This one’s pretty eclectic. I’ve culled some garden design related images from Erin Loechner’s Design For Mankind who culls them from everywhere. Links back to the original source are on every post. It’s a fast and furious inspirational blog with multiple entries each day 5 days a week which is why it’s in my reader–no way can I keep up.
Most posts are a single image and a short statement. Pulling ideas from everywhere, there can be a lack of focus and sometimes things are just plain silly. But there is so much offered up that it is a funhouse of random inspiration that takes very little time to absorb and move on…perfect for those with a short attention span. It’s also an incredibly popular site with more than 12,000 hits daily.
Lace Tree
New Zealand's Fox Glacier
Living Art?
Vegetarian's Purse?
Confetti Garden
In case you missed them…here’s links to a few of the previous ‘In my Reader’ posts: ArchDaily, Vulgare, and last week’s The Good Garden. Enjoy!
Last Sunday I met up with a group of my peers from APLDNJ for a summer social and private tour of Grounds for Sculpture. I hadn’t been in a few years, so enough time had passed for me to see it with ‘new’ eyes. The day was blazing, the company was stimulating and as always the sculpture park was a mix of high and low, weird and wonderful and outside the box thinking.
Over 250 large and small scale sculptures are on the grounds, many in their own ‘garden’ spaces. What has always fascinated me about the park is the way plants, landscape forms and elements are used. They are an integral part of the experience.
Picea abies 'Pendula'
Two Picea abies ‘Pendula’ form a living arch that frames the view of a highly polished steel sculpture just beyond it on a walkway.
Undulating walk
One of two walkways with Corten supported turf ‘waves’.
Gabion Wall
This gabion wall supports a suspended bridge. It could have simply been filled with rip rap, but instead it is a sculptural wall that forms the backdrop of an amphitheater.
Red Maple Allee
Nowhere in the park are plants used in a more arresting way than this allee of red maples. They were dug and planted as young trees in groups that had already formed. They are pruned up so their trunks form a living fence and the effect is highly sculptural.
Courtyard
The stone and steel sculptural piece in the foreground is entitled Grupo and is by Pat Musick.
Water Feature
Courtyards
I kept on thinking about Luis Barragan in this series of courtyards.
J. Seward Johnson, the park’s visionary philanthropist is also a sculptor and his work is throughout the park. He creates vignettes of life-sized characters doing things. The most famous are recreations of paintings by the French impressionist painters in 3-D. I find them hilarious…none more than this one of Monet’s Woman with a Parasol on a hill of grasses and plastic poppies…yes plastic.
Fake Poppies et al.
And because this is a sculpture park I’ll show you my favorite non-plant piece (Hearts Desire by Gloria Vanderbilt) which is new to the park since I was last there and was in the ‘Garden of the Subconscious’–a meandering space formed with weeping pines and spruces.
Underused plants is a totally subjective topic based only on one person’s experience. So bear in mind that I’m the non-plant obsessed designer of the group!
I have visited many, many gardens and I’ve only seen this plant in three or four private gardens even though almost every arboretum and botanical garden I have visited has one. So, in my experience, Heptacodium miconioides or Seven Son Flower is an underused large shrub/small tree if there ever was one.
With a climbing rose in a private garden in Pennsylvania
Hardy in USDA Zones 5-9, Seven Son Flower is a truely 4 season plant that tops out at 15-20 feet and about 10 feet wide. It’s not terribly fussy and will grow in full sun or part shade. It does require pruning at a young age to create a graceful tree form. The small tree in the image above has been pruned, the one in image below has not.
In bloom
Now here’s the kicker…it may only survive due to its re-introduction into horticulture in the 1980s. The Arnold Arboretum has had one since 1905, but it was rediscovered about 30 years ago and is very rare in its native habitat in China.
Why should you have it in your garden? It rivals Stewartia pseudocamellia with its bark’s exfoliating beauty.
Exfoliating bark
Winter Interest with texture and structure
Its vase shape makes it valuable for designing a layered planting scheme and an easy companion to woodland shade lovers.
Multi-stemmed vase shape
The bold and coarse foliage is very useful when creating textural interest.
Bold foliage
Personally, I really like the buds.
Heptacodium flower buds
When most gardens are beginning to wane, Seven Son Flower puts on a show. It has spectacular late season, fragrant blossoms when little else is in bloom. They start out white and as the fall progresses the calyces turn rosey as if it has a second, different color bloom cycle. They are attractive to butterflies. Its fall foliage is golden–although pretty unremarkable.
White Bloom
Late season color
What’s not to like?
Here are the links to the rest of the roundtable posts…enjoy–it’s a plant-a-holic’s delight!
Finally a cool summer morning after weeks of oppressive heat and humidity. The slowest painter in the world should be finished this week and the most damage will be done to the garden–he left the foundation for last. I am at the 1/2 way mark and I’m still not sure what this exercise is about.
Six months of images. Six months of Mondays. Six months of commitment. Unexpected forks in a path that I thought would be somewhat straight forward. The close observation makes me want to tear it all out and start over. The last 26 weeks (actually only 24 since one didn’t have a photo and the other was a photo taken in Buffalo). I am giving up control here too since I’d rather have even rows of three and the last only has two…maybe that’s the lesson.
There’s a new garden lifestyle blog in town and it’s worth a look. The Good Garden is Sarah Kinbar’s brand new blog. In case you don’t know, Sarah was also the Editor in Chief of Garden Design magazine for the past several years. She has an inquisitive mind and great taste. Add to this honesty (she hasn’t been reading Organic Gardening) and a her own point of view and well…see for yourself.
Here’s some of what’s she’s posted in the first month…
'We Must Go'
A post about Fresno, California’s Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno…this single photograph makes me want to put it on my go to list also…
Pretty...
Some would consider this garden design blasphemy…but YES! I agree, gardens should be pretty again. Apparently so do more than a few others in the Rise of Pretty Gardens.
Tool Shed Green Roof
This green roof is achievable by just about anyone…love that the shed is plum colored also! Not sure why the post is titled Tood Shed Greenroof though…
Photograph by Richard Felber
This week Sarah not only featured Richard Felber’s incredible garden phototgraphy, but Garden & Gun magazine…and
Royal Hawaiian Hotel via Elle Decor
The pink and grey outdoor lounge at the The Royal Hawaiian hotel as shown in Elle Decor this month. Now that’s right up my eclectic alley.
