army.  Buck’s questions about the models-the eventual heights, distances and spaces-much like what I think about every day. But his precise questions regarding the length, width, depth, and height of elements in these sculptures forced me to think less about landscape and more about my intentions.      

A property needing landscape can be forgiving of what you have not accounted for in a drawing. A big idea may leave out that space or this corner.  This might make a landscape renovation more difficult than a landscape starting from scratch.  Buck’s wood sculptures I would not need to keep alive. They need to be brought to a visual life.  

While Buck is absorbed constructing these sculptures, I have time to panic.  What will I do to finish them, once he is done? What will go in all those spaces?   

Two of the four sculptures have been done for 5 months.  I have been scheming to provide an imaginative  finish worthy of his precise effort.  As much as I would like to have an answer, nothing is coming-yet. I had originally planned to fill my hedges with reindeer moss in different colors.  Now I am not so sure.  I could fill them with various sized wood spheres, stained the same mahogany color as the geometric shapes.  I could stain the interiors of the spaces, and do nothing more.  I could fill the shapes with seeds or dyed wool roving .     


 If you have ever made a change in a garden only to see that choice go on to change how you see everything around it, you will see my dilemma.  Gardeners have to go on, and live with their choices. This tree over that tree.  This perennial over a world of other perennials.  This groundcover instead of that. There are so many plants from which to choose-all of them different, many with merit.  All of this leads me to think about those treasured moments in my own garden which were much more about accident than by design.  That chance nicotiana seeding and growing up in the gravel walk.   

I got involved with these models by design. It is looking like I may finish them by accident.

Sunday Opinion: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

I am a reader, as I was raised to be such.  My Mom read to me non stop until I learned to read.  I never had the good sense to ask her later about why she did this, so I can only assume she thought it was important for people to read.  Reading in its simplest form exposes people to new words; a decent vocabulary is a tool by which people attempt to communicate.  I use the word attempt, as no number of words strung together necessarily insures communication.  Communication is an art form, not necessarily covered in a grammar primer.  Gardeners nonetheless become better, given a better vocabulary.  The best way to acquire gardening skills is to garden, but reading about it can be great fun. 

I know the meaning of verge, bosquet, pergola, porcelain berry, (ok, ampleopsis brevipedunculata is the latin version which precisely communicates the plant in question) bond beam, espalier, species, compost, environment, tap root, topiary, tree lawn, perennial -you get the idea.  Every word relevant to gardening implies an idea.  Reading that exposes me to those words goes on to expose me to ideas from other countries, other gardeners, other times, other places, other eras, other environments, other points of view.  I have a considerable library for good reason-there is always something that is new to to learn.  Part of being a well rounded gardener implies being a good reader.  Not to mention that there are those times when I would rather sit and read than dig a hole or water plants. My magazines pile up all season long, in preparation for winter. I am a reader, not a skier.

I have many hundreds of books; I refer to them, and reread- regularly.  My library is my window on the world. My books do not go out of style.  They don’t wear out or break.  It is amazing how little of the information they contain is obsolete.  A two volume set of photographic plates, entitled Jardins de France, is a prized possession.  Published in 1925, there are places pictured that no longer exist-except on these pages.  The Encylopedia Brittanica that my parents spent so much money to make available for me to read has been replaced by the internet.  Any gardening vocabulary word you might type into the Google search engine will likely get you many more websites than you could possibly digest. But the idea is somewhat the same.  A book you can hold in your hands is a different experience than looking at a computer screen, just like the music you hear in person is completely unlike any recording of music. Clare Lockhart, a high school English teacher, was obsessed with teaching how to write an elegant paragraph. If you didn’t learn, you had to keep writing them until she was satisfied you had that skill in place.  I cannot help but think all that practice with paragraph construction has helped to make my computer searches better and faster. But no matter the source of your reading material-what you read will inform your gardening. My advice-read up.  I do find that I get far fewer questions about plant culture than I did years ago, as the computer has made asking questions easy and convenient. I am better able to field questions about fruit trees and tropical plants, as I can look them up.

I have a long history of writing.  Like my Mom and my grandmother Nana, I kept a journal.  Some parts of that journal were personal-other parts recorded the peony bloom, or the date of the spring thaw, or random thoughts about my gardening efforts. Everything I write down sticks with me. I hope you enjoy reading my essays as much I as enjoy writing them.  The process of writing is exploratory, and helps me to think things through. 

 What I write is a rich stew.  Nature is the meat-how I cook that meat directs my writing.  My experience can  flavor the stew with garlic, rosemary-or romance.  I would furthermore encourage everyone to keep a journal.  Most things I wrote in my journal in my twenties either make me smile, or wince.  At 45, I threw away 27 years worth of journals; it was a good decision.  What you have a mind to write about translates what you think about or experience into information you might use. It can also give you a better picture about weather cycles, plant hardiness-the nature of things.  What interested me about gardening twenty years ago is much different than what interests me now, so  I am back to writing.    

You may think that no gardener needs to think about arithemetic as using it comes so naturally.  Most of the skills I use I learned in elementary school.  I dilute my moss dye using a 1 to 5 ratio.  Mixing soil, calculating how many perennials I need for a project, the flats of groundcover, the yards of decomposed granite-simple arithmetic.  Figuring the numbers of tulips I need to fill a spot may be the least favorite part of the process of having tulips in the spring.  I usually err on the side of way too many, which works out fine in the end. There are other things I have too many of-too many pots, too many hydrangeas, too many ferns-too many plants on a small city lot.  I still scheme about how wedge more in.  This excess is about enthusiasm, not poor math skills. 

We are installing a circular pergola today that Buck made.  A good deal of my excitement about seeing it put together and in place is that my grasp of the mathematics that enabled him to construct it is a skill I do not have.  He saw this structure clearly in his mind long before he put the first two pieces of steel together.  My excitement is about seeing it for the first time. I am sure it will be a very elegant visual paragraph about the structure required to adequately handle growing grapes.  You’ll see.