Waiting…

The 2012 snow storm (or as billed by the local news as the “storm of the decade”) snuck up on me. Then delighted me. All I could do was walk- my truck is completely worthless in the snow- and watch the flakes keep coming and coming  down. Loved that for a couple of days.

Now I sit by the fire and watch the rain keep coming and coming down.

And I wait for spring.

This has felt like the winter of darker, dark and grayer, gray and since the holidays have now passed, I am getting a tad impatient with forecasts in the low 40′s and upper 30′s. I would have thought the fidgeting of my youth would have mellowed. Not so…

I am going through seed catalogues and filling out order forms for waaaaay more seeds than my raised beds can handle. And going through old stacks of Fine Gardening and Garden Design and Horticulture and fantasizing about how perfect and well-tended I will keep my garden this year. Such daydreams can’t be harmful and fill my time while I wait.

The Richest of Wine and Chocolate

We have woken to the first serious frost of the season-crystallized fallen leaves and a coating on the lawn and porch. Pretty simply breath-taking. After the one of finest Fall color seasons I can recall (though there is some chance I say this every year), I am mentally switching gears to fires in the fireplace and pulling annuals that looked so festive during the last months and seem so gaudy and worn in the crisp air.

Since I was too lazy this morning to pull out my camera and instead just chose to take a walk along the shore and watch the mist creep along the water’s surface, I have no photos to share. But I did manage to download some photos taken back in October of some delicious reds and wines and chocolates that are anchoring many of the gardens I plant.

In a fashion cycle in which charteuses and limes, silvers and “aurea anything” sell before any of the standard-bearer plants, it is a challenge to warm those bright tones down and give the garden a richness that the aurea cultivars can easily drain from view. Some of the old fashion rich emeralds, as simple as boxwoods, privets or Choisya ternata, can define and set off the the Spiraea thunbergii ‘Ogon’ or Acorus gramineus ‘Ogon’. But nothing does it so gorgeously as the burgundies, the chocolates, the wines, the blacks. Cotinus coggygria ‘Velvet Cloak’ with Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’

 

Heuchera ‘Palace Purple’ with Helianthemum ‘Wisely Primrose’

Weigela ‘Wine and Roses’ paired with Cedrus ‘Snow Sprite’

Acer palmatum ‘Emperor I’ with Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ and Persicaria ‘Painter’s Palette’

Loropetalum chinensis ‘Plum Delight’ (tender) with Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ and Lavandula ‘Hidcote’

Spiraea bumalda ‘Goldflame’ with Heuchera variety

Dahlia ‘Yellow Hammer’ with Agapanthus ‘Storm Cloud’ and Lavandula intermedia ‘Hidcote’

Hecuhera ‘Obsidian’ with Helleborus ‘Ivory Prince’

Even lettuce in the garden.

Coming Back

I have not written in months. Or taken photos of gardens. Or looked around me much. I’ve recently lost my sister, my only sister, to a  10 month battle with brain cancer. I was tight by her side these last months as she faded away with this disease. Today is one of those days when I am close to ashamed by my inability to stem my grief. I know, I know- that’s wrong-headed. But somehow at this mature stage of life, I believe I am to think of this passage as the normal journey of life, be accepting and at peace with it all. Just not there yet and feel such a void in her absence.

But I sat on my porch this afternoon, reading and watching the light as the dark clouds rolled in for the expected rain coming our way. And I know I sit in a place of beauty and peace and the air is almost palpable with the sound of the bees in the Lavender ‘Grosso’ and Hebe ‘Blue Mist’ and the hummingbirds swooping through the Phygelius and the tide making its way to shore. I picked up an old camera for a moment.

I can’t capture the heady perfume of my Cassablanca Lillies or Jasmine. My old camera pales the rich tones of Agapanthus ‘Storm Cloud’ or misses the rhythmic curved beds filled with charteuses of Leycestria ‘Golden Lanterns’, Acer shirwasanum ‘Aureum’ and the chocolate tones of Sambucus. But you should be here. This place has the ability to heal even me.

Eternal Hope

Ahhhh, spring….. well, not so much here in the Pacific Northwest. I have not one friend who is not whining about our gray weather this year. Endless drizzle (and hail yesterday), all the while it is warm in California, unseasonably hot on the east coast, paradise conditions pretty much everywhere else.

But lest I only look  up at the gray skies and still feel chilled to the bone in my fleece, the plant world around me is chirping along as though it is delighted with the weather and right on schedule. I just need to stop grousing long enough to notice.

In the moments after…

Where to begin…this is so symptomatic of what I have been like this past month. Scattershot… Can’t even figure out where to begin my paragraph.

I have just finished the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. Collaborating with 4 other designers ( go to http://d4collective.wordpress.com to see the evolution of the design these past 9 months)  we created the display garden for the show owners. I have lived, slept, obsessed, powered through and identified  plant names thousands of times in the past 2 weeks. We have see-sawed from high drama to  zen-like mood swings through it all. I have gone to bed at 2 a.m. and been back on the floor at 7 a.m. I have lived on Advil and heat packs and gotten a work-out beyond sense. I may be getting too old for this.

But in the end, we created a magical place- away from the noise of a huge garden show in the center of a bustling convention center and with roughly 70,000 people milling about. A white garden, a twilight garden with pools of water and handblown glass orbs; wrapped with sheer panels of poetry and clouds- a refuge spun from theater and thousands of plants and artists so generous with their time and volunteers that are crawling around from exhaustion too. From a bare concrete floor

to the Garden in Verse.

So now I have time to look out my window, cook a real dinner, see my husband, talk to my family and not bolt out of bed to work on the show. I am ready to be in real gardens and try out my new camera and plant seeds in my vegetable garden…so, so ready.

 

 

 

Slipping through the winter

I was expecting La Nina. Lovely that it passed us by and so sorry that record cold  has crushed much of the rest of the country. I was planting new gardens up until days before Christmas- a first for me. So my fingers were triple crossed that we wouldn’t pay for that decision. But in spite of one frigid dip for a few days in early winter, we’ve slipped through winter unscathed. The past few days of true sun and blue skies reminds us all that we’re just over a month til spring officially arrives.

I’m itching to get going on some new projects- a little restless to be out in the gardens and taking photos. I’ve been leafing through some older files as I do some winter housecleaning and decided to post a few before and afters- including some from this winter’s projects. I’m in the landscape business partly because I love the instant gratification of turning a blank slate or a tangled mess into a sanctuary that makes you smile. I use to practice criminal law. None of my clients were ever excited to see me- actually really hated having to see me. It’s so delightful to have clients happy you are around and smiling when your job is done. Just a few older samples that still make me smile….

.A new deck, a new patio, a yard to enjoy.

A new home and garden. I’ll post updates this spring- one of my favorites.

No way but up here. A construction company’s office- now a bird and chicken sanctuary for the employees to relax in.

A bleak, dark condo entry that is now rich with variegated plantings and a welcoming home.

 

I recognize that standing in a freshly planted garden looks quite different than posting pictures of it. In the space, you have nurtured the soil back to life and the brown earth smells and looks rich, the plants are nursery tended with perfect leaves and blooms. There is an incomparable sense of self satisfaction that you have created a space of beauty. I always take before and after pictures of my gardens, and I’m always initially disappointed with the after pics that what felt so ordered and lovely while I was clicking away, can translate to looking pretty tiny and incomplete in the photos.

So I risk that here but we will return to these gardens in a few months and next couple of years and watch the magic of  a new garden fill in to its full potential

.

This entry is tiny for quite a tall house on the lot. That “grass” you see there is actually a weed patch. The client wanted to have some privacy from the sidewalk that is just feet away- and an enclosure that could match the scale of the house. Lavender ‘Fred Boutin’, Magnolia ‘Little Gem’, Osamnthus ‘Goshiki’ and Anemanthele lessoniana will fill in through the summer.

This backyard was dark and sloped. We filled in the area so the family could have a place to kick around a soccer ball, thinned the canopy to let in light, built a patio.

The front yard takes all the heat and was overgrown with a unruly hedge and parched lawn. We created some privacy screening, built planters and a steel retaining wall for the steep slope by the drive, replaced the lawn and brought the garden up to the caliber of the newly remodeled home. The home and garden will be featured in the spring issue of Seattle Home & Styles.

Steel planter that rust colors with age; wooden planter that doubles for seating with its wide top cap. These small details can make the difference.

Stay tuned for summer photos as the gardens fill in.

Beauty in All Things

I find I am in search of a sensibility of beauty in all matter of things these days-

a meal that touches all your senses (I miss Gourmet magazine and now turn to Orangette and Smitten Kitchen for inspiration),

the stylish inventiveness of the well-dressed (I recently discovered the Sartorialist and JAK & JIL blogs; 

we in the Pacific Northwest have a lot to learn),

writing that causes me to take in a quick, second breath (always Mary Oliver and so many, many more ).

The art of a beautiful landscape….my grandfather’s farm in Tennessee, Reflection Riding. This was my playground growing up. At that the time all I was interested in was my pony, fishing, tractor rides, picnic suppers and avoiding rattlesnakes. I assumed that it was some inalienable right to be plopped into the midst of such incredible beauty and have the full run of the place. I could re-trace every inch of those 300+ acres blindfolded to this day. The essence of the elegance in the mountains of Tennessee. 

An although I’m not exactly a lean modernist type, I am finding such inspiration in many of the elegant compositions of gardens by renowned architects and designers- Andrea Cochran; The High Line in NY City; Maya Lin,

Lurie Garden by GUSTAFSON GUTHRIE NICHOL.

These designs are not plant-centric but equally about the innovative use of materials. The excellence in them is a recognition that creating a beautiful landscape is far from a static art form- completed for posterity as a painting or book might be. They are designed to age and morph with a sense of beauty at every stage.

This is an exciting time in our design field- so many bright creative people drawn to it- working with issues of ecology and urban crowding and earth stewardships. I am a tiny cog in this giant wheel but love that I am still struck by the elegance that comes from beautiful composition and attention to detail. And hopefully still absorbing this beauty into my own design work.