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‘New traditional’ design updates old spaces

North Carolina is a great place to be a new traditional interior designer, says Durhams Heather Garrett.

The state has plenty of traditional architecture, but people dont necessarily want the inside of their homes to look like Grandmas house, said Garrett, who recently landed on Traditional Home magazines 2013 list of 10 up-and-coming new trad designers to watch.

A lot of my clients are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and they want to buy a house that feels solid, and it feels classic and it feels traditional, but they dont want to have to furnish it and design the space in a way that necessarily matches that, she said. But it has to blend.

Thats what new traditional is all about.

Its that fusion, Garrett said. Its that way of infusing something very fresh and very cutting-edge with the traditional pieces, architecture, surroundings that kind of keep a space grounded.

Traditional Homes readers voted Garrett, who runs Heather Garrett Interior Design from a studio a few blocks from the American Tobacco Campus, their favorite of the 10 designers to watch. Garrett described those readers, like many of her local clients, as a younger, little bit more modern reader who loves design and appreciates classic architecture, the classic shapes of furniture. That reader that wouldnt consider themselves contemporary but really doesnt want to be penned in by the furniture that theyve inherited from their parents.

In highlighting Garretts work, Traditional Home cited her art history background and ability to blend French modern and Southern traditional styles to achieve a distinctive look.

Her signature look includes sophisticated surfaces as varied as plaster and hide or velvet and linen, as well as extraordinary lighting, the magazine wrote.

In rooms she designs, Garrett puts the focus on classic American and European design sensibilities with a natural and organic flavor, she said. She might cover an antique French chair with a contemporary print or use a chandelier that incorporates rope and seashells as a focal point. An updated perspective on paint can also give a room a modern twist without losing the elegance of a traditional style, she said.

Sick of a stuffy dining room with white chair rails and moldings? Choose a bold paint color you love and cover everything including those chair rails.

You preserve the traditional architecture and the feeling of that detail, but youre not calling attention to it like they traditionally would have, she said. Youre pulling it back a little bit.

For that matter, you dont even have to use the dining room as a dining room.

That room can be kind of a dust-catcher for a modern family, Garrett said. Shes turned the dining room into a far less formal family room in many local homes to keep up with the way people live.

New traditional, at least as Garrett sees it, can be very family-friendly.

Kids, pets and red wine are facts of life, shes fond of saying, and her designs take those facts into account. She often uses outdoor fabric for indoor upholstery, including in her own home. When her two kids spill food on the familys white sofa, which is covered in ultra-soft outdoor umbrella fabric, no one gets sent to time-out. The mess sponges right off and life goes on.

I feel like its my responsibility not to create a household thats more tense than it was when I found it, she said of designing spaces for families. Kids shouldnt feel like interlopers, and parents shouldnt be shooing the little ones away from the furniture, she said.

To give your home a new traditional look, you dont need a blank slate, Garrett said. Its more of a mind-set, really, than an actual undertaking.

We all have kind of our go-to aesthetic, she said. For every three things that you have, that you would consider to be beautiful but very solidly traditional, force yourself to choose one thing thats really modern for you.

A new traditional home can be beautiful and show high style, but it doesnt have to look like the set of a magazine photo shoot, Garrett said.

I try to really make sure that my spaces dont feel overly decorated, she said, that it really feels like somebody got a helping hand in helping the space more clearly reflect them.

Chandler: 919-829-4830

Raqib Shaw: Inside the Garden of Earthly Delights

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In the dreamlike private universe he has painstakingly created, the London-based artist finds all the inspiration he needs.

October 30, 2013 9:55 AM | by Alex Needham

A former sausage factory is the last place you’d expect to find Shangri-la. Yet behind the high wooden boards that shield the spartan building from South London’s grungy Peckham Road is a bower of bliss to overwhelm the senses. Mountains of flowers and trees—magnolias, azaleas, ferns, begonias—are piled up in pots, attracting a considerable number of butterflies and bees. There’s a waterfall, in which a small Jack Russell called Mr. C is gingerly dabbing his paws. Down the path through the flowers is a swinging sofa with a canopy. If you ask for tea, an assistant will instead bring a glass of pink champagne the size of a man’s forearm, despite the fact that it’s early in the afternoon.

This is the home, studio, and empire of the artist Raqib Shaw. Born in Calcutta, India, and brought up in Kashmir until the long-standing conflict in the area forced his family to flee, Shaw moved to London in 1998. “I love Kashmir—oh, you have no idea how much I love Kashmir,” he says with a sigh, dressed in his customary uniform of flat striped cap, apron, and pointy blue suede Patrick Cox shoes. “Why do you think everything here is a pathetic metaphor for the Himalayan mountains?”

Shaw’s overwhelming paintings, in which mythological creatures disport themselves with ribald abandon in hyper-real landscapes, have turned the 39-year-old into an art world favorite, adored by fashionable collectors and heavyweight institutions alike. Right from the start, Shaw made large-scale works, some as big as 15 feet by 8 feet. To create his series Garden of Earthly Delights (2002–2006), which depicts hybrid creatures conjoined in sexual acts in a dazzling underwater world, he used a porcupine quill and car paint. The Hieronymus Bosch–inspired paintings put Shaw on the map. Having seen his 2002 MA postgraduate exhibition at London’s Central Saint Martins, Glenn Scott Wright, a codirector of the Victoria Miro gallery, brought one work from the Earthly Delights series to the 2003 Art Basel fair, where it was spotted by the gallerist Jeffrey Deitch. Deitch gave Shaw a solo show in New York, and Victoria Miro offered him his first show in London, which sold out before it even opened, in February 2004. Garden of Earthly Delights X, meanwhile, is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“He goes against all the norms of art,” says the curator Norman Rosenthal, an early champion of Shaw’s. “His work has this air of private excess—incredibly beautiful, very cultivated, knowledgeable—and he combines the cultures of East and West in an extraordinary way. Underneath all the hysteria there’s incredible pain and a sense of loss, both personal and political, for Kashmir. It makes his art authentic and real. It’s on the edge of kitsch but never falls into it.”

In November, Shaw takes over three of the Pace gallery’s New York spaces—the first artist to do so—with the first and second chapter of his Paradise Lost series that he began in 2001. “The variety of the work and the intensity of this series demanded it,” says Pace founder Arne Glimcher. One gallery will feature huge sculptures, including Renaissance-style wrestling figures; in another will be circular paintings of charging horses; and a third will showcase just one piece, which Shaw is still finishing when I visit. It’s an eye-popping panorama featuring exploding Western architecture—“bits of Piranesi, a bit of Versailles, a bit of St. Paul’s,” Shaw says—overrun with creatures that have monkey heads and human bodies.

Shaw’s London headquarters is at once an installation, an atelier (his word), and a metaphor. The bathroom—previously the sausage factory’s abattoir—is tiled and painted deep red, with blood-spattered statues inset in the wall behind the bath, and enormous scarlet Acqua di Parma candles, which sit on a shelf above the toilet. There’s another room with flower arrangements so gigantic that they look fake, an impression belied by their scent. A long lean-to down one wall of the studio’s ground floor is filled with bonsai trees, one of which is 300 years old and cost about the same as a really good car, one of Shaw’s numerous assistants tells me quietly. (Her task is to water all the bonsai, a four-hour job.) On a balcony upstairs there are two beehives, which are ruled by a pair of queens whimsically named Meredith and Josephine.

A small and highly theatrical man, Shaw is fantastic company. When discussing the art world, his conversation is a conspiratorial, sibilant whisper, rising to loud hilarity when he alights on something that tickles him. Expensive habits—one friend says he once spent more than $30,000 on cut flowers in one go—have left Shaw drastically in debt. Not that he cares. “I intend to die in the red,” he announces flamboyantly. “I always tell the accountant, ‘Black is not a color—red is the color of fashion.’ ” Though he comes from a rich family of carpet merchants and jewelry makers, Shaw has not always lived luxuriously. While at art school, he camped out in a studio that had no heat or washing facilities; Shaw had to bathe in a baby’s wading pool. “I know it’s romantic; I know it’s nonsensical, but I absolutely loved it,” Shaw insists. He wasn’t even put off by the fact that on more than one occasion, dismembered murder victims were dumped outside. “Sweets, I saw a foot!” he tells me with a flourish. “I called the police, went to an opening at the Victoria Miro gallery, and when I got back, it was dogs and helicopters.” The East London badlands where he used to work have since been gentrified. Still, few outsiders visit the studio. Rosenthal drops by now and again, and Shaw occasionally hosts parties where a soprano will sing—opera is one of his passions. In fact, it’s only the Royal Opera House that lures him regularly beyond his bubble. (A rare exception was a recent studio outing to a Beyoncé concert, after which Shaw and his assistants ended up dancing at the gay party Trannyshack.) He has no interest in going to art world parties and dinners, claims to have no friends, and as for a partner, Shaw declares, “I haven’t had sex in the past 15 years.”

As Shaw tells it, however, his more pressing problem is that the work for his New York show is behind schedule, and, he says, “the begonias are not as bright as they were last year, and one of the fish is being cannibalized in the pond. Now that’s a crisis!” He screams with laughter, an astonishing noise akin to a hyena being throttled. In 2016, he plans to finish his Paradise Lost series with a 130-foot painting, likely to be shown at Jay Jopling’s White Cube gallery in London. Jopling will have to tear down walls to accommodate it, Shaw says. “Jay’s such a seducer. He said, ‘Raqib, I made this gallery so you could fit the painting in the space.’”

Maybe it’s the assistant continually topping off my glass of pink champagne, but time seems to stand still in this sybarite’s domain. “People judge time by years,” Shaw tells me. “I judge time only by panels.” Inevitably, it dawns on you that you must reel out of the garden and go back to the real world. “It’s very difficult for anyone to separate me from the surface, from the studio, from my assistant, from my tree, or from my desk,” Shaw says, carefully pruning the pink hydrangea he hands to me as a parting gift. “It’s all one.”

The Glory of the Garden

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Pertinent Impertinent

The Glory of the Garden
James van Sweden wasn’t just a landscaper; he was a landscaping artist. In gardening, he preferred a holistic experience — but Americans disagreed.

The 1940s suburban Michigan of James van Sweden’s youth was a panorama of precise, tidy houses bordered by meticulous lawns. As a teenager, van Sweden (who died a few weeks ago) was responsible for maintaining his parents’ own prized yard. The chore grew into a lawn-mowing business, which didn’t last long. As van Sweden pushed his mower across his neighborhood, something else caught his attention. A few of his neighbors had allowed their yards to sprout free and the results were a revelation. Margaret Smith’s lawn was “postage-stamp size,” overtaken by larkspur and iris and globe thistle. Marybell Pratt and Margaret Holmes had almost no lawns at all. For James van Sweden, these neighbors had joined in a tiny revolution. They began to give plants to the young van Sweden, who proceeded to overhaul his own pristine backyard. Gone went the lawn and in its place waved tangles of wild phlox. Van Sweden began taking trips to the Michigan countryside, where he sketched country meadows and wildflowers, sand dunes and pines, re-imagining what a garden could be.

Like his Michigan neighbors, James van Sweden had a passion for grass. But van Sweden, and his partner Wolfgang Oehme, wanted their grass free-flowing and long, filled with birds and bees and butterflies. In Gardening With Nature, van Sweden included two paintings. One is A Neat Lawn by David Hockney. The centerpiece of A Neat Lawn is a house that is essentially a beige rectangle with an address on it. The house is flanked by static shrubs. The bottom half of the painting is another rectangle, a large green swathe of lawn. The grass is also static and strangely barren. There are no people in A Neat Lawn, no movement at all, save a sprinkler lightly sprinkling.

Cape Cod Evening, Edward Hopper

The other painting, by Edward Hopper, is titled Cape Cod Evening. It is also a painting with a house, but only the side of the house is seen. A man and a woman are relaxing in the evening light — the woman leans against the house with crossed arms; the man sits slouched on a step. A soft, overgrown grass that is yellowing with autumn hides their feet. They have obviously stopped mowing their lawn. There is a dog in the painting too, standing half-swallowed in the meadow of grass that reaches back into a copse of woods behind the house.

Stachys byzantine or Lamb’s Ears, courtesy of giltay / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

James van Sweden wanted his gardens to be a holistic experience, something to stand in the middle of, be enveloped by, residing somewhere between art and wilderness. Van Sweden wanted to design gardens that had the boldness of a wild landscape, lush and full and free, gardens that moved even when the wind wasn’t blowing, with dramatic contrasts of texture and height and color. Van Sweden thought a garden ought to have a powerful smell and include plants that you could stroke, like the velvety Stachys byzantine, which feels like the ears of a lamb. Touch was even more important to van Sweden than color, for human beings are tactile creatures. Time’s effect on the garden was paramount and each plant was carefully chosen in its relationship to the seasons. Some people thought Oehme and van Sweden’s gardens most beautiful in the winter. “Time is the gardener’s friend and foe,” wrote van Sweden, “always working its relentless changes. Gardening teaches us patience… But gardens can also teach us to live more in the moment — to listen, to watch, to touch, and to dream as the garden works its peaceful magic.” Van Sweden thought a garden could be experienced like a poem or a story. There was meaning in every lichen-covered stone, every changing leaf, and that meaning could emerge from the same mystery contained in wild nature. “Out of vast, unknowable nature comes the freedom to form new thoughts, or to notice some tiny wonder for the first time… It is not necessary that meaning be written in the garden, only that you discover personal meaning and be transformed.” Even a tiny garden plot on a tenement balcony could achieve the romance of a meadow, if given the right attention. Sometimes Oehme and van Sweden’s New American Garden style was also called New Romantic.

For van Sweden, the words “American” and Romantic” were perfectly interchangeable. “Americans crave frontiers,” he wrote in Gardening With Nature.

We like wide-open spaces, broad horizons, and new challenges. As a nation, we are restless wanderers, always searching for what’s over the next rise. We put down roots only to pull them up again when the spirit moves us.

Given our love of change, it’s surprising that the American garden scene consists mostly of suburban yards marching across the countryside in uniform ranks: hedges pruned carefully into unnatural boxes and balls; “foundation” shrubs piled high against houses like green concrete; broad, empty lawns awaiting weekly crew cuts and frequent doses of weed killer and water; and prissy flower beds jammed to their borders with garish and predictable annuals. Do gardens have to be so tame, so harnessed, so uptight?

For many Americans, these were fighting words. The American lawn is not merely a domestic pleasure — it is the emblem of the civilized American. The American lawn is an ordering of savage nature, it is a triumph over the forces of chaos. Americans may once have craved frontiers, but the terror that wolves and mosquitoes wreaked upon early colonizers ultimately changed their intrepid self-conception. Prairies turned to city blocks, cowboys became urban planners, and geometry overcame anarchy. We paved over the chaos, drove out the insects, and shined fluorescent lights over the darkness. We are not to be entirely blamed for doing this. It is difficult to sit comfortably in a tangled meadow. We have no fur to speak of, no scales or feathers. Our foot soles are soft, our nails are short, the meadow air makes us sneeze. Few things can soothe our tender hides and tender souls more effectively than the wide-open, broad horizon of a freshly mowed lawn.

A classic, freshly-mowed, American lawn. Image courtesy of herefordcat / CC BY-NC 2.0

Oehme and van Sweden understood that our gardens ought to be a balance between green concrete and totally wild nature. They would often allow garden paths to crop up organically, for instance, letting people wander as they liked and setting them later. Oehme and van Sweden were also not very strict about “natives.” They liked North American plants but they liked exotics too. Both gardeners felt the Japanese, for instance, had a particular sensitivity to grass and were quite influenced by their uses of it. Oehme and van Sweden were broad-minded when it came to grass — they loved Himalayan purple silver grass and European autumn moor grass as much as (or even more than) American grass.

Himalayan purple silver grass, also known as Himalayan “fairy grass.” Image courtesy of Kew on Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Yet James van Sweden was ever guided by the spirit of “American grass.” American grass is the days of Thoreau and Whitman and wild Prairie shag. It is amber waves hiding the burial mounds of the Sioux and Grizzly bears and jackrabbits. This kind of grass was destroyed with the birth of the standard American lawn. Lawns took on the burdens and comforts of all things domestic. The wildness of grass went away. And with it went that fabled wildness once said to reside in every American: The belief that one could, at any moment, go from settled to savage, that one could, at any moment, just go.

Wild grass was already on the way out in Thoreau’s time. One of his most famous essays, “Walking,” is largely a complaint about his neighbors’ yards.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps… The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar), so that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

James van Sweden would have agreed. Where van Sweden disagreed with Thoreau was the solution. For Thoreau, the only cure for our sterile civilization was in the pristine, unspoiled wilderness. “In Wildness is the preservation of the World,” he famously wrote. James van Sweden was able to find wildness in an unmowed field. Americans, he knew, can never be truly wild. But they can be inspired by nature even in a yard and feel a longing for wildness in their souls.

This is what James van Sweden meant when he wrote, “It is not necessary that meaning be written in the garden, only that you discover personal meaning and be transformed.” Van Sweden was not merely dabbling in superficial aesthetics. The New American Garden was an exhortation to resurrect the shattered American spirit. It was the barbaric yawp of Whitman and every American Romantic who calls out to the wild. Maybe it is ridiculous to put so much importance in a garden. A gardener cannot return us to Eden any more than a preacher can. But there are messages written in a garden whether we place them there or not. And what better way to consider America than in the consideration of her grass?

“A child said, What is the grass?” wrote Walt Whitman, “fetching it to me with full hands;”

How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

The grass in Cape Cod Evening is only a few inches longer than the grass in A Neat Lawn. It is yellowing instead of green. Both paintings are residential scenes: a house, a town, a lawn. Both paintings show nature in the hands of men. Only, in Cape Cod Evening, the grip has softened. The man in Cape Cod Evening holds his hand out to the dog but the dog looks the other way. The animal is just close enough to the couple to look comforted and just far enough away to look free. • 24 October 2013

Stefany Anne Golberg is an artist, writer, musician, and professional dilettante. She’s a founding member of the arts collective Flux Factory and lives in New York City. She can be reached at stefanyanne@gmail.com.

Article photo courtesy of Rachel Ford James / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Feature photo courtesy of Karen Roe / CC BY 2.0
Homepage photo courtesy of UGArdener / CC BY-NC 2.0

Lowenfels: With gardening season over, time to settle in for winter reading

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This is the time of year when folks suddenly realize that it really is over. There will be no more outdoor gardening for nine whole months. What to do in that void? Obviously, indoor growing should be considered. And, it seems to me that in these dark months it’s worthwhile to catch up on reading. This is a great time to get into some gardening magazines.

I know we all have iPads and computers and get a lot of our gardening information from the Internet, but there is something about a print magazine, especially a gardening or horticultural one, that makes it important to keep them around. I note this because earlier this year the entire staff of Garden Design magazine, one of the few magazines left, were summarily dismissed as the mag went out of publication. Personally, that is a shame. There is a place for these publications in the garden world, even if there may not be in the news world. Gardeners really should support them lest they all disappear. Here are a few suggestions.

Let’s start with one I always push because it is so unique. “Green Prints” (www.greenprints.com) is the only monthly compilation of what I call “Hort Lit.” This consists of horticultural stories and writings rather than the “how-to” stuff that you find in all the other gardening magazines. This is a thick — 75 or so pages — “Readers Digest-size” monthly compilation of the best of what editor (and my good friend) Pat Stone can find amongst all the garden print. (He must read a lot!) In any case, you will find funny stories, poignant stories, children’s stories and more. As an added inducement to subscribe to Green Prints, I would mention it won the Best Garden Magazine Award from the Garden Writers Association.

Next is Rodale Press’ “Organic Gardening” (www.organicgardening.com). Yup, this is the successor title to the original Organic Farming and Gardening, still going strong after all these years. It keeps reinventing itself, which means it is always changing. If that sounds bad, it isn’t. It keeps the magazine fresher (and trying harder) than some of the others. If you are not an organic gardener as a result of reading this column, perhaps Rodale Press will convince you of how easy it is to drop the chemicals.

“Garden Gate” (www.gardengatemagazine.com) magazine comes out every two months. It is a glossy full of gorgeous pictures and fact-filled articles on all aspects of gardening. The folks who publish it are so sure you will want to subscribe, they are willing to send you a free issue to try. What have you to lose?

“The English Garden” (www.theenglishgarden.co.uk/magazine) is, as you have already guessed, a publication out of England. It is full of fantastic garden pictures and interviews with gardeners who design, build or maintain them. Yes, it is all about gardening in Great Britain and reviews their stuff and people, not ours, but hey, it’s winter here so what does that matter?

“Gardens Illustrated” is another garden magazine from England (www.gardensillustrated.com). Get ready to do some drooling. This one is full of beautiful pictures of gardens, English gardening advice, and articles about plants worldwide.

“Fine Gardening” (www.finegardening.com) bills itself as a garden design magazine. It is probably the American equivalent of a high-brow English magazine, and I mean that in a positive way. It has fantastic photography and writing. You won’t just read this in a couple of minutes. If you want you can purchase one month at a time. People use words like “breathtaking” when describing some of the gardens covered, and there is no question yours might seem a bit pale in comparison. Nonetheless, there is always something inspiring as well. Besides, aren’t Alaskan winters for dreaming a bit?

There are other magazines, horticulturally oriented and otherwise, which always devote a portion of their print pages to gardening and gardens. If you have one worthy of note, let me know at www.Teamingwithmicrobes.com. It’s a long winter, climate change or not. We have plenty of time to read.

Jeff Lowenfels’ bestselling books are available at tinyurl.com/teamingwithmicrobes and tinyurl.com/teamingwithnutrients.

Garden calendar

NOT TOO LATE: BRING IN CERAMIC POTS, UNDO HOSES FROM OUTDOOR FAUCETS AND OTHERWISE SAVE THINGS FROM WATER EXPANDING WHEN IT FREEZES.

LIGHTS: FOLKS, NOW, NOT IN MARCH, IS THE TIME TO INSTALL AND START USING GROWING LIGHTS.

HOUSEPLANTS: GET SOME NEW ONES. NURSERIES, SUPERMARKETS, FLORISTS ARE ALL STOCKED UP.

ALASKA BOTANICAL GARDEN: THE GARDEN IS OPEN DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS, ALL YEAR LONG. GREAT TIME TO CHECK OUT THE BIG GLACIER BOULDER AND SEE HOW THE PROS PUT A GARDEN TO BED.

Buffer project at Oswegatchie Hills adds to nature’s ambiance

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Looking to escape the daily rat race and step back into pristine woodlands for a few minutes or hours? Within only a few turns down the road from I-95 traffic, strip malls and suburbia, the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve on the East Lyme bank of the Niantic River beckons the world-weary nature lover.

The preserve, which opened in 2007, was created by the private/public partnership of the Town of East Lyme and the Friends of the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve (FOHNP). The all-volunteer nonprofit group provides stewardship of the existing preserve and seeks to acquire more of the adjoining hills to protect the fragile ecosystem of the forest terrain and Niantic estuary.

One of the largest swaths of open space along Connecticut’s highly developed shoreline, the 470-acre preserve of undeveloped hillside terrain has more than three miles of walking and hiking trails. These pass through an abandoned pink granite quarry, lead to rocky ledges and overlooks of the river, views of Smith Cove and moments of solitude with native plants and wildlife. There’s also Clark Pond, a tree-lined pool at the preserve’s southern end and the main entrance, next to Veterans Memorial Field, off of Route 161.

As with any real estate, curb appeal matters. Two years ago, the preserve’s management council decided the main entrance needed some sprucing up.

“This is our gateway, this is the main entrance to the preserve, so we want this space to be inviting,” said Greg Decker, FOHNP vice president and chair of the stewardship committee. “It should look good and say to the public that this place is well kept and managed properly. It says ‘Welcome.'”

What started out as a “little project” – a few native plants and wildflowers around the entrance kiosk – turned into a much larger undertaking, one designed to solve a pesky soil erosion problem exacerbated by vehicle traffic and parking at the heavily-used town ball field.

“There was nothing there to hold the soil in place, so the runoff was eroding the top of the hillside and running into Clark Pond,” Decker said. “Anywhere you get disturbed soil from construction or usage, that makes it ripe for invasive plants to move in.”

Judy Rondeau, natural resources specialist and Niantic River Watershed coordinator for the Eastern Connecticut Conservation District, recognized the opportunity to create a conservation project, one that would help clean up runoff into the Long Island Sound and make the pond bank more appealing and useful to humans and wildlife.

The pond shoreline technically is a riparian buffer zone; these buffers are the first line of defense against the impact of land usage associated with residential, agricultural and industrial areas. Too often, native vegetation along rivers, streams and bodies of water get torn out or destroyed. Lost with the plants is a natural filtration system to keep pollutants and silt out of the water.

“Above us is a pristine, 169-acre runoff area that goes into the Niantic River,” Decker said. “It’s unique in this area to have such an undeveloped watershed like this, so it’s important that we protect it.”

It wasn’t only recent human activity that disrupted the western slope of Clark Pond, which was created years ago by the enterprising Clark family who owned the land. They dammed the stream so they could harvest the ice and sell it to ships in the Niantic fishing fleet. Circa-1905 photos from East Lyme Town Historian Liz Kuchta show horse-drawn sleds pulling the ice blocks down to the docks.

Back in the day, the pond also served as a public ice skating rink, Decker said. Early on in the project, volunteers unearthed a couple of old guard rails mired along the shoreline.

Rondeau suggested getting rid of the invasive plants and thorny brambles on the slope and replacing them with native plants that would feed and support terrestrial and aquatic wildlife and plants. The space would be a lot more pleasant for hikers, too. Decker, a CT-DEEP Master Wildlife Conservationist who runs the research boats for the environmental labs at Millstone Power Station, wondered where he’d find a landscaper who would know what to do and what to plant.

“So, I sat down next to some guy at the Save the River-Save the Hills annual pasta and song fundraiser at Flanders Fish Market a couple of years ago, and he turned out to be a landscape architect who specializes in native plants and fixing soil erosion along the shoreline,” Decker said. “Talk about fate.”

Drew Kenny, who lives in East Lyme and earned his degree in landscape architecture at UConn, volunteered his services to create the landscape plan and help with the planting. He designed a meandering path through a wildflower meadow and plantings of bird-friendly native shrubs for the 250-by-100-foot sloping shoreline.

Kenny’s design incorporates almost 300 native shrubs. Some were planted last year. Last Saturday, about 15 volunteers put in the last 87 plants, silky dogwoods and shadblow serviceberry. A landscape plan at the kiosk indicates what has been planted and how the plantings tie in with existing oak and sumac.

“The whole waterside edge is planted with native species. There’s also bayberry, clethera and grey dogwood,” he said. “We used Eastern red cedar as anchor plants to guide people through the area; the bayberry highlight the entrance and access to the bank-side.”

Some 30 pounds of wildflower seeds, sown last spring, have become a wildflower meadow; many of these species develop deep roots that will help secure the soil. Paths will be mowed through the meadow and around the shrubs.

Kenny, who has taught landscape design and architecture classes at UConn, opened his own landscape design and installation firm, Outdoor Lifestyles, in East Lyme earlier this year and has been installing landscapes from New Haven to Stonington. He says he’s been involved in so many erosion control and repair projects along the shoreline over the years that it has turned into a niche.

“This project is my interest in being connected with the community,” said Kenny. “Native plants are the way to go, whether you’d doing it along a wetland or in your back yard. A lot of people are torn between thinking they have to have gardens and perennial beds verses having a nice simple outdoor living space. You’re going to be better off with the native plants for easy maintenance.”

Before any of the new planting could be done, the invasive and thorny plants had to be removed; plants like Asiatic bittersweet, multifora rose, Japanese barberry, poison ivy and catbrier or smilax, also notoriously deep-rooted and thorny. Because of the wetlands and proximity to water, the East Lyme Inland Wetlands Agency required that these be removed mechanically or by hand. No chemical herbicides were allowed. Topsoil had to be replaced or added once the weeds came out. A silt fence held in the soil while grass and wildflowers got established.

Then there was the arduous task of digging and prepping almost 300 holes for the shrubs and trees, no small feat considering the established tree roots and other shoreline vegetation.

The work has been done by volunteers, including FOHNP members, the newly reconstituted East Lyme and Niantic Land Trust and East Lyme Girl Scouts Troop 63800. The Town of East Lyme has organized teams of J.B. Correctional Institution inmates to help, too. The town’s highway and parks and recreation departments have donated time and equipment to remove invasive plants, dig holes for planting the native shrubs and bring in and position 20 boulders to help define the walk path through the wildflowers.

“We couldn’t have planted these without East Lyme’s new post-hole digger,” said Decker, who is also chief waterer of the transplanted shrubs, a critical step for plant survival.

“Greg has been the driving force for this project since day one,” said Richard Gallagher, fellow board member of FOHNP, who helped prep many of the holes for the young plants. “He puts so much time and effort into this preserve.”

Grants and donations funded the plant purchases. FOHNP received a $1,000 grant from the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund, the Town of East Lyme was awarded the Les Mehrhoff plant biodiversity preservation grant from the Connecticut Wetland Scientists, also $1,000, and the Dominion Nuclear Connecticut Foundation donated $2,500.

Although the majority of the heaving lifting, digging and planting is over, Decker says volunteers will be sprucing up the entrance area with a few more plants.

“We also want to put up some educational signs, telling people what was done and why,” said Decker.

The nature preserve is open to the public and welcomes school groups and educational tours. See www.oswhills.org for trail maps and more information. For more landscaping ideas, see Drew Kenny’s Outdoor Lifestyles page on Facebook.

Atlanta Home Improvement Magazine Launches New Web Site Introducing …

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ATLANTA, Oct. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Atlanta Home Improvement magazine, the premier authority in Atlanta on home remodeling, interior design and landscaping, has launched its newly re-designed site, AtlantaHomeImprovment.com, to enhance the user experience for both local businesses and homeowners. With a streamlined design, improved search functionality and rich multi-media content, the new AtlantaHomeImprovement.com makes it easier for consumers to find home remodeling and landscaping ideas, resources and professionals.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131015/NY97252LOGO)

“We are excited to launch the next-generation Atlanta Home Improvement site to connect engaged homeowners and shoppers with our clients, faster and more easily,” said Jennifer Prins, publisher of Atlanta Home Improvement magazine. “More than ever, we’re empowering local home remodeling, design and landscape professionals to strengthen their online brand presence in the marketplace to attract shoppers, drive increased business, and generate more ways to interact with qualified consumers.”

“When a consumer comes to the new AtlantaHomeImprovment.com for home renovation ideas, they will find even more relevant content for inspiration and easy connections to the resources and professionals who can make their dream home happen,” adds Prins. For advertisers, the new site offers a stronger web presence, more lead capture methods, enhanced traffic from organic and referral search, and increased opportunities to reach prospective customers.

Key site features include:

Premium Partner Listing, a 400-word story highlighting a local business’s work. Limited to 24 total profiles with prime placement on the home page and all subsequent landing pages in rotations of six, each Premium Partner listing features unlimited photos, a company description or story, logo, contact information, website link, “Ask A Question/Get A Quote” functionality, social media connections to Facebook and Twitter accounts, and video upload capability.
Find A Resource, an online go-to source for visitors searching for products, services and professionals in remodeling, design and landscaping. Featured prominently on the home page and subsequent landing pages, searchable by category or alphabetical listings, each trusted resource features a custom page that includes 20 photos, a 250-word description, logo, contact information, website link, and “Ask A Question/Get A Quote” functionality.
Run-of-Site Digital Display Ads offering exclusivity as one of only 16 Leaderboard advertisers and 16 Rectangular advertisers rotating through 4 positions on the site, every landing page, every blog page, every day for one year.
Videos custom-produced by Atlanta Home Improvement that are prominently hosted on the site and YouTube for one year. Also included with this feature are social media announcements, a two-week promotion on the home page, and an archived version of the video at www.AtlantaHomeImprovement.com.

For 12 years, Atlanta Home Improvement has been the premier source in Atlanta for inspiration and education about remodeling, landscaping, and interior design, as well as the latest home products, events and expert advice from industry professionals. Through its monthly full-color glossy magazine, website, blog and social media channels, Atlanta Home Improvement connects a monthly audience of over 220,000 homeowners who are actively searching for home remodeling and landscaping services to advertisers representing the region’s most respected businesses.

About Atlanta Home Improvement magazine
Atlanta Home Improvement magazine is a part of Network Communications, Inc., a leading local media company providing lead generation, advertising and Internet marketing services to the luxury and multi-family segments of the housing industry. The Company’s leading brands are Apartment Finder, DigitalSherpa, Unique Homes, New England Home and Mountain Living. The Company’s strategy focuses on providing high-quality and measurable marketing solutions to local clients by leveraging its proprietary prospect-focused distribution, social media and online franchises, and content management infrastructure.

SOURCE Network Communications, Inc.

November Gardening Tips

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In November at Cedar Creek Lake we start to experience colder temperatures and usually our first frost of the season. The average first frost day for our area is November 15th. While many plants above ground are moving into a dormant state for winter, there are still many important gardening tasks to be completed in and around the garden.

If you lost plants this summer due to the excessive heat and are looking to replace them, fall is the best times of year to replant. All horticultural professions are in agreement on this point – FALL IS FOR PLANTING. Trees and shrubs planted this time of year get their root systems established for better spring growth and blooming. Plus, it greatly improves their chances of surviving our hot Texas summers.

Preparing your plant and vegetable beds in the fall ready for spring is recommended. Using compost, manure and dried molasses to improve the quality of your soil will give your plants a big head start in the new year. At Cedar Creek Lake there are several different soil types. If you have heavy clay, use expanded shale or lava sand to break up the soil and improve drainage. For sandy soils, amending with compost will improve the soil structure and help hold moisture.

If you are looking to have bright vibrant colors in your home for the holidays or in your landscape in spring, think bulbs. Daffodils, tulips, paperwhites, amaryllis and hyacinths are all available now for planting. Bulbs, especially daffodils, look spectacular in the landscape when planted in clumps or groups rather than standing alone.

According to the Dallas Arboretum, single late tulips grow best in North Texas. They should know, they plant over 400,000 each year! Recommendations include Menton, Blushing Girl and Maureen. Tulips are best chilled in the refrigerator for 4 – 6 weeks before planting to ensure the best flowers.

If you have tropical plants like hibiscus, bougainvillea, palms or citrus fruits that are not winter hardy, remember to bring them inside before the night temperatures get too cold. When inside find a sunny location and continue to water but less often.

Pruning is recommended at this time of year. Pruning trees and shrubs serves two purposes – to remove dead branches that are an entry point for unwanted diseases and insects and to shape and beautify the look. Use sharp pruners and a pruning sealer to protect the cut. Perennials should be cut back to the ground after the first frost.

If your lawn is a warmer season grass like St Augustine or Bermuda it will start to go dormant this time of year. Cut back on watering to prevent fungus and disease from developing.

Happy Gardening

Tips o’ the Irish gleaned from visit to Emerald Isle’s gardens

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When we travel the world to see great gardens we learn to be flexible.

Our latest tour to Ireland was billed as the castles, gardens and pubs tour, but thanks to our local guide we added a performance of “River Dance” in Killarney and falconry lessons at an Ashford castle where launching a large falcon from one’s arm gives a whole new meaning to the term “flipping the bird.”

Here are a few take-home ideas from the most spectacular gardens in Ireland.

Choose a signature color for your garden. Many of the grand estate gardens used paint to add a repeating color on the wooden structures and hardscaping. Benches, artwork and doorways all matched with bright red, cool blue or turquoise green paint. The flower shades and foliage colors might change from month to month but a single, repetitive tint held the explosion of color together. Choose your own signature color and start painting — the front door is a great starting point.

Frame a great view with a wide path and side planting — or use your window frame. We were awed by the grand vistas at huge estates such as Powerscourt House but even without acres of landscape you can imitate the skill that the Victorians used in framing great views. Just a pathway of lawn or paving material can lead the eye toward a lovely tree, bench or garden art.

Another way to frame a view is to design from the inside looking out — let your favorite window be the frame for the garden view you will be looking at year-round.

Add some height with ivy covered arches, wooden columns or a classic “folly.” Greek temples or contrived castle ruins were used in large estate gardens and these destinations were called “a folly” by their creators as they fooled visitors into thinking the garden was much older than it was. In your own garden you can repurpose or recycle a broken pot laying on its side with a ground cover plant spilling forth from the opening or use a rusty bicycle or wine barrel as a planter to give your garden a sense of history.

In a small garden use structures and archway to add height. Not only do you get the instant gratification of a vertical element but a garden structure won’t outgrow it’s space.

Pot up your blooming plants and move them around the garden. Helen Dillon is an internationally known garden writer and we were surprised to find metal garbage cans filled with flowers and foliage plants framing her formal water feature. Dillon is a color expert in the garden, on display in the way her gray and silver containers blended with the gray paving stone around the dark pool of her water feature. She also grows plants in black plastic nursery pots so she can mingle them in her borders, adding color accents where needed. The black pots seem to blend and disappear into the soil.

Add extra color to your people photos — use garden blooms for a backdrop. You don’t have to be a gardener to add the wow factor to your family or vacation photos. Our group had great fun looking for flowers that matched up with what we were wearing. Posing in front of plants that coordinate with a scarf, shirt or jacket brightens the intensity of all the color tones and reminds us all that you don’t have to travel far to realize that the world is really a beautiful place.

Celebrate the autumn season by posing in front of a fall scene at a public park or garden. Wear something orange, gold or brown. You’ll want to print and frame the colorful result and bring it out for display every autumn.

GARDENS AROUND THE WORLD

Want to join us on our next garden adventure tour? We’ve booked a river cruise down the Danube that sails July 1 with stops in Vienna, Germany and Budapest, Hungary, and a custom tour of the gardens of the Sound of Music. Contact sue_rainbow@comcast.net or 253-863-2245.

Marianne Binetti has a degree in horticulture from Washington State University and is the author of several books. Reach her at binettigarden.com.

Happy birthday John Brookes, the king of garden design

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Anyone interested in design can immediately tell when they walk into a John
Brookes garden that it has been designed. It will have impact. The spaces
will contrast yet work together, it will feel good to be in, it will be
fascinating and it will work.

When John visits a new client and assesses their garden, he invariably takes
on board what the client wants, be it a large eating area, screening from
neighbours, or a children’s play area. Looking at the house inside can be
revealing: “If it is all a bit of a tip, they won’t cope with or want an
immaculate, formal garden,” he says. He will then see what the site needs:
maybe there is a muddle of conifers that are getting a bit above themselves,
views that could be opened up or unsightly views of flats.

_{(MMGI / MARIANNE MAJERUS)}

The period and layout of the house has a strong influence on the site. Some
garden areas are more important due to their juxtaposition with the house.
Putting a contemporary, asymmetrical design in front of a perfectly
proportioned Queen Anne house would be a difficult mix to harmonise. “A good
design is rather like a well-cut suit – it has to be right,” he says. “No
matter how many decorations you add to it, if the basic cut does not look
good then nothing will rectify it. It also has to be suitable for the
purpose and place, just as you would not turn up to a black-tie affair in
jogging bottoms.”

The whole design process is daunting for those not tuned into designing or
gardens. Now, at 80, John finds the process easier and quicker to get
results that both he and the client find satisfying and exciting. He has
encountered many different sites, clients, climates and budgets and has
developed a repertoire of strategies and techniques that enable him to
create great things from unpromising beginnings.

The process he uses is one he recommends to anyone embarking on a new garden.
The key starting position is to get an accurate survey of the site with the
house included. If you cannot run to a surveyor, your conveyance plan
enlarged to 1:100 or a convenient scale depending on the site, is a great
starting point. With a long tape measure (or two if you can go to
triangulation) you can add on all the elements you wish to keep: trees,
access, doors to the house, and so forth. Levels can be measured with the
help of a mini laser level from Screwfix or similar.

The client needs to compile a list of exactly what they want. For people who
have not had a garden before this is more difficult, but a garden space has
tremendous possibilities and these are expanding all the time.

Talking to a New Zealand architect recently, he said he designed houses with
gardens where anything you could do inside you could do outside too. He has
designed garden bedrooms with beds that could be rolled out so you could
sleep outside, outdoor fireplaces and kitchens.

_{(MMGI / MARIANNE MAJERUS)}

Their climate is different to ours but we are increasingly pushing the
boundaries of what you can achieve in an outdoor space. Fresh air and more
natural surroundings are a wonderful tonic and in the garden we can exploit
them to contrast with our increasingly technological life.

The next step John advocates is to sketch positions on the plan of what might
go where. Then factors such as the orientation come into play and things are
shuffled round. Sometimes he will use cardboard templates to help this
rationalisation and organisation. The design process then proceeds with
decisions as to whether it will be classic and symmetrical or modern and
asymmetric. Eventually it will evolve into a design that embraces all the
factors. When he presents it to the client he explains the process and why
things are how they are.

John finds working on a new garden is invariably stimulating and exciting.
Much of his time is now spent on large commissions in Russia, Louisiana and
other far flung places which throw up exciting new challenges ensuring that
even someone of his vast experience is not continually within his comfort
zone.

Looking back at his designs from 50 years ago he is still proud of them but
they were different then. Today they tend to be larger and more lavish. The
Room Outside has grown — in many ways.

Tesselaar Plants Offers Up Ideas For Season-Long Foliage

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by Tesselaar Plants
Posted: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 3:33PM EDT

Pooped out on gardening ideas by fall? One of the hottest up and coming trends is fabulous foliage.

“People are spending less on gardening, and the plants they do buy have to offer interest through fall,” said Anthony Tesselaar, cofounder and president of international plant marketer Tesselaar Plants. “With many flowers done by this point, those gardening on a budget are making sure the leaves left are worthy.”

Interest in foliage is clearly there, according to the USDA’s 2012 Floriculture Crops Summary, which showed a 4.6-percent rise in foliage plants bought between 2011 and 2012. But how do you incorporate foliage into your landscaping and container gardening? Here are four ways from Tesselaar and other experts.

Consider Color

“Color is the best jumping-off point to start your new adventure,” write Karen Chapman and Christina Salwitz in their new book Fine Foliage($16.95, St. Lynn’s Press). The book offers 60-plus foliage combos for every location and purpose.
gardening books

Fine Foliage authors Christina Salwitz (left) and Karen Chapman

“Begin by reading the color cues provided by key plants; then use them to establish color echoes with one another,” they write. “Once you have your color link, vary the texture and form of the plants.”

In their plant recipe “Foliage Fiesta,” for instance, the Tropicanna® canna, ‘Finger Paint’ coleus and ‘Golden Ray’ New Zealand flax (phormium) all sport shades of red, orange, green and cream. But the plants all offer different forms and textures, from the ovate leaves of canna to the serrated shields of coleus to the tough, spiky swords of New Zealand flax.

Tropicanna canna foliage

A common color theme unites Tropicanna® canna, ‘Finger Paint’ coleus and ‘Golden Ray’ New Zealand flax.

“Shrubs steal the show in fall,” said About.com Gardening Guide Marie Iannotti: “They’re also the most likely to still be around in nurseries.” For attention-grabbing color, she suggested ‘Henry’s Garnet’ sweetspire, gold-leaved caryopteris and late-season ornamental grasses like prairie dropseed, red switch grass and blue oat grass.

Allen Owings, a professor of horticulture with Louisiana State University’s Ag Center in Hammond, Louisiana, also suggests adding ornamental grasses to your landscape design, as well as coleus, copper leaf plant (acalypha) and tapioca (cassava). For those in colder climates, he admits, some of these choices may need to be overwintered or bought in spring for season-long color.

Go dark

“Dark foliage is great any time of year, but it particularly suits the fall color palette,” said Iannotti. “The clear jewel colors of fall flowers are all the more striking next to the newer, dark sedums like ‘Chocolate Drop’. Near-black colocasias and cannas – like Tropicanna Black – are at their peak now and look amazing with a backdrop of gold or rusty tree leaves.”

Salwitz and Chapman like dark-leaved varieties of euphorbia as well as coral bells like ‘Obsidian’ and ‘Purple Ruffles’. For Halloween, they suggest super-dark plants like black mondo grass and the ‘Black Pearl’ ornamental pepper, which contrast beautifully with orange pumpkins.

Tesselaar recommends using Tropicanna Black cannas: “The rich, broad leaves are one of the darkest colors in the cannas and they really add interest in the garden where planted, or when used as a center piece in a large mixed garden pot.”

Owings loves dark alocasia and purple- and black-leaved ornamental peppers like ‘Purple Flash’ and ‘Black Pearl’. “Dark purple- and black-flowered petunias also go well with Halloween and Thanksgiving-colored landscapes,” he added.

To keep your garden from feeling like a black hole, however, Salwitz and Chapman suggest pairing dark beauties with brighter leaves, which act as an uplight or high contrast.

Vary plant forms

“Form refers to the overall size and shape of a plant, using terms such as mounding, columnar, vase-shaped or prostrate,” write Chapman and Salwitz in Fine Foliage. “A garden that has ‘flat lines’ can be dull and uninteresting, whereas adding contrast in form can be used to move the eye through a space, make a visual statement and break up an otherwise predictable composition …”

foliage book

Karen Chapman and Christina Salwitz’s new book, “Fine Foliage,” offers foliage combinations for every garden.

This is where tall or architecturally striking plants come in, said Tesselaar. He’s especially fond of the mounding, strappy leaves and long, sturdy flower stalks of Storm™ agapanthus (lily of the Nile). In Fine Foliage’s recipe “A Change of Pace,” agapanthus foliage serves as an ideal contrast to golden bamboo’s tall, willowy feathers and aeonium’s thick, fleshy carpet.

For strong forms, Tesselaar also turns to cordylines. For a graceful, rounded, fountain effect, he recommends the basal-branching Festival™ Burgundy. For a more upright, spiky, narrow structure, there’s the 8- to 9-foot-high Burgundy Spire™.

And don’t forget the trees and shrubs, added Iannotti, noting their availability in fall: “Shopping in fall lets you see exactly how they will fill out, whether they will elegantly weep or droop like a ninebark or beautybush or billow like a dappled willow.”

On the other hand, cautioned Owings, a plant that gets too tall or wide can whack out of proportion with its supporting players in landscape design. “Know the mature size, including height and spread.”

Contrast textures

“In garden terms, we use the word ‘texture’ to describe a surface, both visual and how it feels to the touch,” Chapman and Salwitz write in their book. “Without the contrast of different textures, the composition will look unexceptional.”

Book on using foliage in garden

Festival Burgundy cordyline cuts across ‘Gay’s Delight’ and ‘Freckles’ coleus, Persian shield and golden Hinoki cypress.

In the recipe “Jewel Box,” Festival Burgundy cordyline’s long, narrow, strip-like leaf inks a bold, dark line across a mound of ‘Gay’s Delight’ and ‘Freckles’ coleus, Persian shield and golden Hinoki cypress. In “Brushstrokes,” feathery ferns serve as the perfect foil to bolder coral bells. And in “Warm and Fuzzy,” velvety Rhododendron pachysanthum pairs brilliantly with glossy orange hair sedge (Carex testacea).

“Probably the biggest mistake home gardeners make is falling in love with plants that have soft, fluttering leaves or frilly foliage,” said Iannotti. “Borders need spiky phormiums and big-leaved ligularia and bananas.” Many of the bolder, spikier plants aren’t hardy in cold climates, she noted, but they can be brought indoors, either as houseplants or stored dormant.

“The texture of plant materials depends on the size and disposition of the foliage,” explained Owings. “Plants with large leaves that are widely spaced have coarse texture; those with small, closely spaced leaves have fine texture. Extremes in texture that prevent harmony in the composition should be avoided. On the other hand, some variation is needed for variety.”

About Tesselaar

Tesselaar Plants searches the world and introduces new plants for the home garden, landscape, home décor and gift markets. Tesselaar undertakes extensive research and development of its varieties and, once they’re selected for introduction, provides marketing and promotional support through its grower and retail network. The Tesselaar philosophy is to introduce exceptional plants while “making gardening easy” for everyone, so it makes its products as widely available as possible. Tesselaar believes the more gardeners there are, the better it is for everyone.

Source: Tesselaar Plants