MUSCATINE, Iowa — Saturday was a good day to get rooted in community gardens during the community garden open house at the Riverview Center.

Though the turnout wasn’t as big as she would have liked, Annette Shipley, the Muscatine County Coordinator of the ISU Extension office and the Master Gardener Coordinator, said she’s still excited about getting community members involved in one of the six community gardens throughout Muscatine.

If anyone is interested in being a part of the community garden, she says she’d be happy to help get them connected. All they have to do is give her or Master Gardener Kay Walter a call at the ISU Extension office at 563-263-5701.

In glancing around at the different garden stations at the open house, where the coordinators of each garden were manning their displays, Shipley noted the variety of the gardens. One garden is on private property (Solomon Gardens), another is on public (Taylor Park). Mulford and Wesley-MCSA are both church gardens and East Campus is a school garden.

“We can offer everyone a different experience,” Shipley said proudly.

Lee Falkena, a science teacher at East Campus who is coordinating the East Campus garden, was the only coordinator to have a partner Saturday. Sophomore Brandon Moore was on-hand to talk about his part as “overseer” of the gardens, a self-awarded title which Falkena amended to “leader” with a good-natured chuckle. Moore’s helping with the garden’s design — determining how to use space efficiently — and helping oversee the garden’s plants.

The garden at East Campus was started last year and lessons from it are integrated into the science curriculum. Falkena’s goals are to involve more community members, particularly students’ parents, and have the students teach them about gardening as they go.

Across the room, J.R. Hendricks was standing in for coordinator Adam Thompson at the Taylor Park table. Hendricks was part of the Leadership-Muscatine group that got the garden at Taylor Park going.

“I had no idea what a community garden was,” Hendricks admitted, but now he and the rest of the group say they’re excited to get the garden going. They planned on having the plots in their garden — a combination of normal plots, enabled plots and youth beds — set up and ready to go by now, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Saturday, though, brought some hope to Hendricks with its sunshine and warmer temperature.

Hope also came in the form of helping hands.

A group of about 15 AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) members lead by fellow member Justin Jenkins stopped by to see if they could volunteer at the gardens, an offer met with enthusiasm from all parties.

The NCCC team has been in the area working with Louisa County Conversation in environmental stewardship. Jenkins said he was inspired by the community garden effort, citing its similarity to urban gardening in his hometown, New York City. The group plans to help get the gardens ready to go for the people who plan to plant in them.

Team leader Elizabeth Siliato, who is following Jenkins’ lead for this project, said, “It seems like it’s gonna be really great.”

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Crystal Palace garden designer Georgia Lindsay reaches Grand Designs final

5:30am Friday 4th April 2014 in Outdoors

By Robert Fisk, Chief Reporter

Garden designer Georgia Lindsay is in the final of a Grand Designs competition

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Shakespeare said all the world’s a stage but for Georgia Lindsay it is more of a garden.

The 44-year-old, from Crystal Palace, originally trained in theatre design and is a mural artist and interior decorator.

But since 2010 she developed a passion for garden design and is now down to the final four in this year’s Grand Designs competition for her small city garden design.

She said: “Maximising a small space to create an interesting enjoyable place to relax is my forte.

“It is a family garden, where relaxation and play co-exist harmoniously.

“The garden has many sustainable, green features which is a strong ethos behind the Grand Designs image.

“I’m thrilled to be a finalist in this year’s competition.”

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Just as you update your wardrobe by periodically purging clothes that you no longer like and adding new favorites, you can similarly tune up your garden from time to time. And that’s the idea behind Rebecca Sweet’s new book, “Refresh Your Garden Design with Color, Texture Form” (FW Media; $20).

After working with hundreds of clients over the years, the Bay Area landscape designer, author and speaker set out to answer the question she’s most often asked: How do I take my garden to the next level without a complete overhaul?

“A lot of people have existing gardens, or buy a new house, and don’t know what to remove, keep and relocate,” Sweet says. “It’s easy to start from scratch, but harder to work around keeping 75 percent of what’s already there and having it tie together. People get stuck in a rut, just like with their wardrobes, and the hardest part is seeing their gardens with fresh eyes.”

By using simple techniques, she says, you can weave disjointed parts of your landscape back together again. The first step is to home in on one or a few things that you really like, such as specific flowers, shrubs or trees. “The best way to do this is to take a photo, print it, and look at it inside your house,” Sweet says. “Things look a lot different on paper than they do in person.”

Circle areas that you like on the photo, then take the color, texture or form of those elements and start incorporating them into your garden, working in one small area at a time so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Repeat these favorite components throughout your yard to create a pulled-together look, but as you go along, be sure to inject a few contrasting plants. “Otherwise things get monotonous,” Sweet says.

Sweet realizes that, by sharing tricks of the trade in her book, she may be writing herself out of a job. But her overarching goal is to help gardeners take charge.

“I want people to get their confidence back,” Sweet says. “They’re so afraid they’re making the wrong choice, and that it’s not going to look good. But I want them to feel that there’s a lot they can do themselves, and to experiment and have fun. There are no hard and fast rules. It really, truly is about empowering people.”

Design: Rebecca Sweet, www.harmonyinthegarden.com.

 

Steal these looks

Rebecca Sweet’s design ethos revolves around balancing the use of color, texture and form. These vignettes break down ideas that you can incorporate into your spring garden.

All-over contrast

Without a flower in sight, this bed’s varied leaf shapes, colors and textures create a beautiful tapestry using prickly blue ‘Globosa’ spruce, chartreuse ‘Mikawa Yatsubusa’ Japanese maple, wispy Japanese forest grass, lacey maroon ‘Pipa’s Red’ loropetalum and white-edged ‘Silver and Gold’ dogwood. “What really makes this combination stand out is the contrast,” Sweet says, adding that, while a combo this diverse has the potential to look chaotic, what keeps it under control is the bulk of each plant. “If each plant was smaller in mass, it would start to look busier.” Design: Proscape Landscape Design, Freeland and Sabrina Tanner, (707) 226-2540.

Dash of color

Though they vary dramatically in texture, fine-bladed ‘Elijah Blue’ fescue and broad-leaved verbascum are similar enough in their soft silvery hue that they might fade away in the landscape, especially against a deep green backdrop of juniper. But a bright crimson burst of ‘Red Riding Hood’ penstemon adds energy and keeps the otherwise cool green-and-gray combo from lulling you to sleep. “If you’re sticking within a limited color range, make sure you occasionally wake up the eye with a pop of contrasting color,” Sweet says.

Same form, different hues

“If you’re combining plants that are similar in texture and form, you need them to be different colors,” Sweet says. “Otherwise, they’ll all meld together.” This bed full of spiky, upright growers – pale blue lavender in the front, purple fountain grass in the middle and blond Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ in the rear – is a perfect example. If using all green grasses, for instance, the bed would look flat. But because warm colors advance visually, the rich burgundy patch of fountain grass jumps forward, making each plant layer distinct and causing the bed to look deeper than it is.

Cool look for a hot space

Sweet uses a lot of drought-tolerant plants in her designs and says that many low-water choices – such as lamb’s ears, dymondia, santolina and the artemisia shown here – have gray foliage. The problem with having too much of that shade in a design, she cautions, is that it can look washed out. So, when planting light gray or silver, Sweet advises using the pale hues for roughly a third of the design, and balancing it with darker tones, such as deep purple verbena blooms and rich green carex, for the remaining two-thirds of the plants. “It doesn’t look hot and parched which is a common side effect of very drought-tolerant gardens,” Sweet says.

In-your-face form

These textures and shapes are so bold, it’s hard to take your eyes off of them, and together they make a perfect focal point. An overflowing tabletop pot of pale green cobweb sempervivum gives way to giant blue, puckery hosta leaves that are topped by super sharp Puya that looks like giant, spinning pinwheels and adds a subtle sense of motion. “If going for a really dramatic texture or shape contrast, simplify the color palette,” Sweet says. “Because there’s so much going on, using all cool colors helps this combination look serene. If it had a lot of bright colors, this might be a visual headache.” Design: Proscape Landscape Design, Freeland and Sabrina Tanner, (707) 226-2540.

Perfect harmony

Here, both repetition and contrast flow through every plant choice. Mounding burgundy heuchera and Japanese maple coordinate with both the hues in the coppery-colored stones and the vibrant magenta ‘Red Eye’ rhododendron blooms while setting off the deep-green pulmonaria and lime ‘Angelina’ sedum. In terms of texture, the frilly heuchera echoes the ruffly rhododendron flowers while standing out against the lance-shaped pulmonaria leaves, feathery sedum, and finely serrated Japanese maple foliage. And because the plants are mostly evergreen in Northern California, this display looks good all year round. “This has lots of contrast and lots of repetition,” Sweet says. “You could stand here and look at this for a long time – it’s very engaging.”

Julie Chai is a Mountain View freelance writer. E-mail: home@sfchronicle.com

A SHOREHAM garden designer has been named the top contractor in the country.

Steve Smith, who owns Shore Landscapes, in Hammy Lane, was crowned Marshalls National Contractor of the Year 2013 last week, winning a new Toyota Hilux truck.

He was entered for the top prize having won the Best Patio Transformation under 35m² in the prestigious Marshalls Register awards.

Receiving his prize, Mr Smith said: “I’m truly amazed, shocked and elated that leading industry experts have chosen me over and above all of the talented people in this room.”

The awards ceremony, held in West Yorkshire, celebrated excellence in hard landscaping installation and design. There were more than 650 project submissions from 250 contractors.

His wife, Sonia Smith, said: “We were absolutely over the moon. The awards are judged by people in the industry so it means a lot to be recognised by his peers.”

Steve has more than 30 years’ experience, including helping at the Chelsea Flower Show last year, and has won awards in the past, but never on this scale.

In fact, Shore Landscapes was highly commended in the Association of Professional Landscapers (APL) Awards 2014 just a week before.

Daughter-in-law Rachel Thompson said: “He has worked hard all his life and this is the first time he has truly been recognised for his hard work and dedication.”

David Jessop, operations manager of the Marshalls Register, said: “The winning project was simply stunning. The quality, design and use of materials on this project, as with all his projects, were simply superb. I couldn’t be happier for him.”

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center to Provide Design Assistance to the Suntory Flowers Exhibit at Ventura Botanical Gardens

PRWEB.COM Newswire

Carpinteria, CA (PRWEB) April 03, 2014

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center will be providing design assistance for the Suntory Flowers exhibit at the upcoming Ventura California Spring trials at the Ventura Botanical Gardens, to be held Saturday, April 5th to Thursday, April 10th. Eye of the Day will be providing its Fermob French outdoor furnishings, Francesco Del Re Italian pottery, and other European terracotta and glazed pottery vessels to showcase and highlight Suntory Flowers’ bright blossoms for an eye-popping exhibit, fit for any outdoor enthusiast.

The California Spring Trials is a week-long, industry-only event that is well known throughout California, as well as to businesses within the horticulture realm looking to display their latest plant varietals, as well as trending gardening tools and products. At the event, during which plant breeders, growers, and suppliers are in attendance, vendors are free to market themselves, as well as partake in learning about effective merchandising programs and packaging within the industry.

“We’re more than excited to work with the award-winning Suntory Flowers,” said Owner Brent Freitas, “because we’re able to collaborate with flower experts to create the most visually appealing designs and planting arrangements, suitable for our California weather. Suntory is known for its blue-toned carnations, and we’re known for our one-of-a-kind, colored garden pottery glazes… so we’re excited to come together to create vibrant, natural art for the outdoors.”

Suntory Flowers is also well known for its Surfinia line of flowers, which are a combination of deep red and white petunias; as well as its Sun Parasol line that has sold more than 16 million pots to gardening enthusiasts from around the world. In addition, Suntory was behind the first blue rose ever created in history, as well as the world’s only blue-toned carnation, which is sold with its vibrant streaks of color and delicate, fringed edges on special occasions.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/04/prweb11733982.htm

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SPRING GARDENS are all about fresh beginnings and possibilities borne on the promises of a darker season. It’s an annual chance to witness nature hitting the reset button, showing us that life is a cycle, that death is integral and that beauty, hope and life renews us.

That’s what Phil Jonik and Patsy Faulkner experience every year when they first see the burgeoning buds of trees, shrubs, plants and bulbs emerge as their two-acre property awakens from its wintery sleep.

This April 19, the couple will share their spring garden with the community when they offer a garden tour fundraiser for a neighbor going through a difficult season of life.

In January, Alex Porrata saw her exuberant 4-year-old, Ezequiel, hospitalized with a rare form of childhood cancer, requiring extensive treatment.

And suddenly, she lost his father and her husband, 43-year-old Ron Powell, a former star basketball player at Dominican University who later worked as a data recovery engineer at Novato’s DriveSavers.

More than 600 people attended his memorial at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station.

Porrata posts updates of their son’s progress and offers appreciation for the many kindnesses she receives on a Caring Bridge page set up for Ezequiel (www.caringbridge.org/visit/ezpowell).

Now Porrata, a former teacher, must take care of Ezequiel and 7-year-old Yolanda, as she navigates Ezequiel’s ongoing medical situation and keeps their family afloat without Ron’s income or any life insurance.

That’s what prompted Jonik and Faulkner, who have known Alex for 28 years, to offer the garden tour.

“People want to help but they don’t know how,” Faulkner says. “Our garden is an act of love for us and it seemed like a nice thing to share it for such a worthy cause.”

They’ve lined up a number of musicians, including Terry Haggerty and Tim Cain — both former members of the Sons of Champlin — and the Silver Strings, a Celtic group, to perform in the garden every half hour. There will be refreshments and guests are welcome to wander the gardens, which were begun more than 60 years ago by Hazel Krebs, a former Strybing Arboretum employee, and her husband, an amateur camellia hybridizer.

Cultivated as ornamental woodlands, on about a third of the property, it boasts 60 camellias that are more than 60 years old and perhaps 50 rhododendrons, many of them more than 20 feet high.

“We call it the Secret Garden because when we first found the property it was neglected and overgrown with brambles,” Jonik recalls. “We started in January with chain saws and as we worked on it, we would discover how many specimen plants were there.”

And, as spring came along, “things started blooming each week and we were stunned at every turn,” he says. “It reminded us of (Frances H. Burnett’s novel) ‘The Secret Garden.’ Even 28 years later, we still find new things.”

They’ve also added to the old garden — new paths to make it accessible, more azaleas, rhododendrons, camellias and maples to fill it in, and themed rooms, including one just for 50 (mostly hybrid tea) roses, one for variegated shade plants and one solely for red plants for extra interest.

The ultimate goal was to give their garden, which embraces the main house and a rentable guest cottage dubbed the Inverness Secret Garden Cottage, a chance at a new life.

That’s something they hope their fundraiser will give to their beloved neighbor and her two children.

PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday and also on her blog at DesignSwirl.co. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield, CA 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.

if you go

What: The Inverness Secret Garden Tour
When: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 19
Where: Call for directions and parking instructions
Admission: $25; reservations required
Information: 669-7444; info@isgcottage.com
More: Donations can be sent to only Alex Porrata, Box 667, Inverness, CA 94937 or as a “gift” to the PayPal account alexporrata@mac.com

It has been three years since Airfield, the 38-acre estate and working farm in the heart of Dundrum in Dublin, closed its doors to the public as part of an ambitious, multi-million euro redevelopment plan.

Central to that plan, was the renovation of Airfield’s much- loved garden, which had been open to the public since the mid-1990s.

A place of billowing box hedges, stately Irish yews and barely contained flowerbeds reminiscent of a Beatrix Potter drawing, much of it was the work of Airfield’s owners, the Overend family, who lived, farmed and gardened here for more than a century. In particular, both garden and working farm were the life’s work of the “Misses Overend” – sisters Letitia and Naomi – who established Airfield’s not-for- profit charitable trust in the mid-1970s, generously bequeathing the estate to the people of Ireland.

• Plenty of room to grow at Overends Cafe
  

And what a legacy it proved to be. Following Naomi’s death in 1993, the gardens continued to evolve under the expert eye of Jimi Blake and his successor Emer O’Reilly.

Charmed by Airfield’s quaint air of rural tranquillity and informality, the public began visiting the estate in ever-increasing numbers. Young families held summer picnics in the meadows, fed the ponies, rambled through the orchard, inhaled the perfume of the roses that grew with sweetly scented abundance in the walled garden, and paused to stroke the vintage cars (another lifelong hobby of the sisters) that sat in one of the farm’s outbuildings.

Volunteers helped out with garden maintenance while schoolchildren, as part of Airfield’s Green Fingers Club, grew fruit, flowers and vegetables in their own dedicated plots.

So it was perhaps inevitable that the trust’s decision to redesign Airfield’s gardens met with some public trepidation, dismay and even criticism. Despite its assurances that the redevelopment was necessary to keep Airfileld going, and that any any changes would respect the legacy of the Overends, there were those who worried that the sisters’ original intention of preserving the house, gardens and farm was being overlooked, that the essence of Airfield would be irrevocably lost, and its charmingly idiosyncratic personality would fall prey to the march of “progress”. The subsequent appointment of English garden designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd (rather than an Irish designer) to carry out a large part of the redesign caused a few more raised eyebrows, despite the fact that it followed a public selection process, which began in 2012 with an open invitation to all qualified landscape and garden designers to apply.

Lennox-Boyd, say those responsible for the selection process, was chosen for her willingness to immerse herself in the history of the estate, her great knowledge and experience of designing both ornamental and food gardens, and her almost forensic attention to detail.

Having been given a sneak preview of the gardens before their formal reopening to the public next week, I can say with all honesty that I think the trust and those involved in the redesign and redevelopment of the estate have done a very fine job. The planting is in its infancy, the landscaping of some areas not quite complete and, yes, the more higgledy-piggledy areas of the original garden that gave it some of its unique charm no longer exist, but the bone structure of a great garden is clear to see.

A SHOREHAM garden designer has been named the top contractor in the country.

Steve Smith, who owns Shore Landscapes, in Hammy Lane, was crowned Marshalls National Contractor of the Year 2013 last week, winning a new Toyota Hilux truck.

He was entered for the top prize having won the Best Patio Transformation under 35m² in the prestigious Marshalls Register awards.

Receiving his prize, Mr Smith said: “I’m truly amazed, shocked and elated that leading industry experts have chosen me over and above all of the talented people in this room.”

The awards ceremony, held in West Yorkshire, celebrated excellence in hard landscaping installation and design. There were more than 650 project submissions from 250 contractors.

His wife, Sonia Smith, said: “We were absolutely over the moon. The awards are judged by people in the industry so it means a lot to be recognised by his peers.”

Steve has more than 30 years’ experience, including helping at the Chelsea Flower Show last year, and has won awards in the past, but never on this scale.

In fact, Shore Landscapes was highly commended in the Association of Professional Landscapers (APL) Awards 2014 just a week before.

Daughter-in-law Rachel Thompson said: “He has worked hard all his life and this is the first time he has truly been recognised for his hard work and dedication.”

David Jessop, operations manager of the Marshalls Register, said: “The winning project was simply stunning. The quality, design and use of materials on this project, as with all his projects, were simply superb. I couldn’t be happier for him.”

A medical centre in Milton Keynes is seeking inspiration from college students as it launches a competition to design a holistic garden.

Linford Wood Medical Centre, which opened at the end of last year, has joined forces with Moulton College to task students with creating plans that draw on the ethos of the centre and provide a calm and relaxing space for patients and their visitors.

In addition to providing a range of diagnostic and outpatient procedures, the centre offers an integrated oncology unit providing non-surgical cancer treatments including advanced image guided radiotherapy. The garden is adjacent to the chemotherapy unit which will be opened later this year.

Design of the centre was carefully and thoughtfully designed with patients in mind.

The medical centre’s manager, Stuart Southgate, said: “We wanted to create an environment which offered high tech and advanced treatments, but in a calm, environment.

“Patients want to have convenient access to treatment in a comfortable environment that doesn’t constantly remind them they are ill, but inspires a feeling of wellness. We want to extend this holistic approach beyond the building too, and decided to enlist the help of local horticulture and garden design students to come up with a plan for the garden.”

Linford Wood Medical Centre’s oncology patients have access to its Living Well suite which is run by Penny Brohn Cancer Care, a charity which uses a combination of physical, emotional and spiritual support to help people to ‘live well’ with cancer. Stuart added: “Penny Brohn’s national centre in Bristol has fantastic organic, sensory gardens which the students could seek inspiration from.”

Senior horticultural lecturer at Moulton College, Adrian Stockdale, said: “We were thrilled to get involved and enable our students to work with a real brief rather than just hypothetical ones. The garden area can be seen from various areas within the centre, and these viewpoints need to be considered. Combined with taking into account the needs of cancer patients makes this a challenging and very interesting project, and has got the students thinking outside of the box.”

Some of the students attended a site visit where they took measurements, pictures and gained an understanding of the centre’s ethos and its patients’ needs.

Robert Stratford, a first year student who lives in Fenny Stratford, said: “This is an exciting and interesting project. It is nice to bring health ideas into a garden design, which opens up all kinds of opportunities.”

Georgina Kirkpatrick, from Grange Farm, who is in her second year, added: “Personally, I see this garden as being an extension from the chemotherapy unit – and will do my best to bring the warmth, space and curvaceous interior into the garden space. It’ll be interesting to investigate plants that will offer the right colour and possibly even calming qualities.”

The judging panel will include representatives from Linford Wood Medical Centre, Cancer Partners UK which runs the centre, Penny Brohn Cancer Care, and Thomas Redding Garden Services in Newport Pagnell. The winning student will receive VIP tickets to attend the Royal Horticultural Society’s Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in July.