Figured we could use some shade-blessed pictures, while so many of us are under the heat dome (special treat at the end). From professional landscape artist Dan B:
I’ve sent pictures of the garden at my partner’s house before. It was summer. Here’s Spring. It’s my garden in part because I designed it, supervised the major grading, and then the rock walls, pond, paving, and planting. This was done in 2000 and 2001.
Top photo: This entry side of the house was sloping lawn and a chunk of rockery. There was no privacy for the dining room / breakfast table and the living room. The dwarf trees don’t look so dwarf now.
There was a deck between the house and garage. It’s great for parties and there are many good spots in the garden when the weather is good.
This area was two feet underground and sloped so no one would stand on it. We had a BJ Meet-up here on a hot day last summer.
Looking the other direction. This is at basement level where the master bedroom and another bedroom are located. Now there are French doors to the garden. The far end is at the former grade. The rusty table is a welders table from Boeing surplus. (It didn’t fall off a plane.)
This is a mass of Evergreen Maidenhair Fern at the far end of the path. I bought a four inch pot of this at a rare plant sale. This patch must be worth a few hundred dollars.
These cut Columnar Basalt steps lead to a gravel terrace surrounded by Rhodies.
This is one edge of the terrace. The tenants like to have a fire in the fire cauldron. The wind currents make everyone equally smoked.
Here’s one of the Rhodies and a Corylopsis pauciflora in the background. It’s rated to 24″ in height. Hmmm…
I love the contrast in textures and leaf color at the foot of the Corylopsis. The tenants, who take wonderful care of the garden, prefer big masses of brightly colored flowers. Sigh.
These are the French Doors from the downstairs. They lead to a wet bar. It’s convenient at party time during the summer season.
And my partner is at the 100th anniversary of the family charter boat the Schooner Zodiac.
It’s a “nice” size – 127 feet on deck. I’m minding the cats and garden.
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
Jeffg166
Oh, to have such lovely weather to garden. The place looks amazing.
I woke to it being 80F degrees at 4 am. The high today is to be 98F. With the humidity it will feel like 105 or more.
The Arts Festival is on Main Street yesterday and today. I doubt it attracted many people this year with the high heat and humidity.
My garden is burning up. I gave up trying to save it when the high heat rolls in.
BretH
“French doors to the garden…”
My wife and I have been looking for a house in the Chapel Hill area for about 5 years now. (Her elderly mom and her sister live there). One of my dearest wishes is to have a room where we spend lots of time that opens out into a garden. That’s rare. House after house has the main room open out to a deck, where you can look out over the yard but aren’t invited to go out in it because of the height and stairs.
OzarkHillbilly
When I dream of my gardens, this is what I see.
And then I wake up.
raven
Awesome shots! Here’s the video of the Schooner Zodiac, of course I wondered if they fished from here and they did!
raven
@BretH: I built our screened porch that looks over the garden. We had an addition built after this picture but we did retain the porch. We spend a great deal of time out there and we are considering somehow sealing it so we can be out there more
Here’s the addition and you can see the porch a bit.
BretH
@raven: I think my desire started with seeing Fallingwater when I was young, and being entranced by the inside = outside philosophy.
delphinium
Your gardens look amazing-definitely a great place to escape the heat!
Will be another hot day here, so no gardening plans except to water the beds that get full sun.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I can’t even dream about that gorgeous a garden, I don’t possess that ability to visualize. And it’s lovely IRL .
@Jeffg166: Unless it’s saved with a hard prune, it looks like I lost a rose bush. I watered them all every day, but must not have given this one as much. It’s fried.
satby
The heat wave is temporarily broken here, big storms rolled through in the wee hours and the low overnight went down to 70. The high today will stay in the 70s, though still cloyingly humid. The week promises to be better by midweek. Can’t wait. The best news is after Tuesday the overnight lows go back into the 60s, so some of the flowers may fruit in my tomatoes.
satby
@raven: that video is amazing!
CCL
Beautiful garden. Looks so cool and inviting and wonderful planting combinations. Love the restraint, as I am easily seduced by color…
This morning I am looking out at fog and see flashes of bright red (scarlet tanager), yellow (goldfinch), duller red (cardinal), grey/black (catbird) darting in and out the mulberry tree with its now ripe berries. Two bunnies are chomping on the white clover below and the squirrels and the various LGBs (little grey birds I can’t identify ) are in the mix as well. We desperately needed this rain and so I am grateful and content.
O. Felix Culpa
Beautiful garden! (See, also, CCL above.) I am only a wee bit jealous. Well, actually a lot jealous. I’m doing my best to create a Southwest native plant pollinator garden, along the lines of an English country garden. So, sort of planned, yet “natural” looking. I’m just one year in, so we’ll see how it goes. So far my perennials have had a better than expected survival rate.
@raven: Love your screened-in porch. I would spend a lot of time there too.
@satby: So sorry about your rose. Fingers crossed it revives after pruning.
OzarkHillbilly
In garden news from the Hillbilly Haven, flowers are blooming here. The full riot of color is still a week or so away, but this smattering is nice to see and the pollinators certainly appreciate them. The wild parts of the driveway island has for the first time ever been taken over by bee balm. So many flowers the flutterbys are hard pressed to choose just one. Decisions, decisions.
The veggie garden is progressing, tomatoes are growing tall, the sweet peppers are producing, the eggplants are flowering, the cukes and melons all look healthy. Squash is still a couple weeks away from being sown but the mounds are all prepped and waiting under black plastic.
My chickens… My chickens have had a couple of rough weeks. First the meat birds got in the mail and 24 of 45 did not survive it. Then some predatory pos began thinning my flock of layers. Finally caught the SOB in the act after closing up automatic door and finding him/her spread eagled on the hardware cloth covering the back window.
Then to top it all off, came down one morning to find 6 of my 10 pullets dead in the brooder room, not one of them consumed in any way, shape, or form. It had to be a weasel. Once they get their blood up, they go into a killing frenzy. Usually they take the top of a birds head off and drink the blood, but I guess these little guys weren’t worth the trouble. I count my blessings that he left 4 alive.
It was my own damned fault, I had left a hatch unlocked.
As of right now, the hatchery is sending me replacements for the birds that got lost in the mail, and I have placed another order for 6 more layer chicks. Also picked up 3 more mature layers from some really nice folks not too far away. It’s been an expensive couple of weeks.
MazeDancer
Beautiful! Just beautiful.
TerryC
Beautiful!
I only do trees. Annuals are too much work. This year I planted 25 each of four different types of oak, 50 paw paws, 75 red mulberry and about 100 others. Don’t have much more room for trees left on my 17.5 acres after planting more than 16,000 in the last ten years.
My latest fun is taking field stock, some of which I planted and some of which are volunteers, and grafting other types of trees onto them. I completely topped off a Callery pear this spring and replaced it with scion wood from domestic pear. I also grafted some cherries, plums, apples, locust, and mulberry. One of my volunteer crabapples now has its own limbs plus five (5, so far) other varieties on the same tree!
MelissaM
“Family charter boat.” My family had a camping trailer in the back yard until I was about 8. Same thing?
Your garden is just lovely. How buggy is it? I like my yard just fine but even without the midwestern heat, sitting out there is just making myself a feast for the mosquitoes. What I really like of your garden is the separate spaces. “Ooh, a little seating nook!” yet right around the corner another. Wonderful!
Denali5
My weeds are doing very well, especially the poison ivy.
Gvg
I got my garden mostly weeded and mulched before the serious heat moved in. Like last year, I plan on not doing much except in the shade until fall. I water and collect seeds. Do inside house projects. Unfortunately my mother who loves gardening even more than I has been relegated to a walker this past year and her garden is out of hand, so in spite of heat, I need to find a way to help her. Finally convincing her on the wonders of mulch, so that weeded areas stay weeded for awhile. She loves the wildflower look and was convinced that her flowers could self sow better than the weeds, in spite of evidence. You can do meadows. But first you have to actually eliminate most weeds and the seed bank. She never did.
I am very much trying to learn from what I think she did wrong and plan for my old age. Lots of dwarf flowering shrubs I think…also grade my property better and make sure I have very good paths. No steps. Dad keeps saying wait till you need them to buy or build ramps and mom can manage steps still. He is wrong. I don’t have lots of money, and I won’t be able to build them when I need them and mom is going the long way to avoid steps.
AM in NC
Evergreen Maidenhair fern! What amazing sorcery is this? I have a Southern Maidenhair in a terracotta pot that I took over care of when my mom died two summer ago, and it is my favorite thing. 3 feet across and has thrived in my (now former) light-filled bathroom. There was a stand of Northern Maidenhair ferns in the woods near my house. Took all my willpower not to dig some up, but they spread so slowly, I just couldn’t take any.
Your partner’s house’s garden is just spectacular. Thank you for sharing it with us!
We just moved to a different house where we will be doing an addition, and I’ll be pretty much creating a new garden from scratch (except for some pecan trees in the back and a few keepers in front, like a fig tree, some blueberries, and an oak leaf hydrangea). The design project feels daunting, but I am so excited!!! This time, I WILL remember to do before and after photos!
Mike in Oly
My better half and I got a tour of this garden two weeks ago. It was even more beautiful in person. A really well thought out design and execution. We enjoyed it immensely.
opiejeanne
@MelissaM: Probably not very buggy. The first time I visited Seattle 40 years ago I was struck by the fact that so many houses didn’t have screens on the windows. I’m a little outside the city in a semi-rural area (alpacas, miniature donkeys, horses, and goats in the front yards of multi-million dollar properties) and we do get mosquitoes and flies sometimes, various bees and hornets. I think it’s starting fly season because the cats are watching the ceilings and something buzzed past my ear this morning.
StringOnAStick
Lovely, Dan B.! Your garden posts here are always such a treat, especially seeing what can be created in a much wetter place than the high deserts I have lived in my whole life. Going to the wet side of the Cascades is such a visual treat!
@O. Felix Culpa: Just offering my support for your endeavours; I’ve done several water wise perennial gardens and I think I’ve finally created my lifetime masterpiece though that realization is a multi year thing as the various plants and shrubs reach maturity. I gave away a few plants this spring that I put in 3 years ago because it has gotten a bit crowded; it’s always a work in progress. My goal next year is to be in the annual garden show so people can see that water wise can look as lush as any high water use English garden. This area is wrestling the on going drought and the reliance on turf grass has to end.
Dan B
@raven: Thanks for that video. It’s the first time I’ve seen it. It’s interesting to see the original masts. They’ve been replaced a couple times recently, as has the deck – did I mention it’s not a money making operation? The first time the masts needed to be replaced because of age. The second recent replacement was because they broke in a windstorm, didn’t damage anything, miraculously. And did I mention that wooden boats are not…. $$$ maintenance > $ profits.
Dan B
@StringOnAStick: Its great to hear you’re doing a beautiful garden in Eastern (central, actually) Oregon. I have a nephew and his partner, a former sister in law, and a neice and her family in Redmond and Bend. My nephew is installing 6,000 square feet of turf at their new home in Redmond, “Because dogs like to play on lawn.” I didn’t ask where he read those studies. Animals need places to hide and places to plan their “attacks”. I always feel that a big lawn is like a prison yard, suitable for running and supervised activities like catch, not for play that sparks the imagination. When Mike in Oly and his partner visited my partner’s garden they kept thinking they’d seen all the garden and then we’d go around a corner or up stairs. Whenever there are parties there groups of people fill those smaller spaces because they feel right.
O. Felix Culpa
@StringOnAStick: Thanks! I hope to be in your position in two more years. I’ve halted new plantings for now, to see how the existing plants grow and spread. Will add a few more in the coolth of autumn, because I can’t help myself. My new drip irrigation system is working well so far. Thankfully we did not inherit a lawn, so I didn’t have the hassle of undoing it. We just got mostly bare landscape with a few “strategically placed” rocks.
Dan B
@satby: Just let me loose in your garden with a backhoe and an unlimited budget, whee!! Pete and Chasten will be compelled to visit, all the way from Traverse City!
Dan B
@StringOnAStick: Id love to see pictures of your endeavors. There are pictures of my partner’s garden when it looked as barren and uninviting as homes in Bend. After a summer with barely over an inch of rain per month lawns in Seattle are a dingy tan. My partner’s garden and my garden have large areas that require zero water. It’s a fascinating challenge.