Garden tour time! And what better garden to tour than a good friend's beautiful garden you designed yourself? Such was the case when my garden club met at Eddie's garden last month. What a fun visit! Besides being very gracious, Eddie and her husband have quite the beautiful home and lovely garden. Today is an update of the now mature garden I designed and won an award for last year from the Perennial Plant Association (PPA).
This garden was designed for a plant lover. Eddie wanted something different, something in bloom all year round, a wildlife friendly garden, and something she could work in. The above view is from her front door.
This corner to the right of the front door showcases her patio peach and some groundcovers. You cannot beat heucheras for year round interest. Here 'Mocha Mint' takes up the job along with some irises and daylilies under the patio peach tree.
One of my strengths in designing a landscape is to combine trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, etc, into a complete landscape that flows and provides lots of interest. Here we have a crepe myrtle underplanted with dwarf nandinas. I am not a big fan of the tall nandinas but do like the dwarf nandinas as they can be planted in sun or shade (prefers more sun than shade), and they are evergreen. This is a bonus in a year round landscape.
Walking down her front sidewalk you are greeted by all sorts of pollinator friendly plants. Eddie is lucky in that her home faces east. In Tennessee you can grow just about anything in an eastern exposure.
Eddie's front lawn is bounded by perennial beds. Here we have the 'summer garden' filled with amsonia, brown eyed Susans, dayliles, and coreopsis. The border goes further into the background toward the driveway where 'Knockout' roses are planted along side baptisias and asters.
This part of Eddie's garden is my absolute favorite part due to these beautiful 'Autumn Joy' sedums. I call this her 'fall garden'. This area divides Eddie's home from her neighbors and provides year round interest in addition to hiding a power transformer box behind the grasses. The purple ninebarks like 'Diablo' (pictured here) make a good companion for sedums.
This border garden flows really nicely and is not unfriendly to the neighbor house with the way it was designed to flow. The intent was not to cut off any neighbors but to enhance Eddies gardening views and gardening time.
Now this garden is a garden I had no part of and I tell you I love it! Eddie has done a fantastic job landscaping the end of her cul-de-sac. Just look at all that color! And if you could see this garden in person you'd be delighted with all of the pollinators visiting this beautifully done garden. The textures, heights, and colors all work very well to make this end of the street garden a draw for passerbys.
One last shot of Eddie and Pete's beautiful home....
in the garden...
I am really behind on posting pictures and articles. Hopefully things will slow down for me a bit so I can be more regular but life is hectic! Blogging sometimes takes a backseat. Please stay tuned for more garden tour pictures from my friends gardens coming up-soon!
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden
Can you guess what I have been busy doing? I have finally ventured into the realm of landscape design. Yes, I've been designing landscapes a very long time but I've never really put the designs down on paper. This school term sees me in a landscape design course at Nashville State. Our instructor is very knowledgeable and is sharing a great deal of tips with us all, too bad the above pictured design had to be completed for a client prior to my third class. I find that kind of funny-and difficult.
Fortunately I have some really good landscape design books (Todd Bertauski is the author) that are fairly simple and self explanatory about the process of drawing landscape designs. Still, I find that I have to find my own style of putting my designs down on paper. Conveying the look of a landscape is not an easy thing to do. Not to mention measuring, erasing, drafting, erasing, labeling, erasing. Oh, did I say erasing again? Let me explain. Landscape designs are typically drawn on a high quality see through paper called vellum. When you make a mistake and have to erase-grrrrr-it is difficult to fix it completely. I am learning this the hard way. An alternative to drawing directly on the vellum is to put tracing paper over the vellum and draw your design on the tracing paper. Then you put that tracing paper under the vellum and draw the design again. That is an easy process-if you have a light table. I do not. Can you see where I am going? Landscape designs take a lot of time and attention to detail.
I have added landscape design to my business model. Many clients seem to desire landscape design more so than garden coaching, or if they need some coaching, they want design too. It only makes sense to add that element of the horticulture market niche to my business.
As we go along I may share some tips and methods of drawing landscape designs so you too can do your own landscape designs. It seems there are not a lot of sources of information for learning this skill-unless you wish to pay for it. Additionally, if you Google landscape design, guess what you come up with? Landscape designs with no input on how you get the actual thing on the paper-not an easy thing! So I'll try to help. It was always my intent to share what little knowledge I have about gardening with you readers when I started this blog. I have very little knowledge about drawing landscape designs but will doing quite a few in the next few months so we can learn together. If there is anything specifically related to the process you might like to see I'll try to fit it in here if you let me know, either by email or a comment.
Why I never thought of venturing into landscape design before is a question I am asking myself quite a bit lately....
in the garden....
My clients are quite delighted with their landscape design and are busy purchasing the plants and installing the design themselves-with a bit of guidance from me along the way. I am currently building my portfolio of landscape designs. Look for updates as I go along. This will be the first design I'll feature but there will be many more. I have before pictures and will take after pictures (required for certification though not required to practice landscape design in case you were wondering) once the landscape is complete. I can't wait! While these particular clients don't often check things on the computer they have given me permission to post their design and are most excited about it all. I'm excited because without the referral and the need the clients had to get a landscape design I might not have seriously considered designing landscapes so I am grateful to these folks.
P.S. The title block is cut out to protect the privacy of the clients but the direction North is straight up (that is part of the title block).
Do check out my new website located here for more info on landscape design.
Matron of Down on the Allotment is posted a dogblog post. Do check out all the dogs in the garden and send her a note letting her know about your dog...in the garden.
Update: The Blotanical Awards winners have been announced. Congratulations go out to all the winners. In the Garden did not win any awards but just being nominated was winning enough!
I wasn't sure if I'd write this post or not, but I think I'd be remiss if I did not personally thank every single person who voted for this blog and blogger in the Blotanical awards nominations! Plus the fact that most other nominated bloggers (not all mind you but just look at my blogroll) have already posted their posts about the nominations helped to make up my mind to go ahead and post. This is the only way I know how to thank you-THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! And to let all of the readers of this blog know about the awards who may not be members of Blotanical. Blotanical is a directory of garden blogs that this blog has been a part of for nearly two years. There are over 1500 garden blogs registered at the directory. We are ever so excited to be nominated in any award categories-let alone four categories! So to say this small team here-and especially me and our group of commenters is MOST excited would be an understatement. I am giddy with joy-again thanks!!
I really wish Blotanical and even blog awards in general could go national like the Emmys or something along those lines. Perhaps one day the blogging world will get that big, not sure. That way all could have access to the process, and even though all have access to this directory, unless you have a garden blog you usually don't visit Blotanical. My co-posters wouldn't have even known about the whole award thing if I hadn't told them and they have blogs-Skeeter-Dawn-Lola! They know now.
In the Garden Blog made the final five for the following categories:
Best Garden Art Blog
Best Educational Blog
Best Tennessee Blog
And a huge surprise-a Blogger Award Nomination:
Blotanist of the Year
How wonderful to even reach the finals and I want to tell everyone who voted for us-thanks! If you made the finals-good luck! If you did not make the finals-don't give up!
in the garden....with a couple of big argiopes (black and yellow orb weavers).
P.S. I am currently on the road returning from North Carolina and Mr. Fix-it's 20-Year Class Reunion. I'll check in when I can. Thanks in advance for visiting and good luck to all nominees-they are all such a great bunch and many of the nominees are blogging friends of this blogger and blog-so I really mean it when I say good luck!
