Calgary Garden Coach

piet oudolf-inspired plants for Calgary sustainable gardens

... and here at last, are some of my thoughts on Piet Oudolf-iinspired gardens for Calgary, which I promised way back over a month ago...

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I first became interested in Piet Oudolf’s garden designs when I saw pictures of some of his commissioned works in North America – the Battery Park Conservancy Gardens of Remembrance in New York, the Lurie Gardens at Millennium Park in Chicago, and the High line Gardens in New York City.  If you look up these gardens or his home page online, you will see the pictures are stunning!  Since then I’ve been studying two of his books written with Noel Kingsbury:   Designing with Plants, and Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space.  I highly recommend them.

Piet Oudolf’s garden design philosophy strikes me as perfect for Calgary gardens – it is inspired by nature and respects ecology.  He uses wild plant communities as inspiration and sticks to plants with a “wild character”, meaning plants that have a natural proportion and – bonus! therefore do not require staking.  (In other words, no peonies allowed!)  He uses native species, although not exclusively, and considers biodiversity and ecological fit when designing his plantings.  He also uses ornamental grasses extensively and designs for long seasons of interest – his gardens come into their own in fall and also look good in winter.  With “sustainability” and “winter interest” being some of the buzz words in Calgary gardening these days, I’m sure we could all learn a thing or two from Piet Oudolf.

If you must have your tropical cannas and Japanese maples that you overwinter in your basement or heated garage, then Piet Oudolf-inspired design may not be for you.  To be honest, I cannot claim to agree with everything he says as he echews roses (nothing can convince me to give up my shrub roses) and in fact tends not to use shrubs at all, since most tend to be amorphous shapes with little structure, and they do not change form dramatically in one season which is another aspect of his designs.  But you can’t become a world-famous designer and establish your own unique style of design without being opinionated, right?  He does use hedges as more formal borders and accents in a garden, but otherwise he sticks to naturalistic, low-maintenance perennials in combinations that will blow you away.

After we garden for a few years, we all start to realize that texture is important in garden design, rather than just flowers, flowers, flowers.  Usually we think of leaf texture but Piet Oudolf takes this texture criterion to a higher level by making the form and structure of seed heads the most important aspect in choosing plants.  He classifies plants by the shape of these seed heads, such as spires (digitalis, salvia, veronica, cimicifuga, liatris, verbascum), buttons and globes (echinops, monarda, astrantia, centaurea montana, allium), plumes (filipendula, solidago, thalictrum, persicaria, calamagrostis), umbels (angelica, phlox paniculata, lychnis, sedums, eupatorium, achillea), and daisies (echinacea, rudbeckia, asters).   All of these plants are hardy in Calgary, by the way.  As mentioned above, he also uses long-lasting plants with strong shapes that have good structure even after flowering, often well into winter.  Leaf shape and texture is only the second consideration, and colour (flower or leaf) is the third. 

What makes Piet Oudolf’s gardens so special is not only the plants that he chooses, but how he puts them together.  A restricted number of plants are used in a space, and plants are intermingled with not only the macro effect in mind, but also the micro.  In other words, the planting en masse is beautiful, but the details of contrast between two neighbouring plant groupings are also important.  He avoids formality, preferring planting patterns that are not controlled or geometric, and ends up with a unique style, sometimes termed “New Wave”. I can only try to describe the quality his complex plantings have as a modern, stylized, sweeping force of nature. 

If you do nothing but add a few drifts of the above-mentioned plants to your already existing garden, you will benefit from the beauty and low maintenance of the plants he uses.  If you are looking to fill or renovate a larger area, then perhaps some of these combinations will be of inspiration to you:

• Astrantia major, astilbe and deschampsia cespitosa (tufted hair grass)
• Astrantia major, actaea simplex (these first two combinations are the only ones that will do well in partial shade)
• Eupatorium purpureum (joe pye weed), actea simplex (bugbane), deschampsia cespitosa, echinacea purpurea, astilbe
• Echinops ritro (globe thistle) and verbascum (mullein)
• Perovskia (Russian sage), Echinacea purpurea, helictrotrichon (blue oat grass), eryngium (sea holly)
• Purple sedum, deschampsia cespitosa, perovskia, nepeta (catmint), verbena bonariensis
• Digitalis (fox glove), monarda (bee balm), agastache foeniculum
• Eryngium (sea holly), salvia superba, pink achillea (yarrow)
• Astrantia major ‘Roma’, allium ‘Purple Sensation’
• Perovskia, liatris spicata, coreopsis, deschampsia cespitosa
• Astilbe, aster, sedum, persicaria (fleeceflower), deschampsia cespitosa
• Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’, eupatorium purpureum, monarda, persicaria polymorpha
• Veronicastratum virginicum ‘Roseum’, echinops ritro, thalictrum polygamum (meadow rue), eupatorium purpureum
• Calamagrostis brachytricha, salvia superba, allium ‘Purple Sensation’
• Monarda, helenium, echinops ritro, persicaria amplexicaulis, achillea, hemerocallis, dianthus, stachys byzantine, nepeta racemosa
• Thalictrum polygamum, phlox paniculata, campanula lactiflora, persicaria, filipendula rubra

While most of the plants listed above bloom in summer or fall, there are also some early spring plants that Piet Oudolf uses to fill a garden in spring.  In addition to spring-flowering bulbs, phlox divaricata, euphorbia, epimedium (bishop’s hat) and geraniums are all used for their toughness and beautiful spring flowers.

So, as you are planning the changes you want to make to your garden next year, why not consider a few of Piet Oudolf’s favoured plants?  You can’t go wrong with these for low-maintenance, sustainable plants and for adding long seasons of interest to your garden.

a garden consultation for Christmas

Garden consulting is something I do part-time over the summers, mostly just because I enjoy talking about gardening with anyone who will listen.  So I haven't really thought much about the business lately, but I recently got an inquiry from someone asking if I did gift certificates for Christmas.

Sure, why not?  And it occurred to me that this would be the perfect Christmas gift!  I certainly would have appreciated such a gift when I first started gardening.  Plus it wasn't made in China, doesn't involve any plastic, and won't eventually end up in the landfill.  Not to mention that if the recipient ends up adding a few drought tolerant and/or edible plants to their garden, we could end up increasing the sustainability and biodiversity of their local little environment.  How great is that?

For all you gardeners out there, why not make up your own little gift certificates to give to family and friends?  Just a thought.

piet oudolf garden design - perfect for Calgary gardens!

Lately I've been studying a few of Piet Oudolf's garden books.  His garden design philosophy has been described as "naturalistic", as he uses mostly perennials that look close to their wild ancestors and that have long seasons of interest.  His gardens are gorgeous - let me repeat, GORGEOUS! - and best of all, many of the plants he regularly uses in his designs do well in Calgary - a bonus!

I'm planning to write a little more about his design principles here in the next few months, and maybe even an article for the Calgary Horticultural Society's newsletter (I'm getting ambitious, aren't I?)  But in the meantime, have a look at some of these photos posted on other websites.  I could spend all day staring at some of these, couldn't you?

Piet Oudolf home page

Piet Oudolf's photostream on Flickr

Adam Woodruff's photostream on Flickr

Piet Oudolf interview on Gardening Gone Wild (with lots more links in this article)

Paula's garden

A regular reader and commenter (thanks, BTW!) of this blog, Paula, sent me some pictures a while ago and I've been meaning to post them.  I don't post too many "before and after" of my own garden designs for clients, since I don't usually do the actual planting, just provide a drawing, so there's nothing much to look at.  So, here are some pictures that are much prettier to look at than my sketches!

Some of the front/side garden - nice job Paula!

I especially love this one (above).  I always tell clients that the line between where the grass ends and the garden begins is one of the most important things in the overall design - because it is the line that your eye sees.  So make big, sweeping, smooth curves, not little squiggly ones.  The circular shape of this line and how it follows the circle around the base of the tree looks great.  I wouldn't necessarily change a thing, but if you wanted to go for even more impact I could see the bed around the tree becoming just a little bigger, and the grass effectively becoming a narrow pathway around the tree.  A bench in there somewhere would also be a visual treat and provide a place to sit and enjoy the view.  BTW, the repeat of pink flowers and the various foliage colours and textures look great, too!

Paula sent me a couple pictures of her morning glories, after I complained about mine.  Paula, I'm still not convinced!  Yes, yours are beautiful! Yes, I finally got flowers too this year and yes, they are big and exotic looking, but the quantity of flowers and length of bloom time cannot beat sweet peas - not to mention morning glories don't have any fragrance!  I'm definitely planting more sweet peas next year and will probably skip the morning glories...

Here is Paula's greenhouse (I am so jealous!) in the back, surrounded by lots of garden.  I love the green picnic table too - as you know I'm all about colour, there's no beige in my garden! She's done an especially great job because here's what it used to look like...

Wow, what a transformation!  And don't get me started on what a pain it is to get rid of all that gravel mulch....  Please people, it is not low maintenance, and unless you are planting a desert-style, xeriscape type of garden, it is ugly, ugly, ugly.  Paula, we should start an educational campaign about the disadvantages of gravel mulch!  The number of clients I've had who've asked me how to get rid of weeds that are growing in their "no maintenance" gravel mulch... well, I could go on but I won't. 

Here's some more "before" pictures from Paula.  Paula, I sympathize with you on the paint colours and the gravel!  As you know, I've had the same issues at my own house.  Sometimes you just want to meet the previous owners, shake them, and ask them what the &*^$#! they were thinking, don't you?!!

Anybody else out there want to share like Paula and show us some of your garden pics?

plants for the new shade garden - check!

What fun it is to have a whole new garden area to plant from scratch!  In my large, established yard with mostly garden and little grass left, I don't get this opportunity very often any more!  In fact, I think this area may be the last large-ish area I had left to plant! 

The area behind the new retaining wall is very shady on the left, and a little more sunny on the right.  What were my plant criteria?  I wanted to put in some shrubs around the back to prevent the kids from playing back there - anything that produces berries was preferred (BTW that is more difficult to find in shade plants but made the plant selection easier).  I definately wanted something evergreen to look at in the winter, and a wide variety of foliage colours and textures from perennials, of course!  Here's what I ended up with:

 

... and closer up:

 

The plants are:

• 3 virburnum trilobum (american cranberry) 'Bailey Compact'.  This shrub is shade tolerant but will probably produce fewer flowers and berries in shade.  Nevertheless, it does have a spectactular red colour in fall, even in shade, and will definitely serve the purpose of keeping the kids from falling off the back of the wall!  They will eventually get up to 1.5 m tall and wide.
• 1 virburnum lentago (nannyberry).  This is a great shrub for producing berries even in shade.  The bluish-black berries are supposed to be delicious, but I've not yet had any myself.  Maybe next year!  This shrub will have white flowers in spring, purplish-red foliage in fall, and will eventually get up to 5 m tall and 3 m wide!!
• That empty space on the right will be filled next spring with a picea pungens globosa (dwarf globe blue spruce) to meet the "something evergreen" requirement.  This shrub requires more sun than the others, which it will get on the right side of this area.
• 1 tiarella 'Mystic Mist'.  This perennial groundcover has great foliage colour and likes shade.  I had some plants in the front garden that the hares kept nibbling to the ground until they finally died.  I hope this one has a better chance in my fenced backyard!
• 3 heuchera 'Palace Purple'.  These purple-leaved plants are not as fancy as some of the newer varieties you can get these days, but are tried-and-true hardy in Calgary (and way cheaper!)  The dark foliage will stand out more once that blue spruce is behind them, and it also looks nice beside the burgundy veins in the tiarella.  These plants spread to about 30-40 cm and are drought tolerant.
• 1 hosta 'Halcyon'.  This plant is so big because I transferred it here from another area of the garden (it is over 5 years old). Its blue foliage colour will nicely repeat the colour from the blue spruce (that is, once the spruce is planted), and I love how that blue contrasts with the burgundy shades in the tiarella and heucheras.
• 1 calamgrostis acutiflora (feather reed grass) 'Avalanche'.  I have some of the regular green 'Karl Foerster' variety growing in shade, so I'm hoping this variegated variety will also do well in shade.  This one is a bit floppy from growing in a greenhouse but next year it should stand straight and tall, and get up to 120 cm tall.
• The existing iris germanica (bearded iris) should get enough sun here to flower, and the spiked leaves will contrast in texture with the rounded heucheras and globe spruce.
• There are some existing anemone sylvestris (windflowers) behind the hosta that can't be seen in this picture.  They have lovely white flowers in spring, and do well in full shade.
• At the base of the wall, to the left of the birdbath, there is one more hosta that you can't see in these pictures.  It is hosta 'Night Before Christmas'.  The green and white leaves should stand out well in shade and echo the other hostas of the same colour (but forgotten variety) on the other side of the pathway.  This is a fairly large variety that can eventually get over 1 m wide!!

There.  New shade garden finished (for now).  Now I really must concentrate on emptying that compost bin that I said was such a high priority!  Planting new stuff is way more fun...

trellis tips

If you are attaching a trellis directly to a wall, leave a space of about 5 cm behind it to make it easier for the vine to grow around and behind the slats.  Here you can see the new trellis in my back shade garden is screwed into some pieces of wood which create the desired space.  If a trellis is the kind with "legs" that you poke into the ground, then leave the same amount of space but secure the top with a wire or bracket to give some extra support.

Voila!  Here's my new trellis with a little clematis tangutica planted at the bottom.  I really like the feeling of being "in" a garden, which means that there are not only plants at your feet, but plants growing up the walls of the garden as well, and closing you in.  I hope this trellis and vine will help to achieve that in a few years, in a very shady, dry area of the garden where things had been looking a little bare.

Now if only I could camouflage that electrical meter box!  I'm thinking of painting it blue...

giant annuals in my garden

I only started growing my own annuals from seed a few years ago.  I think I started to get greedy - I could have so many more flowers for so cheap!!  Greedy, but true. And annuals are a great way to fill space while you're waiting for shrubs and perennials to mature.  But by this time of year I'm always overwhelmed with the giant annuals I grow (see the annuals are taking over 2008 and too full 2009).  I must make a mental note for next year to grow some smaller things, because my perennials and shrubs are getting bigger now and I'm running out of room for the big stuff.  Or else I just need to plant less of it...

Nicotiana sylvestris has been easy to grow for me and gets up to 6 ft tall in my garden!  Every year after I plant it, it takes a while to start growing and I think I'm not going to bother growing it again. But then it starts flowering and the scent overwhelms me! So sweet! The big leaves sure grab your attention as well.  I don't really have space but maybe I should make some?

The lavatera 'Silver Cup' is a must-have.  It is getting huge and bush-like but I just keep cutting it back and making bouquets with it.  Love it, love it, love it!

The verbena bonariensis can be seen here in front of purple monkshood, pink lavatera, purple liatris and white echinacea.  This is called a "see-through plant" because it is so wiry that even though it is tall, you can plant it in front of shorter things and can see through to the things behind.  It self-seeds a little bit but I always start some from seed to make sure I have lots in the garden.  It's also a butterfly magnet.

I already mentioned that my castor bean isn't as big as usual this year, but I think that is due to location.  I also start this from seed every year.  I never really know where I'm going to put it but I jam it in there anyway.  And I'm supposed to be a garden designer?

Here's a cloud of borage in the bottom right of this photo.  There are several such "clouds" in my garden.  This plant mysteriously appeared in my garden one year, and once you have borage you will have it forever.  I do love it though (and so do the bees!) and it is easy to pull up and remove any plants you don't want.  This year I started resorting to giving some away.

And finally, there's cardoon, which I wrote about here.

How much foliage variation is too much?

(text coming soon...)

my newly planted strawberry bed

Here's the strawberry bed under the sunroom windows at the back of my house.  Besides the fact that it dried out and needed to be lined to retain moisture, there were a few other problems with it before.

It used to be all strawberries and so it was fairly boring to look at.  I like to have garden designs, especially up against the house, that are tied with the house in some way, rather than looking like the garden was just plunked there with no regard to the design of the house.  Also, the back of the garden is under the eaves and therefore is quite dry, so the strawberries growing at the back were fairly thin anyway (not to mention hard to reach).

I added some dwarf alberta spruce (which I will probably end up treating as an annual since they don't do well here... I have until next year to think about what I want to replace them with) and ornamental millet to add height and texture at the back of the bed.  Whaddya think?

PS  Um, don't look at the lawn.  I am not a lawn person.  Maybe I will be someday after I finish all these other projects...

I don't get the "prune shrubs into a ball shape" thing.

Here are two nanking cherry shrubs in my neighbourhood.  Which one do you think looks better?  The one that looks like it is exploding with flowers or the one that is painfully trying to bloom on the tips of its unnaturally sheared branches?

I definitely have an opinion on this!!  Fine, prune your shrubs into neat, trim shapes if you are using them for a formal hedge or you are into topiary or something.  But otherwise, there is no need!  It is less work and I think the shrub looks much nicer if you let it take its natural shape.  Instead, prune out some of the older wood once in a while by cutting out the thickest branches right from the base of the shrub, removing the odd crossing branch, and that's about it.
Of course, I guess it's a matter of taste.  What do you think?

garden planning: front yard garden design

Here's a picture of my front yard last summer... obviously unfinished.  This year I will be getting rid of the lawn on the left hand side and planting more drought-tolerant, low maintenance perennials.  The front yard is east-facing and fairly sunny close to the sidewalk.

Last year when I expanded my back hill garden (now dubbed the "Adventure Garden" for the kids), I posted about some key elements of design when planning a perennial bed, like grouping plants, repetition, contrasting shapes and textures, planting in drifts, and adding depth.  I also posted a drawing of my plans (which I sort of followed!)

This year as I plan the rest of the front garden I am being much less organized (maybe because I just have less time?)  Anyway, I'm still keeping all the design principles in mind, but I plan to acquire all the plants first, then just place them wherever they happen to look good to me when I'm ready to plant. 

This means slightly less planning, but I still have to make sure I pick a good variety of perennials.  I want things that bloom in various times of the year, I want things with a variety of foliage shapes and textures, and I want to repeat various plants throughout the yard to tie everything together.  Plants that can be left standing all winter are a bonus.  So instead of a drawing this year, here is my chart explaining my choice of perennials.  For each season, I want to make sure there repetition of at least one thing that is blooming, and each grouping of plants should contain at least one plant that has foliage interest all season (so that even when things in one area are not blooming, the combination still looks good).

                                     blooms     foliage interest           repetition    winter
                                                  (shape/colour/texture)                          interest
spring
bergenia                            X                   X                   
bearded iris                        X                   X                              X

summer
catmint                               X
campanula glomerata           X
lilies                                   X
yucca                                  X                  X                                               X
yarrow                                 X
sea holly                              X                                                                   X
daylilies                              X                                                  X

fall
sedum 'Autumn Joy'             X                  X                              X               X
russian sage                        X                  X                                               X
echinacea                             X                                                                   X
purple liatris                         X                                                  X               X
helichrysum (curry plant)      X                  X                                               X

all season
ornamental grasses                                  X                              X                X

garden planning: raised beds, cold frames and espaliered apple trees for a sunny south-facing corner of the backyard

Here is the northwest corner of our backyard as it looked last fall (it currently looks exactly the same except buried in snow...)
It has been our junk corner since we moved into the house, but that is about to change.  It is the sunniest spot in the backyard and it is time to make better use of it!  It's a perfect veggie growing spot. 

One of our goals for this gardening season is to clean out the junk (over the course of the summer) and then build raised beds this fall which will be ready for planting next year.  I wish we could get it ready for planting this year but I'm trying to be realistic here - it just wouldn't happen.

Last year we put in a couple little raised beds in a different spot in the yard, but it wasn't enough space for what I'd like to grow.

Anyway, the fence on the right hand side of this picture faces south, and the grade slopes down toward the back.  It was previously used as a parking pad so there is concrete and hard-packed soil in this area.  Rather than trying to dig and improve the soil, I plan on taking the easy route and building raised beds on top.  I also have 3 windows in my living room that are 1.6 m tall and destined to be replaced soon, so the raised beds will be designed so that the windows will eventually fit on top of the raised beds to make cold frames to extend the growing season.  The beds will be approximately 2 ft deep to make it easy to reach to the back.  Ultimately, this is what I want them to look like:
Whaddya think?

What to do on the north side of a fence

Here is the fence on the south side of our back yard.  My neighbours had it built a couple of years ago (and told us the day before they were having it done and that we owed half, but that’s another story).  Anyway, I hate it.  It looks like a barricade.  It can be viewed from the sunroom, the back porch, and the master bedroom, so it would be nice to have something nice to look at out there, even in the 6 months of the year that nothing is growing.  This area is also next to the patio with the dining area and BBQ, so it’s got to look even better in the summer.  Yet, I have enough shady areas in my garden already;  I don’t really want to plant more shade-tolerant shrubs and perennials up against the fence.  I want an interesting year-round focal point.  Here is my solution:

This year I’m going to put in 2 columnar ‘Gladiator’ crabapples.  They don’t take up much space and they’ll be tall enough to get sunlight over the fence most of the day, without casting too much extra shade.  The spring flowers are gorgeous and the burgundy foliage looks great too and eventually they’ll be tall enough to block the view of the neighbours’ back window and garage.  In between them will be a nice bench to sit in the shade and overlook the butterfly potager garden, with some kind of a decorative trellis-y thing above it.  I think it’s going to look great!

my favourite plants for a sunny, low maintenance front yard

A lot of people comment that I “must spend a lot of time working in the garden”, but truly I don’t.  Well, I do, but that’s because I’m always busy with new projects, not because I spend a lot of time taking care of what is already planted!!  It’s not hard to have a low maintenance garden, you just need to know the right plants and where to plant them.

My front “Welcome” garden really started to look established last year.  For me, the front garden has to be particularly low-maintenance.  I want a garden that is going to look great from the street (and also from the house), but I don’t spend as much time out front so it has to pretty much take care of itself.  Last year I top-dressed it with compost in the spring, and honestly that’s about it.  Here are the plants that are very successful at putting on a year-round show with almost no maintenance in my front garden:

In June, the Shasta daisies and bearded irises put on a nice show together.  The irises don't bloom for long but their foliage looks nice all season.  Watch out for some varieties of Shasta daisies which self-seed invasively!  The newer variety “Becky” is well-behaved.  I also have some ground-cover sedums and geraniums that spread, do well keeping the weeds down and bloom nicely in spring.

 

In July, the daisies are still going strong and now look good with veronica spicata, feather reed grass, and asiatic and LA hybrid lilies.




















In August, the lilies are still going, the daylilies have started, and the ornamental grass has reached its full height.

 

In September, the daylilies are finishing and the sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ is starting to turn colour.

 

In October, the daylily and euphorbia foliage are turning colour, and the sedum has reached its full colour.  There’s a red-leaf rose in the background that I had just planted but will eventually be very big and has colourful, orange fall foliage.

 

In November, everything is finished except the asters, but there is still lots of textural interest and variety of colour thanks to the juniper and diabolo ninebark.

 

This year I am going to plant the other side and will have no grass left. Can't wait!! Some additional low-maintenance plants I have in mind are:

• liatris, echinacea, catmint, campanula glomerata, russian sage, yucca, bergenia, and more bearded iris, daylilies and sedum
  

front pathways

Some neighbours on my street had their front walkway replaced this fall.  This is what they replaced it with....

I hate to sound opinionated, but how sad!  The same, boring, straight walkway they had before.  If you're going to shell out a few bucks to replace it, why not shell out just a couple more and get something nice?  A little wider, a little curvier, a little more creative?  I don't like straight paths unless they are for a very formal, symmetrical design.

Some designers state that front pathways should be at least 1.5 m (5 ft) wide in order for 2 people to walk side-by-side.  I actually think that is a little wide for some cases.  It might be a little out-of-scale compared to the 1950's bungalows in my neighbourhood.  But at least 4 ft would be nice.

Here's another house in my neighbourhood that just had its front walk, as well as the whole front lawn, replaced.  Looks nice, doesn't it?  Can't wait to see it in spring when more low-maintenance shrubs and ornamental grasses go in.

 

I am actually quite happy with the shape of the gently curving front walkway I inherited with my house, although it is much too narrow. Since I don't have the budget to have a professional landscaper come in and replace it for me (and I am a do-it-yourselfer anyway), I have something else in mind.

Here's a great way to widen an existing pathway without breaking the bank.  This neighbour laid bricks on either side of a typical, narrow pathway and had her concrete stained to match.  I am hoping to do this to my front path someday...

Sigh.  So much to do, so little time!

more art in the garden

Here are some more little ideas I picked up on the garden tour this past summer:
Dried allium seeds heads in an oriental vase.  Would look pretty inside or out!

A retaining wall made of broken concrete pavers.  I have some of these lying around I might use someday...

A cute little potting area beside the house.  It doesn't take much to make a plain area beside the house look nice, does it?    I have a spot on the north patio beside my house where I'd like to do something like this...

The same potting area.  But I'd like to build a raised bed like this in a different area of my yard.  When the living room windows eventually get replaced, you know what I'll use them for...!

Tree stumps for pot stands.  Why didn't I think of that? 

art in the garden - a gardener's wish list

I have been gardening for long enough that I am comfortable coming up with my own plant combinations and overall designs for my yard.  However, I am always on the lookout for neat ideas for decorating my garden.  Here are some pictures I snapped on the Calgary Horticultural Society's winning garden tour this past summer, with some ideas I'd like to incorporate into my own garden -the pictures are my own, but unfortunately I didn't keep track of whose gardens they were, sorry.  Any of my family members who are wondering what to get me for Christmas, take note...
I have a large patio on the north side of my house, that I'd like to add some raised beds to someday, to add interest to the space.  Here is a great idea of a wooden bed on rollers so it can be moved around depending on what kind of space you need on the patio.  Brilliant!

... another building project for hubby (someday).  Why build a regular old deck railing when you can have something as eye-catching as this?  Hmm, where would I put this...

Of course, every gardener needs a greenhouse.  Well, I can always dream...  I love how this one is built on a foundation of bricks.

This is a neat way to build a garden room.  I can see this in between the 2 spruce on my north patio someday.  All it is is a two-sided trellis to make the front wall, a hedge on either side, and a fence in the back.  Easy peasy.  Love the painted colours, too.  Honey, I need one of these...

 

Here's the same garden room from outside one of the hedges...

 

These free-standing trellises are a friendly way to create a bit of a boundary without making a barricade against your neighbours.  Lovely.

A bubbler fountain.  A nice way to get the sound of running water without the maintenance of a pond and/or waterfall.  I was thinking of getting one of these for my mother-in-law, but then she went and bought herself a little fountain-in-a-pot instead.  Hmm, I still want one for myself...

A rain chain.  This one is attached to a little pump at the bottom and a hidden clear tube behind the foliage so that it is always tinkling away.  Another option for adding the sound of water without a lot of maintenance.  Help! I want both...

 

I have always eschewed the idea of mirrors in the garden.  They are lovely, but I have enough kamikaze birds flying into my windows already, I don't need to add more things to confuse them.  But this  was a neat way to recycle a broken mirror, plus I think the large spaces between the pieces would prevent birds from thinking it was a hole in the fence and trying to fly through.  It is placed low enough on the fence to reflect the beautiful woodland garden below.  Would it be bad luck if I broke a mirror on purpose just to recreate this in my own garden...?

winter interest - thank goodness for beautiful evergreens

  These spruce boughs were absolutely gorgeous when I was walking to work yesterday.  A picture taken in the dark doesn't really do justice to the delicate frostiness of the snow-laden boughs, but here you go anyway. 

The branches looked like gigantic snowflakes and I couldn't resisit snapping a few pics.  Once again, gardeners in zone 3 really need to pay attention to how our gardens look the other six months of the year and make sure we have lots of winter beauty to get us through these dark, cold months...

i'd say winter is officially here

  Here is the same view I posted a picture of 2 days ago for Garden Blogger's Bloom Day.  I took it on the way to work so sadly it was dark at the time (but it's also dark when I come home so I really had no choice).

Right now everything looks beautiful covered in ice and snow, so I will be blogging about the beauties of winter and designing for winter interest a lot over the next few months!  Then I will start to go stir crazy and be dying for spring...

designing for multiple viewpoints

  Here is my back hill garden at the end of its first season.  It stretches across almost the whole width of the backyard and is the widest and deepest bed I've ever designed.  It can be viewed almost anywhere in the yard and also the house, so that made it more challenging as well. I spent all last winter planning it.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.  Only a few tweaks in mind for next year.  The left side here is shadey...

... and the right side is in full sun.  That makes it hard to do the "repeat plants for unity" thing.  I had to try to tie it together more with repeating colours rather than repeating plants.  So I ended up with repeating silver and blue foliage (lamb's ears, russian sage, artemesia, blue oat grass and blue fescue), with red foliage (castor bean, elderberry, penstemon, ninebark, sedum matrona) and blue flowers (clouds of self-seeded borage, catmint, russian sage).  I also like to have lots of bearded iris throughout the bed because the shape is so stand-out - the ones in more shade bloom less but the leaves still add great texture (it's my favourite "repeat plant"!).  And finally, varying heights of things really helped make such a deep bed look interesting too (rather than just having short plants at the front, medium in the middle, tall ones at the back).

While I also love yellow foliage, I kept it mostly out of this garden because there would have been too much going on.  There is lots of yellow in my shade garden, though.

the most serious gardening mistake

  Very serious.  You can't tell from this perspective, but that cable line that this newly planted tree is directly under is only about a foot above the top of the tree. 

I mean, I know not everybody spends as much time thinking about garden design as I do, but are these people totally clueless?  Make sure you check the full size of a tree before you plant it, and give it room!

Perennials can be moved.  Shrubs can be pruned to control their size.  Trees however, do not liked to be heavily pruned to control their height, or at the very least it is high maintenance to do so.  This swedish columnar aspen, which will want to grow to 10-12 m high, is not going to be impressed if it is kept to a height of 3 m. 

Why, why, why?

don't top evergreens!!

Not only do these look awful, but the trees will not grow properly after this butchering.  Spruce trees grow from a leader, or a single central stem.  Chopping them off like this often causes two leaders to start growing, and they are weaker and often grow crooked and the tree will just never look good again.

Better to take them out if you don't like them.  But these were are on the north side of the house so they weren't shading the house anyway, only sheltering it from a busy street.  I don't know what this person was thinking.

perennials for a zone 3 cutting garden

 The south side of my house is a cutting garden, because it's a spot that you can't see from the street, house or backyard.  So it's the perfect place to grow flowers to bring into the house - the only people who look at this spot are my neighbours - well, too bad for them!! 

Don't these lilies look nicer in a vase than beside the rain barrel?  Since "out of sight, out of mind" often describes my current gardening regime, the flowers in my cutting garden must also be low maintenance and fairly drought tolerant.  Of course, they also have to have strong stems and last a long time in a vase.  Here are some of my favourites:

• allium
• aster
• baby's breath
• blue salvia
• delphinium
• heliopsis
• bearded iris
• liatris
• lily
• monkshood
• obedient plant
• peony
• garden phlox
• russian sage
• shasta daisy
• veronica

perennials: the first year they sleep...

Here's my back hill garden at the beginning of July.  The middle is the new part where I took out the grass this spring.  It looks a little sparser than the sides, which are 4 years old now. 

It may be tempting to plant perennials really close together, but if you want to save yourself some work in a year or two (and save money by not buying too many perennials), remember to leave space for their full size.

There's a rule about growing perennials:

"the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap."  This is because they take some time to get their roots established before their growth really takes off.  So be patient, use mulch and wait until the third year before you decide you really need more plants!!

Here's what part of the same garden looked liked last year at this time:

how to screen a gas meter

This gas meter was an eyesore from the south patio, a small, intimate patio where the picnic table is.  Of couse, I couldn't put something in front of it that would permanently block it, or the meter reader would not be impressed.  This was my solution.

Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' is a narrow, tall ornamental grass.  I cut it down in April, and by now (end of June), it is tall enough to screen the meter but it is flexible enough to be brushed aside.  With Calgary springs, that means really only a couple of eat-outside days before the meter is covered. 

what grows in my zone 3 shade garden

In my other shady areas, I try to plant drought-tolerant shade plants, which doesn't leave a lot of options.  This spot north of the garage is the one spot I baby - I have some moisture-loving plants, and give it extra water (it's quite dry because of the mountain ash tree roots).

Here are the plants I have in this spot:

ligularia

hostas

ferns

anemone sylvestris

bleeding heart

heuchera

goat's beard

astilbe

lamium

columbine (in a spot that gets a little dappled sun)

yellow creeping jenny

The bleeding heart is in deep shade so it blooms really late (it's almost July!!).  Anemone sylvestris is also still blooming here.

front yard gardens - more than just curb appeal

Thinking of getting rid of a little more lawn?  Besides some of the reasons I've discussed before, people like to improve their garden to make their house look nicer from the street.  But often, a garden around the perimeter of your house can only be enjoyed by you from outside - what about inside?

This house on my street just finished adding the garden in the front by the sidewalk.  While I'm not crazy about the rocks, and I question the fern in a west-facing unshaded garden, I like the general idea!!  If you're going to add some new garden space, why not put it where you can also see it from inside the house. 

The bench also adds a friendly and inviting touch.

For a few of my views, click here.

design principle - use odd numbers

Almost everyone knows the design principle of using odd numbers in a composition - unless you are going for a very formal, symmetric design. 

However, here are 2 sedum 'Autumn Joy' planted together, and they blend together so well that you can't tell they're 2 plants. 

Rules are made to be broken.

just say "no" to plastic plant tags!

OK, I didn't make fun of the plastic swan pots, but this is where I draw the line.  It's time to be a little snobby and opinionated. 

This person at least did a decent job of spacing out their new perennials to allow for the mature size of the plant.

BUT

honestly, who thinks these tags help the garden look nice?  I know people want to keep them for the information they have, but puh-lease get a notebook, folder or even a ziploc bag to keep these tags in (and tell your significant other why you are keeping them so he/she doesn't think they're garbage and throw them out -trust me). 

why hire a garden coach?

I know what you think I'm going to say - hire a garden coach so you don't end up with tacky swan pots in your garden...!

But actually, that's the point.  You should plant what you like.  If you like plastic swan pots, then go for it.  This is the yard of an older couple in my neighbourhood, and while the garden style is certainly not trendy, they seem happy with it.

It's actually kind of cute - the pots move around occasionally.  Sometimes they're lined up tip-to-tail beside the driveway, sometimes they're swimming in a circle on the lawn.  Not my style, but cute.

Anyway, my point is, as a garden coach, I listen to what you like and not only help you accomplish it in your garden, but also maintain or improve it.  This is different from a landscape designer who will come up with a complete design and/or install it for you, but then you may have no idea how to take care of it, or be afraid to change something in a year or two.  Whether or not you spend big bucks on a professionally installed landscape, you still need to know a thing or two to keep it looking good year after year.

planting containers - thriller, spiller and filler

The supposed rule for planting containers is to have at least one of each:

1. a thriller is something tall that will add height to the composition (usually just one is sufficient - and people will secretly make fun of you if you plant dracaena because it is overused - and there are so many more options now!  just say no to dracaena)
2. a filler is something that will bush out and occupy the middle of the composition (could be foliage and/or flowers and depending on the size of container, one or more)
3. a spiller is something that will hang over the edge of the pot, softening the edges and occupying the lower portion of the composition (again depending on size of container, one or more)

I would like to add my own rule - plant add least one plant for foliage (how can I make that rhyme?) just to add texture and make the composition look not quite so busy.  Here I added yellow creeping jenny, which is a spiller (and also a perennial, so can be put in the garden at the end of the year).

Of course, rules are made to be broken (and that includes planting dracaena if you really like it).  I didn't plant a thriller here because this basket is hanging right underneath an outdoor light.  A simple combination, but I like it!

it's all about foliage, baby!

While plants with interesting foliage are very trendy these days, it is also an important design principle in perennial beds to have varied foliage.  For perennials that only bloom for weeks rather than all summer, you need to have contrast in shape/texture/colour of leaves if you want the garden to look interesting all summer long.

Here's an area in my new back garden that I'm particularly happy with.  Remember that a lot of these plants are babies and are going to be twice as big by the end of the summer or next year, so there won't always be so much empty space.

The plants are:

sea thrift and moss phlox for green low-growing, needle-like foliage
sedum for variegated ground cover
iris germanica for flat, sword-shaped leaves
helictotrichon sempervirens (blue oat grass for fine, blue grassy foliage)
castor bean 'impala' for broad, flat reddish leaves (this is the only annual and I started them from seed)

[Update: here's the same area 3 weeks later with the sea thrift and moss phlox starting to bloom]

tricking the eye - adding depth

Here is my dry stream bed in progress.  I think I've done about as much as I feel like for now, but in the future I will replace the stumps on the right with rocks, put down landscape fabric and cover the "stream" with gravel.  In the meantime it makes a nice pathway for the kids to wander into the garden.  Maybe someday it'll actually be a waterfall...

You'll notice that as you go further up the hill the stream bed gets narrower and the rocks get smaller - to add depth.  Similarly, if you want to make a space look deeper you can plant finer textured plants further away and broad-leafed plants closer in.  Pastel colours also tend to recede and bright, warm colours tend to look closer.

how to plant annuals - pack 'em in!

I haven't potted up my containers yet because I vowed not to buy any more plants until I get my perennials in the ground (hopefully will finish this week-end).  But here's a pretty combination planted at Mount Royal College.

While new perennials should be planted with some space to grow so you don't have to move them in a year or two, annuals only have a short, cold growing season here so jam them in tight!!  Why wait till the end of the season for them to fill in?  This container was planted last week-end and already looks full, but by the end of summer will be overflowing.

They say (who are "they", anyway?) to replace your potting soil every year but that seems such a waste to me.  Unless I am planting something with roots that need a lot of space (eg. castor bean), I only replace the top third.  Old potting soil can be spread around the garden, lawn or compost bin.  I also add lots of compost to my pots for a slow-release fertilizer.  I do also use a water soluble 20-20-20 synthetic fertilizer for my flower pots occasionally in the summer.  There, I said it.  It's not organic but it's only pots so I tell myself that it's unlikely that excess amounts are running off into the sewers or hurting the worms...  I still feel a little guilty though.

spring flowering trees and shrubs

I am very fortunate that I live where I can walk to work (from my house to my office door in under 15 minutes!).  But this time of year I am even more thankful because in my older neighbourhood, almost every yard has at least one spring flowering tree and shrub and the walk right now is glorious!!  I think everyone should have at least one of these old-fashioned spring-flowering specimens. 

• Nanking cherry (shrub)
• Lilac (shrub or tree)
• Crabapple (tree)
• Mayday tree
• Flowering plum (shrub, non-fruit)

The only thing I have is a french (white) and vilossa (mauve) lilac, but if I had just a wee bit more space...

what to do before a garden coach comes

• Grab some gardening magazines and books from the library.  Gardens West is a great magazine because it features lots of Canadian prairie gardens (but also some from BC which will make you drool).  Canadian Gardening is also pretty good but very Ontario-centric ...not everything you see in it will grow here.  Fine Gardening is also very good but American so look at style but not necessarily specific plants.  If you find pictures of something you like of a garden somewhere else, you could always copy the style but substitute some of the plants for ones that grow well here.  It will help if you can show your designer some pics of things you like (and/or things you don't like).
• Watch your yard as much as you can to see which areas are sunny and which are shadey.  Full sun is considered 6 hours or more of direct sunlight.  Keep in mind the sun will get higher throughout the summer so an area that only gets 4 hours of sun now might get 6 hours of sun in the summer.
• Think honestly about how much time you want to spend maintaining your garden.  Low maintenance is not no maintenance.  There are flowers and shrubs that require little attention, and those that require lots - pruning, deadheading, staking etc. 

Why should I get rid of my lawn?

In case you haven't already been convinced by the trend of replacing your front lawn with garden (if I didn't love gardening so much I would think it was a way for the gardening industry to convince us to buy more stuff...), let me try to convince you.

I think the main reasons people have mostly grass in their yards (front and back) are because that's what everyone else has, it doesn't occur to them to have much else, and because they don't know how to take care of anything else (whether most people know how to take care of their lawns is debatable too).  But if you plant the right things and learn how to take care of them, a garden can be much easier to take care of, much more beautiful and interesting to look at, and more environmental too!  If you don't want to take a big leap, at least start by replacing a little patch of grass that is difficult to take care of anyway, for example grass that doesn't grow well because it's too dry/wet/shady, or it's difficult to mow because of tight corners, a slope or other features.

This was my brother's front lawn before I took over.  He was annoyed with the rocks that made it difficult to mow the lawn, and just generally wanted something nicer to look at. Don't you think this would look much more beautiful with some flowering vines climbing the posts, hanging pots over the porch, contrasting foundation shrubs (diabolo ninebark and gold mound spireas) and a nice small evergreen (dwarf globe blue spruce) between the rocks to make it look like they didn't just drop out of the sky?  Plus some low-maintenance perennials for colour spring to fall.

Well, that's what I did but unfortunately I don't have a picture of the final product.  However, my brother moved last year so this year I get to design his front yard again.  Yippee!!  I guess since I'm running out of space to garden in my own yard, I need to start gardening in others'!!

How to re-design a perennial bed

After reviewing planting design books and my garden photos all winter, I am ready to re-work a section of the “back hill”, which is viewed from my sunroom.  I learned a long time ago not to plant just one of everything, because it results in a spotty composition that is unrestful to look at.  However, I have been grouping all my plants in roundish clumps of 3 or 5, which makes a bigger impact but still just results in bigger “spottiness”.  Now I want to re-work everything in larger drifts, that are interconnected and interwoven to make a “tapestry” of plantings.

To truly follow the design process, the plants should be chosen last, after you have drawn a lay-out and specified height and width for each plant grouping, among other things.  However, how many of us will do that?  Normally we already have some plants we want to move around, or we are working with some pre-existing shrubs for background plantings, and we want to plant the flowers we know we like.  So, I distilled some major design principles and some practical pointers down to these rules, which I used for the composition shown above. 

The rules are in order of importance (I think), and they are also in order of difficulty, starting with easiest if you are a beginner gardener.  Work your way down the list as you grow more plants and have more confidence combining them.  Also, this year I will be posting photos of some great combinations under the “Captivating combinations” category on the sidebar, so check those out too.

• Situate plants in the locations that suit them i.e. shade lovers in shade, sun lovers in sun, group moisture-lovers together, etc.  This is a no brainer – if you do nothing else, do this!
• Plan for combinations of at least 3 plants together that compliment each other i.e. bloom at the same time and/or have foliage that look good together.
• Make sure that neighbouring plants differ in at least one (preferably two or more) aspects: plant height, plant shape, and leaf shape, colour, size or texture.  Notice I didn’t mention flowers here.  If you create contrasts using plant and leaf characteristics, then the combination will look interesting even when the plants aren’t in bloom.  This is key for perennials, which only bloom for a few weeks.
• Repeat a few plants throughout the composition for unity.  For maximum impact, these should be plants that look good all season and that have interesting foliage.  I am using siberian iris (thin, straplike leaves), bearded iris (flat, sword-shaped leaves), a tall sedum (upright with rounded, fleshy purplish leaves) and lamb’s ears (short with rounded, silver, fuzzy leaves).  They all have stand-out foliage and it just so happens they’re easy to grow so I have lots to spread around.
• Plant in drifts as much as possible (long, skinny blobs as opposed to round ones).  The drifts should overlap and weave in and out of each other and have smooth transitions between them.  The lines between each plant grouping will allow your eye to move smoothly across the composition, rather than jump around as it will while looking at a “spotty” composition.

There are more design principles such as balance and proportion, focal points, etc., but follow just the rules above and you will be well on your way to having a designer-quality garden.  Then again, rules are made to be broken so  remember to follow your heart.  Add your own personality!!

keep mature plant size in mind!

How many times have I seen trees and shrubs planted too close together?  Or a large spruce planted too close to a sidewalk, driveway or house? 

It's hard to imagine the little pot from the garden centre is going to grow into a large tree or shrub, but please pay attention to the full size of something (height and width) when you're planting.  That goes for perennials too, although at least they can be moved or split when they get too big.

These people have done a nice job of keeping their evergreens trimmed, but unfortunately, the beautiful trimming job just seems to draw attention to the poor tree that had its top cut off, don't you think?  What do you think is worse - keeping a tree that looks silly because it's in the wrong spot, or putting it out of its misery?

design for winter interest

Right about now, every Canadian is dying for spring.  While you're making your wish list to take to the garden centre this spring, make sure you don't just fall for those plants blooming their little hearts out in their pots in the store.  Grab some plants that will look good all winter as well - we might as well make our gardens look as nice as possible all year considering at least half the time they will be in "winter mode". 

This neighbour's yard makes me stop and stare year-round.  I took this picture today (March 28) and as you can see, everything is still standing from last year, and still looking great. 

The evergreens add colour to an otherwise brown landscape, and the ornamental grasses, artemesias, sedums, hydrangeas (not shown) and more look good all winter.  Basically anything that makes a good dried flower will likely look good over the winter.  If it gets knocked over by a big dump of snow, you can always cut it down later.