Today

Sister Seraphim’s Birthday Celebration – Ice Cream Social Craft Fair – The Hermitage No-Kill Cat Shelter, 5278 E. 21st St. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Aug. 12. Free. 571-7839.

Tuesday

Artist As Archaeologist – Kaitlin’s Creative Cottage, 740 N. Main Ave. Build layers of tissue paper and collaged images in an artistic strata to reveal something wonderful about your soul. Fun and easy. Pre-registration required. 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Aug. 14. $20; all supplies included. 622-6161.

Canyon Knitters – Kirk-Bear Canyon Library, 8959 E. Tanque Verde Road. Bring your needles and yarn to an unstructured gathering of novices to experienced knitters. 1-3 p.m. Tuesdays. Free. 594-5275.

Thursday

Yarnivores – Murphy-Wilmot Library, 530 N. Wilmot Road. Brown-bag dinner group devoted to the yarn arts. Bring your dinner, project and yarn. 6-7 p.m. Thursdays. Free. 594-5420.

Friday

Urban Yarns – Joel D. Valdez Main Library, 101 N. Stone Ave. Bring your hooks, needles, and lunches to Urban Yarns, an informal weekly gathering. Note: No instruction is provided. 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Fridays. Free. 791-4010.

Canyon Quilters – Kirk-Bear Canyon Library, 8959 E. Tanque Verde Road. An unstructured quilting opportunity to audition colors, layout blocks or applique. Ample tables for sandwich pinning. Electrical outlets available. Bring your project or preview works in progress. 1-3 p.m. Fridays. Free. 594-5275.

Saturday

Hands-On WaterSmart Garden Design – Pima County Cooperative Extension, 4210 N. Campbell Ave. Hands-on class that will help you develop a conceptual xeric garden design. Participants should plan on bringing a basic site map of their garden drawn on graph paper. Registration required. 9 a.m.-noon. Aug. 18. Free. 626-5161.

Gray Water Rebate Class – Pima County Cooperative Extension, 4210 N. Campbell Ave. Tucson Water’s Single Family Residential Gray Water Rebate Program can reimburse you up to $200 when a permanent gray water irrigation system is installed in your home. Tucson Water customers must attend a two-hour gray water workshop that will cover the appropriate methods to design, operate and maintain a gray water system. Registration required. 10 a.m.-noon. Aug. 18. Free; sponsored by Tucson Water. 626-5161.

Ventana Canyon Summer Indoor Arts and Crafts Festival – Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, Kiva Ballroom, 7000 N. Resort Drive. More than 50 artists. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Aug. 18-19. Free. 797-3959.

Meet The Blogger

MaryEllen Malinowski

Everyone calls me simply, M. As an Irish girl, it seems perfect and free spirited.

Zen Living by design is a lifestyle that bridges the soul of nature, water, light and tranquility.

Zen Living by design is a a branch of my business Infrared Light International. As an international award winning infrared photographer, author, Japanese Garden Designer and Koi enthusiast, my mission is that each and every day, Through inspiring words, images, designs, services and interpretations, I will enlighten Chicago and inspire the world to experience Zen Living by their own design.

One of my greatest passions is working with Koi and as I founded The Koi Whisperer Sanctuary in 2010, after I rescued a Koi and became known as “The Koi Whisperer.” I continue to speak for those who have no voice, both in rescuing, healing and educating on the history and holistic care of these incredible creatures. The Zen Living by design studio embraces The Koi Whisperer Sanctuary where I continue to design Japanese Gardens, Koi Ponds and share the beauty of my Tea House on the Fox River. I frequently lecture on Zen Living. and was honored this summer to speak at the Fabyan Japanese Gardens in Geneva, Illinois.

I am thrilled to blog Zen Living by design with ChicagoNow and share my journey of discovery with you so that you too, can design your own Zen Living lifestyle.

Love and Light… M

THE LONG driveway descends through firs and ferns as it wraps toward the Whidbey Island bluff. A sweep of lawn, a grove of katsura trees, a house outlined in a precise hedge of oakleaf hydrangeas set a seaside scene of restrained elegance. After living in a historic house in Coupeville, Rod and Janet McNae moved south for a west-facing view. “Nature is the dominant feature here,” says Janet of the saltwater and majestic conifers.

Cross the driveway and climb a few stone stairs and you’ll find the heart of the property in Janet’s kitchen and cutting garden. The scale is smaller here, and the vibe more rustic. Her 40-by-75-foot garden is pushed up nearly to the edge of the forest. Rows of cedar boxes hold vegetables and flowers at a handy height for planting and picking. Here in the sunniest spot on the property, Janet grows a colorful tumble of scented roses, herbs, sweet peas, tomatoes, nasturtiums, strawberries and flowers to cut for the house.

A stone wall topped with lavender surrounds the sturdy, 8-foot fence that protects the garden from marauding deer. The enclosure is floored with crunchy gravel and holds eight of the untreated cedar boxes, lined with landscape cloth and set on a grid. Each box is 5 by 10 feet and 28 inches high, which holds a surprising amount of food and flowers.

Then there’s the “shed” at one end of the garden where Janet plans and plots her garden. The little house is pure romance, with windows and doors that open wide to breezes off the water, a wood-burning stove, high ceilings and pine paneling. Oh, and pale wicker furniture, silver tea trays and piles of English gardening books and magazines.

Janet experiments with plantings every summer in the easy-to-change-out raised beds. She says the chocolate cherry tomatoes, picked and eaten straight from the vine, taste as if they’ve been dipped in balsamic vinegar. Janet is an accomplished cook who puts all she grows to good use. For a summer treat, she stuffs zucchini and patty pan squash blossoms with goat cheese and chopped basil, then roasts them in olive oil. By late in the summer she’s on her third planting of arugula, which grows along with lettuces and pea pods. She lets the kale go to flower, because the bees are so eager for the little yellow blooms.

Last summer Janet planted the raised beds by color. The orange and chocolate bed held coreopsis, yarrow, sneezeweed and chocolate cosmos. One bed was blued with sweet peas, dwarf delphiniums and hardy geraniums. A mostly green bed was planted with lettuces, borage, dill, sorrel and kale. Several beds hold fragrant roses like the deeply ruffled, pink ‘Abraham Darby’ and the pure white ‘Glamis Castle,’ surrounded by the soft, chartreuse leaves of lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis).

From the tiny alpine strawberries Janet plants for the birds, to the garden house that offers respite from sun, rain and weeding, the garden is generous and comfortable, extravagant in its planting, yet practical in its simple, classic design.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of “petal twig.” Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.

View full sizePhoto by Benjamin Brink/The OregonianSilverberry (Eleagnus pungens), heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica), snow gum (Eucalyptus niphophila), Japanese aralia (Fatsia japonica) create the Africa Rainforest feel at the Oregon zoo.If you’ve dreamed of creating a tropical garden in your backyard but worried about what plants would survive our Pacific Northwest weather, go to the experts.

Next time you’re at the Oregon Zoo, wandering past the African slender-snouted crocodiles or the Rodrigues flying fox, and around the red-flanked duiker, look around. You’ll notice you’re surrounded by plants that make you feel as if you’re smack in the middle of an African rain forest.

Look closer and you’ll notice that the zoo has kindly provided plant identification tags for hundreds of those plants.

Rick Hanes, the zoo’s horticulture supervisor, says they get a lot of questions about the plants at the zoo. (Isn’t everyone in Portland a gardener?) Hanes says he feels it is the zoo’s job to create a connection between the plants and the animals that will leave people feeling as if they are in a wild, exotic environment. Sometimes this can be done with specific plants that offer the right colors and texture. Sometimes it can be done with the way a plant is pruned or by the mixture of other plants around it.

View full sizePhoto by Benjamin Brink/The OregonianMonkey puzzle tree (Arauaria araucana)It turns out that picking a plant that will fit in at the zoo isn’t all that different from picking a plant for your own backyard.

Hanes says the first question to answer is: “Will it grow?”

His suggestion is simple — go to a local nursery and see what they have. The trick, Hanes says, is getting the plant established; after that, it can withstand a lot. At the zoo they look at things like the available sunlight. Can a plant be tucked up against a wall to protect it from the wind and also provide warmth? What does the plant need?

The next question to answer is: “Will it fit my budget?” For this question we offer no advice.

The final question is: “What effect do I want to create?” For the zoo the answer is usually a mixture of plants to create the right habitat feel. Sometimes it’s a hardy plant like a viburnum.  Other places it’s combining bamboo with a broadleaved plant like Fatsia japonica.  

Plant choices to mull are right there on a trail in the African rain forest. Doesn’t a fatsia, eucalyptus or palm next to a big madrona tree  make you feel as if a python is just around the corner?

And your options don’t end there. Other ideas for your home garden could spring from a visit to areas representing Asia, the Serengeti or shorelines.

— Benjamin Brink

View full sizePhoto by Benjamin Brink/The OregonianSnow gum (Eucalyptus niphophila, detail of bark)PLANTS AT THE ZOO

As well as showcasing animals, the Oregon Zoo highlights their habitats: According to a note on the Oregon Zoo website, the zoo’s botanical gardens representing the flora of its world of fauna have “more than 1,000 species of exotic plants, including firebird heliconia,  pelican flower  and ground orchid.  Some of the exotic plants are harvested and given to the animals as browse.”

You can find plants representing a variety of habitats, including the rain forest, savanna, Asia, a mountain ridge and the Serengeti, among others.

Some of the plants you’ll find in the gardens include:

Crocosmia (C. ‘Norwich Canary’)  
Fairy wand (Dierama pulcherrimum, also called angel’s fishing rod)  
Red-hot poker (Kniphofia ‘Border Ballet’)  
Cape fuchsia (Phygelius ‘Sunshine’)  
Sun daisy, aka African daisy (Osteospermum ‘Lavender Mist’)  
Monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana)
Snow gum (Eucalyptus niphophila)
Arrow bamboo (Pseudosasa japonica)
Dragon root, aka false Solomon’s seal (Smilacina racemosa) *
Inside-out flower (Vancouveria hexandra)  *
*These two are Oregon natives

For a list of the plants and more information about them, go to bit.ly/zooplants 

By MARELLA CARACCIOLO

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Sally Gall for The Wall Street Journal (2)

East Hampton, N.Y., left, and Itri, Italy

WHEN ROBERT JAKOB isn’t planting, pruning and building fences on the East Hampton, N.Y., property he bought 32 years ago, he tends to a garden in a valley near the town of Itri, south of Rome. In 2001, Mr. Jakob, a garden designer and painter, and his then-partner David White, the longtime curator of Robert Rauschenberg’s estate, were in Italy on their way to Naxos, Greece, where they wanted to buy a house. “We visited Cy Twombly and Nicola Del Roscio in Gaeta,” Mr. Jakob said. “Cy mentioned a piece of land nearby that was up for sale. ‘It’s bucolic,’ he added. We went to see it that afternoon: glorious views and crumbling pig and goat sheds. David and I decided this was it: a Mediterranean alternative to our East Hampton home.”

Sally Gall

Robert Jakob looking out from his living room in Itri, Italy.

Monti Aurunci, a mountainous region overlooking the sea, is best known for its 50-odd varieties of wild orchids, for its rare salamanders and, a few generations back, for the fierce nature of its brigands—a far cry from the cosmopolitan comforts and luscious gardens of the Hamptons. “The property in East Hampton had a shell of a building we were told had been used by Willem de Kooning as a studio in the 1950s,” Mr. Jakob said. This Italian adventure offered the opportunity to design a home from scratch. “All the houses I had liked during my travels kept cramming my mind.” The end result of this memory edit is a two-story modernist-looking building. The animal sheds were transformed into guest rooms where close friends, including garden historian Mac Griswold, come to stay. The interiors are sparse: a few weathered 18th-century pieces of furniture, mostly Swedish; some work tables; a sofa; and a handful of Mr. Jakob’s own botanically inspired works on paper (his show at the Drawing Room in East Hampton last fall was sold out).

Though the East Hampton cottage embodies a similar taste for minimal décor, the views from the windows tell a different story. “Back in the ’80s, I became obsessed with English gardens, which I tried to emulate,” Mr. Jakob said. “I collected old roses, irises and perennials. The garden evolved into a series of ‘rooms.’ So it was overwhelming, in Italy, to feel so exposed to the landscape.”

Which is why he decided to keep his Italian garden to a bare minimum: a few flower pots here and there (agapanthus plumbago, irises and Mrs. Oakley Fisher roses) and an enclosed garden where lavender bushes and cardoons live side by side.

Sally Gall for The Wall Street Journal

Verdant Paradise

East Hampton, N.Y.

The back of Robert Jakob and David White’s Hamptons property was planted with a mix of gaura, hollyhock and butterfly wheat. Views of the marshes are blocked by hornbeam hedges and a brick wall.

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Sally Gall for The Wall Street Journal

One big room

Mr. Jakob calls this “the large room,” and it serves both as computer zone and dining area, with the kitchen occupying one corner. The pair of chairs was designed by master woodworker Jean-Baptiste-Claude Séné, a favorite of Marie Antoinette’s. The painting on the back wall is by Mary Heilmann, whose garden in Bridgehampton Mr. Jakob helped redesign.

Sally Gall for The Wall Street Journal

Enveloped in green

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Sally Gall for The Wall Street Journal

The arbor

Wooden floors, a small writing table and a comfortable armchair, usually 18th-century Swedish, can be found in bedrooms in both homes. This room in the Hamptons opens onto a shaded garden area bordered by shrubs and potted plants. The arbor, with its wooden beams sustaining a roof of grape vines, serves as a shady sitting area. In the warmer months, this part of the garden blossoms with peonies, Siberian irises and gooseberries.

Itri, Italy

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Sally Gall for The Wall Street Journal

Keeping it low-maintenance

In Itri, it’s all about the landscape: sweeping views over rugged mountain peaks, sunburned valleys and pristine coastlines. With the exception of some fruit trees—citruses, pomegranates and almonds—herbaceous borders and a few potted plants, Mr. Jakob has kept the garden to a bare minimum.

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Sally Gall

Handmade home

The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was built with the help of local craftsmen who carved slabs of travertine to make the sink and counters.

Sally Gall

Open vistas

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Sally Gall

The pergola

The top-floor bedroom in Itri, where a Robert Jakob drawing hangs on the wall, opens onto a sunlit terrace commanding views of the valley and sea. The pergola, with its locally handcrafted terra-cotta tiles, built-in benches and 18th-century majolica tiles, is an outdoor room for gatherings and meals. With the help of Anthony Gammardella, who also designed the pool, the house’s animal sheds were transformed into guest rooms.

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For most of us urban dwellers, home is a box of an apartment in a concrete jungle. Access to a garden or a park is increasingly becoming a luxury in most cities and towns. We can curse city mandarins for the lack of planning, or we can create our own little green zones in our balconies.

But gardening is no mean task. Sriram Aravamuda, cofounder of Bangalore-based My Sunny Balcony, which designs gardens in small spaces, says you must be prepared to invest a lot of time and energy in the maintenance and upkeep of your garden, however tiny. Here are some design tips for your balcony garden:

The Startup Plan: If you have a large balcony or an attached terrace, go ahead and get yourself a miniforest.
But if space is limited, mark out a zone for the plants.

Leave enough space in the middle for a couple of chairs and ensure there are gaps between pots for cleaning.

If you dry clothes in your balcony, put up a flexible partition like a rollable ceiling-to-floor bamboo screen that divides the utility area and the garden.

The Plants you Choose: Do not buy too many plants altogether — add to your garden regularly. Decide whether you want just ornamental plants or you want to mix them up with herbs and veggies.

Anthuriums and spathiphyllum are two flowering varieties that do well in tropical balconies; dieffenbachia, palm, ficus and philodendrons also grow well in the shade. Herbs and greens need more sunlight, but the easiest to grow are spinach, coriander and mint.

The Basics the Design: To start with, spend some time in your balcony or terrace to figure out how much sunlight it gets, and depending on that you can choose sun-loving or shade-loving plants.

Place pots and planters on the periphery, but don’t line them. Make clusters and islands with pots of different colours, varying heights and girth. If you have pots on the wall, put smaller pots at the base and the larger ones on the other end.

The Pots: Get pots and planters of varying shapes, sizes and colours, or make your garden more fun by re-using materials as planters.

You can convert wooden crates, large coffee mugs, wooden basins, water cans, wide-mouthed bottles and traditional earthen cooking ware into pots.

Make use of the railings and walls too. Get flower or window boxes than can be fitted onto the railing, or create a trellis screen to mount creepers. You can also hang a series of multi-coloured coffee mugs to hold your herbs.

The Accessories: Just because you have a small balcony garden does not mean you cannot accessorise.

You can put up windchimes or brass bells, or hang a series of Chinese lanterns across the ceiling of the balcony. A budget option would be to weave a string of fairy lamps in between the pots and over the plants.

Add a water element, like a petite water fountain. Its magical sound will draw you out every evening. Also, spread out garden accessories like a gnome or a frog or even a small sculpture.

Finally, put up some outdoor furniture, depending on the space you have. It will be a perfect perch to watch the stars.

West and Alexander-Sinclair both have long experience of Chelsea, and were
apprehensive about their chum’s debut. “I think they were a bit apprehensive
at first,” says Swift. “But then the frames arrived and they started to say
‘you know, I think this might be OK’, to which I replied ‘yes guys, thanks,
I have actually thought about it, it isn’t completely random.’ I was on the
plot next to Cleve, which was helpful. But I wasn’t really nervous. I
haven’t gone down the garden-designing route because the people with enough
money to let you do a proper garden tend to be very controlling. But I’ve
always had a strong aesthetic sense, and from years of standing in show
gardens for telly I know how they work.”

He proved his planting chops, too. “Some of the iris exhibitors from the
pavilion looked at my bearded irises and said ‘that’s exactly how they’re
supposed to be grown, with lots of space and a gravelly base.’ ‘Thanks very
much,’ I said.

“Chelsea was great, but left me shattered. I can see how winning a gold medal
could become an obsession, but now that I’ve got one there’s no way I’d go
back next year. Plus I’m never going to win Best in Show, because Cleve
always wins that.”

It’s tempting to see Swift’s mix of telegenic good humour and thoughtfulness
as a reflection of his parentage. His father is Clive Swift, the actor best
known for his part as Richard, long-suffering husband of Hyacinth Bucket, in Keeping
Up Appearances. His mother is Margaret Drabble, the novelist and
academic, and his siblings are an academic and a lawyer.

“My parents separated when I was very young,” he says “so I saw Dad mostly at
the weekends, when we’d go to the Arsenal together. But I definitely get my
sense of humour from that side of the family; a strong Jewish sense of
humour.” Being the son of famous parents never affected him. “Once at
Highbury the people around us starting singing ‘There’s only one Richard
Bucket,’ but that’s about it. It didn’t catch on.”

The academic inheritance from his mother’s side of the family was less
obvious. “There was certainly a lot of typing going on in the house when I
was growing up,” he says. “But I was never much of a reader. I was busy – I
was in a band, I went to art college, I went on a kibbutz in Israel. But I
never wanted to go to university, and frankly I didn’t have the A-levels.
But it wasn’t really rebellion. Or if it was, it was rebellion against a
family that was impossible to rebel against. Whatever I’d do, my mum would
just say ‘oh, that’s nice dear’, and carry on.”

After a series of odd jobs he started working for a landscape design company,
and took a course at the English Gardening School in Chelsea. His first
makeover was of his mother’s garden in Hampstead, which backed onto John
Keats’s old house. Broadcasting offers followed soon after.

His new series mixes a serious message with all the joshing. In The
Flowerpot Gang, he teams up with Anneka Rice and former England
cricketer Phil Tufnell. In each episode, the slightly improbable bunch sets
about transforming an unpromising site into a community haven. Each has a
different role. “Anneka’s brilliant at drumming up support. If we were short
of manpower she’d go off and come back with the local rugby club, or the
Territorial Army. Tuffers is more of a people person. He can talk to
anybody.”

The team created spaces for a dementia home in Sheffield, a young carers’
centre in Sunderland, a community garden in Poplar and a schools’ garden in
Bristol.

“It’s very important,” he says. “And there does seem to be a bit of a movement
at the moment. Ten or 15 years ago it was all about Ground Force, and people
putting in decking. But properties are getting smaller and smaller, and the
idea of having a private garden is fading.

“Community gardening is about coming together, so what we’re doing has far
more reach than just designing one or two posh people’s gardens.”

Of course, the less positive aspects of television exist whatever the subject.
“If you put yourself up on screen you’re going to be called names. At a
garden show I once heard these two old biddies talking to each other over
the microphone. ‘You’ve just missed that Joe Swift,’ one said. ‘Oh good I
can’t stand him,’ said the other. And I still get called a mockney. But you
have to be able to take it. It’s just human nature that some people will
like you and others won’t. If you start getting too precious about it all
you lose that sense of humour. It’s important to be able to take the —-
out of yourself. But I guess the Chelsea garden showed I’m not all laughs.”

The Flowerpot Gang starts on Wednesday on BBC One at 8pm

Anneka Rice interview, Review p29

After almost 20 years in the business of helping to make backyards beautiful, Duncan Alexander Scott knows what’s likely to turn heads and leave jaws agape when home owners want to transform their garden into an oasis.

Duncan’s landscape and design business, Simply Intreeging, has built a reputation for enthralling homeowners with original, creative and stunning feature garden designs.

With experience gained from working in indoor plant hire, retail and wholesale nurseries, landscape design, bush regeneration and landscaping, Duncan can channel diverse knowledge to create your perfect, custom designed garden.

Duncan said it is possible to have a high impact, low maintenance garden.

“It all comes down to the correct plant selection and layout,” he said.

“This, meshed with a great hard scape, is what makes a high impact landscape for years to come.”

Simply Intreeging offers design and consultancy services for all things outdoors, including old garden renovations, as well as landscaping for new and existing homes, acreage landscaping and dam scaping.

They can also tap into a homeowner’s desire for water features, do native and endemic forest planting, or create feature walls and panels to bring class to an area with grass.

Simply Intreeging can also incorporate a creatively designed, custom-made fire pit into the design for your outdoor entertainment area.

Ideal for outside social gatherings in Winter, when the weather heats up and Summer arrives, a fire pit can be filled with ice and beverages for you to entertain guests.

Not only does Simply Intreeging design creative landscapes, their services extend to landscape and garden maintenance, to ensure your new green hub stays beautiful and vibrant. 

They also offer a gardening advisory service for homeowners.

For those people who don’t have a green thumb, or who don’t have the time to maintain their property, Simply Intreeging can perform scheduled maintenance for lawns, gardens and water features.

If your garden is in need of some renovation, let the innovation of Simply Intreeging turn your backyard into the envy of your friends.

Phone Simply Intreeging on 0413 615 036 or visit http://www.simplyintreeging.com.au/