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Friday, March 7, 2014

How to Train Rambling Roses

With lovely photographic diagrams, Hartwood Roses Blog has one of the simplest, most informative explantions of how to train rambling roses that I have found.

Custom 65 Degree Angled Burner Pan

Check out this custom burner and pan we created for a client of ours. Again, we entered the dimensions in to our Rhino 3D rendering software to get the exact angle the client wanted. Precision is perfection. And thats what we aim for here at Warming Trends, perfection.

For more examples of custom burners and pans, please visit our website www.warming-trends.com. If you are interested in a custom fire pit, please contact us online. Or call today. 1-877-556-5255.

Earth Hour

Im not sure if youve heard any of the hype around Earth Hour, but its an amazing initiative by the World Wide Fund, encouraging every individual, business and community to take a stand against Climate Change. To show your support, you need to sign up and commit to switching off your lights for one hour on Saturday, March 28th at 8:30pm.

It started in Sydney, in 2007, and had around 2 million people coming together to switch off their lights for one hour for this vital cause.

In 2008, that number grew to about 50 million. Global landmarks like Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square, all switched off in support of Earth Hour.

This year, 2009, Earth Hour will see the lights go out on some of the most recognised attractions on the planet, including Cape Town’s Table Mountain, Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Merlion in Singapore, Sydney Opera House, the iconic 6-star hotel, the Burj al Arab, in Dubai, Millennium Stadium in Cardiff and the world’s tallest constructed building, the Taipei 101.

Earth Hour 2009 has one major aim: to unite the citizens of the world in the fight against climate change in order to convince governments and world leaders that our planet cannot wait any longer. There simply isn’t enough time, and therefore 2009 is a colossally important, if not the most critical year, to take action on climate change.

Click here to join.

Beyond the Border Part 2 Massing Matters

The same rules that create impact and drama in art can be applied to perennial planting.

My last post set up my proposition that perennials and grasses—the most dynamic plants a gardener can use—ought to not only be used more often, but used in as a larger percentage of our built landscapes. It’s time to liberate perennials from the confines of the British border and embrace a new aesthetic inspired by the patterns and palettes of our native vegetation.

This post will ground my lofty rhetoric with some practical how-to advice. How do you design for long term success with plant material that is inherently ephemeral? To achieve lasting, low-maintenance perennial gardens, there are two areas one must master: composition and plant selection. This post will focus on the first, and most important, rule of composition: massing.

First, let’s understand the context we’re discussing. Perennials in a landscape setting (parks, civic landscapes, large residential) are inherently different than a flower border. They are larger in area, typically set farther away from the viewer, and are not gardened as intensively. So the rules of composition must address this context.

Massing Matters

More than any other strategy, massing perennials and grasses together is the golden rule for landscape perennials. Why? We group several of the same plants together in order to make them more legible and give them visual impact. A single flower in a half-acre planting disappears; but a block of 100 (residential), 200 (small park), or 500 (large park) has dramatic impact even from a distance. Massing perennials together draws attention to their ornamental characteristics. It amplifies their color, form, and texture. More importantly, it also helps relate the scale of the plantings to the scale of a house, building, or park. A mass of 20 Echinaceas, for example, can look paltry next to a monumental building. Massing plants together gives the planting proper proportions to their context.

Larger massings of sedges and perennials in a biofiltration garden for an office park. The lines between the species create a pleasing composition. Design by Ed Hamm for Rhodeside & Harwell. Photo by Thomas Rainer.

The European ‘New Wave’ style made popular by designers like Piet Oudolf, Noel Kingsbury, Michael King, and other celebrated designers tends to interplant perennials in smaller clusters to create highly textured tapestries. I am personally a huge fan of this look, particularly to see it executed on large public projects like the Highline and Lurie Garden in Chicago (even Oudolf masses plants together for effect). These designers use repetition rather than massing to give their compositions visual coherence. However, in my experience, the main drawback of a mixed meadow approach is that it requires quite a bit of maintenance, particularly in the heat and humidity of the eastern U.S.

Massing reduces maintenance. By placing plants of the same species together, you group them by their cultural requirements. Everything within that block needs the same care. It also makes weeds much easier to identify. In highly mixed plantings, identifying a weed from a young perennial or grass requires a trained gardener—a luxury not available in most landscape settings. Massing also makes it easy to re-plant if a perennial dies or struggles. Every project I’ve ever worked on required re-planting anywhere from 3-10% after the first year or two. With large masses, it’s very clear what needs to be replanted.

A nicely interplanted moment, but with five species in just a few square feet, the perennials are already competing for light and nutrients. To keep this composition together would require quite a bit of maintenance.

Massing plants of the same species together also reduces competition between perennials. Any time you mix species, the plants compete for light, water, and nutrients. All of my early experiments with interplanting perennials went poorly as one plant often “ate” another. The composition grew together, the more aggressive plants eliminated their more demure counterparts, and the end result was a total mess. On one project where I interplanted about ½ acre of perennials, I went back a year after it was installed and had to un-interplant the entire garden. The garden had grown together in this awful mess. Anything that was mixed together was pulled out and separated. The correction worked. I’ve visited it several times in year two, three, and four. The masses are more readable, the maintenance staff can easily identify weed from desired plan, and the garden is more stable.

Since then I’ve had a good bit more success with interplanting perennials, but it requires much more planning, horticultural knowledge, and care with plant selection than I initially understood. I’ll discuss some simpler strategies for interplanting later. Even though I interplant quite a bit now, it is still within the context of larger masses.

Two images of a garden designed by Wolfgang Oehme that feature large
perennial masses appropriately scaled for the residential setting.

My early mentor, Wolfgang Oehme, of the design firm Oehme, van Sweden & Associates is a huge proponent of large-scale massing. Wolfgang is one of the great plantsmen of the last century, and his success in using this richly layered style of large perennial masses validates this method. Since I’ve left OvS, I’ve had an opportunity to experiment with refinements to this style, particularly a method of matrix planting. It blends all of the advantages of large masses (maintenance, legibility) with a more visually dynamic field. More on that later.Next post: What type of perennials and grasses do I choose? Some tips on choosing worthy plants for landscape settings.

home garden design

After finding myself a property for many years, lots of people decide that they want a new garden design however are often caught up as to how to start. There are a number regarding considerations, the main one is of ones taste. What can you like? Even though it is a backyard, it doesnt have to be overrun using grass, crops, trees and also flowers unless you want it to end up being. Some may possibly prefer the minimal maintenance advantages afforded simply by wood patio decking, gravel, wooden chips, ceramic tile or cement.

home garden design

Remember, its your garden to help you do to this what you want.

The easiest method to get ideas for your garden design is always to go to see what otherwise is out there that can take your elegant. You can search anywhere, your mates houses, open public gardens, a patch associated with grass in the center of a city supply you with a wealth of concepts.

Once you have a perception as to the type of garden you desire, you need to take into account the size of your backyard and strategy accordingly. In case you only have a smaller working area then you certainly do not want to get a little obsessive with sowing. Your tiny garden might very quickly turn out to be cluttered as well as feel claustrophobic. In case you have a small backyard you should make use of layers to make a sense of level and breezy colour strategies.

If you are fortunate enough to have a big space since your canvas youll be able to really go to town using your designs. Basically anything moves and is remaining entirely around your tastes.

Do not just start and buy crops, flowers or some different for your backyard until you have a strategy drawn out in some recoverable format, this should be a new to range representation of ones garden with everything else in place. It really is much easier (along with cheaper) to generate changes in some recoverable format than it is to perform then when youre putting your backyard together.

Once youve a plan in writing that you are pleased with, then you can collection to community to buy whatever you will need. Remember the tools!

home vegetable garden design

small home gardens

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Gardens and Memory

Photo of Reservation 232 taken in 1927 (photo courtesy of Historical Society of Washington)

Gardening for me is mostly a solitary activity. But the last few months, I’ve been sharing my watering, weeding, and transplanting with my ten-month old.

It gives my wife a few moments of peace, and it is a pleasant distraction for Jude, who would otherwise be tugging on an electric cord or grubbing dust balls from underneath the refrigerator. Jude is fascinated with the ornery mockingbirds (“dta” while pointing), the cloud of bees over our perennials, and the raisiny fruit on our Serviceberry tree. He often notices something that I do not. Yesterday, he leaned over to grab the seed clusters of our Kousa Dogwood. They had budded into these gorgeous emerald orbs. “Huh,” I thought. “That’s cool.”

Image by Fred Jeranes

To see the garden with my son changes the way I experience it. The filter through which I see the garden is dislocated, and I not only see the garden in a new way, but see my son as well. I get these glimpses into his precious mind, experiencing the world all fresh and new.

Moments like these make me think about other gardeners. If I feel most like myself—most grounded—while I wander through my garden, then I want to know other gardeners as they are in their gardens. How do they see their gardens differently than I do? What do they care for and love?

Kim Breneger

Several months ago, I was contacted by a woman who is working with a group to create a memorial garden for Kim Brenegar. Kim was a garden designer who lived and practiced in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Kim died at the age of 49 in a tragic car accident. Although I never knew Kim personally, her presence was everywhere in the neighborhood. Friends of mine were her clients, and they raved about her. Kim was passionate and colorful gardener and designer. I only knew people who knew Kim, but her enthusiasm was infectious. Her loss was not just for those who loved her, but the entire neighborhood and gardening community in Washington, D.C.

The Friends of Kim Brenegar have proposed a most fitting memorial. Together with the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, the Friends group will redesign, restore, and maintain a garden called Kim’s garden on the site of a National Park Service Reservation at the intersection of 8^th Street SE and Independence Avenue that Kim volunteered her time to maintain.

This garden will be an ideal tribute to Kim. What I love most about this project is not just the physical space—the garden—dedicated as a memorial, but that volunteers and friends will remember Kim through the act of gardening. It’s not so much the place that is connected to her memory, but the activity of caring for the garden as Kim did.

We are what we love. To connect with another, we must love what they loved, care for what they cared for, and cultivate what they cultivated. In doing so, we get a glimpse of the heart.

To read more about Kim’s Garden, click here.