It's my mission to faithfully translate, with respect and fondness for my client's dreams, their needs and visions into an inviting, harmonious outdoor living space. I carefully guide my clients to express themselves in a unique garden environment that is durable and comfortable. With a passion for plants, I design colorful landscapes with an emphasis on water conservation and sustainability, with unfussy yet exceptional plants that thrive in our Montana gardening zone and that make the landscape come to life.
A recent visit to the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden brought me much delight and revived my old love for a landscape type that we rarely see here in Southern California: An urban haven entirely dedicated to the cultivation and exhibition of a California native-scape. This is a jewel of a garden situated south of the San Gabriel foothills which offers a great example of xeriscape landscaping. The 86 acres are beautifully designed and entirely planted with cultivars and wild species of native plants, whose exploration leads you through various habitats and a mosaic of vegetation patterns, such as desert, chaparral, grasslands, forest, and riparian (areas on the banks of fresh water).
Ingredients for your own Eden: Take a bit of space, add an inviting piece of furniture, surround with a beautiful plant screen and groom well. Just recently I got an SOS call from a client who is desperate to find help with a nightmare she is experiencing with her present maintenance company: Plants in various states of wilt or decay, with bare spots in the landscape; succulents drowned, groundcover smothering everything in its way, and most offensively, "alien" plants willy-nilly planted, presumably as substitutes, that have nothing to do with her landscape design and that she never approved.
I would love to hear from you, whether you are seeking help with your landscape design project or with a gardening issue, or whether you just want to send a suggestion or comment. I will get back to you within a couple business days.
How a homeowner with an artist's love of beautiful details and a receptive landscape designer found synergy and fertile ground in the garden for a beautiful backyard landscape collaboration. A couple of years after installation, this garden has matured beautifully. I cherish the artistic collaboration with my clients; it contributes to very personalized and satisfying designs. In this project, the teamwork was particularly fruitful, as Melissa F., entrepreneur, artist and singer/song-writer, contributed an immense flow of creative ideas and suggestions.
In my previous post I wrote about terrestrial bromeliads, a group of plants that can make beautiful, even majestic attention-grabbers in your garden while being perfect companions to many drought resistant plants. Their form, foliage and colors lend themselves very well to be paired with succulents, cacti and other low water plants in the sustainable landscape design. Bromeliads can be attractive specimen in the difficult areas of your garden, such as in hot reflected light or one that hardly sees any as on the north side of a house, under the eaves.
Browsing at my neighborhood garden center for a special Mother's Day plant, I notice the pink and purple/lilac flower clusters of Hydrangeas strategically placed at the entrance. I'm impressed by their gorgeous petal 'bombs' and think that this old stand-by would probably wow my host, too. But then a thought steels itself into my mind: How long will my gift decorate my host's table? Will she throw it away when the bloom is over, or will she plant it? This frilly one wants much more water than our rainfall provides, and many of our local micro-climates and soils are anything but easy on it.
I hope spring has revived your gardening interests to rediscover your connection with nature, and that you have been well. My spring clean-up is not done yet; I'm still finishing bird netting over my strawberries, refreshing mulch, and getting my irrigation in shape. In my last two posts, I was considering how hardscape has come to dominate many of our landscapes, and how the beauty, intimacy and romance has gone out of them. Today I want to show how well-selected plants can balance out the hard structures making our gardens softer and more welcoming.
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