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At A Glance: Sunday Morning

Sunday morning before the shop opens is a favorite time of mine. For those of you who live too far away to visit, to follow is what we are looking like the end of April.

vintage English urns on plinths

mid century French garden chairs

new fountain from Branch

Do you have time to play catch?

concrete dogs

English concrete containers in the Italian style

white concrete boxes and boxwood topiary

Errington Reay and Co salt glazed pots

French pots

topiary myrtles

zinc table

Howard

Zinc for the garden

late April

blue votives

Posted on: April 29, 2012 5 Comments

Filed Under: Picture This

In 1996, I had a shop devoted to fine and fabulous objects for the garden- newly opened for business. Of course I had lots of ideas, not the least of which was a scheme for a landscape out front. Gravel paths, and a slew of buxus koreana from Canada. Marv Wiegand gave me 6 months to pay for these boxwood-this was a huge help to a business just underway. This 1997 view of the shop-the word gawky comes to mind.

This past week tells a different, more recent story about the shop garden. The years of work show. Time is a enormously important design element in the landscape. You may be able to cut in line other places , but any landscape needs some age to represent well. Some new landscapes may be charming and bright at first-this is a super nova stage. But how they look fifteen years later tells the design tale. Great landscapes are about the long vision, and faithful maintenance.

Unlike a landscape, annual pots are a celebration of a single season. They start with small plants that take hold slowly-the spring weather in Michigan can be cold and unfriendly to plants native to tropical climates. It seems as though every plant is the same size, no matter whether it will eventually stay small, or grow 6 feet tall. New plantings are almost always out of scale with the container.

This same pot in late September is just about as good as it will get. The fall equinox-tomorrow. Cold nights will have an adverse effect on the coleus and sweet potato vine. But just before the cold weather begins to bring the annual season to a close, the plants seem to take on a robust appearance. Perhaps the cooler weather, or the sun lower in the sky, makes the color appear more saturated.

In any event, the annual season is brief and sweet. It takes no time at all to find out whether an experiment in color and form is satisfying-or not. Better yet, there is a new season ahead-for those containers that need a better idea.

This is my best effort ever in these two small pots. It took years to figure out one simple thing. Large growing plants do not prosper in smaller pots. Plants that mature at a size proportional to the size of the container put on the best show.

I am always pushing that size restriction with these two urns. One year I grew nicotiana mutabilis in them-hilarious, the outcome. Last year’s coleus-much too big a grower for the volume of soil in this pot.

Today the plantings are as lush as they will ever be. That lush look compliments the urns without overpowering them. The succulent in the front never grew large enough to obscure that Italian goat face.

This Tuscan square was vastly larger than its plantings in June. The steel plant climber that keeps the red mandevillea aloft is a major feature.

Yesterday, the lemon grass was every bit of 7 feet wide-all this from 4 4″ pots planted the first week of June. I have taken lots of pictures of all of my pots this summer-I like keeping a record of how they do. But I will not photograph this one again. This is as good as it gets.

3 6″ pots of swallowtail coleus were planted in this pot. It’s a bushel basket full of green and yellow highly textured leaves today.

This pot might be my favorite of the year. The plectranthus is falling over from the weight of its branches. The variegated miscanthus grass in the center is emerging in a way I never anticipated. The community which resulted from my planting is courtesy of mother nature.

I am very much enjoying this moment.

Posted on: September 21, 2012 9 Comments

Filed Under: container planting, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: annual plants, container plantings

Coppice Wood

Coppicing is a traditional method of producing long straight woody stems by cutting a tree or a shrub back to the ground. Many varieties of woody plants respond to this drastic treatment with vigorous growth-from the ground. Coppice wood was used to provide firewood in European countries where the number of trees were vastly outnumbered by a large population requiring fire for cooking and heat. Shrubby trees wre planted on the perimeters of farms; regular coppicing produced densely twiggy living fences.

The new shoots emerging from the stump of a tree grow long and straight. The juvenile growth is vigorous, and the color is vibrant. In England, the coppice wood from the sweet chestnut tree is still used to make fencing and fence poles for livestock and poultry. The sweet chestnut is coppicied on 12 to 18 year cycles, and then harvested to make fencing and gates. The poles come from coppice wood which is allowed to grow upwards of 30 years before cutting.

The fresh cut twigs which arrive at the shop in early November are grown by farmers who plant their shrubs in rows or blocks, like crops. Large fields are harvested in rotation, so every year there is a crop of long straight stems. Many of our twigs come from varieties of salix, or willow. Every gardener knows that the new or current year’s growth on a red twig dogwood shrub has the best color. Mature stems become woody, and the color dull. The new bark of coppice wood is lively. Newer cultivars of the redtwig dogwood have better and brighter color. The coppice wood of this redtwig dogwood cultivar is known for its especially brilliant color.

Once the leaves fall, those twigs which are ready are harvested, sorted by length, bundled and shipped. Most bunches are 10 stems, except for the curly willow. The winter color of curly willow stems is subtle, but no so its shape. The curving and curling stems provide lots of volume-these voluminous bunches are usually 5 stems. 5 stems of this gracefully airy and unpredictably curving willow can endow a winter container arrangement with lots of rhythm and movement.

Coppiced yellow twig dogwood is brilliantly yellow green. The twigs will be color fast the entire winter. Used in a winter container, it is not unusual for the stems to root, and leaf out in the spring. Though but a very few of the leaves are still clinging, the branches are vibrant at a time of year when most all else in the garden has gone dormant.

Flame willow is a striking coppery orange in color-quite unlike the bark of the trees and shrubs that grow in my garden. This warm cinnamon color is a standout in snowy and gray weather. This variety of willow is much more handsome in its twiggy state than it is as a green-leaved shrub.

Japanese fan willow was cultivated from a fasciated, or flattened natural stem. Many perennials and shrubs will exhibit this peculiar characteristic. Some azaleas that exhibit densely twiggy growth were propagated originally from fasciated stems. Fan willow is noted for its exotic shapes and forms. No two branches ever look the same.

Curly copper willow exhibits much the same habit of growth as the green curly willow. However the striking color means it will take fewer branches to make a statement in a winter container. Our coppice wood has arrived at just the right time. The cold temperatures outside will help keep them fresh, and the surface of the bark glossy. Thought the color will survive the winter perfectly intact, the warm weather in the spring will eventually dessicate and shrivel the stems.

But there is a place for dry stems in winter containers. Dead wood branches that have shed their bark can be beautiful in a winter arrangement. Bleached natural branches are dramatically pale in color, and are visible from a great distance.

The coppice wood-just one element of many that goes into a beautiful winter container arrangement.

Posted on: November 4, 2012 7 Comments

Filed Under: container planting, Winter, Color, Holiday Tagged With: dogwood branches, cut twigs, coppice wood, winter container arrangements, winter container gardening, red twig dogwood

The Garden Designer’s Roundtable: Romance

What makes for a romance? An attraction that cannot be denied. An attraction that evolves from the excitement generated by the hope that a relationship might lead to a steadfast commitment. The romance suggested and generated by the possibility of love-who hasn’t experienced it? Gardeners romance their gardens-meaning they seek to establish a relationship with their environment, their love of plants, and their property to a mutually satisfying end. I never met a gardener that was not committed to the long term. However, mutually satisfying outcomes are rare. Things go wrong. Plants die. Taste’s change. More than rare, garden outcomes that stir the heart are short lived. Ephemeral. This makes the possibility of true romance all the more desirable.

Nature-the object of every gardener’s sincere affection. On occasion, that love is returned. Sometimes I am face to face with it in such a way that takes my breath away. But more often than not, nature has another idea in mind. I have had my hopes dashed more often than I care to recall. The weather here last spring was anything but. All of the efforts made to protect the spring flower buds-spurned. There are less dramatic challenges to one’s love for the garden. A lack of rain-or too much. The neighbor’s kid or the neighborhood rabbit who snaps all the lily buds off. The specimen evergreen that is not so happy where you have planted it. The effort it takes to improve the organic content of the soil. I suppose the spring will eventually come when I think I’ve had enough-but it hasn’t happened yet.

Anyone who gardens long enough realizes that a romance has its ups and downs. There are on occasion those perfect moments. An hour or a day or a season that enchants and utterly satisfies. They could be very simple, and not so readily apparent to a casual observer. The sun emerging after a spring rain. A quiet hour spent weeding. Watching a hummingbird feed. How the roses look just before they bloom.

That June day several years when the roses were blooming like I had never seen them before-heart stoppingly romantic. That summer day when all is good enough in the garden such there is time to take time to enjoy it. There are those perfect moments that come when you least expect them, and are over before you know it. That fairly accurately describes my relationship with nature. Never easy, and often times irritating and disappointing. Despite all that does not work, a life without a serious relationship with nature has no appeal to me.

This cold windy and snowy February moment that Milo and I shared in the garden-satisfying indeed. I am sure the other members of the Garden Designer’s Roundtable have an equally personal romance with nature-be sure to read on.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

David Cristiani : The Desert Edge : Albuquerque, NM

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Mary Gallagher Gray : Black Walnut Dispatch : Washington, D.C.

Posted on: February 26, 2013 12 Comments

Filed Under: The Natural World, Landscape Design, Garden Stories Tagged With: the Garden Designers Roundtable