I thought  that this month I would share with you the variety of features that we have created in our gardens.  Ready?

Cottage Garden in Manakin –Sabot

This site surrounds a small building used to store tractors  and tools.  But with this sweet little garden, you are fooled into thinking it is a cottage in the meadow.  We did a total make over by edging, weeding, deadheading, planting, mulching, and laying a crisp garden path with raw woodchips.

Three Retaining Walls That “Talk” to Each Other Off Lauderdale Rd in West End Richmond

Here the clients and I carefully staked out and designed this minuet of dry stack walls with hidden mortar.  Of course, our crew did the artistic hands on creation.

The lovely stone arcs in the landscape will contain light airy plantings of small evergreens, hydrangeas and long blooming perennials.  You do not want too many varying plants in this small space.  The main features are the two Japanese maples and the stacked walls.  Keep it simple.

A Garden Fence and Trellis Near the University of Richmond

You might remember the garden we have been working on since last winter.  Well here is the garden trellis that functions as a gate.  It is constructed with cedar boards “ripped” to this specific size on site.  It is the perfect scale for the house and property.  The lightness of the feature is surprising for its strong structure and is repeated on the shed and privacy fence.

You are captivated from the street view, and drawn through the functional carport to the garden space with the fountain, terrace, and seat wall behind.

Dry Creek Bed That Helps with Drainage Off Atlee Road in Mechanicsville

This yard had a soggy ditch and a stop short vista in the back yard.  Our design and installation of river birch trees, hypericum ground cover, and carefully placed river rocks and boulders serves three purposes.  It helps rain water run off the property quickly; provides a natural wall for privacy; and transports you to a New England style landscape with Virginia spring weather.

Riverbirch Before

Riverbirch After

New Gravel and Small Stone Pedestals off Westham Parkway in West End Richmond

How about a driveway pull- in with warm tan stone that doesn’t splay?  Try Sherando buff.  Unlike pea gravel, it is a clean stone (no dust) and angular.

For even more curb appeal, we constructed two short stone pedestals near the street so the stone pots were not lost as you entered the front walk.  The New Guinea impatiens give the shaded garden a luminescent bright white color.

Cheap Fix For An Eroding Hillside Off Robious Rd in Midlothian

There was heavy erosion to this slope whenever it rained.  The gutter just could not handle it all.  Instead of a pricey retaining wall, we installed a few heavy boulders, so when the rain did fall, it hit the rocks.

Labor is less because we just “plant” the rocks.  The homeowner does not see this side of her landscape so it will most likely be planted with a tough groundcover.

Remember the clearing of woods article in March?  Well, this homeowner told me to keep going with the most functional part of her outside space.  So we designed and executed the plan for the driveway and outside terrace and garden.

How did we do it? First, we reshaped her parking area to accommodate more parking and an easy turn around.  A small tractor was used to cut the new area and spread clean #57 gravel about 6” deep.

Using the driveway excavation dirt, we created a crescent shape berm near the house.  This berm not only provided a raised bed with good dirt for plants, but also gave this garden lover a cozy room where the parking area behind it is obscured.  Perennials, ornamental grasses, and flowering shrubs are planted in the berm so that she has experiences beautiful outside ‘wallpaper’.

The final picture is a great example of masking necessities.  The propane gas tank, sewer clean out and access to the pump had to remain where they were.  We did not hide them with a fake rock or green plant, but worked around them with neat clean lines.  Good artisanship and the right design help them disappear.

I thought I would attach a few pictures of our merry crew at work!

This week we performed one of my favorite tasks of clearing the woods along a lovely pond in Goochland County.  Clearing woods artistically is a matter of having an educated labor force who knows what is valuable.  A random American holly, dogwood, forsythia or wild blueberry bush is left alone.  We take out weed saplings, undergrowth, dead limbs, and trash.  We usually do not remove anything smaller than your lower arm.

Later we may incorporate red bud trees, daffodils, and wildflowers.  These pictures show how someone who “couldn’t see the pond for the scrub” now feels like she lives in Maine!

I have included a poem that this grateful client wrote about our first ‘walk and talk’.

Before We Add

“What should I plant and where?” I asked,
eager to start
the landscaping
long delayed till
now. ”Before we add, we need to
take away, “ she
said. ”Only when
the essence is
clearly seen, do we know where to
start.” -sage advice
for gardeners
of any kind.
JDG

This past January my family decided to bond on a week long “inclusive- o” package to Cancun, Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula.

Ek' Balam

Before hitting the resort and getting totally spoiled, we trod off the beaten path by staying a few nights in the charming town of Valladolid. We skipped going westward with the dozens of tour buses to the famous ruin of Chichen Itza, but instead donned our Indiana Jones attire, and headed 20 miles north to the breathtaking Mayan ruin of Ek’ Balam.

Ek' Balam

It echoed back to the good old days of tourism.  The only ‘vendor’ for refreshments was a single coke machine. Local handcrafted items were under a thatched roof. There were only a handful of other tourists.  And everyone who was there was allowed to climb on the ruins, and walk within reach of stone carvings.

Ek'-Balam and the Family!

The future looked exciting with huge mounds of stone covering future sites to be revealed.  What a great find!

If you walk by one of our gardens this time of year and have a swaft of fragrance over take you, chances are it is the Daphne odora.  My neighbors have been known to hike into my woods sniffing for the diminutive flower with variegated leaves. Once they do, they are hooked and want one for themselves.

Daphne Odora

The nickname for this plant is “odor of the gods” and boy does it fit.  An added bonus is that the flower is a pretty white and pink bloom that when cut, does beautifully in the house.

Another cold weather treat that blooms pink and is first in the winter garden is the “Dawn” viburnum.  This can have a quirky shape that does not stand out as a flowering shrub, and does not grow quickly. You only need one or two flowers however to bring the sweet fragrance inside.  This year with the warm winter temperatures it popped forth in December.  As I cut some stems to take inside I whispered …”Not yet! It’s too early.”

Dawn Viburnum

The third “must have” winter flower that is the Hellebores or Lenten Rose.  These I plant en masse of 6’s or 12’s to create an evergreen winter anchor in the garden.  The whites, pinks, purple and even black of the Lenten rose flower are stunning.

Lenten Rose

The other variety dubbed Foetida or “Stinking Hellebores” is a bit rangy but does great in the woods as a ground cover. Both of these varieties reseed.

Stinking Hellebores

The care for the first few years of these plants is absolutely nothing but water.

It was such a treat to start from scratch with the garden renovation of this Sears Catalogue home. Not only that, we worked with a long time client who had moved from another home we had landscaped. We had our own mutual admiration club!

After a lot of on site meetings, we drafted a concept plan, and

• cleared and exposed a lovely hidden garden in the back.

• designed and built an on-site “shed” that blends with the Sears retro style house.

• planted the front yard with family and friend donations of autumn ferns, oak leaf and Nikko blue hydrangeas, euphorbia, peonies and Russian sage.
• installed a variegated bluestone terrace to take care of the winter mud factor and ease in the cost of the terrace, seat walls, trellis, fire pit  and water feature to come next year.

• took care of a water problem in a high trafficked area with a classy French drain.

Our first concern in analyzing landscape projects is to consider drainage problems that may exist for the house foundation, plantings, and traffic areas.

These new homeowners wanted to take no risks in stopping any drainage issues that had contributed to their moldy basement from years of neglect.

Our solutions were to:

• Redesign and lay the brick walk so that it drained away from the house.
  
• Redirect all downspouts away from the house with a closed French drain. We dug a “dry well” at the end of each pipe and filled it with gravel to direct the water deep into the ground.
  
• Lay the beautiful chalet gravel up against the house and porch to double as a stone feature and barrier for any moisture that may collect there.
  

• Create a natural swale which would redirect any water that came from the upper portion of their lot.
  

If it does rain forty days and forty nights, this is the place to go to stay dry!

A Studio on Cary Street in Downtown Richmond

When this renowned artist asked me to landscape his studio on Cary Street.  When I learned that his space had no irrigation or light available, I immediately thought of using boulders.

Before

There is no better way than using stone to add drama and powerful energy to a landscape. The initial outlay for boulders can seem expensive at $250.00 a ton, but that is off set by absolutely no maintenance. The difficult component of using boulders is just getting them to the perfect spot with the perfect angle showing!

In his museum exhibits, this artist is referred as an abstract environmentalist. Our design stayed abstract by creating small vignettes within the narrow space.  We integrated it with  St. John’s Wort ground cover and the geometric Dee Runk Boxwoods.

We placed a “muy grande” boulder in front of the building for instant identification of the space.  The plantings include a purple flowered vitax which hates to be watered and a few sedums planted close to the rock.

After

]]> http://www.christiesfinegardening.com/blog/romancing-the%e2%80%a6-boulders/feed/ 0 http://www.christiesfinegardening.com/blog/more-perennial-fall-bloomers/ http://www.christiesfinegardening.com/blog/more-perennial-fall-bloomers/#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:42:06 +0000 admin http://www.christiesfinegardening.com/blog/?p=547

Lespedeza is one of my favorite plants partly because of its old fashion name “kissing by the garden gate”.  You get a lot of bang for your buck with this $12.00 perennial that starts out the size of your hand and grows bigger than you in 3 years.  The pretty pink flowers are shaped like a pea bloom and lasts for months.  The only maintenance is to cut the plant with hedge clippers in June, and then again in February.

Lespedeza

Silver Fleece Vine
This is another inexpensive perennial that grows quickly and holds well to pergolas and other upright garden features.  It isn’t that terrific while not in bloom, but is just great in the fall when you need something pristine looking that hasn’t been fried by summer heat. When it gets too big after 4 years or so, I cut it back drastically and let it start over again.

Silver Fleece Vine

Stony Point Area- Let’s Spruce Up a Steep Bank

This was a challenging project. The clients’ goals were to prevent erosion on this steep bank, while giving it evergreen in the winter and long lasting blooms in the warmer seasons. Low maintenance and low water needs of course also fit into the design.

Before

We used about 20 small boulders to serve two purposes; namely holding the soil in place and creating a garden feature.

We “planted” the boulders and plants; then pinned down straw matting around the plants and stone to hold the dirt when a heavy downpour hit. The straw matting eventually disintegrates but until then, it holds the bank until roots are established. We also left any old tree stumps that we could on the bank to hold the soil as much as possible.

After

Plantings include 3 crape myrtles, abelia, plum yews and the low growing spring blooming phlox.

Quite a change don’t you think?

North Side Off Brook Road- We Do Brick Driveways

This old brick driveway skirt had broken and sunken bricks lay at odd angles.  It had collapsed in some places over the years from heavy use. Both clients (because they share this driveway) wanted it pretty and useful without losing any of the old charm of the original drive.

Before

Voila!  After the project both clients said the work was better than some work inside the house!

After