Garden Design - A Dog's Eye View :: Fine Gardening, June 15, 2010

Guess what? Dogs aren't actually colorblind; they just have a lot less chromatic sensitivity than humans. That's why I don't let Biff the Wonder Spaniel pick my outfits. On the other hand, he might have a leg up on me (dog pun) when it comes to designing gardens.

When I start a new design, I picture the plants the same way Biff probably sees them. I imagine they will never bloom—that I'll have to rely on something other than floral color for interest. I select and combine plants using all their other visual qualities—the silhouette of the plant, its foliage shape, leaf size, density and surface texture, for example. The flowers ice the cake.

So I got to thinking. What if Biff took after his old man and created a garden blog for dogs? How would he describe the two most fundamental design principles that dogs and their bipedal slaves should master?

Cool images, thought-provoking words follow...

I'm Sick of These Plants! :: Edhat, August 14, 2010

Landscape designers can get a little full of themselves, me included. We know so many more plants than you do and can recite polysyllabic botanical names like Parthenocissus tricuspidata without coming up for air.

Discovering a cool, new Heuchera with crinkled, copper-colored leaves and chartreuse polka dots is like a crack head's deep toke smacking the brain with a dopamine two-by-four. Then comes the roller coaster ride - cosmic sensations of euphoria and empowerment, then the inevitable crushing crash. The story endlessly repeats as we find ourselves down some sketchy alley, peering over the nursery wall, scouting our next fix.

The trouble is, some of the shiny new plants designers get all throbby about haven't been around long enough to reliably know what happens ten years down the line.

Sometimes it's safer to work with the plants we see every day. There's a reason they're so damn ubiquitous. They're everywhere because they'll grow anywhere, whether you're a Master Gardener or a nursery newbie.

Sure, I would love to design every project as an artistic and botanical adventure, but that's not realistic. For many clients, it is preferable to create a garden filled with common, but thriving plants that require minimal resources, than to create a short-lived masterpiece of exotica that demands constant life-support.

I've got more to say here...

Masses of Grasses :: Edhat August 1, 2010

Gimme grasses. Gimme blades of green, gold, silver, striped, speckled, ghostly gray, purple. Grasses that fury in the wind and nod in the rain. Enchanted grasses that capture first and last light of day. Grasses of every size: ground cover types to walk on, giants to get lost in.

Grasses fit into every style of garden from Tarzan-meets-Gilligan's-Island-tropical to Muffin-Mouse-cottage.

And the flowers! No, not like your great granny's geraniums, all lipstick red and showy. I'm talking about delicate, smoky puffs of soft purple, or stiff, quaking stalks that sound like a prairie rattler.

Use them in big drifts or pop just one into a perennial bed for an explosion of contrast. Group different types of grasses together to create tapestries of subtle color shifts, or mash them up for high-contrast impact.

Get the idea? You need some ornamental grasses in your garden. If you find that when you're done reading this article, your pulse has quickened (or you've overflowed your drool cup) get these books (preferably at a local independently owned book store): Grasses-Versatile Partners for Uncommon Garden Design by Nancy J Ondra (Storey Books), and The Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses, by John Greenlee (Rodale Press).

There's more to read...

By The Sea :: Edhat.com July 18, 2010

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see Rhynchelytrum nerviglume ‘Pink Crystals’ nodding in the breeze, I wonder if there’s a simple and sensitive procedure for enzymatic assays in single cells that can be applied to the measurement of beta-glucuronidase in single parenchymal cells of liver.

That’s because Linda Wudl hung up her career in biotechnology and, along with Fred, her organic chemist husband (I don’t mean her husband is organic, though I’m sure he is—I mean he is a chemist who works with optical and electro optical properties of processable conjugated polymers [but you probably would have figured that out for yourself], so I’ll finish off this sentence that’s already gone on WAAAY too long and has probably tempted you to click over to Ed’s story about that pinstriped, double breasted albino puffin that was spotted in a palo verde tree near El Pollo Loco last night…But I digress), founded Seaside Gardens, a one-of-a-kind nursery in Carpinteria, CA.

Read the rest...

Who's Afraid Of A Little Orange?

It happens a lot. When I get to the place in the interview where I ask new design clients about their favorite colors, I help out by first explaining the difference between cool and warm colors, just to get a read on their preferences. Donning my professor's ascot and corduroy sport coat (with leather elbow patches), it unfolds something like this…

"Green, blue and violet are cool colors: They soothe and bring calm to the garden. In color theory terms, cool hues "recede", blending into the background and making no demands on our attention."

I pause, receiving a nod of comprehension from the client, then reload and start the second volley…

"On the other side of the color wheel are the warm colors: red, yellow and orange. They tend to be more vivid and add excitement to…"

I realize that she didn't hear a word after I mentioned The Color That Shall Not Be Spoken.

"No orange," she snaps, visibly shaken, but mustering a semblance of outward calm.

You'd think I'd said, "And over in that corner we'll put the zombie coop and feed them children and puppies from the neighborhood."

"No orange…please!"

I've got plenty more to say...

Art City Studio : : Hidden Art Trove in Ventura

Art City Studio (197 Dubbers St. Ventura, CA) is a fantasyland of stone-shafts of raw, rough, black-scarred basalt; twenty-foot towers of stacked travertine, internally lit, coming to life after dark.

For years, I've been hearing tales of Art City from landscape designers raving about the custom fountains their sculptors conjure up. Since I'm not only having my Edhat turf expanded 250%, but also writing for Conejo Valley-based 805 Living magazine, I decided to sniff around for a story.

This art lover's wonderland occupies a sizeable lot surrounded by unapologetic industrial buildings, stacks of shipping containers, and car mechanics. But you instantly know you're somewhere special. Along the sidewalk, rough-hewn columns of Kansas limestone, or "post rock", signal something unexpected in this invisible neighborhood.

Now it get interesting, so click...

Garden Like A Vulcan : : Let Logic Guide You

After I've been declared Supreme Ruler of the Universe, I'm making Star Trek's Mr. Spock my Magistrate of Sustainable Gardening. He'll be in charge of a new mega-bureaucracy with far-reaching powers to bring clear, logical thinking to landscape maintenance, because so much of the work people do in gardens makes no sense.

Take raking, for example.

CRS (Compulsive Raking Syndrome)

I don't understand what's so bad about seeing fallen foliage under plants. With all the zero tolerance raking going on you'd think someone had dumped radioactive, Ebola-infested asbestos everywhere. As my buddy Owen Dell says, "Why do you think they call them leaves? You're supposed to leave them there."

Week after week you or your gardener are out there scraping away with one of those harmless looking flex rakes, rounding up every leaf that had the temerity to fall in your garden, and then having the pile hauled away.

That's quite silly, really. Not only are leaves a multifaceted resource for the garden, but excessive raking will eventually compact the soil's surface into an impenetrable, crispy, lifeless crust.

Lots more to read here...