GardenDesignOnline

Design: Garden Dialogues

Ever wonder exactly how designers and clients work together to create fabulous gardens?

In a great new program from The Cultural Landscape Foundation called Garden Dialogues, small groups of participants will be able to visit exclusive, exquisite gardens around the country and find out exactly how these magnificent spaces were created.

You'll meet some of the country's most noted landscape architects working today, among them: Pamela Burton, Edmund Hollander, Mario Nievera, Raymond Jungles, Larry Weaner, just to name a few.

Locations include Newport, the Hamptons, Atlanta, Miami Beach, Southern California, Nashville, Maine, DC, Chicago, Portland, and others.  Register soon, or you could miss out on a great opportunity to learn about design from the masters. More Info: 202-483-0553

photo: TCLF

Happenings May 2012

Selected Events Around the Country:

May 19-Oct 21, "The Artist in the Garden," Bronx, NY
Exhibition on Monet's Garden, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700

May 2, May 5, Stone Wall Buildling Workshop, Boylston,  MA
2nd: 6-9PM; 5th: 10AM-2PM, Workshop, Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 508-869-6111
May 4, Intro to Rooftoop Urban Agriculture, NY, NY
8:30AM-noon, Workshop, Hort Society of NY, 212-757-0915
May 5, Garden Conservancy Open Days Garden Tours:  ME, NY, TN, TX
ME: York County; NY: Dutchess County; TN: Knoxville; TX: Dallas
May 5-6 Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour, CA
10AM-5PM, self-guided, various locations, 50+ gardens 714-566-4800
May 5, Home & Garden Tour, Venice, CA
10AM-5PM, Guided WalkingTour, 52 homes & gardens, 310-821-1857
May 5, Georgetown Garden Tour, Washington DC
10AM-5PM, 84th annual tour, 8 gardens, 202-965-1950 

May 6, Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, CA
10AM-5PM, self guided, various locations, 30+ gardens 510-236-9558
May 6, Garden Conservancy Open Days Garden Tours: CA, IL, NY, PA
CA: Los Angeles; IL: Winnetka; NY: Mt. Kisco; PA: Swarthmore Area
May 9, Gardens that Heal, Glencoe, IL
9AM-5PM, Seminar, Chicago Botanic Garden, 847-835-5440
May 10, Small Space Container Gardens, NY, NY
6PM, Lecture, Hort Society of NY, 212-757-0915
May 10, Italian Villa Landscapes in US Design, Washington DC
6:30PM, Lecture by TCLF's Charles Birnbaum, Hillwood Museum & Gardens, 202-483-0553
May 11, 2012: National Public Gardens Day
Events throughout the country at your local gardens.
May 12, Contain Your Urban Enthusiasm Saturday, Bronx, NY
10AM-5PM, All-day class on container gardening, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700
May 12, Conversation, Laurie Olin & Kieran/Timberlake, Philadelphia, PA
2PM, Penn Design, Meyerson Hall, 215-898-6591
May 12-13, Garden Conservancy Open Days Garden Tours: CT, NY
CT: Litchfield County; NY: Dutchess, Columbia, Suffolk, Putnam Counties. 
   
May 15, Terrific Tree Pits, NY, NY
10AM-1PM, Workshop on designing urban tree pits, NY Botanical Garden Midtown Center, 718-817-8700
May 17, Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill, Boston, MA
9AM-5PM, 83rd annual Self-guided garden tour (617) 227-4392
May 19, What's Out There Weekend, Washington DC
Special Tours of exceptional gardens & landscape sites, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, 202-483-0553
May 19, Vertical Gardening for Lg & Small Spaces, Silverton, OR
1PM, Lecture by designer & author Rebecca Sweet, The Oregon Garden, 503-874-8100
May 19-20, Garden Conservancy Open Days Garden Tours: CT, NJ, NY, IL
CT: Hartford, New Haven Counties; NJ: Bergen County; NY: Nassau, Ulster, Westchester, Suffolk Counties; IL: Chicago suburbs.
May 19-27 Rhododendron Festival, Sandwich, MA
10AM-4PM, various events, Heritage Museum & Gardens,508-888-3300

May 21, "A Private Oasis," NY, NY
6PM Lecture & book signing, landscape architect Edmund Hollander, Hort Society of NY, 212-757-0915
May 21, Design Day, Wrightstown, PA
10AM-3PM, Workshop, designer Renny Reynolds, Hortulus Farms, sponsor: Penn Hort 215-988-8869
May 22-26 Chelsea Flower Show, London

May 31, National Mall Design Winners, Washington DC
6:30-8PM, Panel of winners, National Building Museum, 202-272-2448

LOOKAHEAD:
June 3,  23rd annual Garden Tour, Maryland
10AM-4PM, Hort Society of MD 410-821-5561
June/July: Garden Dialogues - various locations & dates in US
clients & landscape architects discuss their gardens on site 202-483-0553
July 4-10 Perennial Plant Symposium, Boston, MA

National Arboretum Plant Sale

One of things I don't like about living in Massachusetts is that I'm going to miss yet another plant sale at the US National Arboretum in DC -- this year the members' only sale is Friday April 27 from 10AM to 1PM (and readers, it's worth joining just for this, as they always have many things you can't find anywhere else).  Otherwise the sale runs from Friday the 27th from 1PM-4PM and Saturday the 28th from 9AM to 4PM.

  My garden here is filled with plants I acquired there over the years -- two paw paw trees, a bottlebrush buckeye, a dwarf upright holly (I forget which one!) -- and many others.  If you're within range of DC, well worth a trip.  And I sure regret leaving many of the other plants I left in the ground when we sold our house in DC -- but you can't take everything with you.

This year's sale also includes 600 books on design, horticulture, etc from the library of a long-time member who died last month.  Many a treasured volume, I'm sure.

Books: Vertical Garden Design

How about one of these in your own garden:  a green wall covering 190 square feet, composed of 350 plants of 80 different species, including mints, sages, thymes, wormwoods, tansies, lavenders, hyssops, Santolina, bee balms and woodruffs, just to name a few.

In a new book by Noémie Vialard, Gardening Vertically: 24 Ideas for Creating Your Own Green Walls (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc), you'll find out exactly how to design and install small-scale vertical gardens for urban or suburban settings. Vialard, a friend of vertical gardening master Patrick Blanc, takes you through a series of simple steps, using Blanc's method for installing green walls.  Vialard gives you a couple of options along the way and warns that water consumption can be quite high, although if you plan carefully, you can recirculate a lot of it. 

If you're not ready to go the Patrick Blanc route, Vialard gives you plenty of other ideas: planting climbers on walls, fences and trellises; making a wall of terracotta pots; a vertical shelf system that holds containers; and even a circular container within a frame that can simply be hung on a wall.

Best of all, Vialard has created "plans" for 24 different vertical gardens that can easily be adapted for any situation. I loved the "Mosquito-Repellent Wall" featuring basil, artemisia, lemon balm, lemon verbena and other plants -- and she suggests installing it anywhere that's near the spot where you tend to sit outside. (And if you try it, let me know if it works!).  There are also salad and herb walls, a scented wall, others of mosses and ferns.

If you're not into a big investment of time and materials, Vialard shows you how, in just about two hours, to frame a door, decorate the base of a tree trunk or disguise the veg garden.

BEAUTIFUL photos and illustrations throughout. One of the most artful and inspiring books I've seen on the subject.  It belongs on every designer's bookshelf.

In the Magazines April-June 2012

Sunset April 2012

*Pavement plantings: what to plant between the paving *stones, and pretty nifty patterns.
*Herb border for kitchen use, color and fragrance.
*Design for a veg garden spiced up with flowers
*Tiny demo garden in San Francisco: Garden for the Environment

Fine Gardening May/June 2012

*Design for a small space: Asian-inspired
* Shed solutions: storage, guests and more
* Plants for slopes
* The best of the perennial geraniums
* Designing with contrast

Garden Design May 2012

*Actress Marg Helgenberger's LA garden
*Eight magnificent courtyards: London, Sydney, Santa Monica, Japan
* Vertical solutions for edibles

 

Design: Garden Antiques at NYBG

The oldest and largest garden antiques show in the US is celebrating its 20th anniversary April 27-29 at the New York Botanical Garden.  A benefit preview party and collectors' plant place on April 26th features the noted landscape architect Mario Nievera, designer Renny Reynolds, editor & designer Charlotte Frieze, interior designers Juan Montoya, Ann Pyne, Jonathan Adler and others. At the preview, attendees will get early access to all of the antiques and there's also a silent auction of rare plants, garden decor and other items.

The show itself runs from 10AM to 5PM Friday through Sunday; most of the items for sale are from the late 18th century through the mid 1950's, from U.S., England, France, Belgium, Sweden and Italy. Among this year's highlights are an ancient Roman terracotta oil jar, pendant lights from the 1920's and a French custom-made copper armillary dating from about 1720.

In all, 31 exhibitors will be showing furniture and garden ornament, and antique garden books will be featured at Potterton Books of London and NYC.

Preview Party: 718-817-8885
General Info: 718-817-8700

photo: Barbara Israel Garden Antiques

Plants: New American Chestnut - NYBG

Ten improved American chestnut trees (Castanea dentata) will be planted Wednesday (April 18) at the New York Botanical Garden, and scientists hope they might be able to survive the chestnut blight that wiped out most of the trees.  The blight was introduced by error in the early 1900's, and within a few decades, most of the trees were gone.

The trees are being planted by scientists from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, with support from the American Chestnut Foundation.  The new chestnuts contain a gene derived from wheat that detoxifies the oxalic acid produced by the blight and that kills the trees.  Dr. William Powell, a biotechnology expert at ESF says if the oxalic acid can be eliminated, "we probably will get a resistant tree."

Powell also noted the importantance of the chestnut, a key species in  Eastern forests, in providing nuts for wildlife and human consumption, and rot-resistant, fast-growing wood for the lumber industry.   "It was an important part of our history," he said, and "we really want to bring it back."

Powell's colleague Dr. Charles Maynard, said the location of the planting is very important because it is just a short distance from the spot where the blight was first discovered in 1904.

The trees at the NYBG are among more than 100 varieties of new American chestnuts that are being tested in field trials for blight resistance at various locations around the country.

(photo: Am. Chestnut Foundation)

 

 

National Mall Finalists

The National Mall in Washington DC, popularly known as "America's front yard," may soon get a much-needed makeover.  The Trust for the National Mall has announced the 12 finalists in a major design competition to improve sites that have been crumbling for years, and the winners will be announced in May. The finalists include some of the most prominent names in the United States in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture.

The photo above is the concept by Andropogon Associates and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson for Constitution Gardens, including a restored lake, a glass pavilion (Founders' Hall), a marketplace, plazas and more.  The site is near the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial and the Reflecting Pool.

The Mall, between the Lincoln Memorial and the US Capitol building, is visited by more than 25 million people a year, and it is now marked by cracked and sinking sidewalks, large areas of dirt (and mud when it rains) instead of grass, and limited public facilities. The National Park Service has said the Mall requires $400 million for critical deferred maintenance and at least another $300 in improvements.  The competition called for sustainable designs that would help preserve and protect the Mall for many years to come. 

The image at left, by Michael Maltzan Architecture and the Tom Leader Studio, calls for a underground facility at the Washington Monument, with dining, retail and event spaces, as well as an amphitheater with a circular stage.

The public has been invited to comment on the designs of the competition finalists, which can be found on the Trust's website ... but just try getting on that website!

 

 

Landscape Lectures

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is hosting a series of lectures with noted landscape architects this year ... the first, with Michael Van Valkenburgh, sold out right away.  So sign up soon for the others, listed below.  Lectures are free with museum admission and take place at 7PM in Calderwood Hall.

Landscape Lectures

June 7th -- Takuma Ono in conversation with Charles Waldheim

Sept. 27th -- Ken Smith

November 8th  -- Martha Schwartz

2013:

February 14th -- James Corner

April 11th - George Hargreaves

Eco-Friendly Garden Containers

Sure like this vertical wall system from CompoClay, part of the company's new collection for this year.

The line of garden planters is made from a raw material made from minerals, water, and sand, according to the firm.  It took CompoClay seven years to develop the mix, and they say it can emulate wood, metal, stone and ceramic without sacrificing safety and durability.

Aside from garden planters, the company also manufactures a wide variety of architectural elements and items for the home. They also take on custom-designed projects, and promise many more new products in the coming year.

(photos: CompoClay)