Blue Planet Garden Blog

If Gardeners Ruled the World

Some days it feels like I live my entire life on the computer, but when it comes to the holidays, I'm an old fashioned gal.  Every year, I design and illustrate a garden-themed holiday card that I mail to my clients. While it would be much simpler, not to mention greener, to send an electronic greeting, it is an honor to help create something as personal as a garden for another person and I want my card to reflect that.  (Although honor or not, I usually opt for a funny message, because that's just how I roll.)

But as I don't have all of your addresses, you'll have to settle for the computer version.  Click on the images to see a larger view.

Cover:

Inside:

If you're interested in the mechanics, here's the process.  First I come up with a theme.  The idea of creating a card based on the 12 Days of Christmas came from fellow designer Sharon Peterson a few years ago.  It takes more than a good idea, however, as I have to make sure the concept is simple enough that it's within my ability to illustrate and communicate.  For example, I've had an idea of creating a card based on a graphic novel - because really, it's about time someone exposed the gritty underbelly of the gardening world - but so far it's just been too complex for me to figure out how to implement. 

Once I've sketched out the idea and decided on the message inside, I make the illustrations.  In this case, I drew each of the 12 day pictures separately, imported them into photoshop, and duplicated each picture to create the tree's layers.  Despite the number of pictures, this year's card was easier to draw than most.  I even included a little shout out to Facebook friend and succulent expert Debra Baldwin for my day 12 photo.  I tried to make an echevera but it ended up looking like a blue pointsettia, so I settled for a cactus.

Once the cover art is laid out, I import the file into Zazzle and add the text.  The first few years I did everything myself, including printing on my own color printer, but using a store like Zazzle is much easier, and it also lets me post the cards for others to buy as a few designers have expressed interest over the years.  You can see cards from previous years here.

Seasons Greetings, everyone!

Susan

Garden Designers Roundtable: Inspiration – What I Learned from the Girl from Ipanema

  When it comes to inspiration, I believe in discipline.

Don’t misunderstand me.  Like many of you, I often stumble across something inspirational when I’m least expecting it.  Sometimes my muse is obvious: a beautiful garden or an eye-catching plant. At other times it may not be related to design at all, yet somehow helps me make the leap to a whole new way of viewing a garden.  But these moments come when they come, and frankly, I need a steady diet of new ideas to feed my creativity.

For that reason, I’m a fan of charettes and other exercises designed to stretch the way I approach the task of garden design.  I’m particularly fond of those with a time limit.  As anyone who’s watched a competition like Project Runway knows, most of the designers do their best work with a crazy assignment, limited budget and a ticking clock.  Conversely, when set free to create whatever they want, they freeze and produce some of the dullest pieces.

I’ve taken part in numerous exercises like these over the years, but one of my favorites was a homework assignment for a class on pathway design.  Our instructions were to choose a piece of music, and while we listened to it, free our minds and draw or color whatever the music made us feel.  Jagged lines, shapes, blobs; wherever the music took us was fine. My song was Antonio Carlos Jobim's The Girl from Ipanema.  For me, the mental picture this song conjures  is of a beautiful woman, neither young nor old, hips swaying as she strolls down the colorful streets of a tropical town on her way to the ocean.  Reveling in her own beauty and the beauty of the day, she is uncaring of the admiring glances sent her way, too busy savoring a unique moment in time.

What I wound up with on my oversized piece of newsprint was much less specific:  a sinuous line snaking through riotous clouds of rich color.  Unfortunately, I no longer have what I drew, but the idea of careless, feminine beauty interpreted through color, curves and texture stayed with me.  And that idea became the inspiration for this garden design:

 

Which turned into this garden:

 

Like most of you, I’m a busy professional and find it difficult to make time for activities that don’t have a clear reward. But this past month I realized I needed to recreate the discipline for myself that various classes and workshops have provided, and so signed up for the Sketchbook Project.  If you haven’t heard of it, thousands of artists all over the country have been sent a moleskin sketchbook, with instructions to fill it with images inspired by one of several themes.  My theme is “a record year for rainfall” but how I interpret that idea and what materials I use is entirely up to me.

My sketchbook arrived yesterday and I have until January 15th to fill it, at which point it will be added to a traveling show with museum stops all over the country, including my own backyard, San Francisco.  Crazy assignment, limited budget and a ticking clock – a steady helping of discipline that will hopefully lead to a frenzy of inspiration.

If you’d like to see where other Garden Designers Roundtable members find inspiration, visit these posts:

Andrew Keys, Garden Smackdown, Topsfield, MA

Carolyn Choi, Sweet Home and Garden Chicago

Jocelyn Chilvers, The Art Garden, Denver, CO

Lesley Hegarty and Robert Webber, Hegerty Webber Partnership Bristol, Avon, UK

Pam Penick, Digging, Austin TX

Rebecca Sweet, Gossip in the Garden, Los Altos, CA

Rochelle Greayer, Studio g, Boston, MA

Susan Cohan, Miss Rumphius' Rules, Chatham, NJ

Ivette Soler, The Germinatrix, Los Angeles, CA