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Holiday Tables At Cranbrook

For 39 years, the Cranbrook Auxiliary has raised money for the restoration of both Cranbrook house and the gardens via the Holiday Tables event in late November. This year, 18 designers spent the day yesterday decorating their tables for the holidays. I did a table for them at least 10 years ago. A good friend, client, and long time benefactor of Cranbrook asked if I would return, and decorate a room, this being the last year for this particular event. I am sure this group has an event plan for the future, with an entirely new format. As for this finale event-we were all in. The theme of this year’s tables-Illuminate the Season.

If you are local to our area, you are well aware of the Cranbrook property, house and schools. It houses one of the most respected graduate art programs in the nation. If you are not local, suffice it to say Cranbrook is a vibrant institution with substantial gardens of which we are very proud. Interested in the entire story? http://housegardens.cranbrook.edu/about

The house is of a particular period and time. The wood furnishings and tile are dark. The rugs are old and quietly gorgeous. The lighting is subdued. The period and style of this room drove the design for our table. For starters, Rob hand fashioned three strands of holiday lights – a reproduction of lighting from a much earlier era comprised of taupe colored cloth clad twisted wire, bakelite sockets, and large scale reproduction bulbs. Each bulb got its own vintage tin reflector before it was inserted into its bakelite socket. These light strands are outfitted with a dimmer switch, so the light can be adjusted to fit the mood of the occasion. A small flock of our grapevine deer sculptures with sparkly gold and cream lit collars help populate the space. The quality of the light is key to our design.

The china is my own, collected a few pieces at a time since my twenties. The Compleat Angler, manufactured in the early 1980’s by Portmerion China in England, was inspired by the watercolors of English game fish done by AF Lydon in 1879. I have never used this china-I display it, and enjoy looking at it. The flatware is Ambience Olivewood, made by Alaine St. Joannis. This we have used every day for many years. So why am I talking china and flatware? It is a tradition with this event. The sunset room is a fairly large room. We were going to need more than a table, set for a holiday gathering.

We placed three Christmas trees in the room-two of which are flocked. Detroit Garden Works is featuring flocked frasier fir trees for the holiday season this year. They are available in a variety of sizes and colors, by special order only. These are the first flocked trees I have seen since my childhood, but apparently they are popular from the mid west to Paris. The French blue is my favorite color. As the light string wires looked beautiful with that color, we had a color scheme for the decor. The wires themselves are handsome enough to feature them as holiday garland.

We did bring an artificial Christmas tree. This is my favorite style of artificial tree. It is clearly artificial-not a representation of a real tree. The branches are brown, and lightly dusted with snow. We decorated it with pale French blue glass balls, and long crystal drops.

The 10 foot long shallowly oval table with square ends is meant to be placed against a wall. This was a perfect size to set the table on one side, and decorate the far side. The flocked fir branches hold a variety of other materials. A light strand, the dried curling fronds of garden ferns, glass balls in cream and blue, and fresh magnolia leaves are interspersed throughout.

table detail

The soup tureen and pike oval platter

What I like best about this display is that it seems visually believable in this space. The antique Victorian wicker chairs are ours, but they look appropriate to the room.Every item has a vintage, or a garden feel. The color is subdued, but festive. If you are interested in seeing all 18 of the holiday tables, a formal buffet tea is scheduled for 11 to 3 today, a cocktail party for Friday evening by reservation, and general admission Friday and Saturday from 10-4. We think the Cranbrook House and Garden auxiliary is well worth your support.

Posted on: November 20, 2014 19 Comments

Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Color, Holiday Tagged With: setting a holiday table, Cranbrook Holiday Tables, Cranbrook gardens

A Belated Glance At Halloween

I know this post is 4 days after the fact. So sorry for that. I rarely am able to write a post in one sitting. Photographs for a post may take plenty of sittings. I hope late is better than never! I do so enjoy the Halloween holiday, so I am writing belatedly. It would be tough for me to let Halloween pass, unacknowledged. To follow is the stale news of my late fall gardening life. Rob made a point of choosing 4 pumpkins for me to carve for my Halloween at home. He knows I love that fall holiday that celebrates in a lighthearted way the coming of the dark time. Halloween is a silly gateway to those serious months in which there will be no gardening. I carve pumpkins, light them up, buy treats for the kids, and turn my porch light on. Buck fixes chili. It is a party that comes to us. The pumpkins Rob chose were big. The walls were thick. The rind was tough. Really tough. It makes sense that a very large pumpkin would have thick walls and a tough rind. How else would a pumpkin emerge, grow, and stand up? Nature at work is a study in how living things work. I am still learning. Love that party. Luckily, my carving day was this past Sunday. I had a whole day to deal with thick walls and the tough rind.

I had time to think over how I would carve these pumpkins. Cutting a lid, and scooping them out took plenty of time. I have learned from many years of exposure to Buck that any task at hand requires a sensible and thoughtful approach to the work. Years ago, I gutted and carved my pumpkins at home in the kitchen. How exhausting it was to haul those big pumpkins up a steep flight of stairs from the basement. I never liked that part. In the back of my mind fluttering around was why would I carry a pumpkin upstairs, and carry at least a third of it back downstairs? Why, indeed. This seemed not only inefficient, but not in the spirit of good fun. Fun that is too much work is not that much fun. Emptying every pumpkin of the seeds and goo permeated every surface of our kitchen. What a mess. For the past few years, I have cleaned out and carved my pumpkins at work, on a table at a perfect height for me to work. A giant trash was strategically placed to accept, via that miracle we know as gravity, all of what it takes to make a pumpkin ready for carving.

My pumpkins had those same incredible stems as all of the pumpkins Rob purchased this fall for the shop. His choices inspired lots of gardeners interested in representing the fall season. I was a happy member of that group. By the afternoon on Sunday, my pumpkins were ready to carve. Did I have a plan for the carving? No. Did I draw on the pumpkins? No. I just took up my knife, and plunged in.

The carved pumpkins took up residence the morning of Halloween day in the pots out front. The candle inside was all about fire power. I lit them at 4:30 in the afternoon. I knew they would burn at least 12 hours. Rob’s Belgian made outdoor candles emit a lot of light, and easily handle a windy night. Each pumpkin was encircled with a ring of faux black hydrangea stems. Fake flowers have their moment.

I took pictures at 5:30 pm. That heavy duty candle had already turned my carved eyebrows black. The flame is obvious. What I did not see until I looked at this picture the next day was the fall color on my Limelight hydrangeas. The fall season in the garden is indeed beautiful.

I was happy to see that my group of 4 pumpkins were representing the spirit of Halloween in my garden. By 5:15 pm I was ready for Halloween. Meaning, I was ready for company. Buck and I did get company.

Trick or treat

trick or treat

Halloween visitor

trick or treater

this green Halloween visitor was my favorite

kids with their family

more kids with their family

dressed to the nines for Halloween

another family celebrating Halloween

beautiful

skull scary

three girls

horns on fire

Our house

lighted pumpkin after dark

pumpkin ablaze

well after dark

This Halloween visitor was a grandfather, escorting his grand kids through my neighborhood. He told me that his grand kids were afraid to stand next to him. How hilarious. The best part of Halloween? A lot of fun and mock horror celebrated by a community. Celebrating Halloween is a version of community gardening.

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Posted on: November 3, 2016 20 Comments

Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Fall, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: Halloween

The Week Of December 5

Be forewarned, there are an astonishing number of pictures about to come your way. Last was a very busy week for us. But for the pictures, it would all be a blur. My crew is great about photographing everything. They pictures of last years work help inform the work we are doing now. Smart phone cameras and text messages mean I can communicate with the group who is doing the installation while they are 0n site. I hate to have to go back and redo, but I hate worse if something does does not seem as good as it should be. How I am able to stay in touch with my crew means the work is all that much better, the first time around. I can be two places at once-in the shop, and on the job. My landscape crew helps on and off, but they have been finishing up the last of the year’s landscape projects. They will be back today to help out with the work ahead. Buck’s crew at Branch is working for me for the winter holiday season. They makes all of our garlands, and install them. They handle lighting issues. They also install containers. Marzela and David have been focused on the construction of green blankets and centerpieces. All of us whittle greens for Marzela, as the lot of us can hardly keep up with her. David and Salvadore do a splendid job with construction centerpieces, and adding elements one at a time. I am lucky to have each and every one of this group of 10 people. They are independent, intelligent, and thoughtful. They express their opinions, but not at the expense of keeping up. We do this work together. They go the extra mile, routinely. You cannot teach what they have to offer. They came to me with good values, not the least of which is a commitment to doing a great job. A lot gets done in a week’s time. You’ll see. What you will see in these pictures is a design direction from me, and a gifted making by them. I help with the fabrication, but I can walk away and come back later, knowing someone will have picked up my part and gone ahead with it. I still have 15 projects to go. I will be happy if I can finish them by Friday next, but maybe I won’t. I will not push a project out there that is not ready. I am stubborn, that way. The work you are about to see has as much to do with the the relationship we forge with a client as the design and fabrication relationships. We make a concerted effort to represent their taste. We try for better than they thought they could have it.

classic English cast iron boxes with lighted topiary forms

Large Bulbeck lead planter arranged for winter with curly willow, plum eucalyptus, white berry picks, and noble fir

contemporary winter arrangement ready to be installed in a large steel box

late day sun on that large steel box dressed for winter

winter arrangements awaiting installation in a pair of Atelier Verkant stoneware pots on the same projectfinished winter arrangement with yellow twig dogwood, yellow fuzz ball picks and variegated boxwood

pair of handmade concrete pots dressed for the winter season with flame willow, red berry picks, incense cedar and mixed greens

traditional winter arrangement in an urn on a pedestal with red bud pussy willow, green eucalyptus, and mixed greens

winter pots flanking a company entrance with sumac branches, pine cone picks and noble fir

holiday garland and pots with red bud pussy willow, berry picks, bleached pine cones and German boxwood

a pair of Branch Hudson boxes dressed for winter with red bud pussy willow and fuchsia eucalyptus

classic traditional holiday arrangement with red berry picks, holiday sparkle picks, and red sinamay

fountain surround pots for the winter with grassy textured green picks and noble fir

accompanying atelier verkant pot with silver sparkle branches, grassy green picks, frosted faux evergreen picks, noble and silver fir

a traditionally decorated green garland for the holidays

winter arrangements in classic French orangery boxes with curly copper willow, blue gray eucalyptus, and gold sinamay

pair of custom fabricated concrete planters with winter arrangements with red twig dogwood, plum eucalyptus and mixed greens

outdoor lighted tree decorated with poplar branches, faux cherry clusters and feather birds

a second lighted outdoor holiday tree dressed with poplar branches, feathered birds, and faux cherries. For extra light at night, the entire trunk of the tree is wrapped with Lumineo LED light strings, ahead of lighting the branches

indoor holiday tree with blue gray glass ball ornaments, gold glittered banana stems, and gold plastic foil stars

winter containers with gray and white branches and picks

contemporary winter wreath and container

contemporary winter container with red twig dogwood, sage eucalyptus and mixed greens

winter pot with white painted branches, pine cone picks, and gray eucalyptus

finished winter pot with frosted pine cones lit from above

a pair of winter containers featuring white eucalyptus and noble fir. The steel garlic topiary forms are strung with lights.

That pair of pots at night

night light

This steel Bethlehem star fabricated and lighted for Christ Church Cranbrook was a project designed, engineered and fabricated at Branch. We delivered this sculpture, and we were there to assist with the installation.

the star shining

This morning, we will resume the work.

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Posted on: December 12, 2016 53 Comments

Filed Under: Holiday, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Winter, Lighting, container planting

March 1

Detroit Garden Works retreats into a semi-closed state from January 15 until the first of March. During that time we do repairs, repaint, clean, and rearrange. An over simplified outtake on of law of nature we call entropy posits that everything tends to fall apart. Anyone who has ever had a garden, a washing machine or a favorite pair of boots understands how true this is. So every winter we take on a building maintenance project of one sort or another. 10,000 square feet and everything we have in it is a lot to keep clean and in working order. Once that is done, we rearrange every room to include all of the new things for spring that have been coming in since last September. That is an incredibly labor intensive and time consuming job, but by March 1, the shop will have that spring fresh look to it. I know we are just about ready for opening day when Rob is out photographing.

The landscape crews forego the lion’s share of their winter off to participate in re-imagining the shop for the coming season. This involves lots of patience moving fragile items, lots of sheer manpower for those incredibly heavy and awkward things, and plenty of attention to detail. I will confess to asking to move some things around multiple times until I feel the design of it reads right to me. In better than 20 years, I have yet to hear a complaint. At that moment when I am too worried that a direction I have chosen will not work out, Marzela has been known to tell me that that we have it all in hand.

It is hard to describe the process by which we turn over a past season to a new one. It is a big fluid situation. Every year, I am surprised by how a small group of people manage to transform the atmosphere of a big space from what was past to the present. The entire process from the patching and painting to the finish runs between 3 and 4 weeks. My job as a designer has a yearly winter project that goes on in my own house.

Detroit Garden Works has been in business going on 21 years. We are in the midsection of the country, 30 miles north of Detroit. That geography may define what plants we are able to grow, but it by no means defines or confines our vision of the garden to the midwest. This means that a gardener who plants herbs in a vintage wood crate is just as likely to find something for their garden as the person who values the clean lines of a contemporary garden pot. Gardeners are a very diverse lot, and what Rob buys for the shop reflects that.

This group of stone troughs, sinks, and staddle stones that Rob purchased in England this past September are all better than 100 years old, and are covered in lichen colonies that speak to their great age. The large stones with iron rings in the center are cheese stones, that were used to squeeze excess water out of the cheese by virtue of their sheer weight. Though their history is agricultural, their effect in a garden is sculptural.

A collection of English made wood birdhouses in a traditional style are as whimsical as they are utilitarian.

A collection of baskets, chimney stones, wood grape crates, galvanized buckets and steel bird and dog cutout sculptures complete one part of the 2017 collection.

Another room is full of classical antique and vintage urns, benches, tables, sundials, and sculpture. Any of these garden ornaments would compliment a traditional garden. It is just as likely that any one of them could organize or define the mood of a garden.

Objects for the garden can set a tone, create a mood, or organize a space. It only takes a gardener who is interested to take their garden to that level. A garden ornament may be dear, or not. What gives it an aura is the selection and placement of a gardener who who has something else to express about a garden that means much to them.

Of course, our shop would be incomplete without plants. At this very early stage of thje season, we do have fresh cut pussy willow twigs, both straight and branches. And a collection of fan willow. The stars of our March season are the hellebores. By far and away, they are the mainstay of the early spring perennial garden. Our collection this year numbers close to 1500 plants, in various sizes. We carry named varieties, and a large collection of the justly well known Pine Knot Farms hellebore strains. How pleased we are to be able to offer these hellebores for the first time.

For those of you too far away to see our collection in person, we can take pictures, and we do ship. And by all means enjoy the following pictures that Rob has taken of individual plants. It is just about impossible for me to pick a favorite. That could account for the fact that I have lots of them in my garden. A hellebore purchased now will be perfectly happy in a light and cool spot until it can be planted outdoors the beginning of April. This early dose of spring is so welcome. It could be that the best part of the winter landscape is the beginning of the end of winter.