Camellias At Dusk In A Chinese Garden

If it isn't already on your radar for the trip you will inevitably take to my fair city, Portland, OR. (enough about theirs), do not choose between this and fill-in-the-blank: Powell's, Multnomah Falls, Forest Park, your sister-in-law's. The name of the game here in any weather is the Classical Chinese Garden.

The light was fading, the rain was falling and the leaves played like fish beneath one of the many pavillions that provide respite in the garden. Not a great many maples were still holding their leaves on this 1st day of December, but this little poser kindly obliged. Need sound? Give a listen to this story.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I am no indiscriminate city booster. And never mind that my voice is on the audio tour (snore). I have watched this garden grow and mature since its opening in 2000 and I now consider a good many of its plants my personal friends. As such, I can think of no other garden open to the public where it's absolutely always a good time to visit (OK, so skip it when it's crowded). Of course there are richer moments than others -- particularly when fragrances float on the air -- but the garden is simply too complex to reveal itself in any single day.

The last fruit on a persimmon tree as shown off by a shower of weeping willow and the peaked roofs that take wing throughout the garden. I like to think of them as directionals to more celestial planes.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I fear you're going to want to know the name of the persimmon tree above. The number of Diospyros species is frightening so as of this writing I can't say for sure, except that because it's in the Chinese garden, it ain't going to be one of our native trees.

It was probably 4:15pm when I stopped by to grab a few pictures, almost too late for natural light but high time for a tripod. Alas, none to be had. This low-growing camellia's blossoms were spread out in such a way that its flowers seemed to float along the ground.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

9:51 AM ET | 12- 2-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Welcome To Candyland: Portland's Platt Garden

Maples, rhododendron, stewartia and fall crocus; tree bark backlit by warm, benevolent light. When last we visited the Platt Garden, my favorite of the plant meccas in this gardenesque town, even its often modest vine maple was feeling very fall.

Go ahead, pinch yourself. It won't change a thing. Life in this landscape is merrily but a dream.

In this ever-changing corner of the garden, the centerpiece is the four-season Stewartia, a tree with great bark, late spring flowers, and delicious foliage. The purple flowers in the forefront are from the so-called obedient plant Physostegia virginiana a long-blooming East Coast native, and a bit behind and to the right are the naked red legs of a shrubby dogwood.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Among the genera championed by the late Jane Platt -- a tradition continued by the very present David Platt -- is the misunderstood rhododendron, a plant that is so much more than the average American landscape would lead you to believe. Admittedly, we're able to grow a huge variety of the shrubs in the PNW that might not thrive elsewhere, but my guess is there are still quite a number of the straight species rhodies worth a shot. (Straight species refers to plants as they appear in the wild, before they've been hybridized and "improved".)

What all the Platt gardeners know -- there are three generations plus a Buddha-like one year old -- is that leaves can be just as astonishing as flowers. And while the garden does have ample rhodie flowers each spring, the best rhododendron foliage holds its ornamental own year-round.

These silvery blue leaves are covered in what's known in rhodie language as "indumentum", a soft and thin layer that can be rubbed off (not a suggestion, just a description of its texture). This particular species is R. pachysanthum (I think; I'm awaiting confirmation), a showy sophisticated shrub which has matured to a 3.5' x 3.5' size.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Many of us gardeners are collectors; I've got a couple of nice species rhodies myself. But the genius of the Platt Garden is the placement of its specimens with an eye towards the combination of texture, color and size.

Sounds like a simple formula but if you're a gardener you know how easy it is to get it not quite right (I don't believe any attempt in your own garden is wrong). If you're like me, you just let the plants do the talking and hope the conversation's interesting but in a garden this large you're talking cacophony if the leafy choir isn't in synch.

In this tapestry, the explosion of stewartia color (there are several in the garden) is now off to the left; the rich purple and plums of a mophead hydrangea dominate the bottom right. This is one small corner of the rock garden (see rock) which is loaded with miniature treasures in spring and lots of year-round evergreen muscle.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Speaking of tapestries, you don't need a whole lot of material to create one. Not if you know how to play with plants.

Here's the tableau up by the front of the house, featuring a spectacular weeping cedar (Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca Pendula' ) spilling over and around the golden foliage of the royal azalea (in truth a rhododendron), R. schlippenbachii. For scale, see that 6'2" Hunk'O'Man, my irresistible friend Kevin Teller.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

With any luck, we'll hear from one of the Platts shortly, if only to tell me that I've gotten a plant i.d. wrong. Kailla, Buddha-mother? David, slave to Flora? Hope you guys'll stop by!

11:41 AM ET | 11- 7-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

An Autumnal Peek At A Great American Garden

The campaign promises are over; now to deliver the sublime, as we throw open the gates of a private Portland garden on the headiest day of American democracy we are ever likely to know.

Welcome to the Platt Garden, the realized vision of one of the city's late great gardeners, Jane Platt. This three-acre specimen-rich paradise passed from wife to husband (the gentlemanly John Platt is now 96) and then to son. David Platt has been tending the landscape's botanical treasures for almost a decade, often collaborating with his daughter, Kailla Platt. Full disclosure: all three generations of Platts are dear and cherished friends.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

The Platt Garden owes a great deal of its design beauty and plant palette to another of Portland's best places for plant nerds, The Gardens of Elk Rock at Bishop's Close. The plant passions of that garden's founder, Peter Kerr -- who scored plants regularly from the East Coast and England -- have resulted in a number of tree and shrub species that are the oldest of their kind in the PNW. Kerr had two daughters, both of whom gardened. The younger one was named Jane.

Fall-blooming crocus come in dozens of species and rarely do I see them with the same punch and presence as their chubbier spring-blooming cousins. For that reason, I found this small stand in the Platt rock garden a stand-out; I'll have to get back to you whether it's C. medius, C. cartwrightianus or for all I know C. spp. (the last of which translates as 'some species but who the hell knows which one').

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

One more teaser pix before the tour continues tomorrow. It's an image you've likely seen in one form or another before, because when it comes to pure sensuality, few things can beat a stewartia shedding its bark.

Behold the exfoliating surface of Stewartia monadelpha.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

11:14 PM ET | 11- 5-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Look What's Rocking At Versailles

I was driving through the slate gray gloom of fall this morning tuned -- bien sur (accent aigu, oui?) -- to Morning Edition, when I heard Eleanor Beardsley's story, King of Kitsch Takes Over Versailles.

Hearing the outspoken French thrash and gnaw at the current Jeff Koons retrospective was plenty amusing, just the kind of audacious controversy the Sun King Louis XIV might have enjoyed. As he also might have delighted in Koons' whacko floral fantasy, Split Rocker.

Not an easy work to capture with one photo, Koons' fantastical creation is a 40' high stainless steel statue weighing 11 tons and covered in 90,000 flowers and plants.

photo credit: jean-marc

 

Split Rocker in its original form was first unveiled in 2000 at the Palais des Papes cloister in Avignon, France. As described in Art in America, it represents "the head of a child's rocking toy--half pony, half dinosaur--with large yellow "handles" protruding from each side".

As described by Koons, "I thought this is the type of work that Louix XIV would wake up and have a fantasy that he'd want to see. And he'd tell his staff and Voila! he'd come home and there would be Split Rocker".

Which explains why no one's been tending my autumnal garden. I forgot to tell the staff...

1:21 PM ET | 10- 8-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Lady Bird Would Roll In Her Grave

Believe me, I do not invoke the name of the great lady lightly. But Lady Bird Johnson -- the woman behind the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 -- would no doubt consider it the saddest of days if she'd seen these two innocent words married into one terrifying phrase:

VEGETATIVE ADVERTISING.

I just saw it for the first time at The Human Flower Project, an excellent source of human/horticultural tidbits, in a blog entry titled That's No Garden, It's A Billboard. The subject is the easing of highway landscape restrictions that could allow corporate logos to be spelled out in plants. "If a company pays enough, California drivers could be whizzing by flowering signage."

Ponder this composite pix by Christopher Flynn and you'll see why vegetative advertising is a phrase to be feared.

It's not happening yet -- this pix has been photoshopped -- but according to the L.A. Times, the director of the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) is hoping for a change in the rules re:freeway advertising.

photo credit: Christopher Flynn

 

One of the best places to keep track of this story is at Scenic America. To get up to speed, here's some background. And if you're somehow involved or can offer us some insight, do post...

11:00 PM ET | 10- 5-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

A Rainforest Still Grows In Galveston

Several days after Hurricane Ike hit the greater Houston area, communication still remains spotty with Galveston. I did try to contact the folks at Moody Gardens to see whether their Rainforest Pyramid sustained damage; inside is a collection of some 2,000 plant species plus 175 animal species and pools of fresh water fish.

By all reports, the Rainforest Pyramid at Moody Gardens in Galveston sustained very little damage during Hurricane Ike.

photo credit: Bryan Dawson

 

Jerri Hamachek is a spokesperson from Moody, currently in NY. She told me that despite the catastrophic hurricane, "we've been pretty fortunate. I've seen photos of the Rainforest Pyramid and there's some glass breakage but it didn't collapse. And there's been no breach of our 1.5 million gallon aquarium." That would have been disastrous.

What does concern Hamacheck are the indoor pools of fresh water fish, particularly whether there was enough flooding to have stranded them outside their pools. I haven't heard anything further about that. The few staff members still on site have enough on their hands -- particularly with all those free-range parrots -- without me pestering them for news of kalanchoe and koi.

11:17 AM ET | 09-15-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Dancing Through The Tops of Trees

If you're heading to London this fall, here's the latest reason among many century-old ones to visit Kew Gardens. A few months ago, this Royal Botanic Garden jewel opened its Rhizotron & Xtrata Treetop Walkway, and I'm guessing the experience -- unlike its sadly dysfunctional web page, which promises but doesn't deliver -- could knock your socks off.

After looking through a few dozen online sites trying to get a real sense of the experience, I recommend the Flickr slide show posted by a bloke named Andy Brown.

Not to worry if you can't manage the 108 steps to the top; there's a lift. For the insatiably curious, here's more reading.

photo credit: JL2003

 

11:45 AM ET | 09-10-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Xeriscaping Still Gets Bad Rap

Yet again, the art of landscaping with minimal watering takes a hit. In a lushly photographed New York Times article with the yummy title, A Sustainability That Aims To Seduce, author Stephen Orr paraphrases (note emphasis) a few landscape architects as suggesting that xeriscaping can result in "dusty summer yards full of scrappy native species".

I'm not bashing the landscape architects or Orr, per se. The article's thesis is that even people who can afford hiring landscape architects are increasingly environmentally sensitive, and even landscape architects (long-maligned for their lack of expertise/imagination in using plants) are integrating xeric principles and celebration of place into their designs.

What gets me is the lack of acknowledgement that the days of "scrappy native species" are also over. These days, people who love plants and live in hot, dry areas now have unbelievable choices. It's a revolution in gardenworthy species that began in New Mexico with David Salman's High Country Gardeners, and continues around the country and the world.

It's a solid-enough article for the NYT, but if you're not among the privileged and the monied -- who often seem to lack the great, good sense that they have to share the planet -- this last quote may stick in your throat.

... the message of conservation and environmental responsibility cannot be couched in punitive terms if it is to succeed. "People shouldn't have to make a choice between beauty and sustainability," Ms. Cochran said. "Our work is designed so that I am able to say to our clients during a presentation, 'Oh, and by the way, its also sustainable.' "

11:25 AM ET | 08-21-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Get 'Em While They Last

Three years ago, a formidable nonegenarian named Hortense Miller -- vegetarian, environmentalist and early feminist -- discussed her longevity with a reporter: "Well, there's an end to everything. Good God, I'm 96 years old. I ought to die. And I don't do it. I don't know what's wrong with me."

Alas, Hortense Miller was merely human. The gardener who spent 40 years creating what is now the Hortense Miller Garden in Laguna Beach, CA -- plus a few decades writing about plants -- died last week at the age of 99.

Many thanks to blogger Cindy McNatt at Homebody; otherwise I would have missed the woman's passing.

Now you may very well take issue with my headline, but you cannot argue that as elderly gardeners die, they leave the planet both richer (for all their hard work) and poorer (all that sagacity, gone). And since only the smallest percentage of them end up famous enough -- or rich enough -- to be written about and feted, I'd like to suggest that there may very likely be an uncelebrated Hortense Miller living somewhere near you.

Here's my pitch: If there is a senior gardener in your neighborhood, maybe this is the summer to make a little time for her. Or him. Or them. Maybe rather than just nodding or waving, this is the summer to stop and chat. Ask about her trees, his secrets, their memories; offer to dig something out of your garden for them to try. More than likely, you'll end up with something lasting and perennial from them.

I say this because life goes so ridiculously fast and death, well, any gardener knows it comes with the territory. But at least we gardeners get to pass around our passions, like burst pods scattering seeds.

1:40 AM ET | 08- 6-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

A Second Life For Swimming Pools

"A pool is a like a pyramid," writes Bill Lowe, "balanced on its tip. It wants to fall over and become a pond." His recent e-mail continues, "You work all the time to keep it clean, clear and blue. I quit trying."

And so another homeowner eschews the joys of backyard swimming and instead turns it into a habitat for a few large koi, a ton of goldfish and "a number of shebumpkins." Bill continues, "This is a real knee-slapper joke in the koi community; they're koi-goldfish crosses."

And what used to be his hot tub now has lotus, giant reed, papyrus, and a few water lilies growing, all of which seem to be faring quite well in our TP member's Shreveport, La. home. "It should have been a part of Texas," writes our irrepressible Louisiana gardener, "but isn't."

I can't imagine there could have been anything as gorgeous as this before the hot tub became a pond (no offense, Lowe family). "I like her little hook," Bill says about the bee. "And I also like the yellow of the pollen on the leaves; it had rained the night before."

photo credit: Bill Lowe

 

This conversion from pool to pond has any number of precedents, but the one I'm most familiar with is in the otherworldly Montecito garden once the home of Ganna Walska. It's called Lotusland, and if you've never heard of it, this is your lucky day.

You may also think yourself lucky if you're among those who've switched from swimming pool to water feature. Or maybe you converted back? Do tell us your story.

1:28 AM ET | 08- 5-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

In The Garden Of Sampson And Beasley

What you can't see in this little pix is the flagstone stage on the left, designed for -- and featuring this very night -- Portland's own Pink Martini.

photo credit: Phil Miller

Nothing like a mega-party in a mega-garden to put stressful issues like entertaining in perspective. This past weekend, a mere 350 of us went to a fundraiser at Bella Madrona, five crafted acres almost solely maintained by my extraordinary friend Geof Beasley with no interference -- quite literally -- from his gracious partner, Jim Sampson.

With all the socializing, the dinner and the dancing (alas, not me), by the time we strolled the garden it was too dark for pix. But if you'd like to see a few colorful snaps of this magical place, check out the Digital Diary entry from my pre-blog days on the now deceased Web site, Talking Plants.

So many distinct garden rooms, too numerous to mention, including highly cultivated and wonderfully wild spaces. This is a shot at dusk looking down into the conifer garden. In typical Geof Beasley style, conifers are just a part of the picture; sprawled on the ground and in delicious fat mounds are hebes, heather, grasses and always a dash or six of perennial color.

photo credit: Phil Miller

 

11:00 AM ET | 08- 4-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Eve's is Open for Business

In another attempt to answer Talking Plant's most popular query, What Would Eve Do?, the answer is...

Party!

Who knew that all it would take to get this relatively reclusive woman to socialize was to revamp her neglected side yard. Behold the evidence:

Is this an ad for bourgeois living or what? Yes, my futon/backpack days are indeed over. Above and below, gaggles of wonderful guests too numerous to mention chow down during a three-course pot luck (were you dreaming?). In-between, the space in which I recover after they leave.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Naturally there is no Eve; I'm the relative recluse (big duh). But now that my courtyard's doing the talking for me, the genetic sting is gone from keeping visitors amused (see: Roz Levine). Mind you, it does take me a few days to recover each time I socialize, but I've been assured it will get easier.

It's taking me much longer to recover from the cash spent on my urban hideaway, and I've only just begun to put in plants (an enviable state, isn't it?). You've already met my new Aechmea (which, alas, has not yet been potted) but this is my first opportunity to discuss the plant that's one of my key architectural elements, Firmiana simplex, the Chinese parasol tree.

Behold the slightly stressed leaves of a newly planted parasol tree as it adjusts to a summer in the sun (believe me, it looks much worse in real life). The tree is one of four I planted directly in the courtyard hardscape which was designed with 2'x2' planting holes.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Here's what firmiana offered me beyond all other runners-up: strong vertical lines, good winter color (the trunks are bright green all year), tropical foliage and in a few years, a luscious shade canopy. And let's face it, the courtyard needs a lot more cover now because of all the concrete which has made the mid-day sunshine all the more brighter and hotter.

Despite considerable warnings of its invasiveness in the U.S. (e.g., Texas and the Southeast) I am not concerned about them spreading here in Portland's inner city. One bad winter anyway and they're likely to get cut back to the ground. While they'll small enough, I also have the option of pruning their flowers before they set seed.

But enough politically correct apologizing, I doubt there are a dozen mature parasol trees in the entire state.

Whadya think?

4:43 PM ET | 08- 1-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

What Do You Call A Garden Without Plants?

What What Eve Do, Part Five

I call it a respite. A worry-free moment. A garden with limitless possibilities. I also call it, mine.

On the left, what was; on the right, what is. This is very nearly the same angle, now that the juniperous tree has been moved to the parking strip. And this is pretty much the way I last saw the garden before having to leave for the NPR mothership in DC. more than a week ago. Just grabbed the pix before heading for the airport; took me this entire week to find the data storage card!

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

If you've followed the What Would Eve Do series thus far, believe me, I know this is anticlimactic. But I will make good in my next installment, once I get back home (only a few days left) and really take stock -- and pictures -- of what Eve has thus far wrought.

It was no small trick for the concrete crew to add these powdered colors to the setting cement. The process took them about 3 hours, the results beyond my expectations. The colors were pretty subtle when I last saw them, but they've since been sealed (evidentally, an ecological disaster. My housesitter said the fumes in the house made the place unliveable). I'll know in a few days if doing that was a mistake.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

3:08 PM ET | 06-19-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Order in the Courtyard

What Would Eve Do, Part Three

No matter how many books you read of the GARDEN DESIGN MADE SIMPLE! variety, no matter how many measurements you take or design principles you follow, there is nothing and I mean nothing easy about designing a space, let alone one that will be constantly changing every month of the year.

Perhaps I should clarify: there is nothing easy about designing an outdoor space alone. If How-To books work for you (they make me rigid and stupid), so much the better, you don't need to rope a lot of people into your process. But ask what Eve would do, and she'd answer, Brainstorm.

Legions escorted me along the design road: thank you designer friends Michael Schultz, John Forsgren and shvester Susan Levine). Above, the folks that helped me nail it: meet Nani Waddoups (left) and Roy Oudinot. Roy is a landscape contractor who gave me quotes and graciously handed me over to another contractor who specialized in what I finally chose. Nani (she picked my house colors two years ago) is an all-around, class-act designer with great taste who I happily paid by the hour. In the middle of the picture is a trompe l'oeil by an artist named Simple. This piece has lived everywhere I have for the last 14 years.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

You don't have to brainstorm with experts. All it takes is a few imaginative and generous friends. But if what you want seems beyond the scope of casual converstaion, scout around for a local garden that wows you and contact either its contractor or designer.

I don't suggest you lure a whole lot of professionals over to your house and pick their brains without paying them for their time; what goes around comes around and you'll end up on the Avoid This Client list (word travels fast in the trade).

But I do think it's perfectly kosher to tell a designer you're soliciting different ideas and would like to buy an hour's consultation. (You could even ask if your payment might be deducted when you finally commit to that designer.)

After 90 minutes with Nani and Roy (pictured above), a lot of great ideas were proposed and rejected. Among the many things I have come away with are three questions worth answering when you take on a re-design:

1. What's your budget? Mine was $5K. And it was unrealistic.

2. What's driving your design? Could be the budget, could be a fantasy. Mine was the fountain and the narrow lot; it said to me, courtyard. You may need a playground for both kids and adults ... a formal vegetable garden instead of lawn ... a way to make a small space look larger, or a large space feel more intimate.

3. What do you want/don't want? I wanted tidy, easy to walk on, and dog-resistant. I didn't want to weed between pavers, I didn't want anything tracked into the house, and I wanted more hardscape than plants (my plant playground is the front yard). Also, I wanted the color of the hardscape to wed the house and fountain. Not much, right? But it helped me focus. Keep in mind that knowing what you don't want is an excellent place to begin.

And so begins Eve -- with grids, rebar and the ever-present beagle, curled into a construction frame that will soon be home to a tree. Can you see where I'm going here? At least what my hardscape choice turned out to be?

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

After meeting with Nani and Roy and getting Roy's flagstone estimate ($8K-9K, too pricey and conservative for me), I began leafing through courtyard/small garden books and exploring the online work of well-known landscape designers. Let me say loud and clear I owe a great deal to a woman whose work I've never actually seen but have heard about, Bay Area designer Shirley Alexandra.

A few weeks later, I had finally envisioned my courtyard. The question now, did I have the guts to trust what I saw?

In our next installment of What Would Eve Do: tackling the "C" word. Commitment.

12:54 PM ET | 06-15-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

What Would Eve Do: Reviving A Neglected Garden

Tidy. How's that for a design principle? Not what you'd call imaginative or inspired. But after seven years of delicious chaos in my cramscaped (vs landscaped) front garden -- a 25'x50' space where spikey, fragrant, towering and flowering species continue to duke it out -- all I wanted from the side yard was an absence, not a presence. I wanted as few plants in the ground as possible and a hardscape the dogs could neither upset nor track into the house.

A brief June moment in a corner of my front garden, a bonafide sanctuary yards away from a boisterous, energetic and commercially "complicated" street (drugs, prostitution and a wholesome family-style brew pub). I know it's all out there on the other side of the fence, but in here, the only reality is color, texture and movement. Plus occasional energetic bouts of whacking it all back.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Every piece of property has its challenges, whether it's the soil, the neighbor's barking beagle or water-sucking, shallow-rooted trees. Mine is urban density, which has only gotten more intense since I moved in. A few years ago, my peace of mind went right out the window when a cafe opened round the block, its big draw a lot of outdoor seating which instantly put drinking, smoking strangers inches away from my back door.

Come 5pm weekdays and all day Sat & Sun, as many as 40 people with endlessly cloying good cheer would drive me to distraction. (In truth, to tears). I found myself becoming a disgruntled old biddy who scowled, unobserved on the other side of a 10' fence, wishing misery on their good time. Gardening out there was limited to weekend mornings before noon; once the Young People arrived, the noise was such I could no longer keep the windows open in the house.

By last spring, I had to do something: move, or throw money at a solution. I decided to stay put and create thundering, ambient sound.

Proving, yet again, that necessity really is the mother of invention, behold a whole lotta "taking back my space" nearly deafening noise.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Tomorrow's installment of What Would Eve Do: creating a 12' wide, 7' tall fountain without even a sketch of a plan...AND...the leftover ruined yard.

9:48 PM ET | 06-10-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Pissing Rain and Standing Water

Having just heard NPR's Melissa Block report on the desperation after the quake in Chengdu, and the continuing absurdity of foreign aid not getting into Myanmar, I'm torn as always between talking plants and talking real life.

Right now I've decided they're not mutually exclusive.

Even as eyewitnesses text, phone and e-mail in accounts from China, native lewisias in the Columbia Gorge are pushing from bud to flower absorbing whatever sun's rays are available (all told, not much); the first ruellia and acanthus flowers have been spotted by an Austin blogger; and a U.K. gardener mourns the absence of bad weather as he heads into the region's biggest flower show of the year.

Thanks for the much-needed visits to Zanthan Gardens and Blackpitts Garden; your blog recommendations enabled me to pick today's small if desperately-needed bouquet.

2:00 PM ET | 05-12-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Landscape Under Glass Glows

Some breaking news from that blogger's best friend, NPR's Andy Carvin...

Conde Nast has just published its list of the seven wonders of the architectural world, and the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery is on it.

If you were around in February, you might have taken refuge with me there, DC's most-see glassed-in garden.

12:30 PM ET | 03-26-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Bloom and Bust

First, the bust. Progress of the side yard project, What Would Eve Do?, would thus far indicate that Eve wouldn't do a damn thing, at least not this week. Except perhaps obsess over the budget, or and whether or not her home was worth putting more money into, in which case I'm definitely channeling her energy.

Now the bloom. I only noticed this first one yesterday when I took out the short-tine rubber rake (my favorite tool) and started scraping off winter's brick-thick layer of leaves. Many of you will recognize this flower immediately, but let's give the more easily amused among us a chance to guess.

The plant in question have dozens of such wonderful dangling double flowers on long fleshy stems. One thing it ain't (hint hint): a bore.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

This lovely plant's complete invisibility in my garden, hiding as it does behind a variegated yellow phormium, is proof enough that it's time to get out the drainage spade and rearrange the perennials. Remind me, somebody, when I replace that beloved, misplaced spade...

And for delicacy #2, I've been watching this upright flower cluster burst open over the last few days. If you love the straight species in this genus as I do, you could i.d. this big-leaved girl from across the block. But that doesn't mean she isn't still a revelation when it comes to flowering shrubs.

I wish I could say I stood outside and waited for just the right raindrops and just the right overcast light, but today everyone's a winner -- particularly if you're a frog or a plant.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

4:32 PM ET | 03-13-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail

Landscape Under Glass

I snuck out of NPR the other day long enough to spend an hour in the glassed garden created by landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson at the site of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.

(Read this Washington Post article if you need the backstory on this just-opened mega-expensive renovation).

A couple of l.a. friends who are Gustafson fans insisted I check it out. And how! There's just about nothing I love more than a hardscape with "walkable" water (e.g., rills), and a sizeable
part of this courtyard's floor is covered in an inviting liquid veneer.

The courtyard covers nearly two-thirds of an acre and is no easy thing to photograph, but here you can see a section of the fluid floor and much talked about undulating roof. The latter, a source of considerable controversy, was designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster.

Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

 

I was particularly relieved that the plantings, liberated from D.C.'s overwrought Z7 cliches, included not an inch of liriope. Instead, Gustafson used black olive trees, several huge ficus, a few species of temperate ferns, and a smattering of my pittosporum friends from Down Under (I might have spec'd Pittosporum 'Silver Sheen' with its silvery leaves and black stems but she didn't ask).

The big picture - anchored by huge marble planters - is a great success. "For all its scale," says Post writer Adrian Higgins, "it has a real tranquility". To be on the safe side, though, I'd get there before or after school.

Continue reading "Landscape Under Glass" »

10:16 AM ET | 02-26-2008 | permalink

comments () | | e-mail