Blue Planet Garden Blog

Book Review - The American Meadow Garden

Today's post is by guest blogger Shelley Somersett, APLD

Are you ready for a change from the American lawn as we know it?  John Greenlee’s The American Meadow Garden, Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn, is inspiration for designers and homeowners alike, especially in California. An experienced nurseryman, award winning horticulturalist and designer, John provides a detailed guide for the reinvention of sod lawns that includes site preparation, plant selection, installation, maintenance and how species and cultivars perform in different climate zones. The design focus is supported with stunning Saxon Holt photographs of mature meadow gardens both public and private that demonstrate John’s principles of an American Meadow Garden.

Saxon's images illustrate the design principles of ground covers, fillers, background, accents and natural lawns that John uses to guide us through the placement of grasses for a meadow design. His wonderfully evocative photographs capture the textures, movement, backlighting, function and structure of the numerous species available now in the nursery trade. Included is a comprehensive list of resource nurseries.

John includes companion planting options to achieve desired ornamental plant combinations, including bulbs, daisies, sages and ferns, to name just a few. The design aspects are generously illustrated with images from meadow gardens throughout California, Colorado, Texas, Missouri and Wisconsin. The importance of designing alternatives to the traditional lawn which is a ‘time consuming, water-guzzling, synthetic-chemical-sucking mistake’ is the primary lesson he wants us all to learn.

As a residential landscape designer in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than a decade, I gleefully remove lawn whenever possible. Filled with great information on the beauty and functionality of grasses, this will be a book I reach for often.  As a profession, designers have a responsibility to bring about change to support a healthy landscape environment. We must stop our ‘lawn’ habit. It is essential for clean air, clean water, healthy soil and consequently healthy us. This book provides the tools to help us choose the right grasses for different situations.

Perhaps my only criticism is the inclusion of some of California’s worst invasive grasses, Cortaderia selloana, Pampas Grass and Arundo, Giant Reed grasses. The state spends millions removing these species. We should not be adding them back to the landscape.

The American Meadow Garden evokes childhood memories of growing up on a ranch, running through grass up to my knees with my brother and seeing who could stay upright the longest before the grass caught our legs and tumbled us to the ground where we would lay, laughing and peering up at the sky through Blue Dicks and Ithuriel’s Spear, waiting to catch our breath and try again. My childhood lawn was a meadow. Free from petrochemicals, mowing or blowing. No herbicides required. Our peaceful sea of green teamed with life and with my brother, laughter. 

If you practice sustainable design, The American Meadow Garden belongs on your bookshelf.

All photos copyright 2009 Saxon Holt, provided courtesy of Timberpress

Garden Feng Shui for Dummies

Let me begin by saying that the title of this post is not meant to insult the razor sharp intelligence of the average Blue Planet Blog visitor – because, dear reader, you are far from average – but rather is a nod to my own amateur status in the art of feng shui.

My first encounters with garden feng shui happened when potential clients scheduled consultations with me after first meeting with a feng shui practitioner.  Inevitably, they had been given suggestions about what to include in the garden and where things should be placed with little thought given to views, neighbors, circulation, scale, etc.  Suffice to say, this did not make me a feng shui fan, but it did convince me I needed to understand it well enough to work with clients who are.

After much research, I discovered a plant-centric approach to feng shui that I continue to incorporate into my designs. My guiding principle is simple – rely on plants and other traditional garden features like terra cotta and wood to ensure all five elements of  feng shui exist within the garden.  My aha moment came from reading the books of Gill Hale (many of which are sadly out of print), which showed me that each element can be represented literally or symbolically via a plant’s shape or color. This chart demonstrates the Creative Cycle, which occurs when all five elements are both present and balanced by supporting elements (those on either side of it on the Creative Cycle).

 

Not surprisingly, the Destructive Cycle occurs when an element is threatened by its opposing element on the wheel, i.e. fire is threatened by water which quenches it, but fed by wood and earth which nurture it.

Here’s a rundown on each element:

Wood symbolizes growth and expansion and is represented by a columnar shape and the color green.  Clearly, it’s not too challenging to ensure this element is represented in the garden, but keep in mind that the Creative Cycle is engaged when each element is not only represented, but also interacts with its supportive elements. This explains one of the reasons I loath Italian Cypress as a privacy screen as it generally sticks out of the landscape like a sore thumb with no fire or water elements to balance it.

Conversely, this classic topiary is supported by the cheerful red door and its wavy, watery shape.

 

Fire is represented by the color red (what else?) and jagged, triangular shapes.  Fire is both energizing and agitating and is one of the most challenging colors in the garden to work with – in fact, I’ve noticed some designers avoid it almost entirely.  

These next three photos are all of the same garden.  In this picture, the rich red roses are balanced by the square planter (earth) that contains them and the green plants (wood) nearby.

Here the spiky red Kangaroo Paw and Phormium Guardsman are balanced by the wood planter and green plants, the yellow Gaillardia, terracotta pot and the earth-toned DG pathway.

 

This photo shows a less effective use of the fire element.  Although the square shape of the planter is a good match for the red Phormium, the underplanting of blue fescue isn’t particularly supportive.  A mix of green and bronze foliage plants would probably have worked better.

Earth is represented by arbors, fences and solid rectangular shapes as well as the colors yellow, orange and brown.  Traditional garden elements like wooden sheds and planters are an easy way to incorporate wood, as are rectangular garden beds.  Plants with bronze or gold foliage such as this bronze Carex are a wonderful way to bring this element into the garden.  

Adding a touch of fire can enliven an earth dominated area of the garden.  In this photo, the red cosmos add a harmonious energy to the earth colored Mexican Feather Grass. 

Metal represents a gathering energy and is symbolized by domed shapes and the colors white and silver.  Western garden design teaches that white is the color that most draws the eye in the garden – another way of describing a gathering energy at work.  Because of this, I find that a little goes a long way.  A domed arbor is a nice way to introduce a metal element into the garden, particularly one grounded by a rectangular earth element such as a bench.

Water is a meandering element that is easily added via a traditional water feature or by introducing the colors blue and black into the garden.  But water can also be incorporated via wavy shapes like meandering paths:

 

Or a wave of grass-like plants, like this photo or Silver Dragon Liriope my friend and fellow designer Rebecca Sweet took of my backyard yesterday:

 
 

Even when added in a straight forward way, water still craves balance.  Basalt columns (wood shape) add balance to this water feature.

 

Photo by Tai Williams

I'll end with a DISCLAIMER: The Creative Cycle represents only one small part of fung shei, but it’s the aspect that appeals the most to my designer sensibilities. More importantly, it’s wonderfully compatible with Western garden design principles, which essentially use a different vocabulary to reach the same harmonious result.

No matter what you use for a guidepost, in the end it’s all about good design.

Help – The Halloween Store Ate My House!

But no surprise there, it happens every year.

If you followed my blog last October, then you know Halloween is the holiday where my husband Nick takes over the decorating.  As you can see from the photo, the front of our house is very small; in fact, we joke that the kids don’t even need to come up to the door, they can just stick their bags out of the car window and we can drop the treats in from the front door.  Unfortunately this means Nick doesn’t have a lot of canvas to work with, so adding new things becomes difficult.  However, rest assured this does not stop him from shopping for new supplies each year, and adding even more  spiders, snakes and rats to the house:

 

Guess these little fellas got a bit too hungry waiting for the Halloween candy.

The Grim Reaper’s been a mainstay for several years now, although his victims have been known to change.

Bluckeys are also an important part of the scene. For those of you unfamiliar with the science of Halloween decorating, bluckeys are little plastic skeletons.  I recently learned (from Nick, of course) that the term bluckey comes from the blown plastic used to make the skeletons and the word buckey, which is what the more anatomically correct skeletons you may recall from biology 101 are called.  These three bluckeys are a repeat performance last year, still busily attempting a break in:

I like the one on the bottom, who looks like he’s annoyed by the rat on his head, but can’t currently spare a hand to get rid of it.

Last year these bluckeys were engaged in an honorable duel, but this year the one in back appears to be planning an ambush.  Our neighbor recently shared that her four year old daughter refers to the sneaky one in back as Susan and the unsuspecting one in the front as Nick.  Which of course made us ask ourselves, "just what does she think goes on around here?"

Also new this year, the addition of eyeballs to a few of the skeletons:

And apparently, plain old spiders just aren’t scary enough anymore, so Nick upped the fright factor by adding these creepy faces to the ones that hang right over the door.

As this is a garden blog, I’ll end by asking your opinion of grey skeletons as a foil for chartreuse foliage.

Tweeters and Gardens and Swag, Oh My!

File this one under better late than never.  After attending my first Garden Writers Association Symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina at the end of last month, I’m finally writing about it. How’s that for irony?

One of the highlights of the trip came before the conference was officially under way.  The evening before, Helen Yoest (who took the next two photos) and Elizabeth Licata planned a wonderful tweet-up in the garden of Jim and Sharon Bright.

The folks from Proven Winners were on hand and supplied us with yummy food and wine.  What a thrill to meet so many of the gardeners I follow on twitter in person!  After tweeting my disdain for hugging a few days before the conference, you won’t be surprised to hear I was so excited to meet everyone, I hugged my little heart out.

Laura Schaub (my roomie) and Amy Stewart tweeting at the tweet-up.

The conference is a mix of break-out sessions and presentations, interspersed with garden tours of noteworthy gardens.  One of my favorite sessions was photographer Rob Cardillos’, who shared many great photography tips illustrated by his own beautiful work - although his suggestion that by patiently waiting, one can often capture an unexpected shot is not advice this impatient photographer is likely to follow.

A cover Rob shot for Garden Design magazine

I was also much taken by a session on Generation Y and Gardening – but of course, if you read my guest rant on GardenRant last week then you already know that.  Lately I’ve been pondering about how my own design clientele as well as the many gardeners I met via speaking engagements and as a Master Gardener, are changing their approach to gardening, and this session helped clarify my thinking.

Garden tours were a big part of the symposium, and included visits to Duke Gardens at Duke University and the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill.  But my favorite by far was the amazing 61-acre Montrose Garden.  Now a Garden Conservancy property, this historic garden was created in the mid-19th century. In 1977 it was purchased by Nancy and Crawford Goodwin who have created a stunning garden with one photo opportunity after another.

I had been told in advance that GWA is famous for its garden swag, but to be honest, the emphasis on fertilizers, pesticides and high water, acid loving plants, none of which are part of my garden design business or personal garden, meant that I mostly turned down offers of freebies.  One exception was an advance copy of The American Meadow Garden which I was thrilled to receive, as it meant I didn’t have to fake an entry so that I could win a copy from my own Lawn Reform Giveaway.

You won’t be surprised to learn that garden writers are some of the friendliest folks around.  All the authors I met could not have been nicer. Some of  the “celebrity” highlights for me included sharing a table with photographer Saxon Holt and Organic Gardening Managing Editor Therese Ciensinski (who revealed the interesting tidbit that the majority of their readers are not, in fact, organic gardeners) for a brainstorming session on lawn reform, a Starbuck’s chat with Amy Stewart, enjoying a cocktail with Rosalind Creasy as she told me about how turning her front yard into an edible landscape has made her garden the gathering center for her neighborhood, an enlightening discussion with garden media guru Doug Green on the future of publishing, a cab ride with Shirley Bovshow, who revealed a bit about her exciting plans to create content for real gardeners via Garden World Report, and last but not least, getting to meet email pal and fellow Lawn Reformer Susan Harris in person.

Guest Post on GardenRant Today

on Generation Y and the future of gardening. So visit me over there and throw in your two cents.