simplifying the garden

Winter is here and my landscaping business is in its usual mid-season slumber.  While I design all year long, typically early December through mid-February I take a hiatus from garden installations for three reasons:  inclement weather, high soil saturation and low plant availability.  I think its the right thing to do for client gardens even though it means a crazier spring for me.  Scheduling issues aside, I have grown fond of winter’s lull that allows me to eat dinner with Adam every night (instead of with my computer), get into a reliable workout schedule and most of all – ponder my own garden.  This year I have a new garden to develop and my approach is already shaping up to be quite different from our last garden.   One major difference is I am not starting from scratch here.   We built our last house and the garden was carved out of a cedar and alder forest situated in a ravine.  Adam and I did most of the heavy lifting including felling trees, hauling soil, compost, gravel & rock, not to mention the masses of plants & trees that went in.  I am glad this type of work is behind us – the difference between ages 31 and 41 in your joints is nothing to sniff at.  The other factor is how I have changed.  Nearly 10 years of designing gardens under my belt, I am much more restrained in both how I approach developing a garden and how I select plants.  In the early days, I was driven by a mad plant lust and wanted to try just about anything and everything.  Things failed, but many succeeded and I learned from those failures and successes.  In my new garden, I am blessed with good structure and I plan to build on this using a limited plant palette of known performers hand selected for the garden’s precise cultural conditions.  I have also developed patience.  I used to feel that the state of my garden was a reflection of my design expertise, and as such it must always be perfect.  These days, I’m comfortable sitting back and observing the garden through the seasons before I start in on major changes even if it means areas will look less than ideal for a while.  I want to be sure I understand each choice made by the prior owners as they made thoughtful decisions.  For instance, I am fortunate that they preserved some mature gems from the original garden (house was a 1920s rebuild & expansion).  However, changes do need to be made and finally getting to my point – many of these are driven by the need to simplify care of the garden.

I enjoy pottering in the garden, but by no means do I want a garden to own me.  I also have a high standard for how the garden should look.  Marrying these two requires good design.  My mantra – the garden design works so I don’t have to.  Obviously this is an exaggeration.  Every garden requires a measure of work, but the goal is to reduce maintenance anywhere I can – particularly tasks that are repetitively tedious.  For instance weeding with no hope of prevailing – like crab grass in between path stones that were laid directly on unprepped soil.  This new garden came stocked with just about every local weed, and some in spades.  In the beds, I have mounted a relentless assault over the past 5 months through repeated deep weedings.  Luckily the soil is well amended and loose so getting the weeds out is fairly easy.  There are just so many of them including the ultra wicked crabgrass.  The next step in this war is a very thick layer of compost that will go on the beds in early March.  I will probably throw in an organic pre-emergent like corn meal.  While it will take dedication over several years to control weeds in the beds, I can already see results.  On the other hand, the stone path is hopeless.  No matter how much I weed, I will never get all the little crabgrass root pieces out from underneath the stones without taking the path apart.  At that point, the best choice would be to replace it with something lower maintenance like clean gravel that can be lined with weedcloth – which is the plan for spring.    This change will allow me to focus on things that I can improve instead of a battle I’ll never win.

There are other examples of areas that need modification to reduce maintenance.  Salvaged concrete was used for a patio in the interior courtyard (see below).  I like the idea, the concrete is from a driveway that was removed during the house rebuild.  The downside: pea gravel in between the slabs migrates all over the place and weeds & plants have gone bananas in these joints…so another constant maintenance issue.  If I loved the design, I’d find a way to make it work (like sending Adam out with the flamer)…but I don’t.  The patio stops abruptly just past the french doors and feels out of scale with the space.  Its too small to hold furniture.  The grade sits too high, only 1/2″ below the siding, inviting all manner of pests into the structure.   The broken concrete with weeds growing in between does kind of scream abandoned.  In another area, I’d be fine with this – I love a deconstructed wild feeling in the right place.  However in an interior courtyard that should function like another room in the house (and in this house – tie the old and new wings together), it needs a different feel.  I want the space to be functional, echo the interior design and I’d like to disguise the narrowness of the space with a more uniform floor & uneven patio edge.  I’d also like to use the concrete pieces.   With that in mind, the planned redesign includes using the concrete pieces as a border around a larger patio that has a curved edge.  The new patio floor will be a 3/8″ clean crushed gravel in a soft peach hue.  The largest pieces of concrete will be set as landings in the gravel at the two sets of french doors and as stepping stones through a bed from the patio to a nearby path.    To soften the hardscape, Nassella tenuissima and annual succulents such as echeveria will be planted directly in the patio (cutting small openings in the weedcloth) with the gravel serving as a mulch.  Existing plantings in the adjacent beds will be replaced with plants that perform year round since the courtyard is viewed from nearly every room in the house.  We already have Italian piazza string lights to hang above the area and are planning a large farm table as the center piece.  The space needs enclosure on one end, and we want to experiment with tall panels of Cor-ten steel that will age to a rich rust color.  While this design is more complicated than the existing treatment, it will be less work since a much larger area will be covered in low maintenance permeable hardscape that will be lined with weedcloth.  A few before shots of the courtyard and one hastily thrown together mock up of what it may look like…(table courtesy of West Elm).

salvaged concrete slabs

note the crispy Acer…already changing color in August…too hot for it in this spot…

mock up

These are the plans for the future – much work has already been done to simplify plant care.   We arrived on the heels of summer, so initial work in the garden was plant removal.  A few problem plants were dealt with immediately like local thugs Hypericum and Euphorbia ‘Fen’s Ruby’.   Water seeking and thus potentially invasive plants were removed from the base of the Glendon septic mounds.  An Acer Plamatum ‘Bloodgood’ planted about 1′ from the house was removed before it became a problem and given away as there is no spot for a tree of this size on the property. As soon as the weather cooled and rains returned, plants were shuffled around.   First up, dealing with right plant, wrong place.  A delicate Acer palmatum dissectum that burned in the August sun and required constant hand watering was removed from the center of the hot courtyard and placed on the northside of the house where its dark foliage will contrast against the light siding.  An unhappy floppy mass of Nassella tenuissima was pulled out of a shady spot and placed in the sun.  A few things out of scale here and there were removed or shuffled, and some things were regrouped in masses.  Drainage issues were addressed and my usual river rock border along the house was started.  The Glendon mound septic system (if you are not familiar – looks like burial mounds) is fortunately tucked in the back garden.  To protect the sandy mounds against erosion and soften their unnatural forms, masses of drought tolerant grasses and perennials adapted to sandy soils such as Nassella tenuissima, Nepeta, Bouteloua gracilis, Sesleria, Achillea, Sedum and Fragaria (beach strawberry) were massed on & around the mounds to create a “controlled” meadow (e.g. a meadow look without the using the weedy seed packets).   This area will require constant weeding as we cannot use compost on the mounds and they have been infiltrated with several weeds including horsetail.

This got really long but hopefully not too boring!  More to come as we keep moving forward…

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new beginings

Its been ages since I last posted and much has changed!

We sold our beloved home and garden and embarked on a new adventure a few miles away in a spot that gets the most sun you could possibly get on Bainbridge Island.  After seven years in the forest, we decided it was time to come back out into the open.  If you call Seattle home, you know that light is key to living in the rain city. We found that we could not be tucked away in the towering conifers any longer.  Leaving a home we co-designed and built was hard – not to mention the garden we painstakingly developed from scratch.  Everything was in its place, and everything had a place.  The garden had reached a peak where the plants were established, the soil rich & weed free and little maintenance was required in the growing season.  The new garden has many fabulous things going for it, but it also needs a lot of plant replacement and rearranging, lawn removal, some structural & hardscape changes, complete irrigation and persistent & regular weeding…just give me a few years.  I’ll post some “before” pictures soon and chronicle my battles with the crabgrass run wild (no piece left behind).

Thus far, we’ve been hitting the weeds hard and holding back on the blanket overhead irrigation (which does little good for the plants anyway) to limit weed growth.  A tough approach given the record 80 day dry stretch we just had and the fact that there is no below ground irrigation in the garden (and it gets blasting sun 8:30am until sunset).   Some plants have done surprisingly well, others are crispy critters (sorry lil’ Miss Kim).  On my side: the water table is high, things are fairly established and I did provide targeted hand watering for the plants I knew were staying.  Even so, it was mighty tough to keep up on the watering without any help from Mother Nature.  The plants that I knew I would not keep, I did not water.  At all.  Roll call of who is left:  Euphorbia (no surprise), Lavender (suffered some), Miscanthus (surprisingly resilient), Rosa rugosa (tough as  nails), Rubus (can’t kill this stuff even if you want to), Spirea (cruising along), Heuchera (happy campers). Lilac: toast. Burned toast that is.   Chugging along gloriously with or with out water and seeded in ever nook and cranny is Eschscholzia californica, which I do love, though I’m guessing may test my patience moving forward.  I’m sure my new seaside garden adventure will fuel many a post as I tackle each area.  Up first: Glendon mounds overrun with horsetail and  the ever invasive Lysimachia clethroides AKA Gooseneck loosestrife.  Does it get any better than this?

During this time, I’ve been designing new gardens on Bainbridge, Mercer Island and in West Seattle.  I also found time to visit the garden I designed in Los Angeles which was an experiment for me with plants I don’t normally get to work with like echeveria, aeonium and olea.  A dream palette.  It also happens to be my parents’ garden and the design efforts were collaborative.  Everything is filling in beautifully…a few new photos below.  In the shots, you see a buff colored grass repeated over and over – High Country’s introduction Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition.’  A sterile replacement for the soft and fluffy designer darling Nassella tenuissima which is becoming invasive in CA.  The new blonde beauty is starting to make the rounds in the nurseries up here.  I’ve just planted a bunch in my new garden to see how it takes our gloomy springs so I will report on its progress.  My guess is it will need a good jump start of heat to get going, but we shall see.  At my house, I’ve placed it in full southwestern exposure with ample surrounding hardscape to reflect heat….

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8 months on…

Designing & installing a garden is a birth of sorts.  I just returned from Los Angeles and wrapping up phase 3 of my parents’ gardens.  This time we tackled the final frontier:  the beds on either side of the driveway and a small side courtyard.  Near the driveway, we wanted a drought tolerant, easy-care and minimalist plant palette that still maintained a natural feel.  We first set boulders and sited a large specimen fruitless olive (Olea europaea ‘Fruitless’). Powder blue agave (Agave ovatifolia ‘Frosty Blue’) provide a repeated sculptural form.  The agave are interplanted with soft masses of the work horse ornamental grass for the coastal west – Sesleria autumnalis.  Accents of the restio Chondropetalum elephantinum provide vertical interest and movement.  A few nearly black Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’ and soft yellow Yucca ‘Bright Star’ spice up the color while CA native Verbena lilacina ‘De La Mina’ creates a natural looking backdrop with a long bloom season.  Masses of Senecio mandraliscae edge the drive.  All plants are drought tolerant in this maritime climate.  Looks a bit anemic in the below photo – but those plants need space!  As things fill in, ground covers can be added to take up the slack, though this planting will be quite dense over time.

Now on to the more mature stuff.  I was very pleased to see the completed gardens (phase 1 & 2) filling in and looking lovely.  See my prior entry for more on the design and installation of these gardens – Keeping it in the Family.  The meadow garden heads into year 3 this summer while the entrance courtyard is at about 8 months.  Still plenty o’ room for things to stretch their legs, which is important if you don’t want to be making heartbreaking decisions a few years down the road (first year it sleeps, second year it creeps, third year it leaps).  If any of these plants look enticing – keep in mind that much of this would not survive a frost.  Their typical winter lows do not dip much below 40 as they are near the ocean (Sunset Zone 24).

Just a few photos to share now – can’t wait to see it grow up!

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south coast botanic garden

Just back from Los Angeles and wrapping up the third phase in my parents’ gardens.  More on that to come.  While there, we stopped by the South Coast Botanic Garden  in between nursery runs.  I’ve been there several times – it is a wonderful refuge on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.  Particularly the succulent and cactus collection, which boasts some pretty amazing specimen.  The desert landscape feels otherworldly to me – perhaps I just have too much water on the brain from living here.  The plants beg to be touched – though you have to watch out for the teeth and spines. Agave spines can pierce deep before you know you’ve been hit.  Weeding around them is good fun.

Everything was set against an impossibly blue sky…

Mom showing scale on this bad boy...its like a deep sea monster. Forget about a security system. Put this thing in the front garden and no one will come near your house.

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keeping it in the family

My parents live in a natural beauty oasis tucked in the urban metropolis of Los Angeles.  Located on the coast and blessed with ample open space, Palos Verdes offers rolling hills, acres of trails and rugged cliffs.  Despite the cooler temperatures and maritime fog, it is arid like the rest of Southern California.  The native landscape is predominantly coastal scrub, a beautiful tapestry of soft greens, yellows and browns.  In spring the hills green up for a bit, then turn gold.  I always appreciate seeing the dry, sunny hills after winter in Seattle.

Given the climate, I’m frequently surprised by the landscaping.  We read about political battles for water rights in the agricultural Central Valley, yet many LA locals still seem to be in denial about their arid climate.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen and read about several inspiring native and dry gardens there.  Yet, expansive emerald green lawns and thirsty plants still frame many of the houses.  When my mom decided to buck this trend and become more drought tolerant, I was more than happy to sign on to the project.

First – a little background on my parents and their garden.  The property is 3/4 of an acre and borders a canyon of protected open space.  It sits high up above the Pacific with an expansive view of the Santa Monica Bay, Malibu and West Los Angeles.  My parents are English, so it follows that my mom has been a life long gardener.  Not a sit around, drink tea and talk about roses gardener, but a dirt under the nails spend all afternoon weeding gardener like me.  When my family moved from Seattle to Palos Verdes in the early 80s, our new garden pretty much consisted of “meat ball” shrubs and lawn.  My mom systematically removed most of the grass and offending shrubs over time – in small enough pieces that it was gone before my dad realized there was a campaign against it.   The lawn was replaced with an English garden.  Billowy perennials, roses and arbors created a small replica of the home she left many years ago.  The CA heat proved much kinder to the roses than Seattle’s soggy springs.  While they were thirsty and high maintenance (and sometimes downright mean), roses were the backbone of the garden and my mom adored them.

The change began in the back garden.  At this point, none of us knew how far it would go.  It all started with my mom’s trip to visit me and attend the NW Flower and Garden Show in February 2010.  After hearing John Greenlee speak about the evils of lawn, my mom headed home with a mission to tear out the last bit of lawn and create a drought tolerant, bird and pollinator friendly garden on the canyon side of her property.  I volunteered to design it.  In place of the lawn, I designed a stone and decomposed granite path that winds around the space and offers areas to pause.  The center island bed became an ebullient naturalistic planting.  My mom finished the surrounding beds using many of the same plants and a few new goodies like native Coyote Brush - Baccharis pilulari and the native Verbena lilacina ‘De la Mina’ at the canyon edge.  For more details, see the posts “dry garden” and “dry garden part deux”.

Just as we finished planting this area, there was talk of completely redoing the front pool gardens where most of the roses resided.  My parents were looking at significant hardscape work – removing the concrete and replacing it with stone.  It was time, the aging concrete had its issues and the pool was due for a resurfacing.  Despite this, I was skeptical – it seemed like a huge upheaval.  I was even more skeptical that my mom would be able to part with the roses.  I was wrong.  Over the winter, the plans solidified and they decided to go for it.  My mom pulled out nearly 30 roses before they had a chance to bloom – so she would not change her mind once she saw the flowers.  Despite protests from her friends, she forged ahead and stuck to her guns.  The best roses were gifted to friends and drought tolerant plants were salvaged.  Only two plants remained in place.  A loropetalum that we arborized and a camellia original to the garden when we moved there nearly 30 years ago.  In the 11th hour before planting, my dad confessed an attachment to it so it stayed.   Once the garden was cleared, I put together some mock ups.   I flew down and we interviewed stone masons.  While there, I sprayed out the hardscape lines adding new connecting paths and a little extra room to the pool deck.  My parents wanted to keep the footprint pretty much the same, so no radical changes to the layout occurred.  In the end, they were able to mortar the stone over the top of the concrete, which kept the concrete waste out of the landfill.  Seven weeks of dusty work later they had gorgeous stone floors around a salt water pool with a Pebblecrete finish.

Then came the plants.  The timing was perfect as I was just slowing down from my busiest season ever.  I relied solely on photographs, a site plan and Photoshop to develop my planting plan.  The planting palette was chosen to echo the other garden with the difference being more structure.  The back garden was designed to be naturalistic. Since the pool gardens frame the entrance, I wanted to show a bit more restraint in this area.  All plants were chosen for drought tolerance in the site’s maritime climate (Sunset Zone 24).  Knowing more about how Nassella tenuissima (Mexican feather grass) is naturalizing in California’s wild areas, I opted instead for the sterile Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition’ for soft movement.  I’ve never used this grass so I’m curious to see it mature (thank you Sunset for featuring this grass as an alternate to Mexican feather grass in a blog post).  The color palette echoed the back gardens with hues of chocolate, apricot, wine, silver blue and deep violet.  As always, foliage color, form and texture were favored over flower color.

We discussed irrigation in depth and they agreed to try Netafim drip irrigation.   While the goal would eventually be minimal supplemental water, the plants needed support to become established.  I was thrilled as I knew drip would use much less water and be a better choice for the drought tolerant plants than sprinklers. The soil was prepped by first loosening the compaction that occurred during the hardscape construction.  I then added an ample base of sandy loam and a top dressing of compost after planting. We needed a good drainage layer above the native black clay to keep the drought tolerant plants happy during the brief, but sometimes heavy, rainy season.  Irrigation lines were buried under a thin layer of the sandy loam before mulching to improve moisture retention.

We made a road trip out to Asian Ceramics in Duarte (it was very hot!) and found some gorgeous Vietnamese rustic pots for the final touch.

Below are detail shots and a few before and after photos.  The before shots were taken in December and after my mom knew the garden was going to be renovated…so not a depiction at its prime.  In the afters, the plants are young and I leave ample space for growth, thus the bare ground.  Over time, the plantings are designed to soften the hardscape edges and will, of course, fill in as layered heights.  In the next six months,  I will head back down to finish a few smaller areas and will take more photos at that time.

Detail shots:

Before and after from the same angles.  In the last after, note the house exterior is still in progress with repainting, replacement of front door and exterior lighting.

During all this, we had an ongoing discussion about house color.   A few years ago, I encouraged my mom to be thinking of using softer, earthy colors instead of the standard white that so many of the Spanish style homes down there have.  For one thing, my parents have a solid mid-century ranch.  While it does have red tile roof for fire protection, the rest of the house is decidedly un-Spanish.  White can be glaring under the strong Southern California sun and the color does nothing for the plants it backs.  The house needed to echo the stone’s warmth and provide a backdrop to show off the foliage.  After much deliberation over the phone (each with a Benjamin Moore deck in hand), samples were tested and we arrived at a combination of mellow tones in a muted gold (house), nutmeg (cabana accent wall) and mocha (trim & fascia). Benjamin Moore colors: fairway oaks, autumn leaf and fallen timber.  Screen color is way different than paint, but below are Bennie Moore’s online swatches:

Initially, the fence at the property line was painted the gold too.  As soon  as I saw it, I knew it was wrong.  It reflected too much light and made the space seem smaller.  My dad painted over it with the mocha and the change was fabulous.  The fence suddenly receded, making the space feel more expansive.  The delicate grasses and powder blue foliage came to life.  It is amazing how background color affects a garden and it is an important consideration in design.  I only got to see half of the house painted – but what a difference color makes!

showing the two colors on the fence...

late afternoon sun makes the house color glow...

mocha warmth quietly setting off the plants

house partially painted

The final touch was the furniture.  We ran out of time to shop during my last visit – so I canvassed the online retailers.  We selected Restoration Hardware’s Catalina deep lounge chairs for the cabana and arm chairs for around the outdoor fire with cushions in Grass.  We opted to not go “matchy-matchy” on all the furniture, and my mom is going to be on the lookout for the right coffee table.  Existing wrought iron lounge chairs will be powder coated the same dark bronze as the new furniture and there are new cushions to match on order.  I think these chairs made the trip from Seattle 30 years ago and definitely earned a spot in the new garden.

Restoration Hardware's Catalina lounge chair, photo courtesy RH

We had so much fun working together on this project – I am really thankful that I was able to create this space with my parents.  I was limited to my off season due to a full schedule of garden installs here, and completed the work between summer 2010, winter 2010 and summer 2011.  Since I was designing remotely, my parents identified contractors and shouldered nearly all of the install oversight, particularly for the hardscape.   In addition to the general design & plant palette, I sprayed the lines, rounded up the plants, did plant layout and was present for planting.  A true family effort.

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