Plum Trees Are Blooming!

It's March and the plum trees on my parking strip are in full bloom - often filled with bees buzzing and gold finches chirping away. These are the first trees to bloom in spring. Heavenly!

Desert Meditation Garden

A big project I am currently working on right now is a meditation garden in the southern California desert at a small hot springs spa. The garden will be on what is now four residential-sized lots that will be sandwiched between the delightful 7 room spa and a new treatment center that will house massage rooms. This new garden will have a labyrinth, a large outdoor gathering area for yoga, 5 private meditation pods, a small desert Zen garden, and a fire pit. Both the hot daytime heat and the cool desert evenings will be taken into account so that it will be comfortable and magical experience no matter when one is there. We will use desert plants that the owners have on hand after having purchased a nursery that was going out of business. Right now we are in the design stages and getting the irrigation put in to make sure the first year of planting does well. Virtually all of the plants are native to the desert southwest so it will be a sustainable landscape. There is also some run-off from the spa pool into a small area that we will built the Zen garden around. The view of the San Jacinto Mountains to the south and the Joshua Tree National Park to the north will be a feature of the garden. The photo of the landscape is the actual property, the next is the view from the spa, and the other shots are of plants that I saw while visiting nurseries in the area.

Little Urban Gem

I'm currently working on a yard in Seattle that needs to have a new life. The family is growing up and the kids are leaving so Mom wants a renewed and more useful yard for this. We started this project back in October...well, September, really - but due to weather and the busy schedule of the client it really got off the ground right after the big Halloween party that she and her neighbors have at her house each year. The goal is to make an urban garden on the south side of the house, fix the not-too-effective middle yard that drains into the outside basement stairway and provide a new outdoor room on the north side of the house for repose and contemplation and to help extend the deck area.

The client wanted to do a lot of the work herself and agreed to tackle the hard work of putting cardboard on the old lawn and covering it with about 4" of mulch to sit there all winter generating itself into the best garden soil ever! This house sits about 12 steps up off the street so hauling all that mulch up to the yard to some time and effort. You can see the before and after shots of the three parts of the yard here - the grassy areas are the old yard, the muddy shots are the new mulch and cardboard turning into new soil. Kind of messy right now but it will be great when it all gets replanted.

We also had a small garden shed built in the north yard which will add charm to the new outdoor room. When spring rolls around we'll put the new plants in and fix the middle area by terracing and creating effective drainage. The north yard with the shed will have a circular seating area surrounded by native plantings that will give it an enclosed feel - the outdoor room! It will look great.

Condo Garden Renovation

This is the latest landscape design to be finished for a small garden condo in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. This was a complete renovation of a 50-year old garden that needed a new look and lots of soil amendments to get the plants that were going to stay back to what they could be. I decided to keep the gardenias, the three different kinds of Choisya, filled out the Nandina, and added blues and blacks (Idaho Blue Fescue & Black Mondo Grass) to enhance the existing plants. One color section and one cool section were highlighted to be seen from the dining and living rooms. A corner Zen Garden was revived to be seen from the den, with panels put on the fenced area to contain the view; new stone edging was added to visually hold the white sand. A moss garden was created for yet more serenity. And, a cobblestone area under an existing Magnolia finished it all off nicely. I pruned a lot of the plants, including two very old and weary fatsias, down to just above the ground, so that they could come up with all new foliage. This was a very rewarding project that took about a month and a half to design and implement.

Apartment Courtyard Renovation

Here is a before and after of another relatively quick project. This client was renovating the front of this apartment to bring it into the 21st century (or the 50s depending on how you look at it) and needed a quick fix for the front court area which had previously been grasses and periwinkle. This site faces east but gets plenty of sun part of the day so we decided on a mid-century, Palm Springsesque planting scheme of a Washingtonia palm, river rocks (nicely provided by the client from their own home), ajuga and a hedge of heavenly bamboo. The owner found the palm on Craig's List! They rented the one unit that was available immediately after this renovation was finished.

Container Plants Fundraiser and A Newfound Yard

MARCH in Seattle!

...started out pretty warm and now it's roaring through like a lion! We've had two days of nights in the thirties. It actually snowed two days ago. I know the plants can take it but I'm not sure I can. I'm preparing containers for a fundraiser on March 20th for the Interfaith Family Shelter in Everett, WA. It's at 2820 Oakes Avenue from 1-5PM if you'd like to come. Lot's of gorgeous native and perennial plants in pots for sale! Check out www.interfaithwa.org for more information about the shelter.

And, I continue to work on a pretty significant renovation of a garden on Mercer Island. We are pulling 10 years worth of blackberry and ivy out of an area that also has a beautiful old dogwood tree, lots of forsythia, a couple of rhodies and lots of narcissus. We will find the inner garden shortly (about 14 hours of work so far) and make it into a beauty! The photo of last week's work shows the old tires and and old riding lawn mower we also found under all the undergrowth. Treasures for sure! The bottom photo shows the 'before' and the top photo shows the 'after' of this renovation. It took me about 30 hours of work by myself to clear this area out enough to hire someone to come in with heavy equipment to take out a dangerous oak tree (over 50' tall!) and then push the soil around to smooth it all out and get out about 60 blackberry bushes. Now it gets sun! We are going to plant native plants only in this area.

Renovated Parking Strip: Ballard Neighborhood of Seattle

There was asphalt under the junipers and rock garden along the sidewalk of this property in Ballard so we pulled that out and put in crocosmia, more catmint, various sedums and some annuals for color.

The plants I chose for the parking strip were barberry (to keep the dogs out) and some pretty tough drought tolerant catnip and some smaller, golden barberry along with sedums and wooley thyme. We put river rock along the curb and one path going perpendicular to the strip so those getting out of a car parked alongside would have a place to step. We ran a simple soaker hose through the area to get the plants watered the first year. After that they should be fine. Did I mention this whole project had to be done in 2 weeks in order to get ready for a bridal shower?! Yikes!

The whole parking strip was also asphalt so putting in living, growing things made a no brainer for beauty. I suggested to the clients that it would be wise to remove not only the asphalt, but also at least 8" of soil from under the asphalt so that we could get some good soil in there for the success of the future plants. We also decided that they should put a bit of a berm in the parking strip to help with privacy. This worked quite well since we left that area of stone next to the curb. We got a lot of good comments from passersby and neighbors.