garden design | Gardening

Spring 2014 Home & Garden Design

This edition of Home Garden Design features remodels that raised the ceilings in a mid-century home, took a spec home to special, gave a a modern take to a conventional home and added radiant floor heating, as well as how to create a stress-free garden.

Light motif

Transforming a mid-century home with low ceilings

From blah to distinctive

What happens when artists move into a spec house

Modern, but no ‘museum’

Remodel took traditional in a new direction

Finally, warm and toasty

Yes, it’s possible to have radiant floor heating and new hardwood floors

Go to your happy place

Creating a stress-free garden in four easy steps

Past editions of Home Garden Design

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Wildlife-friendly, drought-tolerant gardens on ‘natives’ tour in Contra Costa …

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While taking a garden design class, landscape designer Kelly Marshall once heard a professor say, “There will be wars over water someday.”

That stuck with her over the years.

Marshall, owner of Kelly Marshall Garden Design, has been removing her thirsty lawn, in stages, since 2005; now it is entirely gone.

“We wanted to transform our boring, thirsty front lawn into a water-conserving, native plant haven for wildlife,” she recalled. “The challenge was to come up with something that still fit in with the neighborhood.”

Marshall selected a hardy and colorful array of natives that could take Clayton’s hot summers, added a fountain and strategically placed seating areas and paths, and the front garden became a place enjoyed by everyone in the family, and even the neighbors.

Wanting more planting ‘real estate’ and disliking the water-hogging back lawn more and more, Marshall recently convinced her husband, Mike, to finally let the lawn go. In its place she created a drought-tolerant meadow of bunchgrasses and flowering native perennials.

“I believe it’s easy to have a low water consuming, sustainable garden here in California, if you choose the right plants to begin with,” she said.

Registration is open for the free Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, which will take place Sunday, May 4, at various locations throughout Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

Participants on the free, self-guided event can choose from 35 showcase native plant gardens, and purchase plants from a dozen native plant nurseries.

More than 50 talks will be offered throughout the day. Registrants can learn how select and care for California native plants, lower water bills, design a low-maintenance garden, attract butterflies, birds and bees, and garden without using pesticides.

Inspired by the gardens they had seen on the tour, Clayton residents Karen and Jeremy Amos decided to sheet-mulch away their large, water-hungry front and back lawns. Much to their delight, they discovered that doing so cut their water bill in half. Marshall designed their new low-maintenance, water-conserving garden.

“We were thrilled to receive a $500 rebate from the Contra Costa Water District’s ‘Lose the Lawn and Grow a Garden program,'” said Karen Amos. “And since we installed the new garden ourselves, the cost of transforming the garden was pretty reasonable.”

Carpenter bees are attracted to the sages in the Amos’ new garden, while other native bees gravitate to the local milkweed.

“A family of quail live in the back garden,” Karen Amos pointed out. “Our family loves watching the chicks parade along the boardwalk, then forage for seeds under the native shrubs.”

The quail are protected from neighborhood cats by the family’s dog, and a thicket that provides them with shelter.

The more than 100 species of native plants in Marshall’s garden, the sound of splashing water, ample pond, and the diversity of seed-, berry- and pollen-bearing plants attract a variety of wildlife, from quail, owls, woodpeckers, bluebirds and more. To keep the birds safe, the family cat is kept indoors.

“It’s paradise,” said Marshall, whose garden is just two miles from the Amos stop on the tour. “I never thought our garden could be so beautiful, and also so easy to maintain.”

Saturday, May 3, Markham Arboretum, 1201 La Vista Ave., Concord
10:30 a.m. — Top 10 plants for a native plant garden” by Kelly Marshall of Kelly Marshall Garden Design
noon-1 p.m. — Michael Thelen will play guitar and sing songs from ’60s and ’70s, like The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, John Denver

Sunday, May 4
Karen and Jeremy Amos’ garden, Clayton
11 a.m. — “Save money, save time, and save water: How to lose your lawn, get a garden — and get paid for it, too!” by Chris Dundon, water conservation supervisor from Contra Costa Water Conservation District
noon — “How to maintain a native plant garden” by Karen Amos
Kelly Marshall’s garden, Clayton
“How to transform your front garden into a place that is beautiful, water-conserving, and acceptable to the neighbors” by Kelly Marshall, of Kelly Marshall Garden Design
Native plant sale
extravaganza

May 3-4. Visit Preview the Gardens at bringingbackthenatives.net to read garden descriptions, view photos, download plant lists. Workshops offered throughout spring

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The Organic Rotation Garden: Four Square Design

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In 2009, when the Obama family planted a kitchen garden at the White House, it re-ignited a trend that had been largely dormant for the past century. The simple act of tilling up the lawn and sowing seeds inspired thousands of families to dig up their own back yards and plant vegetable gardens. This return to our agricultural roots resonates with what Thomas Jefferson once declared, as “the noblest pursuit” and the Obamas set the stage for Americans to rediscover the simple pleasures of growing their own food.

For some, growing food is a welcome alternative to the high cost of packaged foods purchased in supermarkets. For others, it is a way of life that provides healthy exercise, and engages all of the senses through a rich tapestry of colors, fragrance, and flavors.

When you cultivate a vegetable garden, you actively engage with your source of food, and integrate with your natural surroundings in a way that far surpasses the experience of purchasing food at the market. Growing your own food is truly the next logical step beyond “local.”

When I planted my first vegetable garden, I began with the four square system, which is one of the oldest and most practical methods that goes back seven centuries. The design has evolved through the ages, and in its best form, combines classic design with the principles of organic gardening. A four square garden simplifies the process of figuring out where to place your plants every year, since you are grouping plants based on plant family, while naturally building the soil to improve productivity.

When plants are grown in the same location year after year they can be weakened by soil borne diseases. In the four square garden, you are creating a garden that will be self sustaining as well as self improving every year. You are working with nature to constantly upgrade the natural balance in your vegetable garden. Start by dividing your garden into four equal squares, and designate each bed marked by the plant type and what they need nutritionally.

Lettuce and other leafy greens, are grown in the bed marked “Nitrogen”.

Mark another bed “Potassium” for the root crops, to sow the carrots, beets, and onion family. Another bed will contain the “Phosphorus” loving crops, or anything that forms a fruit such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. Finally, you will have “Soil Builders” which represent the legume family, including beans and peas, which release nitrogen back into the soil. At the end of the season, rotate the crops so the leafy greens will be planted where the legumes had grown, and the legumes where the root crops had grown, etc.

Growing food for your family and friends is one of the best ways we can effect positive change in our communities. When we bring our families together around the table to share our love for good homegrown food, we are cultivating a healthy choice that spreads beyond our own back yard. Teaching basic skills such as how to build a compost pile to keep waste out of landfills, how to encourage natural pollinators like honeybees, and how to cook with simple, whole foods harvested seasonally may seem like small steps, but when we learn to become responsible consumers, we also reclaim our health as a nation.

Grow a garden this year, and learn more about how this four square system works at my free workshop on Thursday, April 17th at 7PM, hosted by Alan Benoit’s Sustainable Living series and held at The Northshire Bookstore. A detailed four-square plan can be found in my book, The Complete Kitchen Garden.

Ellen Ecker Ogden is the author of The Complete Kitchen Garden and co-founder of The Cook’s Garden seed catalog. She is a garden consultant, and will be teaching a four square garden design workshop at the Northshire Bookstore on April 17. For more information, please visit: http://www.ellenogden.com.

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Gardening: Big lessons outdoors

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Learning about fruiting trees enthrals wee ones. Meg Liptrot reports on a winning kohanga reo that has gone green.

Preschoolers at Glen Eden’s Te Kohanga Reo o Kakariki have their own healthy vege plot. Photos / Meg Liptrot

It is humbling to feel like a dunce around preschoolers, but these fluent te reo speakers put me to shame.

“Kia ora” and “what hard mahi” was about the extent of it for me. I’ll put this in the must-do-better basket, or should I say “kete”.

It is just as well I know my way around plants as I helped identify fruit trees and veges in the new mara (garden) at Glen Eden’s Te Kohanga Reo o Kakariki. Earlier this year the preschool won a Radio Live garden makeover and I’d heard great things about it.

The makeover, sponsored by Mitre 10, featured a vibrant interactive concept provided by celebrity garden designer Tony Murrell. The design incorporated the kohanga reo’s vision for fruit trees, native trees and vegetables. Community, whanau and Radio Live crew turned up to make the design reality over a weekend in February.

This kohanga reo, founded in 1982, is one of the oldest in the country. Formerly based in Green Bay, the preschool moved to the site of a former bowling green in Glen Eden in 2009.

The grounds were bare when they arrived. Staff and whanau laid a serpentine footpath and sandpit for the children a few years ago. The centre is nicely positioned and elevated, surrounded by a park with views of the Waitakere Ranges.

Now, with a wave of Radio Live’s wand and some hard graft, they have a food forest filled with a range of pip and stone fruit trees, citrus, tamarillo, plus guava and blueberry bushes, perfect for little fingers to pick. Tukutuku panels from the old Green Bay Kohanga Reo bring continuity to the new location, taking pride of place on a brush fence surrounding the fruit forest.

The grassed play area features low-maintenance native grasses, colourful flaxes and trees, including a totara and three puriri to attract native birds such as kereru. Large grade trees were manhandled into position for instant effect. Three large magnolias provide instant structure and will produce glorious scent when they flower.

Raised planter boxes were built at perfect preschooler height so the kids can help tend and pick from the gardens. The teachers pointed out that the children enjoy picking green leaves to nibble straight out of this garden, even if they pull faces at salad greens in their lunches. Kohanga reo teacher Rebecca Leaf said their aim for the vege garden is to use only heirloom seed collected from whanau. This provides a lovely connection for the children with their food heritage, linking them with their kaumatua. Rebecca’s uncle is supplying taewa maori (potatoes) and rock melon seed is coming from an aunty. They were given kamokamo seed by Rebecca’s tupuna wahine (grandmother), Reverend Judy Cooper, a founding member of the kohanga who was awarded a Queen’s Service Medal this year for services to Maori arts and the community.

With Rebecca’s young son there are now four generations of the Cooper whanau actively involved in the kohanga reo. Chairperson Terry Davis is justifiably proud of it.

The kohanga reo differs from other playcentres and kindergartens as it has a lesson plan, with a chosen subject each term and the learning environment is governed by whanau. The children are learning about whanaungatanga, gaining a sense of connection about where they come from, shared experiences and a sense of belonging. Next term the children will learn about the environment through Papatuanuku (the Earth Mother) and Ranginui (Sky Father), to tie in with Matariki.

This is Terry’s last year as chairperson. His youngest, Paewaka, will soon be heading to Te Kura Kaupapa but I’m sure Terry will come back to visit, to check on the progress of this magnificent garden and to pick apples in the fruit forest with his mokopuna.

I wondered if the new gardens will inspire lessons.

Rebecca says this year’s lesson plan was already sorted before the garden came into being, but the garden will be a great resource for the staff and their charges in years to come. She says the children are already inventive, drawing pictures with pieces of bark on the concrete path and testing their agility walking across rocks in the new landscape.

A pile of rocky rubble near the food forest will be a good home for native skinks and other wildlife. Fruit trees and flowering natives will draw birds and insects into the garden and provide ample opportunities for observation and identification exercises for the tamariki.

A worm bin is near the raised vege gardens, and children will soon be able to make the connection between composting food waste and growing healthy food, not to mention squirmy worms to hold.

Check out footage of the two-day makeover at radiolive.co.nz

– Herald on Sunday

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Rooted in history, a garden design for the ages in Maine

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TO VISIT Milena Banks’s garden, which meanders down a hill overlooking Maine’s smallest city, is to wander through the mind of an artist, author, and world traveler who studied flower arranging in Japan and drew inspiration from the landscapes of England’s literary masters.

Banks and her husband, Erik, bought the 60-acre Bath farm, complete with 1812 granite house, in 2004. The land around the house “was just an empty space surrounded by trees and swamp,” she says, standing in the pea-stone driveway at the top of the tranquil hillside. “There was a little puddle at the bottom.”

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The couple, who previously lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, were shopping for a home near a city but with space to rehabilitate an increasing number of rescue animals — another of Banks’s interests. They found the farm on the Internet, but the house was a disaster. She made an offer so low she was sure the seller would refuse. Instead, she and Erik became the new owners.

Photos

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The fine art of garden design in Milton

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DOES YOUR YARD have a problem location? Take a leaf from Beth and Robert Cummings Neville, who have turned a bad site into a good garden. Their Milton home is on a slanting rocky lot 20 feet above a busy street corner. “This place was just shale dust and crab grass when we moved in,” says Beth with a laugh. “We could have fracked it and made natural gas out of it.”

Instead they’ve embraced problems as opportunities. Little by little, since 1988, they have built small terraces to control erosion while colonizing each rocky outcropping with improved soil and suitable plantings. For 25 years they’ve had a “no rake policy” under their hedges, leaving leaves and pine needles alone there each autumn to enrich the soil, and spreading their lawn clippings on areas that need a vitamin shot.

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Their efforts have developed almost two dozen mini gardens, each with a name and theme, in styles ranging from Asian fusion to Italianate. The resulting landscape invites exploration and feels much larger than its third of an acre.

Photos

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Design for smaller garden spaces

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The contemporary wing of this Melbourne Edwardian house includes an elevated lap pool and a small patch of lawn.

Stephen Crafti

As people downsize to smaller homes, it’s not the amount of outdoor space that matters, but the pleasure this well-conceived area brings.

The large suburban back garden has shrunk as people opt for smaller, well-designed outdoor spaces. Whether they take the form of a winter garden (an enclosed balcony) attached to an apartment, or courtyard, these areas can be used all year round.

“It’s important to create an outdoor space protected from the outside world. Having some coverage from the elements is also ideal,” says architect Robert Simeoni.

Simeoni created a treasured outdoor space in his own home in North Fitzroy, Melbourne. As well as a modest patch of granitic sand and fruit trees behind a high brick wall, there’s also an undercover car space. “This concrete [to accommodate one car] was originally used by the factory next door. It’s a reminder of what this site was once used for,” Simeoni says.

As there was limited space on the 80-square-metre site, Simeoni went vertical, creating a three-level home. However, there was sufficient room for a modest garden, including the car space – in all, about 20 square metres. “The car isn’t a permanent fixture. We also use the carport area to entertain family and friends,” says Simeoni, who was keen to create a chiaroscuro effect with the light. “The fruit trees create dappled light to the outdoor space,” he adds. Simeoni also included a small balcony leading from the living areas on the top floor. Although not large enough for a table setting, it creates a wonderful viewing platform to survey the neighbourhood, including a park.

BKK Architects also included a covered outdoor area in a house in an inner city bayside suburb of Melbourne. The two-storey Edwardian house was renovated, with a new contemporary wing. This L-shaped addition, constructed in brick and zinc, includes an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area.

Intense program

Although the outdoor area is relatively large for an inner-city site (about 50 square metres), BKK had to include an intense program within this space. Located between the new wing and what were originally the stables (reworked in the same materials as the extension), the outdoors includes an elevated lap pool and a small patch of lawn. The architects also included a built-in concrete bench and barbecue for outdoor dining. “The key to the design was to make the outdoor space feel spacious. We also wanted to ‘stitch in’ the materials of party brick walls,” says architect Tim Black,, one of three directors of the practice.

“We wanted to combine a number of functions in the one area without having them feeling disjointed,” says Black, who sees a trend towards low-maintenance gardens attuned to urban living.

Architect Luigi Rosselli was also conscious of creating a functional and protected outdoor area for a Victorian terrace in Paddington, Sydney. The terrace, with an attic-style third level, was renovated and extended by Rosselli. “We were fortunate to have an additional sliver of land on one side of the house. This made the garden as well as the house feel more spacious,” he says.

While the house already had a swimming pool in the north-facing back garden, the owners were looking for a more expansive area to entertain outdoors, as well as enjoy the outdoors. “We literally halved the size of the swimming pool. This allowed us to create a small lawn area, as well as a deck,” says Rosselli, who worked with landscape architects Secret Gardens.

To ensure protection from the sun, Rosselli included a large, yellow canvas, retractable awning. Built-in concrete seats and barbecue allow the outdoor area to double as a dining area. “When you’re designing outdoor areas, there should be a balance between shade and areas receiving full light,” he adds.

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How to Design and Plant a Garden for You and Your Cat

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Spring is coming. After a long hard winter, I am really ready to start thinking about getting seeds in the ground or in starting containers, planning new flower and vegetable gardens, and seeing what perennials I have in my yard. And, for the first time, I’m thinking about planning a small garden for my cats. I do have gardening experience (mostly with veggies and some flowers) but I have never thought of planting a garden exclusively for my cats. I’d like to, though.

Here are some tips for creating a garden for a cat:

1. Rethink the definition of “garden”

A garden doesn’t have to be a square plot in the middle of a piece of lawn. It could be a circle, a swaying path, or a small garden in a re-purposed animal stock tank, for example. If you have no lawn, your “garden” might consist of cat-friendly plants in containers, close together in a special area in your living space. If your garden is going to be outside on a lawn, you might think about how close you want it to be to your living space. If you’re able to decide where the garden will be, factor in whether you’ll be transporting cats to and from the garden, whether it will be secure (more below on that), and whether you’ll take better care of the garden if it is closer to where you carrying out most of your life in your living space.

Norwegian Forest Cat sitting in a flower field by Shutterstock.com

2. Consider the type of cats the garden will serve

Your garden design will vary depending upon the types of cats it will serve. If you’re caring for ferals, the garden might be open and unbordered by fencing. The same applies for your indoor/outdoor cats, if you don’t want to confine the cat in the garden. If you have indoor cats that you’ve always protected from predators, you might want to completely enclose the cat garden, so that the cats are protected from overhead or surrounding predators. This could be tricky, and even unattractive or dangerous. To me, it’s hard to find fencing that looks nice. And the flimsier fencing (such as bird netting, for example) could potentially injure a curious cat.

In my case, my cats are indoors, and we live in an area where we can regularly hear close, active packs of coyotes. I do have a four-season porch with amazing lighting and windows. I am considering making this my cat garden.

Cat, red tabby, on chair with garden flowers by Shutterstock.com

3. Play with color and texture

Design is difficult for me — I was not born with the design gene! But an avid gardener friend of mine (who also has a lot of trouble with design) grows beautiful and interesting gardens. She explained that color and texture need to be considered in design. Here is one resource on the topic.

Of course, only plant things that are non-toxic for your cats, and that your cats will love. There’s a lot of information out there about what’s toxic and nontoxic to cats, so read carefully and choose your cat garden plants well. Check out our story about toxic plants.

Also, in choosing the plants for your cat garden, consider the following:

Your available light source/strength, and which plants are suited for that light
Your gardening zone/hardiness, if your garden is outside
Your soil, if the garden is outside, and which plants will thrive in your type of soil
Whether you want to use annuals or perennials, or both

Red cat eating green grass isolated by Shutterstock.com

4. Make the garden work for you as well as your cat

I have certainly made the gardening mistake of going way overboard and getting too many gardens going. I love to garden so much that it’s easy to lose perspective. I want to grow everything, and pretty soon I end up having no time to grow or maintain anything. So, keep perspective. If you love gardening and you know you can commit the time to a cat garden, then go for it.

If you want to make a garden for your cat, but you know you’re not going to have much time to weed or maintain it, then choose plants that require little maintenance, or plant things close enough together so that weeds have less of a chance of encroaching. If you’re really dedicated and you have an outside garden space, you can use landscape cloth underneath the soil to attempt to slow the weeds … but I haven’t had luck with that product. If you know your time is limited, stick to a simple indoor or outdoor container garden, whether you have lawn space or not. Your cat will still get the same enjoyment from spending time in such a garden.

So, have you ever designed a garden for your cat? I would love to hear about it. What did or did not work well? Please share any insights in comments!

More about cats and plants:

More by Catherine Holm:

About Catherine Holm: Told that she is funny but doesn’t know it, accused of being an unintentional con artist by her husband, quiet, with frequent unannounced bursts into dancing liveliness, Cat Holm loves writing about, working for, and living with cats. She is the author of the cat-themed memoir Driving with Cats: Ours for a Short Time, the creator of Ann Catanzaro cat fantasy story gift books, and the author of two short story collections. She loves to dance, be outside whenever possible, read, play with cats, make music, do and teach yoga, and write. Cat lives in the woods, which she loves as much as really dark chocolate, and gets regular inspiration shots along with her double espresso shots from the city.

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Free Landscape Design Talk!

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Have you ever wondered what makes some gardens absolutely outstanding? Would you like yours to be one of those too? Or are you just ready after a long winter to see colorful Alaska gardens in bloom?

In cooperation with the UAF Cooperative Extension, the Resurrection Bay Garden Club presents award-winning Alaska garden designer and author Brenda Adams on Saturday, April 19 at 2 p.m. at the Seward Community Library Museum as she reveals one of the most important secrets to stunning garden beauty. Her FREE presentation “Compelling Combinations – Creating Sizzle and Subtlety” will guide you in the use of foliage, color, texture, form, and other plant attributes to create combinations that far exceed the beauty of each individual plant.

“I’m really looking forward to visiting Seward!” the author said, adding that she has been to our neck of the woods many times before. Brenda, who teaches Garden Design at the University of Alaska Anchorage, has designed more than 150 unique gardens and was president of the Homer Garden Club for six years. She is the celebrated author of “There’s a Moose in My Garden,” which will also be available for purchase and signing at the meeting.

If interested in hiring Brenda while she is in town, you can contact her directly by calling 235-1900 or by calling brenda@gardensbybrenda.com.

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Melissa Garden Design

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Don’t forget Melissa Garden Design of Fethiye offers high quality plants, garden design and maintenance services.

Melissa Garden Design of Fethiye is almost /directly opposite Azda on the 22-metre road. Melissa takes its name from its owner, Melis, a graduate of prestigious Istanbul University’s Landscape Design department.

Melis offers a comprehensive garden design and maintenance service from pools (swimming and purely decorative) to outdoor buildings – one of which features in the front garden of her site – to garden furniture, accessories and landscaping work in general – with lots of interesting, high quality plants, shrubs and trees also on offer.

What’s more Melis speaks fluent English and, with her background in cosmopolitan Istanbul, is very sympathetic to the demands of foreign residents establishing gardens here.

So, if you want an unusual plant for a gift check out the range of clematis in stock, or invest in a standard rose. In the meantime, if you have recently built a house and not yet considered what to do with the garden, or if you are bored and want a garden makeover, go down to Melissa Garden Design and talk to Melis.

For more information click www.melissalandscape.com and take a look at their colourful website.

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Spring 2014 Home & Garden Design

Wildlife-friendly, drought-tolerant gardens on ‘natives’ tour in Contra Costa …

The Organic Rotation Garden: Four Square Design

Gardening: Big lessons outdoors

Rooted in history, a garden design for the ages in Maine

Related

Photos

The fine art of garden design in Milton

Related

Photos

Design for smaller garden spaces

Intense program

How to Design and Plant a Garden for You and Your Cat

1. Rethink the definition of “garden”

2. Consider the type of cats the garden will serve

3. Play with color and texture

4. Make the garden work for you as well as your cat

Free Landscape Design Talk!

Melissa Garden Design

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