My crew hates when I come to the job. I get dirt all over the furniture, at best, and at worst I am tinkering with the design when they want to get on with business. But when I am home, I can be the Miss Dirtiness I have always been.
I cannot abide gloves of any description. Even if I could stand to have them on, I invariably loose them, or pitch them out with the trash. Diana never plants for me without gloves-everyone has their own way of doing, which makes for an interesting gardening world. I like to plant with my hands whenever possible. As you can see, I have no fear of dirt. I have no fear of it in my wine, down my socks,. or in my hair. I have on occasion fallen into bed, dirty. After all, the table can be cleaned, and the sheets washed.
I like everything I am working with right there in front of me. Buck was horrified the first time he saw me put dirt on the dinner table, but he is mostly over that. Its a good thing people cannot see the organisms on every surface, and in the air. It would make the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds seem boring. Most organisms are friendly, even necessary-that’s the scientist in me. I like giant tropical bugs, worms, and toads. However, I could never bring myself to eat a snail; I can barely look at Buck when he eats them. Go figure.
In spite of his tolerance for my habits with plants and dirt, he is always relieved to get to the cleanup part. Pretty soon, we will be over the dirtiness phase.
I am the reluctant and sole owner of this giant agave. Armed with vicious thorns and weighing plenty, it is an incredible ordeal bringing it out of the greenhouse-never mind trying to decide where to summer it. Mark does a great job of wintering all my clients tender plants, but this one makes him grumble. 
Mark’s staff person, the other Mark, is smiling here, but please notice the sunglasses, and the heavy duty gloves. This plant is like trying to handle a blue heron that has its leg caught in a rock (that’s another story for another time) or some other similar disaster. At this moment, no one is thinking about how beautiful it is-only how deadly it can be. 
Mark shows up with a long sleeve canvas carhart jacket-never mind that it is 78 degrees. Rob is poised as if an unexpected left jab may be coming his way. 
Finally these three slide it down the ramp, and off the truck. It sat for a week in the middle of the driveway, marooned. I finally said to my landscape superintendent Steve that it might be good to heave the thing in the dumpster, and be rid of it. Steve, who is predictably unpredictable, was indignant that I could even think of chucking an old plant as beautiful as this one. The “beautiful” part of his jolt of a statement set me thinking in a different direction. If I did indeed think it was beautiful, then where would I put it? 
I asked Steve to haul it home for me. I did not dare go to photograph that planting scene; sometimes Steve is better left alone. The tuscan rectangle, whose planting scheme had been bedevilling me for weeks-the perfect place for a giant, homeless, but very beautiful agave. Do these two not look made for each other? The big design issue here is about the seeing. Seeing the beauty in a plant or an idea can inspire lots of good. This massive and unwieldy pain of a plant is now the star of its own show. A lot of plants, clients, schemes, garden arrangements and ornament are loaded on my design bus. All of these things need the right seat on that bus, on any particular trip, to shine. This is an issue which is mine to successfully solve. 
Edward de Bono put it much than I ever could. “We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause, but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.”
Long about this time during the annual planting season, I start to wish for a wedding, or other event. I really enjoy doing those landscapes that are just for the moment. Its not really landscape-its theatre. And there is not nearly so much dirt involved. This wedding I organized around two kinds of trees-this a willow on standard. Having a gray green foliage, and a delicate breezy texture, it was perfect for an allee to celebrate the arrival of the bridal party.
Planted in gray concrete pots, and whitewashed with a paint used to shade greenhouse glass, the trees were “underplanted” in montecasino and roses. Montecasino has the wispy field daisy look of perennial boltonia. The white rose is called Hollywood-it is my favorite wedding white rose. It opens flat, and lasts for days. A pergola I once covered in Hollywood roses without any water or oasis looked fresh 3 days later; even though the temperature was very chilly, that still speaks to great staying power.
Making another kind of welcome-gerbera daisies for the rooms of the guests from out of town. These flowers go beyond their beauty, and seem to express the happiness of the event.
The tent set up outdoors had a white walk sprayed onto the lawn with athletic field paint. On either side of the door into the tent, more pots. These pots were “planted” with Coralburst crabs, whose branches and trunks are painted white. A grower who had lost a number of them was happy they were going to be used for something. The mother of the bride greatly admires contemporary art and design, and very much liked the sculptural aspect of these trees.
The cocktail tables had their simple bouquets-some tall, some short. Every bouquet was oriented around a particular color, rather than a mix of colors. This has a contemporary feeling as well.
Each table had low flowers closely color related, and a canopy of a single coralburst crab. Tablecloths in subtle and varying colors were complemented with napkins tied in double faced satin in various shades of green. It was a fresh and contemporary version of a garden wedding reception, including the paper globe lanterns hung from the roof ridge of the tent. My favorite detail-the fern curls to which the table numbers are attached.
The fountain outdoors was decorated with a series of paper lanterns; we built metal stands to hold them, and the votive candles inside them, just off the surface of the water. Weddings in gardens have a special romance about them.
We needed a riser for the one step down into the yard. A 14″ wide by 9′ long piece of 1/4″ steel, buried, and snugged up against the new wall would do a clean and simple job of it. Once that steel was installed, the decomposed granite would be leveled right to the edge of the terrace. We adjusted the grade as the base of that step to make the transition to the lower level an easy one.
This view from the new terrace is my favorite. There is a simple overall shape, which unexpectedly drops down in the center to a lower plane. What is brick in the upper terrace reverses to granite in the lower; this is a change in material that does not interrupt the big organizing idea, but makes it more interesting.