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Medina’s Community Design Committee hosts garden tour

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The Medina Community Design Committee hosted its first annual Garden Tour June 29.

The event, originally coordinated by the YWCA, was adopted by the CDC to show off historic and beautiful treasures in the City of Medina.

Jenni Kurilko, chairperson of the event, said the goal is to raise money to help preserve the architectural structures of Medina and help homeowners restoring homes to keep a cohesive look. This was her chance to remind Medina residents and all who appreciate beauty there are historic neighborhoods off public square.

She and her husband bought a home in the South Court Historic Neighborhood three years ago. Their home is about to celebrate its 150th birthday and they redesigned and added to the gardens.

“I’ve always liked old homes,” she said, “This house is so sturdy. Things aren’t made the way they used to be. I love the look of it. I love the history of it.”

Her home was the second stop on the garden tour. Her garden is actually a certified wildlife habitat providing food, shelter, water and a place for animals to raise their young. Her water garden attracts frogs, toads, dragonflies, herons and other wildlife. She also has Koi in one of her ponds.

When asked why she decided to participate in the event she said, “People are proud of their gardens and beautiful yards. We’re featuring some really interesting ones. It’s a nice, family day.”

The Casey family has featured its Spring Grove home gardens on several tours. The backyard was a grassy volleyball court for their nine children before it was transformed by Harold and Rosemary.

The garden features not only plants and flowers, but also a hand-built gazebo, various statuaries, waterfalls and birdhouses. Rosemary Casey said she and her husband spent 20 years working in their gardens and this will probably be the last year they participate in a tour.

Five homes participated in the tour along with the Friends of Spring Grove Cemetery and the sponsor of the event, A.I. Root. Paul Becks, secretary for the Community Design Committee, said the tour gives people a chance to see special places in their community they wouldn’t ordinarily explore.

“All the homes have something special to offer, but in most cases it’s not something you can see from the street,” said Becks. “People put a lot of time and effort in their gardens and no one gets to see them. We’re trying to pull back the curtain a bit to show the public the beauty these homes have to offer.”

“People are happy,” said Nancy Mattey, a trustee for the CDC. “People like to garden. It’s an uplifting event to do.”

See more Medina news at cleveland.com/medina.

(216) 986-2371 Twitter: @taraquinnsun

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Layers can create gardening pleasure, beauty

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Every artist has a medium, and the gardener’s medium is plants.

Just like a fine painting often has layers of paint, gardens can be made in layers too, according to David L. Culp, garden designer, teacher and author. He will be speaking on the subject, as well as his renowned Brandywine Cottage in Downington, Pa., on Thursday at Phipps Conservatory in Oakland

Brandywine Cottage, a 2-acre garden that he and his partner, Michael Alderfer, have created over the past 20 years, is included in the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Gardens and is regularly highlighted by Martha Stewart Living and HGTV.

Mr. Culp has been writing and lecturing nationally for more than 15 years, with articles in Martha Stewart Living, Country Living, and Fine Gardening magazines. He is a former contributing editor for Horticulture magazine and teaches courses at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, near Philadelphia. His vast knowledge of snowdrops was featured in the Wall Street Journal, and he has developed the ‘Brandywine’ hybrid strain of hellebores. Currently vice president of Sunny Border Nurseries, Mr. Culp received the Distinguished Garden Award and an Award of Merit from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

His new book, “The Layered Garden: Design Lessons for Year-Round Beauty From Brandywine Cottage” (Timber Press), captures his approach to creating gardens and lessons learned as a lifelong gardener.

“The layered garden approach is basically about how much pleasure you can wring out of one spot,” he says.

His design sensibilities enliven well-worn concepts like four-season interest and use of textures and colors.

“The layered garden is about using a variety of plants and taking advantage of how they live, grow, and even die. To promote different feelings and emotions in the garden, and how that varies from time to time.”

He advises that the layering extends beyond the plant combinations themselves.

“It’s about combinations of borders, how borders work together within the framework of the overall garden, and how the overall garden relates to the larger landscape. That’s another layer.

“There’s an emotional layer to the garden as well: how we react to it.”

By involving ourselves daily in our gardens, we can see how plants change through the seasons. He urges us to constantly seek the beauty and inspiration that are always in our gardens waiting for us to enjoy.

“There is interest as plants die. The red fall foliage of Hydrangea quercifolia with hostas underneath that are going to turn yellow. For a couple weeks, you have a beautiful combination based on senescing foliage. Or you can use a witchhhazel and underplant it with a Geranium macrorhizum or an amsonia in the distance,” he suggests.

The vignettes may be fleeting: “Peony buds coming out of the ground underplanted with a bulb or a spring ephemeral. You are using that moment for a combination. Every little moment is fair game.

“You just have to expand your mind a little, looking at the garden differently, looking at the realm of possibilities. Seeing things in many different layers, different perspectives all the time, looking close.”

There is an economy in his approach. “It’s using that same peony in the spring as it emerges and the same thing with the seed pods in the fall. It’s that Pennsylvania Dutch practicality. Use it up. You’re just using the plant.”

This sensibility and his love of gardening were instilled at an early age by his parents and both sets of grandparents. “I always gardened. I was no more than 5 years old when I first heard the ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ story, which inspired me to plant bean seeds in paper cups so that, like Jack, I could climb my vine into the sky.”

He was undeterred by childhood gardening flops — planting pumpkin seeds after Halloween in a Dutch Masters cigar box, and planting pussy willows too close to his parents’ house.

“A common denominator of all gardeners is the joy of watching something grow, and I have always enjoyed that.”

His layered gardening technique fosters this interest in watching things grow. But how do we begin making layered gardens?

“First of all you have to want to do it,” he stresses. “I usually say our gardens do not do it because we do not demand it of them. We just say, ‘I wish.’ Well, that doesn’t make it happen. You have to go out and say, ‘This is what I have to do to make a winter interest garden,’ or, ‘I want it to look good in the fall,’ so you ask that of your garden, make it happen.”

“Whether it’s a 2-acre garden like mine or a city garden, your house has four sides to it. So you could do each side as a different season of interest, sequencing. Try not to do everything at once. I try to have different peaks in the garden and different experiences as you walk though. Any garden can give you this experience if you just think about it. I don’t think it’s a matter of size. It’s certainly not in my case a matter of money because I’m a gardener. I do this out of passion.”

In addition to the book’s stunning color photographs by renowned garden photographer Rob Cardillo, Mr. Culp has written “The Layered Garden” to inspire and instruct. In a conversational style, he shares triumphs, defeats, and ideas, such as one gardener would share with another.

“It’s meant to be empowering, and it also gives practical advice on some of the plants that will help do that. If you follow the latter part of the book, it’s done by each peak genus that I have through the seasons, giving you hints and tools to start with.”

Brandywine Cottage is the canvas upon which the techniques in his book have been honed. There, he has dealt with deer and other challenges like planting under black walnut trees.

“I bought [the property] right when I saw it. It was really a matter of love at first sight. And like falling in love, you don’t see the object of your affection’s faults right away. I did not see all the poison ivy and multiflora roses. I just saw possibilities.”

He offers his designer’s thoughts, “When I saw the house, because of the hillside I saw the grade changes, and I thought I could do a series of different visual perspectives.” Because of the age of the house (1790s) he went with a geometric design that was often used in that era, something he calls country formal.

“I am a collector so I needed something to give me unity. I knew where I was going right from the start. Sure I had a plan, but it was more like an outline. I filled in the spots as I went along,” he adds.

The garden at Brandywine Cottage has changed over time, something he has embraced. “I had a little grassy meadow on the top of the hill, and I started planting some trees around. I love those old meadows with the cedars coming out of them, like they’re going back to what they were. Now after 20 years those trees have come full cycle, and they are wonderful, magnificent magnolia trees. And with other shade trees around, it’s become a shade border.”

Mr. Culp’s program, which is sponsored by Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens and Penn State Extension, will run from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and include three parts — the layered garden, natives and shade gardening.

Now in his early 60s, Mr. Culp said his garden has made him more reflective. “It’s amazing where a love of gardening has taken me. It’s a huge, huge gift. I have met my favorite people through gardening. It’s been the absolute best common denominator in my life.

“I’m still learning. I’m still amazed every day when I get up and go outside. Though I’ve been gardening here 20 years, I’m just always amazed at the beauty that the garden affords.

“The garden makes me appreciate the here and now and plan for the future even more. Never stop planning for the future but always appreciate what you have today.”

The Summer Short Course featuring David Culp will run from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursday at Botany Hall, Phipps Conservatory. Cost is $95 per person and includes lunch. Information, registration: 412-441-4442, ext. 3925 or http://extension.psu.edu/allegheny/events/.

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Small style hits the big time

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Size matters. More and more.

If not a decided shift at recent High Point furniture markets, let us just say that rooms with smaller footprints will not be ignored. The good news is that the commitment ramps up challenges to design furniture smartly, with an eye to size and proportions, multitasking, built-ins and visual tricks.

A sign of the times is that RH (the re-branded Restoration Hardware) – which several years ago went into heavy Belgian industrial and French chateau mode with mega-scale and opulent proportions – last spring introduced one of its legendary weighs-a-ton sourcebooks devoted to … drumroll … small spaces! The latest edition is described as “a scaled-down collection of furnishings in sizes that work beautifully in more intimate spaces.”

Relatable scale and clean, modern lines are one reason, perhaps, for the appeal of mid-century furniture. This is precisely what grabbed the eye at the Stockholm collection booth at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York in late May. Inspired by home furnishings from the 1950s and ’60s, the sizes of pieces seemed right; add to that comfort, sophistication and style – in a provocative palette punched up with kellyish or emerald greens and acid yellows – at affordable prices. The collection launches at IKEA next month.

Another standout at that show, because of its thoughtful incorporation of storage, was a bathtub designed by the Canadian firm, Blu Bathworks. In addition to graceful lines, the piece spoke to storage needs in an architecturally savvy way, its front and sides wrapped with wood shelving designed to house essentials like towels, soaps and sponges, and even a decorative piece thrown in for good measure.

One company that always has understood the need for small as well as for large scale is Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. For every 90-plus-inch sofa, there are several cozily silhouetted chairs. For every nearly 4-foot-square cocktail table, there may be dozens of petite martini side tables.

“From our first days,” said Mitchell Gold, “we observed how people live and want to live. The reality is every home has small spaces even if the homes are large. We realized people need a variety of proportions.”

Scale really is the motivator – not just the measure, but how the inches measure up; in other words, the proportions of the piece. When Libby Langdon designed her Howell chaise for Braxton Culler, she was reaching out to those who love a lounge option but one that reads more simply, such as a chair attached to ottoman, not a space- hog.

“Often furniture is unnecessarily oversized and overstuffed,” Langdon said. “Many standard sofas have large, rolled arms, each measuring 12 inches wide, which means they are taking up two feet of usable space.”

It’s telling that some of the most popular categories of furniture in recent years have been small tables, bar carts, etageres and desks. One reason is that houses with less square footage demand flexible furniture, so versatile double duty is welcome. A desk can serve as a vanity. A slim etagere or baker’s rack can be ganged in sets of three on one wall or employed in a kitchen or bath for handy items.

A piece with doors and shelving inside might be tapped as a bar, TV cabinet, for plates and glassware in the dining room, or folded shirts and accessories in the bedroom. A cart with casters can be used in an entry, holding books, framed photos and flowers, or as a rolling bar.

Another tack for maximizing space and function is a piece that can be pulled apart and reconfigured. A table introduced this spring by French Heritage has 18-inch components that serve as accent tables that are easily moved about (and stacked); six can be put together to create a handsome 36-inch hexagonal coffee table.

Built-ins long have been a go-to option for designers, as they take advantage of tight corners. They offer storage as well. The top of a new platform bed at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams lifts to reveal stash-away space equivalent to a six-drawer dresser, according to Williams.

Visual space-saving is another clever device for limited square footage. The etagere is a good example, or a cabinet with slender proportions and transparent backside, which allows the wall paint or covering to peek through and become part of the piece.

Going up the wall, of course, is becoming a useful way to conserve space. We see it in floating shelves, wall-mounted cabinets, and in wall-hung toilets, such as the newest model from Kohler, Veil, introduced at the contemporary furniture fair – fabulously compact with a concealed tank and minimal footprint that saves up to 12 inches of floor, a boon for cleaning.

Rails on kitchen backsplashes also are an excellent way to get pieces off the counter. In Susan Serra’s New York kitchen design, those rails don’t remain static; rather, they’re armed with spices, tools and the like. Contents are changed out for formal entertaining, substituting with flowers and paintings – decorative elements to “dress” the space.

Designer Libby Langdon, host of HGTV’s “Small Space, Big Style,” likes to use bold color as a backdrop. In designing a guest bedroom in her own home, she painted the walls vivid chartreuse, complementing the hue in black and white. A black four-poster bed made of rattan surprisingly anchors the space, but its simple design and open weave feel light. Another device, which she often favors, is doing draperies from ceiling to floor, which visually stretches out the height of the room.

Gold used a 100-inch-long Chesterfield sofa in his 1,850-square-foot Washington, D.C., condo because it makes the small scale feel more sumptuous. “We also used a 96-by-38-inch dining table instead of a console to serve as a place for media equipment. Putting it up against the wall makes it look generous, not at all overwhelming.

“On the other hand, in the bedroom we used our specially designed small-scale bedside tables, which are (only) 20 inches wide. For many condos, bedroom walls are just too small for a queen-sized bed and a pair of tables. For us the key is that nothing should ‘hang over.’ Furniture shouldn’t go past a wall’s border.”

That’s smart living.

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Edible forest designed for 6th Ward Park

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Helena is the first city in Montana to design an edible forest garden, which will be located at the 6th Ward Park.

This coming week Dave Jacke, a national leader this type of garden design and author of “Edible Forest Gardens,” will lead a Helena workshop, July 9-14,  with 33 people from around the country who will help design the new park.

Edible forest gardens mimic the structure and function of forest ecosystems through all their stages of development and grow food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizers, ‘farmaceuticals’ and fun.

Jacke gives a public talk 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, July 9, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. The cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door.

To register go to www.insideedgedesigners.com/register.

Jacke’s talk will introduce the vision of forest gardening with scientific background and a sampling of useful perennial edibles you can grow in your garden.

The 6th Ward Park is a 1.1-acre piece of land behind the HATS Bus Station on Montana Avenue, between Gallatin and Bozeman avenues.

St. Paul’s is located at the corner of Cruse and Lawrence.

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Manchester urban garden festival to feature show gardens

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By Matthew Appleby
04 July 2013

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Mary’s garden grows …into a quirky movie

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Mary Reynolds’s parents Seán and Teresa at a reconstruction of Mary’s Chelsea garden at the film set in Dublin.

David Tucker

– 02 July 2013

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A VISIONARY Wexford garden designer who found fame at the Chelsea Flower Show is to be the subject of a new film about her journey to make it big at the gardening world’s Olympics.

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Mary Reynolds, who won a Gold for her Celtic Sanctuary garden at Chelsea in 2002, is in the process of returning to her roots in Wexford to be closer to her family and her main source of work on the East Coast as a garden designer.

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While looking for new commissions, Mary also hopes to design and create a garden in Wexford that will be open to the public.

The new film, ‘Wild’, tells the story of Mary, who puts everything on the line to compete at Chelsea.

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‘It’s an Indie movie – a kind of romantic comedy based around that story,’ Mary told this newspaper as she was packing to return to Wexford.

‘Parts of it are fictionalised, but truth is stranger than fiction. It is a wonderful story and very funny,’ said Mary, who took time out following her Chelsea success to bring up her children and ‘try to be a good mum’.

‘I had my children very soon after Chelsea. It is difficult to do both things. I did Super Garden and presented that programme for RTÉ, but kept everything else to a minimum,’ she said.

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Mary said she had been heavily involved in supervising the garden build for the movie and was very excited at the recent news that international rights to it were sold at Cannes ahead of next year’s release.

Radiant Films International picked up the international rights to ‘Wild’, which marks Vivienne DeCourcy’s feature film directorial debut.

The movie stars Ella Greenwell and Tom Hughes, who plays the part of Christy, an idealist envionmentalist who Mary recruits to help her compete at Chelsea.

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Mimi Steinbauer, CEO of Radiant Films, calls DeCourcy’s script ‘fun and quirky’ and ‘a great antidote to today’s toils and troubles’.

Mary said she met Vivienne DeCourcy, an Irish-American lawyer, when she designed a garden for her.

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‘She asked if she could use my story for a screenplay. It has taken about nine years to get this far,’ said Mary, who hails from Larkinstown.

Her parents Shea and Teresa and sister Maread live on Forth Mountain close to Wexford and almost within walking distance of her rental home in Ballindinas, Barntown, following her move home from the Gaeltacht

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Mary went to school at Piercestown National School and the Presentation in Wexford.

‘I want to be nearer to my family and it’s just mad living in West Cork when most of my work as a garden designer is on the East Coast. It’s too much time on the road,’ said Mary, who has two children, Ferdia, aged nine, and Ruby, ‘nearly seven’.

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‘And it’s gojng to be nice to be near everybody’.

‘Wild’ is funded by Green Earth, the Irish Film Board, RTÉ and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, and will shoot in Ireland and Ethiopia over the coming months.

Mary, the first Irish winner of a Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medal for garden design, started her own landscape design company – maryreynoldsdesigns.com – in 1997.

Following her Chelsea victory in 2002, the British Government commissioned Mary to design a garden for the world-famous Botanical Gardens at Kew in London.

She has also done makeovers for the BBC and RTÉ and has been featured by CNN in a programme about designers with a spiritual dimension.

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Garden design course at Stewart Park

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Garden design course at Stewart Park

2:35pm Thursday 4th July 2013 in News

A complete garden design course costing £53 is being held at Stewart Park in Middlesbrough from 9.30am to 12.30pm on Thursday, September 12 or Saturday, September 14 for 12 weeks, including break for half-term. The last session Thursday, December 5 or Saturday, December 7. The course will provide the practical skills and knowledge needed to design your own garden space covering planning, preparing and completing a garden design, plants for places, plant characteristics and planting styles.

FARMERS’ MARKET: The first in a new series of Farmers’ Markets and Craft Fairs at Stewart Park in Middlesbrough this Sunday. The twice monthly events are held in the Henry Bolckow Visitor Centre and feature a variety of stalls. Sunday’s market runs from 11am to 4pm and admission is free. For more information, contact Nicky Morgan on 01642-515643.

MUSIC FESTIVAL: Myplace youth centre, aimed at 9 to 19-year-olds, is holding its first music festival on Sunday, July 14, from 1pm to 7pm featuring 10 local bands. There is free entry to the event at the former Custom House on North Street in Middlesbrough near the Transporter Bridge. A cafe and barbecue will also be provided.

MAN INJURED: A 21-year-old man received facial injuries following a disturbance outside the Owington Farm Public House in Billingham at about 11.15pm. Three men aged 29, 39 and 41 have been arrested and released on police bail. Police are appealing to anyone who witnessed the disturbance or has any knowledge about it to contact PC Anthony Wraith of Stockton Police on 101 or call the charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800-555 111.

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Bascom benefit features floral design, garden tours, photography

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In The Bridge (ISBN 978-1-4516-4701-3, $19.99), Karen Kingsbury treats readers to a tale of romance and tribulation centered on a bookstore in Franklin, Tenn. Molly Allen and Ryan Kelly meet at Nashville’s Belmont University, where they become best friends.

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Foolproof Garden Gadget Wins Design Materials Award at Dwell on Design …

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Nourishmat With Irrigation 2 Weeks After Planting

This was the only product at the show that I bought on the spot. – Jennifer Karmon, Yahoo! Homes Editor

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) July 02, 2013

Earth Starter’s Nourishmat garden system brought home design gold just a week before its Kickstarter launch. Breaking into the garden, food, and design scenes with a splash, Earth Starter brought home Dwell On Design’s Design Materials Award with its all new Nourishmat garden system, recognizing the sustainable, remarkable build and sourcing of the garden mat that helps consumers learn how to sustain their personal garden.

The 4’ x 6’ Nourishmat garden system lies over soil and comes with a variety of carefully chosen flowers, veggies, and herbs. It is designed to empower consumers to become producers by making it easy and simple to grow their own food. Included seedballs help the seeds germinate and begin to grow properly – they include worm casting fertilizer in their clay mixture.

Additionally, the variety of seeds included is carefully chosen to create a balanced garden ecosystem: specific flowers attract helpful bugs for specific plants. The Nourishmat garden system also hooks easily to a hose for the proper amount of watering per day, and blocks weeds from poking through the garden.

Co-founders Phil Weiner and John Gorby came up with the idea while at the University of Maryland, College Park. In line with the practice of empowering American consumers, the Nourishmat Kit is also manufactured in the United States, contributing to the power of its design materials.

Earth Starter is based in Washington, DC and launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 1st to help fund and manufacture its Nourishmat gardens. For more information, visit http://www.nourishmat.com.

About Earth Starter

Earth Starter is a social start-up based in Washington, DC and founded in 2011 by Nourishmat garden system creators Phil Weiner and John Gorby. Their first creation is Nourishmat, a garden pad with seeds included to create an easy, sustainable garden ecosystem and help consumers grow their own food. Weiner currently serves as Earth Starter’s CEO, while Gorby serves as the President. Together, two are launching the Nourishmat garden system on Kickstarter in July 2013, and afterwards the mat will be sold at http://www.nourishmat.com. The garden system and its seed component, seedballs, are manufactured in the United States.

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English Gardening School launches new design courses

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By Matthew Appleby
01 July 2013

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