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Have A Horrible Holiday

I do have a horribly soft spot for the Halloween holiday. As much as the gardener in me loves the colors, varieties and shapes of the squash and pumpkins that come to market in the fall, I especially relish the ritual carving of these large roundish fruits into faces of all kinds-silly faces, spooky faces, the faces of the dead, damned and long suffering, the terrifying faces, the simply terrified faces. A client who needed a number of fanciful carved faces-how could I  speedily scoop and carve?  Though I love my dremel tool, its grinding wheel coated me in pumpkin juice and bits in seconds.  I needed a time out to wash my windshield.         

My battery operated drill was a lot more friendly.  After a ink sketch on the pumpkin rind, I drilled holes in every spot I neede a curve.  A florist’s knife is sharp as heck, but generating curves with a straight blade on a curved surface-a blisteringly difficult job. Any child would be thrilled with this pumpkin in its current state- holes from which worms seem to be emerging-perfect.  Another reason to really like Halloween-kids.  They care nothing for the elegance of your execution. They are ready willing and able to climb on the gestalt wagon and go-no questions asked.  They like ripped hems, things that don’t match-plastic in any form is perfect.  Pools of blood, skulls, spiders, bones and rats- poorly represented in plastic-kids like me to bring all of that on.     

My client was not interested in horror-she had a birthday party for a sister planned.  She asked for fanciful-but the pumpkin medium has its demands. The finished pumpkins-try as I might-would never enchant an adult like they would a child.  I finally quit worrying-carved pumpkins lit from within will warm up any end of October celebration. No trouble-she was pleased with what I carved.  Would that I could see them lit up, and beckoning visitors. 

Any Halloween celebration can have an aura of horror given an army of spiders. Multitudes of little plastic spiders can make anyone’s skin crawl. The fruits of the gardening harvest seem to settle right in with all the Halloween plastic. A bale of hay and some hemp can put a composition together; I have no fear of making an unfinished mess of a Halloween celebration.  Ask any kid-but be prepared to hear an answer you may not be ready for.  A natural and gentle Halloween-thank heavens I have not seen that essay.  Every kid I have had occasion to meet encourages me to bring on the dirt, the graves, the blood, the guts, the bats, the skeletons, the worms-are these kids not gardeners in the making? 

Broom corn is a plant that for hundreds of years has been cultivated for utilitarian purposes. A corn broom-do you not have one? Fresh broom corn is beautifully multicolored-some stems are droopy-others upright.  A giant tie of orange raffia ties this entire arrangement to a porch pillar. Seeding broomcorn stems and stalks-this is my late October fireworks.    

I used to finish all of my carvings like they might be cited by the Library of Congress-no more.  The truth of the best part of Halloween-a loose and fast gesture will do just fine. Buck and I so enjoy Halloween-as we have hundreds of visitors.  They never critique my decor.  My Halloween at home is all about meeting kids, photographing their costumes, sending them out into the night with some decent chocolate.  I meet, see, and talk to every kid living in my community but once a year-Halloween night.  

Gardening is an obsession, a serious business, an organizing metaphor for a life.  I could go on, but this is Halloween weekend.   I would turn everything over to those kids for this weekend.  Who knows how many of them might might grow up to be gardeners-growing their own pumpkins for their kids to carve.  

I feel really confident that gardeners all over my area have decorated from the garden, and from the plastics industries- and are ready for Halloween just like me.  Sunday night, Buck and I will be ready.  I cannot entirely explain why we both enjoy Halloween so much-but fun has a lot to do with it.      

A love of the garden can be satisfying in ways I never imagined in advance. I anticipate, and plan to enjoy my Halloween.   I am hoping you will have an equally horrible holiday.

Posted on: October 29, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday Tagged With: ,

More On The Warm-Up

Forty years after the fact, some of the landscape attending this fabulous home designed by Irv Tobocman is perilously overgrown.  Every gardener knows this-no garden, no landscape pays any mind to the pause button. Everything in the landscape is either moving forward, or declining.  A lower level terrace opens up a garden below grade-the natural slope of the property is retained by yet another brick wall. The brick wall is barely visible any more.  Most of the material here-I relocated.      I restored the view of the ground plane, and a view of the brick retaining wall. The Limelight hydrangeas, and the columnar gingko trees were planted above the wall-on the street side.  This brick wall is set invisibly into a natural slope; the view out the lower level of the house-beautiful. 

The gingkos trees underplanted with Limelight hydrangeas make for a substantial statement from the street.  The brick and gravel garden outside the lower level of the house-a completely private garden.   

A mini dog run for a mini dog named Pookie, and two mature crabapples are viewed prominently from the grilling terrace.  This space needed some tending to.  Areas like this I call a can opener.  Everyone has owned a can opener that works poorly-but for some reason, it doesn’t get replaced until it is about to fall apart.  Only then you realize what an aggravation it was to wrestle with, and how much better it is to have a tool that works.  The landscape here-not working so well.  Making this space look better- a breeze.  

Boxwood would enclose and remove most of the the dog run from view.  A thicket of hosta sieboldiana elegans will completely carpet the ground below the crabapples-this update aims for lush. 

The small space between the pool deck and the tall brick wall asks for a green and year round softening.  I am looking at an embarrassment of riches in hard surfaces here.  Modern can mean austere-but I like my austere a little more elegant than this.  My clients have no need to view the pool filtration pipes.  The intersection of concrete aggregate pool deck and brick wall will benefit from something living. 

I stuffed that small space with boxwood, and planted Boston Ivy on the wall.  It will make for a vibrantly green enclosure for the pool in no time. Pools generally have giant paved spaces around them-for obvious reasons.  But this does not mean they have to be cold.    

This bare gravelly space at the base of a U-shaped arrangement of very tall brick walls-stony, barky-neglected.  Though not in immediate view from the pool terrace, the look on the other side of the wall is not a good one.  An out of sight-out of mind spot.       


I planted Limelight hydrangeas here-with the idea that they would form a tall groundcover. Come summer, the flower heads will pop up above this pool wall, and bloom. The wall was necessary; it enabled a flat space large enough to build a pool.  The hydrangeas will obscure the indented portion of the wall from view, and strengthen the view of the flat portion of the wall.  

The far end of the pool deck is home to a sternly utilitarian black iron fence.  This row of hydrangeas will mitigate that jail-like look, and provide the landscape from the street with its third planting of hydrangeas.  The large block, the small block, and the single row will visually describe this large property from one end the other from the outside.  On the inside, they punctuate and soften all the hard surfaces.     


By next summer, there will be much more of a landscape to enjoy.

Posted on: November 4, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design Tagged With:

More On The Fruits

You may be bored witless with what I have had to say lately about delle robbia wreaths and faux fruits-but it appears I am still talking about them.  Humor me, please.  The fresh fruits-I love all of them.  I relish the apples, the peaches and plums-the cherries.  Watermelon-what could be better?  Musk melon-delicious. The grapes-so many different kinds of grapes-from champagne grapes to green grapes-all of them taste great.  Plums, apples of every different sort, an embarrassment of riches in varieties of pears-fruits taste great. But like most natural things, they also have great shapes, textures and colors.  A bowl piled with fruit on the kitchen counter delights the eye, as much as the taste buds.            

The faux fruits enable a visual discussion about color, shape, and texture. How each fruit is placed in relation to the others, and in relation to the whole makes a composition.  To compose sounds like a fairly serious activity, but it seems like what it takes to compose a letter is much like what it takes to compose a painting or a symphony.  This is big talk coming from someone that has never composed so much as a melody, but there are times when the way certain things go together makes music to my eye.  The pleasure I take in this is why I keep composing in one form or another, over and over. The geometry of this staircase is compellingly strong.  One could decorate it for the holidays by simply repeating these rectilinear shapes.  The garland could have run below and parallel to the railing.  Swagging the garland introduces curvy shapes that contrast with that severe geometry.  So how do I choose this composition over any other?  A client who says she likes natural things for the holidays.  I interpret that as not only natural materials, but a more natural way of displaying them.  The mixed cedar garland is doubled up.  A single strand of wired garland can have an awkwardly wired appearance.  Adding the weight of a second strand permits gravity to make graceful and continuous swoops.     


I did use some of the faux fruits in the wreath over the fireplace, but they are mixed with dry fan willow, fresh red bud pussy willow, pine cones, acorns and reindeer moss.  The mixed concolor and douglas fir wreath has a strong and lively texture and color that pairs well with the stone surface.  The gold bow?  I usually ask a client should they see some metallic element, what would that be?  This particular ribbon is a dream come true for anyone like me who has trouble composing a decent bow.  A translucent and thin green organza has a feathery god stripe down the middle.  The edges and center of this ribbon are all wired.  Even I can poof this.  

The garland is attached to the stair rail with zip ties. We tied garland whever there was a break in the glass sides of the staircase.  A branch of noble fir, wired with fruits, pine cones and cinnamon sticks covers the zip ties, and provides a little punctuation and a sense of rhythm to the change of direction.   

A family room fireplace is faced in a very beautiful stone.  A pair of simple fiber pots stuffed with red twig dogwood and greens sit on either side of the hearth.  The greens are done in a half round, so the pots do not intrude on the living space.  Beaded coppery bronze acorns are a nod to the holiday-and to the bronzy color in the stone floor. 

The natural garland over the windows is complimented by a garland of gold and bronze oak leaves.  Bronze brown glass pine cones and pine cone ornaments are an element in the composition that speaks to festive.      


Pam fussed at me for taking this picture before she had trimmed the bow streamers into swallow tails.  The finishing touches that come after the big gestures are important.  I check to be sure there is no evidence of the construction.  Every element of the composition needs to be securely, but not visibly attached.  The ribbon tails need to be recut.  There should be no evidence I was ever there-beyond the decoration.  That is a major reason why I do as much of the contruction in my studio as possible.  The 14 faux fruit medallions for the staircase garlands were made at my work bench, and taken to the job, ready to be attached. Even so, there is vacuuming to be done at the end.  Even when I design and install a landscape, one of my favorite moments is when the sidewalks and driveway gets washed off.  Once everything is cleaned up, there is time to look over what has taken so much work to compose.  By no means am I suggesting that things will not need adjusting or reworking-that is more the norm than the exception.  I am suggesting that making things is satisfying and fun.

Posted on: December 12, 2010 4 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday Tagged With: , ,

Beyond The Holiday


I had casually suggested to a client in December that her need for a pair of topiaries that would fit in a small and tall l-shaped space between a doorway and a bookcase might be easily handled with magnolia. I could imagine that a topiary some 6 feet tall, and very thin would gracefully, but noticeably fill the spot. The Magnolia Company was glad to oblige; they sent me a case of branches. The first order of business-remove all of the leaves from the branches, and grade them by size.  Petite, small, medium and large.    

There are leaves in this world that do all sorts of good, beyond their life in a garden, or on the dinner table.  Eucalyptus comes immediately to mind, as does integrifolia. They do the heavy work of bringing a sense of the garden indoors in spaces or places that cannot support living plants.  Give me a topiary from dried or preserved leaves-never ever buy me a house plant.  I like to look in the winter, not look after. Once I cut the stem from a magnolia leaf, I can shape it, and glue it to a form.  Should I be graceful with my cutting, you would never spot that I had changed its shape.  As this client favors very formal and precise shapes, the core of these topiaries would be a stout bamboo pole.   

The petite leaves formed the top.  Most of the lower portion of the leaves were cut away.  Succeeding leaves were spread with hot melt glue, and applied in overlapping rounds.  This is a little hard to explain with words. but I glue some leaves flat-others I scrunch the bottom, as if I were ruching, or smocking them. This curves the leaves from side to side. The brown bruises you see in this picture-the heat from the glue.  These heat marks need to be covered by the next round of leaves. This initial glueing I did on the bench, but every so often I would stand the pole up.  The construction of any ornament so depends on the view.  Leaves at eye level read entirely differently than leaves overhead.   

My work bench is at a height convenient for me to work on a project at eye level. I may move sculptures such as these to the floor, or onto a stool, depending on what I need to see clearly.  My client’s antique iron pots had no trouble handling the weight of the pole, and the leaves.  This picture catches the sculptures at a juvenile, and therefore awkward time.  Magnolia leaves move, curl, and twist as they dry.  Only the bottom of the leaf is secured with glue.  The natural drying process I cannot exactly predict-that is a big fluid situation.   


Three days later, these magnolia columns are evening out.  Why is this?  The leaves are moving and changing shape as they dry. I did my best to plan for this phase.  Predicting the curl and the fan out-very difficult.  I do the best I can, given my experience with these leaves. The construction of these topiaries is not unlike the construction of a landscape.  Any move you make needs to take into account growing, and maturation.  There is no substitute in landscape design for a vision of what the future might bring.  A showroom in Atlanta carries faux magnolia leaves by the box. I could not bring myself to buy them, even though they would never crack or break.  The natural magnolia leaves in their dry state have a grace and beauty that makes taking care of them worth the trouble.   

The leaves are easily manipulated when fresh; the dry leaves have a mind of their own.  This topiary was constructed initially with fresh leaves, and then infilled with completely dry ones.  This makes it easy to control the finished overall shape.       

The stalk of this topiary, a wood stick covered with moss.  The stick is straight and stable, and sharpened at the top. 


Dark green reindeer moss is glued over the dry foam form that fills the pots.  Preserved with glycerine, it will retain its color and shape indefinitely. A pair of magnolia garlands left over from the holidays made three topiaries for the shop. All that’s needed now-the finishing touchup on those leaves.

Posted on: January 22, 2011 6 Comments
Filed Under: Good Design, Woody Plants Tagged With: ,