FEAR, LOATHING AND PASSION

Post 1 of many

Before all you literary OCD annoying people out there bash me for stealing a concept out of David Hicks book....your right...David Hicks is genius and I am proud to say I stole the idea right off of page 224 of his book. This blog's name is a reference to his book and style after all. If any of you don't know who he is, I recommend his book: DAVID HICKS, my kind of garden.

I fear the tacky people will take over the world and spread horrible red mulch and garish colored annuals around so yes, I'm fearful, but confident the real world of great gardeners can overtake this immoral majority of tackiness and take back the country.

I also Loath the weekend makeover mentality that has nothing to do with gardening or good design at any level....so just stop it....already! If your in this group, read this!

Things I love to loath

1. RED MULCH:
Horrible misguided tacky stuff that should be banned.

2. MULCH VOLCANOES:
Volcanoes around trees and shrubs..not only is it bad for your plants. (IT'S UGLY)

3. LITTLE CUTE CONCRETE STATUES:
Bunny's, frogs, mother Teresa, all on my hit lists of never do under any circumstance. Plastic versions even worse.

4. PLASTIC POND LINERS:
Prefab, biomorph shaped plastic pond liners...fake looking, stupid contraptions that should all be recycled for some good use.

5. WATERFALLS/NATURAL PONDS:
Not all but most. Especially those kind the build on the home and garden network. If you have a flat property, don't build a fake berm and stick a waterfall on it. Unless your going for horrifying theme park concept!

You can be successful with this feature but it will take a lot of effort and usually money to make it look natural. I much prefer formal or modern water features that are constructed of concrete, stone, glass or other permanent materials and are designed as art.

6. CONCRETE PAVERS:
Not all, but most especially the ones that come with that no fade surface, so It can look perfectly tacky for years to come. (Try real brick or granite cobble) I also love concrete surfaces used in modern ways. Let the material be what it is. If a product is trying to look like something else, its almost always a bad idea.

7. BIRD FEEDERS, HUMMINGBIRD FEEDS:
Plastic, wood or metal monstrosities that are the equivalent of putting an old sofa on the front porch...YUCH

8. PLASTIC OUTDOOR FURNITURE:
Read blog entry sit on it.

9. ASPHALT DRIVES:
I know this will be a controversial one! There ugly and like big black mark leading up to your house. If you must have kids give them a little patch with one of those dreadful basketball hopes hidden by hedges or other planting somewhere. Or try the PARK, that's what there for.

Alternatives:
Oil and stone top for your asphalt drive is a nice finish. Pea gravel is a nice option and other native materials depending on your area like in Nantucket they used crushed shells, very beautiful option. Stone is one of my favorites, but of course that can really be a formidable cost in a long driveway. I love grass strip in the center of a concrete drive...I have seen this work great with a mid century modern house for a small drive. It allows a little more green and is better for environment.

In a few western states they have developed a soil stabilization product that is made from Pine sap and other organic materials. These have a natural color to them and look much more at home with the land. This process has not come to the Northeast yet. I tried to find an installer for a project I worked on in Darien CT but none could be found. Still a specialty.

BATHERINGS OF A GARDENER

Spring 2008

I can hardly stand up, my back hurts...my hands are full of cuts and bruises, I'm sunburnt, I think my body is frozen in a weeding position....but hey, the garden looks marvelous! Now I need to go away to a beauty spa for a month.

Gary & I participated in the benefit garden tour for PARC again this year and we....or correctly...I have been busy making sure the tour goers get their money's worth. It was Saturday June 14th and we had a terrific turn out.

We added a fairly large new garden this season. (The West Shrubbery) Its not completely finished but below is a picture of the rustic daybed feature set in the center of the garden.

While the garden was still in a still state of fleeting perfection, I shot these photos.

Front courtyard roses & clematis

Entrance to Peony garden

Peonies in full bloom

Overlooking rear north garden and lawn

Re-designed porch furnishings

Breakfast terrace

Blue garden

Entrance to west (Chanel) garden with a site line to potager gate

Shade garden

Potager

Upper cutting garden

Vizcaya Miami Florida

I returned from a week on terrific weather in Miami and I had an afternoon to visit Vizcaya. The gardens that were designed by Colombian landscape architect Diego Suarez and Paul Chaflin are amazing and the siting of the villa and various garden features is thoughtufl and beautiful. The construction started in 1910 and was the winter home of industrialist James Deering, American harvester company. Who new---tractors could pay off so well...maybe I need to rethink my financial plan.

If you go, take in all the complex arrangement of walks, terraces, and garden areas. Alot of inspiration from classic Italian gardens (but of course with Zone 10 tropicalplanting) gives the place a soul and beauty that I think we all are looking for in our own garden and life.

The layout and connectivity of the spaces and its relationshiop to the water was the most magical thing for me. There are several areas under restoration, but you can view them and get a whif of what the creator was thinking. The planting itself is not a highlight but the strong concepts behind placement and selection.

For more information visit the website: www.miamidade.gov/vizcaya

WINTER INTEREST (So bored I'm thinking burlap is interesting)

January in the northeast is pretty bleak in my book: cold, rainy, mixed with some snow. I was away for over a week and when I returned home most of our December snow cover had melted, leaving twigs, leathery oak leafs and cones thrown across the gardens from all the wind and rain. Sure it looks fine from the road, but don't look to close. I keep thinking, I should go out and pick that stuff up, sort of pretend I'm gardening. Then I start thinking of how tidy and neat all the burlap wrapped hedges look and how they emphasis the layout......Okay I'm officially winter bored with the garden and my normal testy nature transforms temporary hatred.

I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of winter interest bull. I would rather be in the tropics. My idea of a great winter garden is lounging next to a pool working on my third glass of wine for the day. During these three months a year I plan to split my time between New York City and any place warm...or at least, that's the goal.

Since I'm not someplace warm I must admit a light coating of snow outlines the garden beds does highlight the architecture of the garden. Judge for yourself.

We cling to what me must..see photos

MY GARDEN

Here it is, photos of my garden so all you closet critics can use it as target practice. I can hear it now. Too traditional, too fussy, way to neat (I like that one), too much maintenance, too ordered. Well who asked you anyway.

To be clear its not some twisty curvy swervey path around the house with bits of planting flung about. It has a tinge of OCD and its not low maintenance, we do use totally organic garden techniques and I have no irrigation. I'll give it a squirt or two if we hit weeks of dry spell, but I really try to ask the plants to make on their own or they are sent to the compost pile.

My own garden is rooted in traditional ideas. It has a rusticity and informal attitude that takes the edge of a layout that has symetry, strong axis lines and some say a formal layout. As in most residential properties the largest feature in the landscape is the house which was built in 1825. Its a post and beam farmhouse and orginally had 200 acreas of farmland, no mostly proptected water shed land and I have two acreas to play with.

I limited the palette to local materials for the hard scape with the exception of some handmade brick made in Virginia. The garden includes ideas with lineage back to Italian gardens and classic English gardens but I think feels very much at home and genuine in the lower Hudson Valley area.

While my design work is starting to lean more more toward modern spaces and planting design that is less about flower gardens my own home and garden is more sanctuary and is very peaceful. Of course its not finished, and I'm already thinking of changing some planting I installed only three years ago...its never finished.

The west garden (picutred above) is edged with stone walls and has design references to a traditional cloister garden. The garden is overlooked and framed on the North side by a arbor that has two towers connected by an arbor all made from local cedar with the bark on. In the summer its partially covered by honeysuckle. The whole garden is the main entrance pathway to the rear vegetable and cutting garden.

The Kitchen garden is designed based on french principles of a Potager. It is a south facing space leveled with the use of a dry stone wall and stone entrance way and gate. Rustic cedar fencing is a material that is repeated in with different patterns and has trumpet vine planting on it.


The garden is filled with herbs, heirloom vegetables and flowering plants which borders the cutting garden separated by a Yew hedge. Several hundred boxwood line the beds along with chives, oregano and thyme for edging and cooking. Many other herbs are planted seasonally.




The layout around the house is all about views from inside and connection to the outside areas. There was an existing porch and I added a breakfast terrace on the West side. I wont' bore you with the standard line about how its perfect for morning coffee..well it is, but who has time.
For the evening we have our main terrace and dining terrace with a pergola. Gardens and hedges souround and embrace these areas so each one seems intimate.

A sunken garden is located between these terraces is a design of tonal blues and purples. Someday I plan on all green space very low but for now we enjoy the color.

SIT ON IT

Outdoor furniture

A few years ago I was on vacation in Tuscany with my partner and our two best friends. I had just finished the garden install at their New York City Brownstone and we were having a charming lunch in a hillside town and my friends proceeded to tell me they found the perfect furniture for the new terrace: Plastic stackable chairs in a terracotta color. The blood must have drained from my face at the thought this abuse of bad taste that was about to be heaped on my garden and I started questioning why I was even on vacation with such people.....when I heard riotous amounts of laughter from everyone including my partner, who where all in on the joke.
Such tragedies occur everyday in the garden world even though the market is filled with clever, interesting, classic, and modern selections.

White plastic stackable chairs have infiltrated the world and its hard to escape this chair no matter where you go. Aluminum tube/ mesh ridden/ swivel base chairs should be banned along with the overly ornate fake Victorian cast iron that for some reason is painted white.....Yuk.!!..and how the hell someone ever sits on these uncomfortable hard things that always have a back rise that hits right in the middle back. Some things where a bad idea then and even a worse idea now. And lets stop it with all the (little) (Cute) details on things. Does the back of the bench really benefit from a trite machine carved basket of flowers detail....I think not. Unless its a sculptural interpretation, flowers belong in the garden, not on our furniture or cushions.

Why do we Americans like to take everything down the most tacky base we can find.

THE MIX

Even though I think I'm stating the obvious, here goes. Your outdoor living spaces need to have a well thought out furniture plan that same as the inside. Think of number of people you would like to accomidate, traffic flow from doors to gardens, function of space: dining, drinking, relaxing or whatever.

Don't match everything from one furniture line, good grief, even the tackiest of interior rarely has all matching chairs/tables. Mix wood with woven or iron. Try different finsihes, and mix styles. Sometimes you can find little table at a flea market and have a stone top cut for it which gives it a fresh appearance. If you have the budget antique offerings add alot to any space. You can repurpose something for outdoors, like steel tables from a 50's research lab. I used something like this for a New York City terrace.

To be clear, I have nothing against the classic Teak Steamer chair with a cushion as long as the teak has been responsibly harvested. I love classic wood benches and you find many resources from outrageously expensive to moderate. I really love some amazing modern almost sculptural pieces from Janus et Cie. I like the translation of classic Louis styles in iron with sunbrella cushions from casamidy. Their work is a great blending of traditional materials and modern twists.

Check out this leaf chaise from Janus et Cie. It's organic, modern and sculptural and has a traditional finish woven resin. I'll take 5 of those lined up on the edge of a pool. For a more traditional look try Almalfi iron furniture (Janus et Cie). For more moderate price point cut still maintaning clean lines check out the classic line of furniture from Restoration hardware.

A couple of web site resources geared toward modern lifestyles offer some great modern options for outdoor seating. You just have to mix and match and shop around. I like the Louis ghost chair by philippe stark outside and the heritage polished aluminium chair is a terrific chair for any environment, you will find other ideas.

Check out Designwithinreach.com and Hivemodern.com. They don't specialize in outdoor furniture but will have pcs you can use, depending on your climate and if its a loggia or porch you have a much broader choice.

I would love to see some over the top Tony Duqudette style offerings for outdoors or styles that have a middle eastern influence. Please email me with your finds!

See my list for good resources.... Please recycle the white plastic...!