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Green And Good Looking

Our temperatures have gone back into the 90’s, topped with a big dollop of high humidity;  I am seeing signs of summer’s end in a lot of container plantings-including my own.  Crispy stems, mildew, and all manner of other trouble one can put under the heading of late summer malaise. Green plantings seem to keep their good looks, even when the late summer doldrums look more and more like the beginning of the end. To follow are some of my favorites this year.

Lime licorice, white polka dot, and a dracaena whose name I do not know-what a fresh look for August 30.

Lemon grass, variously underplanted with basil, parsley, and strawberries. 

King Tut, lime nocotiana, variegated licorice and cream petunias

Australian tree ferns, bromeliads, boxwood, pachysandra

Agave, datura metel

Eugenia topiary, parsley

datura metel, nicotiana mutabilis, gardenia standard, cirrus dusty miller, lime licorice

variegated ivy on standard, boxwood standard

Rosemary on standard, strawberries, fiber optic grass.  It is amazing how beautiful a collection of green plants can be, whatever the weather.

Posted on: August 30, 2010 1 Comment
Filed Under: Garden Design, Good Design

Good Days

There are those times when the garden has a good day.  Good all over. The late day sun slanting across the lawn, and the hydrangeas going pink-just good.  I poked my camera lens through the gate for this picture.  One of my favorite parts of my garden-I see nothing of the neighbors, and very little of the street.  The hydrangeas spilling over the lawn makes it all the more like a garden hideaway.

The fountain garden is back to being its serene self-post new drainage work, giant fountain repairs, all new herniaria-and a new bench.  I cannot tell this part of my garden was under siege until mid July. Buck is testing the waters already about shutting the fountain down for the winter-I am waving him off.

A client that needed a 9 foot long scroll steel bench right away for an event got mine.  Though I wasn’t so happy at the prospect of being without a bench until a new one could be made, no doubt I had a chance to tinker with the design.  I had the new bench made four inches taller than the original.  This is much more comfortable for me, and considerably easier to get in and out of.  I had originally planted herniaria under the bench; it was not happy with the shade.  A new planting of European ginger seems to be working out fine. This is a better place now.

This bed of beech ferns once had Helleborus Angustifolius as a companion.  Try as I might, they suffered terribly in the winter.  As this species blooms on old stalks, even the bloom period was unsightly.  After 5 years I gave them up for European ginger.  The planting is lush and thick.  I am so glad those gawky hellebores are gone.

The rose garden is much brighter in the evening than the fountain garden; I like walking up into that light.  The stone stairs have been in long enough to have acquired a little moss. 

The rose garden is a destination in the evening; a pair of chairs and small table make it a perfect spot to sit and rehash the day.  The grass got cut yesterday; the corgis appreciate this.  When the grass gets long, they look like they are swimming through it, rather than running over it.  I still have intermittent roses; the boltonia and Japanese anemone are in full bloom.     

Japanese anemone is one of my favorite perennials; I like single flowers. I especially like late blooming single flowers.  I also like that I do next to nothing to it except look at it. It thrives in this garden for going on ten years now. 

I pollarded my overgrown Palabin lilacs on standard; it scared me , how hard I cut them back.  For weeks, not a peep out of either one of them.  They are starting to look good to me.

I am not sure why this sunken garden has a feeling unique to my garden. It might be the quietest spot in the yard.  I am only one block from a 5 lane street.  The fountain and the sunken garden minimize that urban noise.   

On the driveway, the nicotiana mutabilis is still going strong.  It will send up giant new shoots all fall long; I keep adding stakes.   

The mum-ball is turning pink-can you hear me sigh?  It actually does not look all that bad with the purple kale.  The bloom period is actually not that long here-I already have plans to trim it back to a green ball once the flowers fade.   


This coleus is done growing; the nights are getting quite cool.  Hopefully it will last a while longer.  The shape is good.  Some days in the garden are just good.

Posted on: September 30, 2010 3 Comments
Filed Under: Upon Reflection, Garden Design, Garden Ornament Tagged With: ,

Coloring Up

Ideal conditions for great fall color involve a season with decent soil moisture, warm days, and temps at 45 degrees or below at night.  Ideal conditions- rare.  Abruptly early freezing can interrupt the process by which leaves slowly stop producing chlorophyll; rather than a display in technicolor, we get a limited range of mud-brown and mud grey.  This year, it is more than startling that we have not yet had a hard frost; it has been years since Halloween came and went before a killing frost.   The night temperatures for the next 10 days look like they will hover in the low forties.  We seem to be headed for great color. What is coloring up?  Gingko leaves turn a gorgeous citron yellow in the fall; that color matures to a brilliantly clear golden yellow.  But a gingko’s main claim to fall fame is about the drop. They drop most every leaf on the same day. Should you happen to be available that day, that drop is a happening.  

Red maples are aptly named for the intense red color of their fall leaves-but they can disappoint in a dry year.  Should that red color be important to you, chose a named cultivar of acer rubrum especially bred for great fall color- like October Glory or Red Sunset.  Maple leaves are large, and grow parallel to the ground.  This makes the shade they cast particularly dense.  But in the fall, the leaves are translucent; light shines through them. This brings that red fall color to life in a spectacular way. 

My Princeton Gold maples have an intensely gold fall color.  The transition from green to yellow can take weeks.  I have never had the inclination to dry flowers in a flower press, but I love pressing fall leaves-in every stage.  Searching for my favorite fall leaf is not so different from shelling on a beach, or cutting the best garden flowers for the dinner table. Any gardener understands nature is a teacher, a resource that should be respected and protected- and a source from which to draw a good life.   

Disanthus Cercidifolius is a rare tree in my zone; native to China and Japan, they thrive in the Pacific northwest.  This particular tree I saw just a week ago for the first time at Landscape Supply in Taylor. Wow.  Related to witch hazel, this small growing tree has large heart-shaped leaves.  However this tree comes into its own in the fall.  Leaves turning purple, gold, orange-and finally red; Disanthus wrote the book on fall fireworks.  Thriving in uniformly moist and acid soil not unlike what makes rhododendron happy-who would not have one if they could?   

Unlike the regal Disanthus, my Norway maple is distinguished only by its age and size.  This means that the sheer volume of fall leaves that will blanket my entire yard in yellow is newsworthy. This day-before I get to scooping them up-is a glorious day.  I was lucky to get this picture before the Corgis got into the yard; they relish making a little ruckus running through these leaves. 

Magnolias have lusciously large leaves-but their fall color I would charitably describe as “tan”.  The beauty of the fall leaf drop has everything to do with the boxwood tables underneath them.  These drab fallen leaves are a kind of late season frosting on a series of shapes.  The spring drop of their yellow petals is followed by a fall drop of their dehiscing leaves.  There is a pattern, a order of events-the season changing.  The fall color on the magnolias-not anything to celebrate.  

The body of leaves that fall on the properties we maintain-we collect them all. We compost them.  Steve organizes the dispensation and decomposition of every scrap of organic matter we collect. We have at least 7 giant piles going as I speak-all of them are at different stages in the cooking process. Every leaf dropped from my giant Norway maple will be composted, and be returned to the soil.   

My Nicotiana Mutabilis is still thriving-it shrugs off the October cold.  Its giant flat leaves are as green as my evergreens; this plant has no plan to shut down anytime soon.  Each elongated leaf is still producing chlorophyll for all it is worth.  Should you be looking for a plant that starts out strong, stays strong, and finishes very strong-consider this nicotiana.

In the fall, the work is leavened with delight.     


I have substantial walls enclosing the Detroit Garden Works property; those walls were in place in 1996.  Many years ago, I planted Boston ivy on all of these walls.  Parthenocissus Tricuspidata Vetcheii.  Those walls today are uniformly and solidly and beautifully covered with the leaves of this vine.   Those giant 3 lobed leaves are turning color rapidly-every leaf is different.  Harmonic–the fall color on the Boston Ivy. In the fall, many of my thoughts revolve around the look of the leaves.

Posted on: October 22, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Design

A Green Garden


I have never had the discipline to plant my containers with green plants.  I am soft in the head about flowers, and color.  Every year I think about greening it, after which I invariably buy pink or orange or carmine flowered plants.   I have been planting containers that feature the color green for this client a long time. This years containers are making me think about green all over again.  The boxwood balls with attending topknots get overwintered in an unheated greenhouse space.  The skirt of variegated licorice is all they need.  The late afternoon sun dusting the boxwood-a beautiful moment.

The Kimberly ferns that were lanky in the spring are holding forth some 2 months after planting.  The maidenhair ferns planted underneath them are in a trailing phase-this I like.  The caladiums and pteris ferns in the wirework planters are a delicate foil for the massive ferns.

The view out from the porch is just as green.  A planting of butterburrs contained by sheet metal set 24″ deep into the soil is a big textured groundcover for a series of Bradford pears.  The densiformis yews either side of the walk are thriving.  Everywhere I look, I see green.  What a pleasure.

She has a collection of topiaries which we winter over with the boxwoods.  This silver germander, teucrium fructicans, grown on standard is a standout. It has been wintered over successfully for many years.  The trunk must be over an inch in diameter; the head better than 4 feet across.  Wintering topiaries is a nuisance, but this germander is not hardy in our zone.  A topiary like this is worth the trouble to cultivate. 

A double ball bay tree is older still.  The window box is so narrow and shallow, I would not think of planting it with anything else than heat loving drought tolerant plants. That dark green paired with all of those blue grey diminuitve plants, an interesting conversation about contrast.

A collection of pots on the terrace is dominated by an agave; the bloom spike is spectacular.  The agave is underplanted with showy oregano. I like the relationship of the giant stiff agave leaves, and the drapy stems of the oregano.  That idea is repeated with the lime striped phormium, and euphorbia.  The stone planter box was planted with 3 one gallon Chicago figs-so called, as they are root hardy as far north as Chicago.  They are happy enough to have set fruit.  

The visual success of this planting is all about the relationship of one plant to another, but the spot on watering ranks right up there.  The container has been watered sparingly, in spite of all of our heat. The long iron box-stuffed with lavender, cirrus dusty miller, white trailing verbena, and a trailing blue succulent whose name I do not know.

White New Guinea impatiens are neither rare nor remarkable, but for the size of the flowers, and their color.  This is the cleanest, freshest, brightest white in the annual kingdom.  They also have a very dressy look-a decided contrast to the lavender.  The white dahlia in the center, about to send forth another round of blooms.

The quartet of baby blue foliaged agaves just filled this old concrete container.  Each of these two elements makes the other look better.  The silver dichondra in the adjacent box is the same color, but of a much different form and habit. 

The white marguerites bloom heavily a few times over the course of the summer.  The sporadic blooms in between are fine.  The dark green ferny foliage takes well to clipping. It is a lush look, even without flowers. Variegated licorice and cirrus dusty miller are surprisingly good together.  The dusty looks so blue-the variegated licorice so lime/yellow.  Very subtle the contrast, and very satisfying.

Some of my favorite plants that are predominantly green, or green and white?  Lime irisine, phormium, white Sun Parasol mandevillea, maidenhair ferns, white trailing verbena, lavender, licorice, dichondra, basil, plectranthus of any kind, and euphorbia Diamond Frost. 

The giant growing nicotiana mutabilis on the far right is the only plant that flowers with any color to speak of.  I cannot hold those pink flowers against one of my most favorite summer plants.


I winter a number of triple ball brush cherry topiaries for this client-I sprinkle them all over the terraces.  The begonia which is the underplanting here-I have not the faintest idea of its name.  I just knew the texture, the shape of the leaf, and the plant habit would work well with this green scheme. A gorgeous green garden-I think I might have to have one.

Posted on: August 3, 2011 8 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Design, Good Design Tagged With: ,