Allium October 26, 2009

For those of you who are already (or always) thinking about next year’s garden, there’s still time to plant Allium bulbs – ornamental relatives of onions and garlic – in your sunny beds. The flowers of the most common ornamental Alliums are a whimsical, spherical burst of pink, lavender or white at the top of a tall stalk, but there are low varieties with gorgeous foliage, as well as bizarre starburst and hairy flowers for those of us who can never have enough weird plants. Alliums show their stuff right after the big spring show and before the summer flowers are in full swing.

We love to tuck Allium bulbs in small spaces between plants. You only notice them at their best, and they seem to disappear after they are deadheaded. A dozen or more look terrific sweeping above and through lower plantings.

If that’s not enough to inspire you, Alliums are deer resistant, drought tolerant and make great cut fresh or dried floral arrangements. Cool!

Take a moment to gain a little additional inspiration from the Google images pages, and add a few Alliums to your fall garden to-do list!

Sit. Stay. Mosaic Newsletter #6 October 14, 2009

Happy fall! The weather switch has flipped, and the days are growing shorter. It’s a perfect time to consider garden goals for next year, and in this newsletter, we’ll share a few ideas for creating a well-used and well-loved seating area. A little time measuring and drawing now, with plenty of time to ponder, may help you build your own beautiful outdoor room by next summer.

When sketching our first concepts for a space, we often start by pondering the location and design of seating areas. Of course, each element influences the others, but outdoor rooms for entertaining, eating or just relaxing are the heart of many gardens. Below are a few rules of thumb to help you design your perfect seating area.

A courtyard dining room, just outside the kitchen, maximizes human space while maintaining a little distance from the neighbor's cedar fence.

Function is key to a successful, well-used seating area. From beginning to end of your design process, return to the questions of how you will use the space. Do you want an intimate dining room for two to four, an area to barbecue with a crowd, or a cozy nook for meditation? Have you chosen materials that will make the space easy to use and care for? Great design matches form to function, and focusing on your practical goals for a space will answer more questions than any article could.

The ipe bench on the right side of this photo is a private, shady spot to relax.

Location, location, location. Consider how the area will relate to the house and the rest of the garden. Areas for eating and entertaining are best located with easy access to the kitchen. If you think about how many trips you take to and from the table before and during a dinner party, suddenly the cozy, shady spot at the back of the property seems like a long way away. Conversely, a short journey through the garden and a little privacy can make a quiet bench seem like a world of its own. In any space, a great view of the rest of the garden (or the greater landscape, if you’re that lucky) is always an asset.

Fit the size of a seating area to its function. Even a modest dining area, for instance, needs room for table, chairs, and a comfortable flow of traffic. Likewise, a quiet spot for a couple to enjoy the sunset should be small enough to feel intimate, but with enough space to not feel overgrown or cramped. These are simple concepts, but they can be overlooked in a challenging space. In the courtyard garden pictured at the beginning of this article, we transformed a tight, rarely used space, hemmed in by the house, the neighbor’s fence and a thick laurel hedge, into an outdoor dining room. We had to be creative with other aspects of our design, from planting in narrow beds to screening for privacy, but making room for people came first. The stone patio is the perfect spot for an al fresco dinner for four, with room to serve and mingle.

The ipe deck is our most used garden room.

Think outside, around and through the box. It can take time and lots of creative thought to discover a solution beyond obvious, flawed options. When we moved into our house, there was no good location for an outdoor dining area. Every obvious place was too exposed to the street or too out of the way. We weren’t willing to settle however, and after what seemed like ages, we came up with the idea of adding a sliding glass door off of our bedroom onto a house-level ipe deck. The deck is such a success that we hardly eat indoors in the summer. Don’t give up when finding the perfect location or layout takes a little head scratching or a minor remodel!

Consider the desired “feeling” of your space. A warm, open space with a view over the garden feels very different than a cozy, shady corner. Surrounding plants and hardscape will strongly influence the ultimate feeling your seating area, but the unchangeable conditions of a space, such as exposure and elevation relative to the house and the rest of the garden color its character.

We used a rusting steel wall and plantings to separate and screen the Gregory garden's seating area from the neighbors.

Mind the edges. When possible, leave at least a narrow layer of surrounding plantings between a seating area and the nearest fence, hedge or property line. The aesthetic softness will make a seating area feel more comfortable and part of the garden. When that is not a possibility, as in the Gregory garden at right, creative selection of screening materials makes all the difference.

Materials matter. There are many options for the “floor” of a seating area, and no one option is right for every circumstance. Pea gravel can be a soft, cohesive, inexpensive solution, but it requires regular maintenance and is rarely the right choice for a dining area where chairs will displace the gravel each time they are moved. Well-laid flagstone can be a beautiful, solid surface for a dining area, but may be overkill for a simple bench.

A custom metal bench anchors one end of this simple, pea gravel terrace.

Finishing touches. When you have created your beautiful space in the perfect spot, treat yourself to some good looking furniture. Sometimes a great seating area is rarely used, just because there is is not a comfortable, attractive place to sit. We sometimes design furniture to fit one of our gardens, but there are many fun options, from retail to resale to repainting an old chair a fun new color.

Thanks for keeping up with us! We hope you enjoy all of your fall adventures in and out of the garden. We look forward to checking in with the next newsletter.

Furniture September 22, 2009

Sometimes, a garden needs one final touch to bring it together. When that final element can be a functional table, bench or chair, all the better…. We have designed custom furniture for a few of our gardens, a feat that inevitably requires more time, effort and head scratching than we could imagine. Those big stone benches require a little sweat equity, as well. Somehow, the results are always enough to make us willing to dive in again.

Cantilevered ipe and steel bench (photo by Robin Bachtler Cushman)

Steel bench with perforated top

Steel table with perforated top (chairs by Henry Hall)

Sandstone bench

Sandstone bench with rusting steel wall

Steel table with perforated top and our first (and only?) chairs

The Ruth Bancroft Garden September 17, 2009

CA succulents and friends in our garden

The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA is a wonderland of textures and colors, and a stunning example of why we would move to Northern CA, if we could only convince a few million people to move away. How lucky that one of the best collections of succulents anywhere would be so beautifully curated…. We hope you’ll find time to visit when you’re in the Bay Area. It’s one of our favorite places, and it may become one of yours, as well. Be sure to check out their photo pages!

WARNING: Visiting the Bancroft Garden can be a thorny proposition for those of us with an affection for spiky, spiny, sculptural plants. They have a nursery, and if you are like us, there is always room for one (or twelve) more little containers…. Serious succulent addicts should be sure to avoid the Dry Garden in Oakland, unless they are prepared to build a cold frame.

Just a thought…. The Bancroft Garden is one of the Garden Conservancy’s Preservation Projects, and one very good reason to join the Conservancy (or give/request a gift membership).

windows and doors September 11, 2009

The view through our front door this morning.

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Design thought: most of us spend more time in our house than in our gardens.  Taking the time to create beautiful scenes through important doors and windows will reward you dozens of times a day.  We often center features or hardscape elements on the primary views form the house, but a less formal, thoughtful organization of space can capture your attention just as well.

Harvest Season – Mosaic Newsletter #5 August 31, 2009

Our fall harvest

We love the harvest season! Of course, we treasure each broccoli floret and baby carrot of spring, but there’s nothing like bringing armloads of fresh summer and fall veggies to the kitchen. In honor of this season’s bounty, we’re sharing a few design ideas for vegetable gardens and some of the resources that help us grow beautiful food.

Before we get started, we should mention that Joy Gregory’s garden is catching some notice on Sunset.com. It’s the first garden in an online article about lawn-less front gardens. Cool!

Beautiful Edibles

The primary goal of veggie gardening is buckets of produce, of course, but many of us work hard to make our outdoor spaces beautiful, and see no reason to stop with the ornamental garden. The character and requirements of the plants present a few challenges, however, which is where good design comes in.

All vegetables have their moments of glory, but planted perfection is rare in a veggie garden. There is almost always an empty patch or browning leaves or something digging up the baby spinach or something chewing on the broccoli foliage…. not to mention the considerations of crop rotation, adequate spacing and cultivation. Without carefully layered, full plantings to fall back on, structure and hardscape design are paramount.

River rock borders frame the water feature at the heart of our veggie garden.

At first glance, the geometric structure required by the way most of us garden (rows of vegetables in rectangular or rectangular-ish raised beds, surrounded by straight paths) may seem limited, but a little thought and creativity offers a range of solutions and feelings from formal and sculptural to whimsical. We consider the necessary rectangular forms and pathways a jumping off point for design, rather than a limitation. Once we’ve got the basic form in mind, we consider materials for borders or retaining. Stone, metal, and wood all present a variety options for finishing the structure of a garden.

We planted our first veggies before the rest of the garden was complete.

In our garden, the best space for the veggie garden was in a lower, sunny corner of our property. The straight lines of the paths and circular “roundabout” continue the overall design of the ornamental garden, and the pea gravel paths and surrounding corrugated, galvanized fence emphasize an overall continuity of materials. Rather than continuing to use the rough, straight edged basalt that forms the borders, walls and stairs of our ornamental garden, however, we bordered our raised beds in large, round river rock. The river rock softens the lines of the veggie garden, and playfully frames the herbs, strawberries and other low plants that spill over the borders. The aesthetic center of our veggie garden is the Vietnamese urn water feature at the intersection of our main paths. The urn is visible from the upper garden and punctuates the long axis of our narrow space. The circular space around the urn cuts into the straight lines of our raised beds, at once playing off of and playing with the surrounding, mostly rectangular, geometry.

Our space reflects our desires and priorities (cohesiveness of design and maximizing usable space, among others). The veggie gardens we have created for clients vary with their goals. One client was a busy mother with a strong design sense. She wanted to involve her young boys in growing some food, but she was more interested in having a “sculptural” garden that was easy for her and the boys to work than in maximizing planting space that she would not have time to maintain. We built three long, narrow, rectangular raised beds from dry stack basalt. Their unusual forms look great even in winter, and grow gorgeous peppers and other heat-loving crops in the summer.

These long, narrow raised beds are perfect for our client who wanted a small, sculptural garden to work with her sons.

A simple, portable ipe and steel framed veggie box

Another client wanted a simple, contemporary box for their veggies. The catch was their request for a portable design they could take with them if they moved. We bolted ipe (a sustainably forested tropical hardwood) to rusting metal corners, which extended below the wood and doubled as stakes to hold the box in place.

There are so many more ideas and materials to try, and we love the challenges and rewards in designing vegetable gardens. Just the ideas for retaining (vertical flagstone, rusting metal, how about a mini-gabion wall?) seem endless. Each space and lifestyle offers challenges and inspiration for design well outside the ubiquitous cedar box.

iA Little Help

We love growing food. Our veggie garden and orchard take a third or so of our usable garden space, and we dream of having more space to grow all of the things that we can’t cram into our little property (brussels sprouts! pumpkins!). That said, our expertise is in landscape design and construction, not in producing food, and what success we have in growing fruits and vegetables is due in large part to research and strategic questioning of farmers and home gardeners many times more experienced and knowledgeable than we are. Below are a few of our favorite resources. We’d love to hear about yours!

One of Robin's photos of the farmer's market

• The Lane County Farmer’s Market and other local farmer’s markets – Local farmers know what, when, where and how to plant, cultivate and harvest, and most of them are generous with advice. Two of our favorite farmers at the market are Grateful Harvest and Ruby and Amber’s (they cultivate by horse power!). The market is also the place to buy starts in the spring – try Ruby and Amber’s tomato starts next year….
• Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Salomon – Everything from planting calendars to best varieties for our area…. This is the Willamette Valley veggie geek’s best friend. It has awfully high expectations for those of us on smaller lots, and we would quibble with a few particulars, but our copy is dirt smudged and dog-eared for a reason.
• Territorial Seed Company – Seeds and starts grown in Oregon, with many organic options available. One of our greatest early season joys is the March delivery of the year’s seeds.
• The Oregon State Extension service – lots of information on fruits, vegetables, pests, and regional differences. We just found this cool pdf with information and planting calendars for different regions of the state.
• Robin Bachtler Cushman’s photographs are terrific inspiration. She chronicles our local farms and vegetable gardens. If you happen to be on the LCC campus before September 21, her work is part of a show, “Markets,” at the David Joyce Gallery.

These are just a handful of the terrific local and regional resources, including many exceptional home gardeners who are happy to share their experience and advice with the rest of us.

Thanks for keeping up with us! Fall is a wonderful time to be outside, and we hope the next month brings plenty of beautiful weather for gardening and other adventures.

Best,

Rebecca & Buell

Check out the Gregory garden at Sunset.com August 27, 2009

Joy Gregory’s garden is on the first page of a Sunset.com article about lawn-free front yards! Cool, hunh?

If you’d like to learn more about the Gregory garden, check out our first newsletter and some fun articles about the space on our press page.

Check back soon – the next newsletter is in process and should be up tomorrow or Friday. [Edit:  Make that this weekend!  Site work took most of our time for the week, but we should have time to wrap up the newsletter in the next couple of days.  Thanks for staying tuned....]

Tough plants August 19, 2009

Hi there! We’ve been working long hours in the field, but we’re hoping the next few weeks should bring more pictures and ideas to the journal. With the hot weather (again!) this week, it seems like a great time to share a few observations about reducing our summer irrigation.

We’ve irrigated less frequently this summer than in previous years. This summer, our irrigation system runs every 6 days most of the time, with an extra cycle on the weeks when temps are above 95. While some of our plants show signs of stress, quite a few seem to tolerate dryer conditions quite well. Below are a few notes from our experience that may help you in planning or expanding your lower-water-use garden. We’ve linked to images for a few of the plants worth noting.

Eucomus 'Sparkling Burgundy'

Among the toughest sun perennials are some plants with tuberous or bulbing roots, like our Eucomis ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ (pictured at left), lillies, and dahlias. I’m sure they would all suffer with no water, but it seems like they could handle even less frequent irrigation…. The Kniphofias (torch lillies) are beautiful, too, and our Molinia ‘variegata’ looks so terrific that it is our new favorite ornamental grass.

Among larger plants, most of our conifers have held up well, although a few, like our Picea glauca ‘Pendula’ burned during the hottest weather. On the whole, “shrubby” plants like Cotinus, Sambucus, and Rhododendron have held up well, although the gold foliaged shrubs look a little scalded. The Physocarpus ‘Diablo’ may be one of the bigger surprises, as it wilts readily when first planted, but seems to handle much drier conditions once established.

In the shade garden, many of our ferns seem hardly to have missed a beat. As a very loose rule of thumb, the ferns with glossier, sturdier looking fronds seem to tolerate the dryer conditions better than the more delicate ferns. The Helleborus hybrids are holding up quite well. They seem to droop a little towards the end of the dry period, but perk up with each watering. Two standout drought-tolerant shade plants are our Bletilla striata ‘Alba’ - a lovely terrestrial orchid with a long, pin-striped leaf – and the white variegated Eleutherococcus (used to be Acanthopanax) that we got from Roger Gossler. It seems like they could not care less!

We haven’t lost many plants, but quite a few aren’t as attractive as they would be with more water. Heucheras, astrantias, and rodgersias all show signs of drought stress, but we expect them to bounce back over the winter. If we decide to further reduce our irrigation frequency next year, a few of them may have to find new homes….

For what it’s worth, there are many gardens that use much less water than ours. We didn’t set out to create a drought tolerant garden (what we *did* set out to create is another post entirely), but we hope that our experience with lowering water use in our little space may help a few people plan or edit their own gardens to achieve a graceful balance of resource-consciousness and beauty.

Hope your gardens are faring well!

Lillium! August 6, 2009

Lillies are beautiful, easy splashes of summer color. Their only drawback is the difficulty of finding a good selection. Our favorite source for bulbs in the fall is Buggy Crazy at the Saturday Market. They grow everything from our native tiger lily to gorgeous, HUGE Asiatics. Keep an eye out this fall for their carefully cultivated and hand selected bulbs.

Want to learn more about growing lillies in our area or Buggy Crazy? Lucky for us, our dear friend Rachel Foster wrote a terrific article for last fall’s Eugene Weekly!

A few photos from our garden to kick start your fall planning:

Cool online tool July 30, 2009

Two from Blooming: Kniphofia northiae and Lavandula 'Purple Bouquet'

Have you seen the Blooming Advantage Plant Finder? Blooming is an exceptional grower of unusual plants, and Northwest gardeners see their purplish pots in almost every nursery. They are best known for their perennials, but they grow a little bit of everything (well, not trees, I ’spose…).

With the Plant Finder, you can search by name to learn about the habit and cultural requirements of a plant or you can input your requirements, such as sun exposure, flower color and height, and the Finder will generate a list of plants that meet those requirements. Most of the plant descriptions include photos, too. Cool, hunh?