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Rose Preview

UPDATE -- this just in -- this float won the Queen's trophy for the most effective use and display of roses in concept, design & and presentation at this year's Rose Bowl Parade.

Get a first look at this year's best new roses during the 117th annual Rose Bowl Parade on January 2nd. (And we won't talk about Michigan not even being in contention this year!)

The lead float will feature the 2006 All America Selections award-winning roses, including (at left) Julia Child, a floribunda that was personally chosen by the well-known chef herself.  This rose is said to have a licorace-candy sort of fragrance and great disease resistance.

Other winners this year included Rainbow Sorbet, a multi-colored (really?) floribunda shrub rose with strong resistance to black spot; Tahitian Sunset, a hybrid tea with orange-peach-apricot hues; and Wild Blue Yonder, with wine purple blooms and a spicy rose fragrance.  For more info on these roses, www.rose.org

(photo: All America Rose Selections)

2006 Lookahead: Save the Date

Events you might want to keep in mind for this year:

FEB 4-12        63rd Annual National City Cleveland Home & Garden Show
FEB 8-12        17th Annual NW Flower & Garden Show - Seattle,WA
FEB 9-12        Maymont Flower & Garden Show - Richmond, VA
MAR 4-6         Gramercy Garden & Antiques Show, NYC
MAR 5-12        Philadelphia Flower Show
MAR 11-19      New England Flower Show, Boston
MAR 11-19      Chicago Flower & Garden Show
MAR 15-19      San Francisco Flower & Garden Show
MAR 18-25      Charleston, SC Annual House & Garden Tours
APR 22-29       Historic Virginia Garden Week
APR 29-May1   NY Botanical Garden Annual Garden Antiques Show
MAY 11-12      4th Annual Green Roofs Conference, Boston
MAY 23-27      Chelsea Flower Show, Great Britain
JUNE 1-3         Native Plants in the Landscape Conference, Millersville University,                                Millersville, PA
JULY 16-22     Assn Professional Landscape Designers Annual Conference, Philadelphia
JULY 17-21     Landscape Architecture & Community Design Symposium, Chatauqua NY
AUG 6-20        New England Wildflower Society Lecture Series
AUG 25-28      58th Garden Writers' Assn Annual Symposium, Valley Forge, PA
OCT 6-9         Am. Socy Landscape Architects Annual Meeting, Minneapolis

 

Holiday Greetings

MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HOLIDAYS, and HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

Garden Design Online will return after the holidays with news and information on landscape design, horticulture, books, the green scene, and much, much more.  In the meantime, please peruse the archives, and we'll see you soon.

Christmas Garden Gifts III

Why not extend the garden season -- or even sit outside on a cold, sunny day -- with an attractive, free-standing firepit from Smith & Hawken. They have a couple of different models, available with screens and/or covers, and the one pictured here -- is now on sale for $195.  Not bad if you can use your patio throughout most of the year.

One of my favorite garden catalogues is Kinsman Company, based in Pennsylvania, because of their many imports and the attention to detail that designers love.  Pictured right is just one of their beautiful planters, and you'll want to check out the hanging versions as well as others that can be mounted upon a wall or a fence.

For serious gardeners, Kinsman carries several different styles & sizes of Felco pruners -- the usual choice of pros -- as well as large-sized Felco loppers.  Copper plant markers are distinctive, and they are one of the few companies that carry appealing tuteurs -- upright structures perfect for a climbing clematis or other not particularly vigorous vines.  You also should check out their steel-rod arches and arbors -- the Monets are particularly nice -- and there must be someone on your Christmas list who'd just love to have a pair of foxgloves (left) -- or two -- all those luscious colors!

(click on images for larger view)                  
(photos: Smith & Hawken/Kinsman)

Christmas Garden Books III

Books for Inspiration / for Plant Lovers

Most of us who live in other parts of the country envy the gardeners and designers who  live in the upper Northwest; they have a climate that naturally favors plants, and the subtitle of The Abundant Garden, by Barbara Denk and Debra Prinzing, says it all:  A Celebration of Color, Texture, and Blooms.

The book profiles nine private gardens on Bainbridge Island, Washington, from "a tiny garden with big ideas" to a naturalistic garden "with four seasons of green."  All the gardens are overflowing with exotic and unusual trees, shrubs, and other plants, in a serene and isolated island setting.  The authors nine separate elements that constitute an "abundant garden," and illustrate the concepts with lovely photos by Denk.  Great ideas on plant combinations, layering, texture, and more.

(click on image to purchase)

Christmas Garden Gifts II

Stocking Stuffers

If you're partial to OXO good grips in the kitchen, you're also going to like the new line of Oxo garden tools, three of which are pictured here.  Aside from the trowels and the cultivator, they include scoops, hand plows, weeders, pruners, floral snips and more forged from stainless steel.  Some of them are sold in sets with a tool caddy for easy transport around the garden.  Available at Lowe's and at many garden centers.

Magazines:  For that someone who's more into design, get them a subscription to Garden Design; for the person who's into plants, get them Horticulture, and for the hands-on do-it-yourselfer, get them Fine Gardening or The American Gardener.  None of these magazines are perfect, but they are what's out there.

My favorite garden gloves are like the ones pictured left, from Burpee, which have a knit fabric on the back side and latex palms. At just $4.95 in the Burpee's catalogue, these ones are a bargain.

Also check out the plant markers from Burpee, 25 for $10.95.  And don't forget -- if you label your plants when put them in, you'll remember what they are!

(photos: Oxo, Burpee)
 

ChristmasGarden Gifts I

If Santa were to bring me whatever I wanted for my garden this year, it would have to be one of those truly elegant, one-of-a-kind outdoor furniture sets from McKinnon and Harris, Inc in Richmond, VA.  All of their items are hand-made from wrought aluminum, and are known among designers for their simplicity and classic style. 

One of my favorites, (above) is the Beaufort-style sofa, accompanied by two lovely Palm planting boxes.  But who wouldn't like to have an Albemarle table (right) in, well, a bright Christmas red?

Check out the web site www.mckinnonharris.com for the full line of tables, benches, chaises for patio and poolside -- and much, much more.

(click on images for larger view)

Christmas Garden Books II- DELUXE DESIGN & MORE

The book with all the buzz this year is a hefty new tome (450+ over-sized pages) from Dominique Browning and the editors of House & Garden, "The New Garden Paradise: Great Private Gardens of the World" (W.W. Norton & Company, $59.95).

As Browning says in the introduction, "We have become aware, over the years, that we are living in a time of enormous creativity in garden design.  Due to the happy confluence of several years of a robust economy and a generation of patrons who were primed to invest in their estates, there has been an unprecedented amount of activity in the gardening world.  Add that to a dazzling alignment of creative design stars, and we have a period of fertility the likes of which we will not enjoy again anytime soon."  And wow, she is not kidding, unless the recent economic boom is just a sample of what's around the corner.

These are not the kinds of gardens you're likely to encounter anywhere in a normal urban or suburban milieu, in the United States or elsewhere. These are not gardens for people who are faint of heart about money.  These are the gardens of the super-rich, and they've obviously hired the best to fulfill their dreams.

American designers represented in these pages include the late Dan Kiley, Douglas Reed, Martha Schwartz  and Deborah Nevins, joined by, among others, Spain's Fernando Caruncho, Japan's Yoji Sasaki, and Jacques Wirtz of Belgium.

(click on image to purchase)

Christmas Garden Books I

My top choice in garden books this year, Gardens by Design,(Timber Press, $34.95) is the latest from British author Noel Kingsbury.   A designer himself, Kingsbury interviewed leading landscape architects and designers from around the world about the way they work.  Americans Isabelle Greene, Steve Martino, Julie Moir Messervy and James van Sweden are represented here, as well as others from Britain, Belgium, Canada, and elsewhere.  From Moir Messervy, you'll learn how to deal with open spaces and how to plan paths for a "garden journey." She believes a journey through a garden needs four ingredients: "a departure point, a destination point, a linking path and events along the way."  The text is accompanied by photos that beautifully illustrate her points. James Van Sweden explains the mystery of linking house and garden, while Briton George Carter describes how to create illusions in the garden, what Kingsbury calls "playgrounds for the senses."

(click on image to purchase) 

Update Flight 93 Memorial

Architects have re-designed part of the Flight 93 Memorial that will be built near Shanksville, PA, to honor the memory of the 40 passengers and crew who died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The new design features a circular bowl instead of a crescent-shaped arc that critics charged was a symbol of terrorism.  In a letter last September to the director of the National Park Service, congressman Thomas G. Tancredo (R, Colo) raised concerns about the original design because of "the crescent's prominent use as a symbol in Islam -- and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists."

Paul Murdoch, president of Paul Murdoch Architects  of Los Angeles, CA, the firm that designed the memorial, called the controversy over the original design "unfortunate," but he said he now wants to "move beyond any sort of divisive labeling and really focus on what the actual experience of the memorial will be."

The new plan, released in the November newsletter of the  Flight 93 Memorial, says a crescent of red maples will be replaced by a large, bowl shaped area now called "the 40 Memorial Groves" because of the addition of trees along one edge. According to the plan, the changes will enhance the earlier design through a break in the trees to better define the path the jetliner took before it crashed.

The official report of the 9-11 Commission said the flight crashed as passengers tried to take back control of the plane from the hijackers.

Other features of the original design that will be retained include a Tower of Voices with 40 wind chimes that will greet visitors to the site, and a circular path to the crash site itself, where a black slate plaza will be installed along with a white marble wall inscribed with the names of those who died.

The memorial is scheduled to be completed by 2011.