Studies in Texture at the Bancroft Garden

Our trip to Northern California was brief, but we are so glad that we made time to visit one of our favorite gardens.  The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA is a mecca for hortitexturephiles and garden lovers of all stripes.  We wrote a short post about the Bancroft Garden last year, but we may not have been emphatic enough in our praise.   It is magical.  You should visit.  Soon.

As you probably know, a sunny summer afternoon is less than ideal for photographing gardens, but Buell managed to get a number of fun shots and (we think) a few pretty darn good ones.

Enjoy!

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It's Succulent Day!

Buell arranged our succulent and conifer containers last night.  The arrangement looks great, hunh?  Finishing that arrangement feels like the beginning of summer, our garden's best season.

These little pots make a big feature at the center of our upper gravel terrace, and a strong focal point at the top of the stairs from the stock tank terrace.  In many cases, we advocate using large containers to anchor your potted arrangements, but enough small containers can have a real impact.  These containers range from around 6 inches to around 20 inches in height.  Most of them are hand-coiled Vietnamese pots with an ash glaze, but there are a few odds and ends that we've picked up over the years.

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Picture Postcard Gardens

Greetings!

Our newest postcard features a few photos of our work (learn more below) and addresses for our website and this journal.  If you're new to the journal - welcome!  Once you've learned about the photos on the card, we hope you'll keep reading.  The newsletters are a great place to start, or you can take a quick scroll through our last fourteen months of photos, ideas and news.  We update every few days during the growing season, so we hope you'll check back soon.

To learn about our Mosaic-designed, 100% recycled-paper postcards read more here.

But for now, on to the pictures!

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This rusting metal wisteria arbor shades our clients' west-facing seating area.  We designed the steel frame to be sturdy enough to support a mature vine, but aesthetically light enough not to overwhelm the plant's beauty or the view.  When the vine drops its leaves for winter or the vine is cut back hard, the arbor provides a clean and (we think) attractive structure on its own.  If you like the arbor, you might enjoy this post with photos of some of our other custom metal features.

A little courtyard makes the perfect outdoor dining room for clients who love to cook.  The garden is just outside their kitchen, where they spend much of their time, and screened from their semi-busy street by a redwood fence.  We built the redwood fence and stone patio, installed the plants, and even designed the cool metal furniture!  Learn more about this pocket garden in our  6th newsletter, Sit. Stay., where we share some ideas for designing a great seating area, and in a post about our furniture designs.

A big, hand-coiled, Vietnamese urn and rustic basalt path anchor this pretty garden.  Our client requested a cottage-style planting with as much pastel floral color as her voracious deer would allow.  We balanced the seasonal color with bold foliage for year-round impact.  This garden has some great ideas, and we've discussed different aspects of it in a recent post about "making a scene," a newsletter about garden features, and a post with photos of three of our favorite deer gardens.

Thanks for reading!  We hope the card and journal provide inspiration for your garden, or at least a few minutes of fun.  If you would like to learn more about Mosaic and how we can help you create your garden, visit mosaic-gardens.com or call 541.434.6467.

For the Birds

Some of our favorite garden visitors are birds.  The garden moves with their hopping, fluttering and bathing and their songs and twitters are a soundtrack for our work.  Part of the fun of watching birds is that you never quite know what they'll do next.  Yesterday, Buell saw a jay dive into our stock tank pond and paddle around, hop out for a moment and then do it again!  Kniphofias are usually a hummingbird thing, but two years ago, waxwings mobbed our Kniphofia northiae flowers.

There are a few plants that bring birds back year after year.  Many of them are well known, but here are three of our favorites that may not make the common lists.

  • Sambucus - Our 'Black Beauty' flowers and fruits reliably, and is absolutely covered in waxwings when the berries are ripe.
  • Eccremocarpus is a red-flowered vine that is a hummingbird magnet.  We can work and watch just a few feet from the vine in our veggie garden, and the hummers are too happy to mind.  If you thin the seed pods, you'll find that the vine flowers through the entire growing season (if you don't, you may find a few baby vines spread around your garden...)
  • Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue' proves that hummingbirds aren't complete color snobs.  Its deep blue flowers vibrate with hummingbirds throughout the summer.  Interestingly, we've found that while newer plants will die in a hard freeze their first winter or two, established plants survived even last year's serious cold snap.

A last word on birds: our native bird populations are dwindling, particularly the species that forage on or near the ground.  There are many, many reasons for this, and there are many ways to help.  Planting bird-friendly gardens and using few or no pesticides (organics first, please) are a great start.  As far as the birds are concerned, the more bugs the better!  Another thing you can do is to bell your cat or find another way to minimize their bird kills.  We love cats, but a few of they are not native to our area and the native birds have not evolved the tricks to escape their efficient hunting.  We also minimize cat (and raccoon!) traffic in our garden by netting off their favorite pathways and blocking off the gaps under our fence.

ColorTextureForm - Mosaic Newsletter #8

Howdy!

We hope our last newsletter was helpful in your spring garden work.  If you haven't checked in since then, we expanded on our spring cleaning theme with a little about gardening tools, ideas for growing food in busy lives and tough spaces, and tips for making a beautiful garden scene. Beyond those ideas, we've posted some neat photos, a winter post-mortem and more, so be sure to scroll through the journal when you're done.

In this newsletter, we'll discuss how we use color, texture and form to select and place plants in our gardens.  The terms color, texture and form are used together so often in articles, books and lectures about planting design that they are almost cliche, but what do they mean for your planting design?  Even a quick survey of online articles shows a huge variety of ideas for designing with those terms in mind.  While one designer may prioritize flower color and structure, another focuses primarily on the texture and shape of leaves.

In our work, color, texture and form carry equal weight, and we have strong ideas about the best way to see and use each one.  We select our plants to create a cohesive palette, sometimes subtle, sometimes high-contrast, that reflects the desired style and mood of the space.  Because the possibilities are endless, and the results should reflect you and your aesthetic, we will focus on how we think about color, texture and form, leaving the nitty-gritty fun of building a palette to you.

Color

Foliage first - While flowers are fun and part of almost every garden, foliage color is the foundation of our plant color palette.  We use foliage to create sweeps of color throughout the year, or at least the growing season.  The colors vary from bold, contrasting spots of yellow and purple to accents of silver and burgundy to shades of green.

Know when to hold 'em - Even in a bold palette of strong, bright colors (restraint does not mean boring), restraint is key.  We intentionally leave out some colors or save them for another area.  If you love every color, or are the sort of person who can't leave a good plant at the nursery, try using different palettes in different areas of the garden.  As you can see in the first photo, our front garden has lots of bright, hot color, while the side garden, at right, tends toward gentler pinks, blues, creams and whites.

What are we talking about here? - What we mean by "form" is the overall shape of a plant - upright, round, conical, weeping, arching, and so on.  Sometimes form and texture overlap, as in spiky plants, like iris and Phormium, but for the most part, form has more to do with outline than texture.

Round, rounded, roundish - Every plant has a form, and some are stronger than others.  Not all strong forms are geometric, but those are the easiest to discuss.  For example, lots of plants have what we call a "roundish" form, where the outline more or less radiates around the center.  Other plants have a more perfectly rounded outline.  Picea sitchensis 'Papoose,' for instance, is almost spherical.  A stronger form makes a stronger statement in the garden, and can be used as a structural, almost sculptural element in planting.  We will shear some plants, like boxwoods and fine foliaged conifers, to tighten and perfect their form.

The dance - In many of our gardens, we select a plant with a strong form and "dance" three to seven of them through a layer of lower plantings.  The repeating, usually evergreen, forms have room to shine, while the lower plantings add seasonal contrast and interest.

Another perspective

Not all designers think alike (thank goodness), and if you are seeking a different, nuanced, and perennial-savvy take on color form and texture, we highly recommend designing with plants by Piet Oudolf with Noel Kingsbury.  Oudolf's sensitivity to tiny differences in, say, flower shape helps him create ever-changing, intricate, romantic plantings.  What an inspiration....

That's all for now, folks!  We'll be back over the coming weeks with more ideas and, everyone's favorite, new photos, so please check back soon.

More Spring Cleaning - Make a Scene

In this final follow-up to our Spring Cleaning newsletter, we  offer ideas for creating compelling scenes or views in your garden, with the goal of making the space more attractive and engaging.  In keeping with the theme of developing gardens, we'll focus on ideas that work with smaller additions and changes here, but a taste of the larger possibilities of this concept can be found in our newsletter about features, among other places.

The most important part of creating a view or scene is to consider the viewpoint.  Whether we're working on a new or existing garden, on a large or small area, we return over and over again to the pathways, windows, doors and other areas from which the space will be seen.  We can all get lost in our own perspective while working in the garden, looking at a planting or other element from right where we're standing - even if we're in the middle of a planting bed!  Take a walk around the area you're working in, pausing at the important viewpoints, considering how changes will appear from each location, and prioritizing the most used points and pathways.  Be sure to repeat this routine often through design and layout,  as the view will change with each new element (or sometimes just a change in light).

Creating or enhancing a central focus is the first tangible step in creating a view.  Whether you're adding a hard element,  planting, or hardscape, consider that any of them will be balanced by your plantings.  Substantial, simple elements will ground your view, where smaller or fussier elements might be lost.  A few ideas for eye-catching elements for your scene are:

  • Specimen tree with beautiful form (go see the Baltzers!).  You may be able to use or improve on an existing specimen in your garden
  • A series of three or five striking conifers or other evergreen (sheared boxwood?)
  • Bench
  • Ceramic urn, planted or unplanted
  • Basalt bowl
  • Stone stairs or path

Even small changes deserve a solid foundation.  Building a base of compacted gravel and leveling your hard elements will make a big difference in their effect and usefulness.  Don't hesitate to move or remove plants or other elements that will detract from the long-term goal.

Whenever possible, we like to bring the finishing plants for a space after the primary elements are in place.  Often the best ideas for finishing the scene we're creating comes  late in the process.  Although the urn in the photo at right was a beautiful element on its own, we didn't think of the forehead-slappingly obvious addition of a big, blue hosta until after it was in place.  You can contrast or echo the color and form of your central elements, but be sure not to bury them in oversized plants.

We hope our ideas for spring cleaning have brought a little fun and inspiration to your garden this year.  We're working out of town this week, but we'll be back soon with the next newsletter and more ideas for your space.

More Spring Cleaning - Food for Thought

In our most recent newsletter, we promised to offer ideas to make gardening more fulfilling.  For us, nothing is more fulfilling than bringing in the harvest from our orchard and veggie garden.  The size of the harvest - buckets of apples or a handful of fresh herbs - isn't as important as the connection to our garden and our food (although the food itself ain't bad).  We talked about designing veggie gardens in an earlier newsletter, but not everyone has the time, sunny space or inclination to devote to a full-on orchard or veggie garden.  Whether you're a serious veggie gardener or an aspiring gardener in an apartment, here are a few ideas for incorporating food into busy lives and small spaces.

Herbs - Anyone with sun can grow culinary herbs, many of which are pretty ornamentals.  Trailing rosemary and thyme can spill over borders, walls or the edge of a container, and other herbs, like upright rosemary can be sheared into cones or other shapes.  Bay is an attractive broad-leafed "foundation" for an herb or veggie planting (ours even survived the single digit temps!).  Consider foliage texture and color in placing your herbs, and you may find that your herb garden is a year-round beautiful corner of your garden.

Alliums - One difficulty with growing vegetables and fruits is that so many are high-maintenance plants.  The little divas want to be staked, watered, thinned, and otherwise coddled more often than many busy people can handle.  Alliums, such as garlic and onions, on the other hand, are low-key, low-maintenance, and low-water.  They only require attention two or three times a year, and they rarely or never need additional water.  They can be harvested throughout the season and dried, letting all of your "hard work" last into the winter!  (Question - Has anyone planted edible alliums around deer?  We know ornamental alliums are rarely, if ever, browsed by deer, and we've heard that edible alliums are often ignored as well.  What's your experience?).

Containers - Some veggies and fruits make beautiful container plantings.  The striking silver foliage of artichokes and cardoons, for instance, are beautiful with annuals (as in the photo at right) or with trailing herbs, nasturtiums and purple basil.  If your sun or space limit you to a container veggie garden, consider arranging your pots with an eye towards foliage combination, and perhaps add a few low herbs or annuals to spill over the edges.  One of our friends had a container veggie garden on the deck of her second floor apartment.  With peas climbing the railing and lettuce in hanging baskets, she packed a lot of food and beauty into a tiny space.

Thanks for reading!  We hope you're enjoying your gardening (veggie and otherwise) and the nice weather.  We'll be back with a post-mortem from the hard winter freeze and another spring cleaning idea.

Ron Lutsko - rainy day inspiration

We often turn to our favorite designers for inspiration.  We discovered the work of Ron Lutsko in Page Dickey's amazing book, Breaking Ground.  If you've ever visited the wonderful California Native Plants Garden in the San Francisco Botanical Garden, you have walked through his work.  His studio is known for creating projects that balance clean lines in hardscape with flowing, drought tolerant and native plantings.  A few minutes spent browsing their website reminds us of the importance and potential of simplicity.

Mosaic Q&A - Austin photos

Have a question? Want more frequent updates? We’d love to hear from you! Read more here and/or write us in the comments or at mosaic@mosaic-gardens.com.

Below is a comment we received a few weeks ago, that we thought would be a fun addition to the Q&A:

I’ve admired your Oregon garden in several magazine spreads and have known about your inspirational design website for a while. But I just found your blog and am working my way through it, enjoying your beautiful garden pictures. I garden in Austin, your former hometown, and would love to see more images of Buell’s Austin garden. Have you posted any other pics of it–or do you plan to?

We've re-posted the photo that inspired this question request above (originally in this post). We lived in Austin before our move to Oregon in 2002. Unfortunately, we only have a couple of good photos of Buell's garden, but they do show what you can do with low, almost no additional, water plantings in a hot climate. Good inspiration for all of us in milder regions, don't you think? Here's another photo of the garden, with a better look at the Goldsworthy-inspired "Beehive" sculpture Buell made from recycled limestone.

For fun, we put together a gallery of some of Buell's work for Gardens, a landscape architecture design-build firm in Austin Texas. Obviously, we have different plant and materials palettes in the Northwest, but the threads of contrast in planting and strong, enticing hardscape carry through to our work in the PNW. Click on thumbnails for larger images.

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Would you like for us to discuss a photo, design concept or plant in greater detail? Please leave a comment or write us at mosaic@mosaic-gardens.com. We very much enjoy hearing from you, and we need your help to make the Q&A a success!

Sit. Stay. Mosaic Newsletter #6

Happy fall! The weather switch has flipped, and the days are growing shorter. It's a perfect time to consider garden goals for next year, and in this newsletter, our last for the year, we'll share a few ideas for creating a well-used and well-loved seating area. A little time measuring and drawing now, with plenty of time to ponder, may help you build your own beautiful outdoor room by next summer.

When sketching our first concepts for a space, we often start by pondering the location and design of seating areas. Of course, each element influences the others, but outdoor rooms for entertaining, eating or just relaxing are the heart of many gardens. Below are a few rules of thumb to help you design your perfect seating area.

A courtyard dining room, just outside the kitchen, maximizes human space while maintaining a little distance from the neighbor's cedar fence.

Function is key to a successful, well-used seating area. From beginning to end of your design process, return to the questions of how you will use the space. Do you want an intimate dining room for two to four, an area to barbecue with a crowd, or a cozy nook for meditation? Have you chosen materials that will make the space easy to use and care for? Great design matches form to function, and focusing on your practical goals for a space will answer more questions than any article could.

The cantilevered ipe bench in the right size of this photo is a private, shady spot to relax.

Location, location, location. Consider how the area will relate to the house and the rest of the garden. Areas for eating and entertaining are best located with easy access to the kitchen. If you think about how many trips you take to and from the table before and during a dinner party, suddenly the cozy, shady spot at the back of the property seems like a long way away. Conversely, a short journey through the garden and a little privacy can make a quiet bench seem like a world of its own. In any space, a great view of the rest of the garden (or the greater landscape, if you're that lucky) is always an asset.

Fit the size of a seating area to its function. Even a modest dining area, for instance, needs room for table, chairs, and a comfortable flow of traffic. Likewise, a quiet spot for a couple to enjoy the sunset should be small enough to feel intimate, but with enough space to not feel overgrown or cramped. These are simple concepts, but they can be overlooked in a challenging space. In the courtyard garden pictured at the beginning of this article, we transformed a tight, rarely used space, hemmed in by the house, the neighbor's fence and a thick laurel hedge, into an outdoor dining room. We had to be creative with other aspects of our design, from planting in narrow beds to screening for privacy, but making room for people came first. The stone patio is the perfect spot for an al fresco dinner for four, with room to serve and mingle.

The ipe deck is our most used garden room.

Think outside, around and through the box. It can take time and lots of creative thought to discover a solution beyond obvious, flawed options. When we moved into our house, there was no good location for an outdoor dining area. Every obvious place was too exposed to the street or too out of the way. We weren't willing to settle however, and after what seemed like ages, we came up with the idea of adding a sliding glass door off of our bedroom onto a house-level ipe deck. The deck is such a success that we hardly eat indoors in the summer. Don't give up when finding the perfect location or layout takes a little head scratching or a minor remodel! Consider the desired "feeling" of your space. A warm, open space with a view over the garden feels very different than a cozy, shady corner. Surrounding plants and hardscape will strongly influence the ultimate feeling your seating area, but the unchangeable conditions of a space, such as exposure and elevation relative to the house and the rest of the garden color its character.

We used a rusting steel wall and plantings to separate and screen the Gregory garden's seating area from the neighbors.

Mind the edges. When possible, leave at least a narrow layer of surrounding plantings between a seating area and the nearest fence, hedge or property line. The aesthetic softness will make a seating area feel more comfortable and part of the garden. When that is not a possibility, as in the Gregory garden at right, creative selection of screening materials makes all the difference.

Materials matter. There are many options for the "floor" of a seating area, and no one option is right for every circumstance. Pea gravel can be a soft, cohesive, inexpensive solution, but it requires regular maintenance and is rarely the right choice for a dining area where chairs will displace the gravel each time they are moved. Well-laid flagstone can be a beautiful, solid surface for a dining area, but may be overkill for a simple bench.

A custom metal bench anchors one end of this simple, pea gravel terrace.

Finishing touches. When you have created your beautiful space in the perfect spot, treat yourself to some good looking furniture. Sometimes a great seating area is rarely used, just because there is is not a comfortable, attractive place to sit. We sometimes design furniture to fit one of our gardens, but there are many fun options, from retail to resale to repainting an old chair a fun new color.

Thanks for keeping up with us! We hope you enjoy all of your fall adventures in and out of the garden. We look forward to checking in on the journal and in our next (spring 2010!) newsletter.

Furniture

Sometimes, a garden needs one final touch to bring it together. When that final element can be a functional table, bench or chair, all the better.... We have designed custom furniture for a few of our gardens, a feat that inevitably requires more time, effort and head scratching than we could imagine. Those big stone benches require a little sweat equity, as well. Somehow, the results are always enough to make us willing to dive in again. Cantilevered ipe and steel bench (photo by Robin Bachtler Cushman)

Steel bench

Steel table with perforated top (chairs by Henry Hall)

Sandstone bench

Sandstone bench with rusting steel wall

Steel table with perforated top, and our first (and only?) chairs

windows and doors

The view through our front door this morning. i

Design thought: most of us spend more time in our house than in our gardens.  Taking the time to create beautiful scenes through important doors and windows will reward you dozens of times a day.  We often center features or hardscape elements on the primary views form the house, but a less formal, thoughtful organization of space can capture your attention just as well.

Harvest Season - Mosaic Newsletter #5

Fall harvest

At first glance, the geometric structure required by the way most of us garden (rows of vegetables in rectangular or rectangular-ish raised beds, surrounded by straight paths) may seem limited, but a little thought and creativity offers a range of solutions and feelings from formal and sculptural to whimsical. We consider the necessary rectangular forms and pathways a jumping off point for design, rather than a limitation. Once we've got the basic form in mind, we consider materials for borders or retaining. Stone, metal, and wood all present a variety options for finishing the structure of a garden.

We planted our first veggies before the rest of the garden was complete.

In our garden, the best space for the veggie garden was in a lower, sunny corner of our property. The straight lines of the paths and circular "roundabout" continue the overall design of the ornamental garden, and the pea gravel paths and surrounding corrugated, galvanized fence emphasize an overall continuity of materials. Rather than continuing to use the rough, straight edged basalt that forms the borders, walls and stairs of our ornamental garden, however, we bordered our raised beds in large, round river rock. The river rock softens the lines of the veggie garden, and playfully frames the herbs, strawberries and other low plants that spill over the borders. The aesthetic center of our veggie garden is the Vietnamese urn water feature at the intersection of our main paths. The urn is visible from the upper garden and punctuates the long axis of our narrow space. The circular space around the urn cuts into the straight lines of our raised beds, at once playing off of and playing with the surrounding, mostly rectangular, geometry.

Our space reflects our desires and priorities (cohesiveness of design and maximizing usable space, among others). The veggie gardens we have created for clients vary with their goals. One client was a busy mother with a strong design sense. She wanted to involve her young boys in growing some food, but she was more interested in having a "sculptural" garden that was easy for her and the boys to work than in maximizing planting space that she would not have time to maintain. We built three long, narrow, rectangular raised beds from dry stack basalt. Their unusual forms look great even in winter, and grow gorgeous peppers and other heat-loving crops in the summer.

These long, narrow raised beds are perfect for our client who wanted a small, sculptural garden to work with her sons.

A simple, portable ipe and steel framed veggie box

Another client wanted a simple, contemporary box for their veggies. The catch was their request for a portable design they could take with them if they moved. We bolted ipe (a sustainably forested tropical hardwood) to rusting metal corners, which extended below the wood and doubled as stakes to hold the box in place.

There are so many more ideas and materials to try, and we love the challenges and rewards in designing vegetable gardens. Just the ideas for retaining (vertical flagstone, rusting metal, how about a mini-gabion wall?) seem endless. Each space and lifestyle offers challenges and inspiration for design well outside the ubiquitous cedar box.

iA Little Help

We love growing food. Our veggie garden and orchard take a third or so of our usable garden space, and we dream of having more space to grow all of the things that we can't cram into our little property (brussels sprouts! pumpkins!). That said, our expertise is in landscape design and construction, not in producing food, and what success we have in growing fruits and vegetables is due in large part to research and strategic questioning of farmers and home gardeners many times more experienced and knowledgeable than we are. Below are a few of our favorite resources. We'd love to hear about yours!

One of Robin's photos of the farmer's market

  • The Lane County Farmer's Market and other local farmer's markets - Local farmers know what, when, where and how to plant, cultivate and harvest, and most of them are generous with advice. Two of our favorite farmers at the market are Grateful Harvest and Ruby and Amber's (they cultivate by horse power!). The market is also the place to buy starts in the spring - try Ruby and Amber's tomato starts next year....
  • Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Salomon - Everything from planting calendars to best varieties for our area.... This is the Willamette Valley veggie geek's best friend. It has awfully high expectations for those of us on smaller lots, and we would quibble with a few particulars, but our copy is dirt smudged and dog-eared for a reason.
  • Territorial Seed Company - Seeds and starts grown in Oregon, with many organic options available. One of our greatest early season joys is the March delivery of the year's seeds.
  • The Oregon State Extension service - lots of information on fruits, vegetables, pests, and regional differences. We just found this cool pdf with information and planting calendars for different regions of the state.
  • Robin Bachtler Cushman's photographs are terrific inspiration. She chronicles our local farms and vegetable gardens. If you happen to be on the LCC campus before September 21, her work is part of a show, "Markets," at the David Joyce Gallery.

These are just a handful of the terrific local and regional resources, including many exceptional home gardeners who are happy to share their experience and advice with the rest of us.

Thanks for keeping up with us! Fall is a wonderful time to be outside, and we hope the next month brings plenty of beautiful weather for gardening and other adventures.

Best,

Rebecca & Buell

Mosaic Newsletter #4

This time of year, everyone's free time fills with daytrips, summer projects and visiting family and friends. When the beautiful, long evenings roll around, we find ourselves wanting to spend time *in* the garden, rather than *on* the garden. In honor of summer fun and spaces that don't overwhelm us with to-do lists, we've put together a few secrets to creating visually rich gardens that don't require constant attention. We'll also introduce you to one of our favorite shady places to spend a warm, summer afternoon - Baltzer's Specialized Nursery.

The past month has been a busy time for Mosaic, but we've managed to add a few fun posts. If you haven't checked in for a little while, take a moment to check out the cool dry-stack stone wall we built, some tips for lowering water use in your garden, a couple photos of our project at the coast and three of our favorite perennials. If there's anything you'd like for us to discuss, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you!

The big easy - thanks to careful plant and materials selection, prep work and many of our other time saving techniques, this S. Oregon coast garden gives more than it takes.

iSummertime and the Garden's Easy

There's a myth that it takes almost daily work to make a garden beautiful year-round. Some great gardeners love to spend most of their free time deadheading, weeding, pruning, raking and fluffing, but many of us find garden work to become (gasp!) a chore if it takes too much of the time and energy we would rather devote to other pursuits. There's no such thing as a "no maintenance" garden, but in the years we've spent refining our plantings to reflect both the aesthetic desires and the lifestyles of our clients, we have discovered a few ways to create spaces that look great with just a little TLC.

From prep work to plant choices, hard work *before* planting made Joy Gregory's garden easy and fun.

Start from the ground up - Before you plant a new bed or build a path or patio, take time to clear and prepare the site well. Many potential issues, from weeds to poor drainage to wobbly stones can be lessened or prevented by excellent prep work. In our plantings, for instance, we spend much, much more time clearing the site, grading, preparing the soil, re-grading and selecting plants than we do putting plants in the ground. And we never use weed cloth (that could be a whole separate post!).

Think ahead - It's easy to get caught up in the moment, and select a pretty plant or hardscape material that will add to your to-do list in the future. For instance, many people love the pea gravel in our garden, but aren't prepared to do the extensive prep work or raking and weeding required to make and keep it beautiful. For them, choosing a different gravel or hard paving will lead to a lower maintenance and more attractive garden in the long run.

Waves of striking foliage look great year round, while flowers add seasonal color.

Foliage power - If you select plants for the color, form and texture of their foliage, rather than flowers, you'll have a longer-lasting effect with much less dead-heading. A few flowers are fun, but bold, spiky, sculptural, fuzzy and colorful leaves are the foundation of our plantings.

Plant in masses - groups of 3, 5, 12 or 25 strengthen a plant's impact, while simplifying both the garden's aesthetic and shortening your to-do list. Masses also allow you to shorten your plant list to include only the best of the best, without delving into less attractive, more needy plants.

Layers of foliage form, color and texture in this little courtyard garden capture attention year-round while keeping weeds at bay.

The nine month rule - if it doesn't look pretty darn good for nine months of the year, it's not worth it! Many plants put on an explosive floral show, and then peter out, leaving half a hole or clump of weedy foliage. One of the exceptions that prove this rule are lilies, which emerge through plants that will cover their fading foliage when they're done.

Think thick - Plant with the goal of creating waves of foliage that cover the ground to shade the plants' roots, save water and reduce weed issues. It may seem like more plants create more upkeep, but if you select your plants wisely and plant in masses, you'll have less work, not to mention a gorgeous, lush garden.

Weed more to weed less - Weed well every week or two, if you can manage it, or very thoroughly once a month through the growing season. In the long run, weeding once a week will take much less time than weeding once a month, because you will break the cycle of reseeding. If you wait much more than a month during the growing season, you're likely to have a bumper crop of the little devils for years to come. We once met someone who said it was impossible to control the weeds in his yard, even though "I go through it once a year on my hands and knees!"

Mulch! Mulching after planting and again every spring will kill or weaken weed seedlings, reduce water usage, insulate and feed the plants' roots and look great. Garden Compost from Lane Forest Products is our favorite mulch (and a great way to recycle!).

Last, but not least, have fun - If you do your homework and prep work, there should be time and room for a few fun, higher maintenance additions to your garden. Most of our plants need attention only once or twice a year, and their easy care leaves us time to deadhead a few dahlias and tidy the pea gravel.

A very easy, shady garden.

iBaltzer's Specialized Nursery

A dwarf Japanese maple from Baltzer's is a stunner in the Dobsons' garden.

Bob and Nancy Baltzer have a gorgeous, diverse selection of specimen Japanese maples and conifers. It's easy to spend hours in the rows of their lovely, cool Pleasant Hill nursery. When you finally emerge from studying one after another gorgeous maple, you will discover that the best part of the nursery is the owners' thoughtful advice and encyclopedic knowledge of their stock. If you find the perfect specimen for your garden, but don't have the room to get it home, delivery to the Eugene-Springfield area is available.

Baltzer's Nursery is open Friday, Saturday and Monday 9am-6pm and Sunday, 10am - 5pm. They are located on Highway 58, just outside of Pleasant Hill. For more information, call the nursery at (541) 747-5604.

Thanks for reading!

We hope you'll stay cool and find a little time to enjoy your garden this summer. We are looking forward to starting a couple of new projects and watching our clients' gardens grow. Keep an eye on the journal this month - there should be a few new pictures of our project at the coast and some more great ideas for your space.

Newsletter #3

What a wonderful June! We've had perfect working weather, fun projects and a terrific garden tour. Thanks again to everyone who came out to support the Symphony Guild at the Music in the Garden event. We hope you had as much fun as we did! In this newsletter, we'll share the transformation of one of the trickiest spaces we've ever seen, offer a few ideas from the resulting garden, and give a summer reading list of five of our favorite garden books. Be sure to scroll through the main journal when you're done. In the last month, we've posted some great pictures, a guide to building simple and great looking tomato cages, a little about how we use metal in our designs and more.

i The Dobson Garden

Ted and Nancy Dobson are determined perfectionists. Everyone in their College Hill neighborhood watched with delight as they scraped, painted and pounded a neglected former rental house into an attractive home. Once the house met their exacting standards, they turned their attention to the yard, expecting to whip it into shape with substantially less effort and time than their house had taken. And then they called us....

Ted and Nancy Dobson's garden this spring.

All They Wanted Was a Container Garden

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In our initial consultation, Ted and Nancy requested an irrigated container garden in their small back yard. The problem was hiding the irrigation. Previous owners had finished the basement of the house and poured concrete over the entire flat space behind the house. A steep hillside required a tall, cinder block retaining wall. Add in narrow dimensions and a stellar view of the heat pump, and, as you can see below, the space was irrigation-proof and less than attractive.

The contrast between dark, geometric wood and round river gravel strengthens the impact of both materials.

We used four main hardscape elements to create the Dobsons' garden: gravel, ipe (a sustainably forested hardwood) decking, stepping stones and bamboo screens. In a tiny space, everything needs a purpose, and each of these elements blends form and function. A large, local river gravel covers the concrete and irrigation while still allowing water to freely enter the drain system, but visitors only notice its cohesive, subtle texture. The ipe decks give the Dobsons a place to enjoy their garden, and its rich color and strong lines contrast with the lighter, more natural feeling of the stone elements. We borrowed the excellent Japanese concept of using large stepping stones as both a stable walking surface and a way of focusing attention on the journey, rather than the destination, thus keeping energy in the tiny garden. Finally, simple bamboo screens frame an enticing view between separate two garden rooms - the seating area and the pathway or journey garden - and, oh yeah, hide the heat pump from the seating area.

Our design surprised the Dobsons, who had expected a quick meeting about irrigation, but it captured their imaginations. We installed the hardscape of their garden in spring of 2006. At the time, they were casual gardeners, planting a few annuals here and there and keeping a very tidy lawn. However, something in their new space set their prodigious energies and curious minds to work, and they elected to plant the new garden themselves. In the intervening years, Ted and Nancy have created a thoughtful, Japanese-inspired planting, which meshes perfectly with their cool, quiet space.

The gardening didn't stop there, however. The front garden, which expands by the season, is a colorful contrast to the understated space in the back. Today, the Dobsons are regulars on garden tours and make long day trips to check out new nurseries. Every season finds them mulling over a new project and perfecting the existing plantings.

Bamboo screens frame an enticing view of the next room.

Three Ideas to Borrow

The Dobsons' tricky space is a terrific illustration of some of our core design concepts. Below are three ideas that can help turn a difficult space into an inviting garden.

Think big, even in a small space. Ample hardscape makes a tiny garden more welcoming. Approximately 2' wide stepping stones are an eye-catching invitation to stroll and the 8' x 14' ipe deck is a perfect spot for a glass of wine with friends.

Multitasking hardscape. Combining simple form with multiple functions keeps the garden cohesive and uncluttered. The Dobsons' bamboo screens frame the view of their path, separate the garden rooms, provide a striking backdrop for planted arrangements, and screen the heat pump.

Limitations as framework. More often than not, careful and creative thought can turn an apparent disadvantage into a guideline for great design. The concrete floor of the Dobsons' original "yard" is still under the layers of rich materials. What seemed at first like an unsightly, insurmountable obstacle became the inspiration for a terrific garden.

Summer Garden Reading

Here are five of our favorite garden design books for some summer inspiration. If you can't find them locally (I've seen several of these available used), we've linked to online sources.

The Modern Japanese Garden - This book by Michiko Rico Nose is as much a study in simplicity, honesty of materials and effective use of space as it is a review of contemporary Japanese gardens.

Breaking Ground - The first garden book we loved, and one to which we regularly return for inspiration. A thoughtful introduction to ten contemporary garden designers by Page Dickey.

Gardens in the Spirit of Place - Page Dickey explores gardens that look to the surrounding landscape and culture for their inspiration.

The Essential Garden Book - As close to a "how to" as you can get in garden design, by Terrance Conran.

In the Company of Stone - Daniel Stone is a master in the art and craft of stonework, and this beautiful book by Dan Snow should be on every rock geek's shelves.

Thanks for reading!

We're already brainstorming for the next newsletter. In the meantime, bookmark the journal and check back every few days. In the next month we'll share some process photos of the gorgeous, dry stack stone wall we're building, and, hopefully, some new portfolio shots. If you want to be the first to know about the newsletters and Mosaic news, join our mailing list! We write once or twice a month at most, and we'll never share your contact information.

Happy summer!

Rebecca & Buell

Metal

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One of the first things that people notice in our garden is the galvanized metal. There's the corrugated fence, stock tank pond and deck planters, custom table frame, deck railing... heck, even our garage door and gutters! In our garden, metal is a clean, bright theme throughout the garden. It is the perfect foil for plants and offers a welcome lightness on drizzly days.

In our clients' gardens, rusty, galvanized and painted metals typically play a more subtle role, but they provide the final details that complete the space. We love the strength, clean lines and exceptional durability we can achieve with metal. While the steel arbors, furniture and features we design will last for many, many years, it is nice to know that if and when they are removed, they are completely recyclable. Below is a small sampling of the metalwork we have designed.

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We designed these table and chairs to add color and brightness to this small space.

Metal is a strong, but visually light solution for an arbor.

The famous screen.

Newsletter #2!

Welcome to our second newsletter! In this edition, we'll share how we select and place garden features and introduce one of our favorite nurseries - Dancing Oaks. If you haven't visited the journal since our last newsletter, we've added a few posts, including some inspiration for those of you who share your garden with deer. If you'd like for us to post more often, please tell your friends about our journal and leave a comment. The more visitors and feedback we have, the more we'll know we're on the right track!

[Edit, 5/28: Don't forget to visit the main page of our journal! We just posted some new photos, and there will be more photos and news to come.]

And... Save the Date!

We hope you will visit our garden on the Eugene Symphony Guild's Music in the Garden tour on Sunday, June 14. Advance tickets are available at most local nurseries. Stay tuned to the journal for more information on how you can support the Symphony Guild, see seven Eugene gardens and meet Mosaic.

iFocus on Features

The stock tank pond from our roof, just above the living room window.

Location, location, location.

The first step in placing a feature is to consider the points from which it will be seen. If the feature can be seen from the house, primary windows and doors are a great place to start. Sometimes the view from the house trumps all other considerations. The pond in our garden, for instance, is centered on our large living room window. On our sloping lot, most of the garden falls below the windows, and we wanted a large, powerful feature to draw attention from the house into the garden. Once we'd selected the location of the 7' diameter stock tank, we designed the pathways and other hardscape around it.

A front window frames the view of a feature and the surrounding garden.

Features can improve the house-garden connection in less structured spaces as well. A Vietnamese urn draws attention from the front window into the deer-friendly cottage garden. From another perspective, the basalt pathway splits, framing the view of the feature from below. Centering the feature on a primary garden path focuses attention and grounds the otherwise chaotic floral display.

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Think big!

Our number one rule of feature selection is more about substance than style. Even in small spaces, it's important to use features that draw attention from in and outside the garden. In the space below, a 48" tall Vietnamese urn stops the eye, where a smaller feature would not hold attention in the narrow space. Many of our features are 36" - 48" high and roughly as wide, and command attention in their carefully chosen locations.

Some features do double duty as furniture, screens or fire pits. A galvanized and powder-coated metal bench in the photo above anchors the other end of the rectangular gravel terrace. The sandstone bench we mentioned in the last newsletter is not tall, but its substantial form in combination with the backdrop of a rusting wall is a perfect, functional focal point.

While size is important, the design and feeling of a space may call for flexible thinking. If you don't want to stop the eye, a low, broad feature, like a pond, will encourage the viewer to look across and into the garden, rather than stopping their eye.

Simplicity works.

We believe that simple forms make the best features. In a classical or contemporary space, clean, unadorned forms dovetail with the geometry of their surroundings. In spaces that overflow with plants or lack a formal framework, visual complexity would be lost in the noise. Clean, quiet lines balance the surrounding chaos. We have designed several features, including a rusted metal fountain at the new Watershed building and several stacked stone sculptures. When left to our own devices, we always return to the simplest forms. Click on the images below for a closer look.

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Dancing Oaks has the best Kniphofias!

iDancing Oaks!

Leonard Foltz and Fred Weisensee are plant geeks with a sense of style. They comb catalogs and continents to find the most stunning (and the most bizarre) foliage, blooms and form. The selection and diversity of plants at Dancing Oaks is unbelievable, if a bit dangerous. Some friends who took their compact car for the first visit had to return the next day with a truck! The nursery is northwest of Corvallis, and well worth the drive. Once you've seen the display garden, chatted with the kind and knowledgeable staff and filled a few nursery carts, you'll see what we mean. Dancing Oaks is open 9-5, Tuesday - Saturday or by appointment on other days. Please tell them Rebecca & Buell say hi! For more information, visit dancingoaks.com.

That's all for now,

but check back soon! It's photography season, and we will post some of Buell's 2009 shots soon. In the meantime, please share this journal with your friends and leave a comment if you have questions, requests or thoughts. And don't forget about the Music in the Garden tour on June 14....

If you'd like to make sure your garden project is on the calendar for this year, call 541.434.6467 to schedule a consultation. We look forward to talking with you!

Happy Spring! Newsletter #1

Every day brings new leaves, blooms and ideas at this time of year. While starting new designs and watching previous years' installations grow up and out, we thought it would be fun to share some more of our work online. We updated the portfolio and press pages of our website, and we're starting this journal to share photos, upcoming events, and newsletters, like this one.

In our first newsletter, we are proud to introduce one of our favorite small spaces. Of course, you may have already met in Sunset, Fine Gardening, the Register-Guard or Pacific Horticulture! Joy Gregory's garden is a perfect example of how a challenging space can become a terrific garden. Whether you're ready to give us a call or you're a do-it-yourselfer, we hope to offer inspiration for your spring garden plans.

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Gregory Meadow

i The Gregory Garden

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Joy Gregory chose her North Eugene home with her son in mind. The house was a great fit, and the neighborhood was full of other young families. There was even a big meadow across the street that served as a natural neighborhood playground. The only problem was that Joy missed having a garden. The backyard was big enough for her son and the dogs to play, but did not leave room for much else. It would have to be the front yard, but where to start? As you can see in the photo below, the existing landscape was little more than a bland 900 square foot postage stamp of scrappy lawn with a handful of boring shrubs. With low expectations, Joy called for help.

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Welcoming and Private

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Joy was well aware of the limitations of her property, but she hoped we could create a garden that was welcoming to visitors while providing a quiet space for her to relax with her son or a friend. By using ample hardscape, focal points and some creative screening we were able to design the framework for accomplishing her goals. The secrets to enticing people into a garden are wide, welcoming pathways and large focal points. In Joy's garden, a planted Vietnamese urn and six-foot wide sandstone path invite visitors into the space.

Creating a private space in such a small, open yard was a challenge. The only spot that was far enough from the sidewalk and main pathways was right at the property line, just beyond the neighbor's front porch. We installed a 6'x9' rusting metal wall to provide screening without enclosing the garden and let plants to the rest. A sandstone bench is a striking final note to the garden, as well as a quiet place for Joy and her son to enjoy the garden.

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Foliage Power

In addition to the practical uses of her garden, Joy wanted fun, boisterous plantings that would engage her son and reflect her

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love of color and form. Of course, as a busy young mother, she needed a garden that was low maintenance. She seemed a bit surprised when we said, "no problem." The key to a colorful and low maintenance space is to focus on foliage texture and color rather than flowers. Of course, some flowers happen along the way, but in the photo and list below are six terrific, easy plants that will catch your eye for all or most of the year!

Six Plants with Great Foliage

  • Carex testacea
  • Kniphofia northiae
  • Kniphofia 'Shining Sceptre'
  • Euphorbia 'Tasmanian Tiger'
  • Libertia peregrinans 'Bronze Sword'
  • Heuchera 'Obsidian'

Foliage is fun, but in our minds, it's the structural and sculptural plants that complete Joy's garden. Big grasses screen the seating area, while round, spiky and Dr. Seussian evergreen plants give the garden form and a little whimsy. Below is a list of five plants that "make" this little garden.

Structural Stars

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  • Sequoiadendron giganteum 'Pendula'
  • Picea sitchensis 'Papoose'
  • Phormium 'Shiraz'
  • Ginkgo biloba
  • Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster'

Until Next Time

We hope you enjoyed our first newsletter! We'll use this space to share news, photos and upcoming events as well as longer newsletter articles like this one, so please check in again. If you have questions about the Gregory garden or there's anything you would like for us to discuss in the future (the design of our garden? deer plantings? small space design?), please leave a comment below. Until then, we hope you'll visit the website for inspiration and magazine articles, including two about the Gregory garden.

If you would like to schedule your garden project for this summer or fall, please call (541) 434-6467 to schedule a consultation. We look forward to hearing from you!

Enjoy the spring, Rebecca & Buell