Some garden advice can be heeded no matter where you live. But much in gardening and landscaping revolves around the specifics of location — weather, terrain, soil type and design preferences.

That’s where the redesigned and updated “Sunset Western Garden Book of Landscaping,” edited by Sunset magazine’s Kathleen Norris Brenzel (Oxmoor House, $29.95, paper), has an edge over a more general guide.

A section on plants, for example, includes chapters on palms, ornamental grasses, tropicals, succulents, cactus and natives. It’s not the kind of vegetation you’re likely to find in Connecticut or upstate New York. And many outdoor living areas pictured in the book appear to be designed for year-round use.

• Also

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  ‘Groundbreaking Food Gardens’ presents 73 themed plans

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  Tomatomania sales and other events that can jump-start spring gardens

• 

  Suzy Amis and James Cameron’s 100-acre mini farm near Santa Barbara

• 

  Photos: The Global Garden in photos

• 

  Garden is her canvas, flowers and edibles (and chickens) her paint

The new volume — companion to “The New Sunset Western Garden Book” (sometimes called the “gardening bible” for the Western U.S.) — gives a good overview of elements to consider when creating a residential landscape. This edition focuses on Earth-friendly design.

Sections on structures, plants, finishing touches and planning are lavishly illustrated with 600 color photographs of Western gardens that offer ideas and inspiration. Short chapters with expanded captions briefly tell the story of each garden and include plant types and landscaping details.

A planning section outlines the basics of site evaluation, goal setting and design principles. Also included are chapters on coping with fire and wind, capturing rainwater and using vegetation to cool a garden and provide privacy.

Landscaping for pets and wildlife is discussed as well. To keep dogs from digging under a fence, the book suggests adding a landscaped “river” of stones along the base. And if you want to attract butterflies, provide a shallow container of water with pebbles on which they can perch while drinking.

ALSO:

2014 spring garden tours scheduled for April and May

QA with interior designer and ‘Collected Cool’ author Jay Jeffers

‘About a Boy’s’ Victorian duplex designed to highlight differences

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: @latimeshome | pinterest.com/latimeshome | facebook.com/latimeshome | facebook.com/latimesgarden

anne.colby@latimes.com

Twitter: @acolby

TAMPA – Spring has sprung and that means the University of South Florida Botanical Gardens is set to host its biggest event of the year.

The 25th annual Spring Plant Festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdayand from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundayat 12210 USF Pine Drive, on the southwest corner of the USF Tampa campus.

Admission is $5 per person but children under 12 and USF Botanical Gardens members are admitted free. Parking is also free.

“Growers come from all over Florida and you’ll get advice from the people you know and grow the plants,” said Kim Hutton, USF Botanical Gardens special events and volunteer coordinator.

More than 70 vendors – from commercial growers to local plant-related organizations – will be on hand to show and sell a wide assortment of spring plants and gardening items.

Talks by plant experts are planned hourly on Saturday. They include a workshop about organic vegetable gardening at 11 a.m. followed at noon with a seminar by George Kish, co-author of “Native Florida Plants for Drought- and Salt-Tolerant Landscaping.”

He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Drexel University and a master’s degree in environmental science from Rutgers University.

“Gardening in Florida’s coastal and dry inland areas can be quite challenging, but if you use native plants the payoff is huge,” said Kish, a recent retiree from the U.S. Geological Survey in Tampa and part-time environmental science teacher at St. Petersburg College in Seminole.

Sunday’s talks include one at noon on beekeeping and another at 1 p.m. titled Orchids for Beginners by Peter Skoglund, an advance placement physics and honors physics teacher at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel who volunteers at the USF Botanical Gardens on weekends.

“I’m going to emphasize that orchids are not hard to grow,” said Skoglund, who earned a doctorate in plant physiology at Penn State University. “Types like oncidium are easy to grow outside under a tree and flower a couple times a year with very little attention.”

While their parents are shopping and/or attending the various seminars their youngsters are invited to spend their time in the free children’s craft area.

For more information, call (813) 974-2329 for more information.

Joyce McKenzie can be reached at joycecmckenzie@gmail.com.

At the height of summer, the garden near Horseshoe Pond is a mix of grasses, and blooming annuals and perennials. The garden, created and maintained by the Wilton Garden Club, was singled out for a landscape design award. (Jeannette Ross photo)

Folks who drive on River Road past the garden at Horseshoe Pond Park during warm weather can be forgiven for rubbernecking as they approach the traffic light at Wolfpit Road. After all, it is easy to get distracted by the unexpected profusion of flowers bursting from the garden planted along the side of the road. Now, nearly six years to the day after the Wilton Garden Club designed and installed the Horseshoe Pond garden, the Federated Garden Club of Connecticut has bestowed its prestigious “Tribute Award for Landscape Design” on the club in recognition of its efforts.

“The ruggedness of this garden amazes me,” says club member Suzanne Knutson, who designed the garden. “It gets hit with sand and salt spray during the winter, which is terrible for the soil, and it gets no supplemental watering during the summer, yet it still manages to look beautiful throughout the growing season.”

Ms. Knutson points out a wide assortment of ornamental grasses form the backbone of the garden. “The grasses are the key to the garden’s success because they’re drought-tolerant, low-maintenance and deer-resistant,” she said.

In early spring, members of the club’s Civics Committee clean out the bed, cut back the roses and plant an assortment of annuals. Afterward, they do the same for gardens the club maintains at the post office, the Veterans Memorial Green, and the “Town of Wilton” sign at the intersection of Route 7 and Ridgefield Road.

While the club’s members do most of the maintenance, they hire professional landscapers to put down a heavy layer of mulch in the spring and weed periodically during the summer.

“We hire workers to do the really heavy work, but that gets expensive, so we try to do as much as possible ourselves,” Ms. Knutson said. “We also spend a lot of money on the annuals we plant, so it’s really important that our plant sale is successful,” she added, referring to the club’s annual Mother’s Day Plant Sale. “That’s where we get the money to pay for everything.”

This is the 75th year the Wilton Garden Club will host its annual Mother’s Day Plant Sale. The sale, which is the club’s primary fund-raiser, will be held on Friday, May 9, from noon to 6, and Saturday, May 10, from 9 to noon, rain or shine, at Wilton’s Town Green.

The project included building a state-of-the-art, environmentally sensitive laboratory and warehouse and making various landscape improvements to accompany the additions, according to a company news release. The company’s goal with the expansion was to create the most ecologically friendly setting possible, the release stated.

The Ball Premier Laboratory has been certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, and the project’s corporate campus landscape improvements have received the following awards:

• Conservation Native Landscaping Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Chicago Wilderness
• Environmental Stewardship Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Illinois Chapter
• Excellence in Landscape Award from the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association.

The streetscape and main entrance of Ball Horticultural Company, a world leader in plant development and distribution, previously consisted mostly of turf with a few trees and planting beds, according to the release. Now, most of the turf has been replaced with a walkway and colorful flower beds that create a prairie and savanna.

“The result is a naturalistic, landscaped corridor,” the release stated.

At the back of the company complex, a central courtyard created by the addition of the Ball Premier Laboratory features turf and native prairie and savanna landscapes. Edible gardens and ornamental landscapes border the main terrace, and employees are allowed to harvest fruits and flowers, according to the release. Woodland and wetland gardens also are part of the new landscaping.

Native plants make up about 75 percent of the project area, with more than 150 species of native grasses and forbs within the prairie, savanna, woodland and wetland landscapes, the release stated.

The property also includes five large rain gardens that help slow rainwater. Planted swales take overflow from adjacent sidewalks to the site’s detention basin.

The clean water that does enter the detention area helps to sustain wetland plants in the bottom of the basin, adding another ecosystem and additional biodiversity to the landscape, according to the release.

By Lynne Smith


Posted Apr. 5, 2014 @ 3:36 pm

LINCOLN

By Mike Danahey
mdanahey@stmedianetwork.com
@DanaheyECN

April 7, 2014 5:50PM

Article Extras

Updated: April 7, 2014 7:57PM

McHENRY CO. — While old campgrounds are the stuff of ghost stories and horror movies, Camp Algonquin recently found itself recognized as being endangered and having historical, architectural significance.

That’s to say the site along the Fox River between Cary and Algonquin off Cary-Algonquin Road recently was named to Landmark Illinois’ 19th annual list of the 10 most endangered places in the state.

The nonprofit has been working to protect historical places throughout Illinois for more than 40 years. According to a press release for the organization since the list’s inception in 1995, a third of the properties mentioned have been saved, less than a quarter have been demolished, and the rest are in various stages “between being continually threatened and rehabilitation.”

On past lists, the group has included Elgin spaces such as the two vacant buildings at the Elgin Mental Health Center designed by noted modernist architect Bertrand Goldberg (of Marina Towers fame) and completed between 1966 and 1967; the classical revivalist-style David C. Cook Publishing Co. Building that went up in 1901; and the Prairie School-styled Fox River Country Day School, which has been the subject of controversy recently as a group has been working to rent some of the now-Elgin owned buildings on the campus to start a charter school.

As for Camp Algonquin, the 116-acre site closed in 2011 and is overseen by the McHenry County Conservation District.

According to information provided by the district, the grounds are only one of four camps built in the United States during the “Fresh Air in the Country” movement during the late-1800s, a movement fueled by the belief that spending some time in a rural environment would alleviate problems caused by inner-city poverty.

“In 1907, a fresh air camp was established on 20 acres along the Fox River. The camp was supported by the Chicago Bureau of Charities, Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Tribune, Oak Park churches and numerous private donors,” the material states. The district’s communications manager, Wendy Kummerer, noted that buildings at Camp Algonquin wound up sporting the names of such sponsors.

The camp stands within a wooded, hilly landscape that once belonged to the Gillian family, the first white settlers of McHenry County, the material states.

“In 1910, the noted landscape architect Jens Jensen — whose work includes parts of Lincoln Park in Chicago — was hired to produce a plan for the original 20 acres of the camp. A detailed site plan from February 1911 depicts 16 buildings … as well as a swimming pool, council ring and extensive native landscaping, vegetable gardens and trails,” the material states.

It adds, “During the Chicago Relief and Aid Society’s years of operation, ill and underprivileged Chicago mothers and their children were brought to the camp and educated on proper nutrition and physical health.”

Chicago-based Metropolitan Family Services at one time ran the facility, but by 2004 sold it to the McHenry County Conservation District. The YMCA of McHenry County operated the facility on behalf of the district until it filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and the camp closed.

Kummerer noted that the district has performed maintenance on the site’s 47 buildings but that quite a few are in disrepair. Last year, the district decided to sell furniture and other items and that most of the structures would be torn down.

Kummerer said the district is working on a master plan that includes reviewing the camp and surrounding land, with the hopes of saving some of the structures. However, it has been estimated it would take millions of dollars to do so, Kummerer said, and currently there are no identified funding sources for this work.

While the buildings would be an added plus, Kummerer noted that the local flora and fauna make the land along the river invaluable for the region, with the district committed to keeping it as natural open space.

The excitement is building, as the days get longer and everywhere around you spring is in full bloom. In Carpinteria, that means one thing: Carpinteria Beautiful’s 2014 Annual Home and Garden Tour. Always the last Saturday in April, this year’s home and garden tour is all about inspiration, creativity and celebrating the small community with a big heart. For 17 years this self-guided tour through some of Carpinteria’s best homes and gardens has been a wonderful venue for those who love amazing architecture, décor and landscaping.

Each year the Home and Garden Tour focuses on bringing you a variety of homes and landscapes to enjoy and stimulate the imagination. This year we are welcoming guests into five very unique homes and one expansive seven-acre landscaped oasis. We can’t give all of our secrets away, but we can give you a small glimpse of the diverse lineup of homes and gardens that will make up this splendid day. Three of the homes are located within the downtown area of Carpinteria. Each home uniquely showcasing the diverse lifestyles and exceptional character that makes up our small town. A Nantucket style beach vacation retreat, a Spanish Mediterranean home with a one of kind mural done by local artist John Wullbrandt and a new construction home that is an open-concept family home with lots of whimsical charm and an exquisite use of modern materials. Our other three properties are all located in the foothills of Carpinteria and offer some of the most

stunning views of the Rincon surf point, the mountain ranges and valleys. You will be treated to a tour of a historic 1928 ranch house and a Post-Modern home that houses a wonderful collection of paintings, sculptures and photography. You will want to have your notebook in hand and your most comfortable shoes while exploring our featured landscape property. Strolling this property you will be enchanted by the array of tropical plantings, and authentic poolside Tiki Hut and even a formal rose garden and expansive views of mountains and ocean.

According the Donnie Nair, Chairperson for the Home and Garden Tour, “Everyone has their own unique method for exploring the homes, and we certainly do not put any restrictions on the time you spend at each location or the order in which you want to explore the properties. We hope people will plan to spend the whole day exploring the town of Carpinteria having lunch, shopping and touring this year’s extraordinary homes and gardens.”

The event is $30.00 per person and the ticket includes a detailed map and brief description of each home and garden. You will also be treated to homemade cookies and our secret recipe lemonade during the tour. Tickets go on sale April 1 at the following locations throughout Carpinteria: Sandcastle Time, The Cotton Company, Porch, Curious Cup Bookshop, Susan Willis, Carpinteria Lumber, and Roxanne’s A Wish and a Dream. You can also purchase tickets at the Carpinteria Farmer’s Market every Thursday throughout April. You may also purchase your tickets by mail, send check and a return postage envelope to PO Box 1294, Carpinteria, CA 93014.

Get your tickets early as this event does sell out!

Carpinteria Beautiful is a non-profit organization and donations are tax-deductible. All proceeds benefit Carpinteria Beautiful’s many community projects throughout the year. To learn more about this event or see what Carpinteria Beautiful is doing to keep Carpinteria clean, green and beautiful, please visit the Carpinteria Beautiful website: www.carpinteriabeautiful.org. Follow us on Facebook @ www.facebook.com/carpinteriabeautiful for the latest updates on the Home and Garden Tour, including features and photos for this year’s tour. Contact Committee Chair, Donnie Nair by calling 684-9328 for more information.

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The trend towards homeowners wanting to improve and perfect the home they live in is a phenomenon that Dean Savarino sees constantly. In some cases, families have been discussing and imagining the changes they would like to make for years. Moving the dreamer’s vision to reality is a tough leap. Homeowners know the routine on adding space or renovating kitchens in their house: you need a plan and you call a designer or an architect. “Most of my clients are wanting to enjoy their home and their backyard,” he explains. “The majority of homes we work with are existing homes and we’re enhancing them.”

But when the improvements involves exterior space, when the homeowners want to put in a pool, an outdoor kitchen, a pavilion, a greenhouse, a pizza oven or a scenic garden—there is dissonance. Here’s what could happen: The homeowner, so thrilled with the interior renovation, gazes out the window of her new, high-tech kitchen onto the pristine blue water of the recently-installed pool, realizes that in order to get to the pool she has to cross a wide and dusty gravel road.

This is not exactly what happened one of Dean’s clients but it’s close enough. The family had nurtured a fantastic idea about an indoor-outdoor space. “Two flat screens built-in above the gigantic fireplace along one of the walls,” Dean readily accesses a farily dramatic set of photos of this unique renovation. The outdoor space is a great room with large comfortable seating, beautifully lit, windows showing bright green foliage decorating the front area of the house, visible through the back wall of the renovation. The other two sides of the space have no walls, but are flanked by classic stone pillars that extend out to a patio and a pool. The first time Dean saw it his jaw dropped. The thoughtful and carefully designed outdoor living space suddenly stopped. Piles of bricks, tufts of grass and pebbles surrounding the exquisite pool—he had seldom seen a contrast so stark.

Kind of a nightmare, but a wonderful challenge in his mind. “We have a very unique, new program now, through technology and CAD renderings we can show our clients in 3D exactly what the project is going to look like. “You really want to start with a plan,” he says, whether you’re building a house, a garden or a landscape.” A good design matters especially when you are integrating it with an architectural interior design that is already in place. (It’s not unusual for Dean to work with another designer, architect, lighting company or implement a sound system into a master plan he’s created for a landscape.)

Now that Dean’s has powerful computers for design graphics he can produce complex and visually complete images and the drawings will incorporate pieces to the puzzle that come from other sources, plumbers, electricians, even materials vendors. Putting a client’s ideas into a plan—for a $500 fee–could require a 15-hour investment for Dean Savarino; he welcomes the risk. Whether he ultimately gets the job or not, he has done his best interpretation and the design he thinks is most likely to succeed.

And Dean finds that more and more his clients will opt for an artistic risk. The clients crave the authentic and original. “We had a client who wanted a large, circular granite couch with a fire pit in the center,” Dean says. “So I said this dinky fire pit is not going to look right, it’s too small. So, we built this fire table.” The table which is long and narrow, but runs across the center of the circular space in the front of the stone couch has coals and flames in a strip down the middle. It’s breathtaking. “We built a whole outdoor kitchen and worked with the heating company to run an extra large gas line. The bricks were cut and made custom.

“I don’t like the usual, but a lot of our customers don’t want the cookie-cutter approach either. You have to listen to what they want. Ask the right questions. And then you know the materials you are going to use. You know what it will look like in the sun, how the pool is going to work visually with the trees. I know what the atmosphere will be like. We have put in vertical gardens for clients for privacy, for instance.”

“The work is amazing and challenging,” Dean says. “When I stand back and look at what we were able to do together with our client, it’s really unbelievable.”

DEAN’S LAWN LANDSCAPING

238 KENNEDY AVE.

SCHERERVILLE, INDIANA

219.864.9078

www.deanslandscaping.com

The 3^rd Annual Central Florida Landscape Garden Fair will be held May 3-4 at Discovery Gardens at the Lake County Agricultural Center, located at 1951 Woodlea Road in Tavares.

The fair will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Saturday’s presentations include Teresa Watkins on Florida Friendly Landscaping, Steve Earls on Square Foot Gardening, Tom MacCubbin on Edible Landscapes, Anne Keller on Geocaching and Jonathan Squires on No Turf Landscapes.

• Topics
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  Gardening
  
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  Lake County (Florida)
  

On Sunday, presentations include Karina Veaudry on Native Plants and residential horticulture agent with the UF/IFAS Extension in Lake County Brooke Moffis on Hot Plants, Cool Looks.

The free event will provide visitors an opportunity to browse and purchase goods from dozens of exhibitors specializing in landscaping, gardening, irrigation, fertilizer, composting, hardscapes and more.

This year’s fair brings back the popular Children’s Passport, which children will have a chance to complete by stopping by the designated locations on the map.

Exhibitor booths ranging from 10 inch by 10 inch to 10 inch by 20 inch, and food vendor spaces are available, as well as sponsorships ranging in cost from $250 for silver level to $750 for platinum level. Vendors and sponsors can register online at www.lakecountyfl.gov/gardenfair. 

The deadline to register is Friday, April 4. For more information, call Tina Chavez at 352-343-9647 or email tchavez@lakecountyfl.gov.

Discovery Gardens is located on more than four acres behind the Lake County Agricultural Center and features 20 themed gardens, including a string of lush courtyards and six specially designed children’s gardens.

The Garden Landscape Symposium of Western Pennsylvania is an annual rite of spring for many plant enthusiasts — even before they slip their green thumbs into their garden gloves for the first time after a long winter.

The event features a day filled with presentations by horticultural experts and a garden marketplace for stocking up on new plant varieties, garden accessories and botanical artwork. A new addition this year is the annual daffodil show hosted by the Daffodil Hosta Society of Western Pennsylvania.

Keynote speaker Michael Dirr, a retired professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia, is well known for his numerous plant introductions and has written more than 300 articles and scientific papers and several books, including an encyclopedia of hardy trees and shrubs. He says the reference book took nearly two years to complete and was a labor of love.

One of the plants that Dirr popularized is the’ Endless Summer’ hydrangea, a hardy plant that can bloom on the current and previous seasons’ growth, providing colorful flowers all summer. He came across the plant in a test field in a nursery in Minnesota.

“ ‘Endless Summer’ was a serendipitous happening,â€� he says. “I was proud of the excitement it generated among gardeners. It also stimulated a breeding frenzy with companies trying to produce reblooming Hydrangea macrophylla. The garden world is better because of the introduction of ‘Endless Summer.’ â€�

Dirr is a partner in a plant-breeding business and says he is constantly traveling and reading to research where the ornamental-plant market is heading. He also is committed to spreading the word about the importance of planting “noble trees,� which he defines as deciduous broadleaf trees that change color with the seasons and stand more than 50 feet tall.

In one of his two talks at the symposium, “In Praise of Noble Trees,� he will elaborate on the rationale for planting noble trees and the best of new tree introductions according to function, ornamental traits and pest-resistance.

“I hope to inspire and educate the attendees to plant noble trees. The payoff for such activity is multigenerational,� Dirr says.

Also speaking will be Sinclair Adam, Penn State Extension floriculture educator in Lebanon County, who will discuss new perennials for 2014 and the importance of incorporating native plants in gardens.

“Native plants are the fundamental building block in Pennsylvania plant communities,� he says. “It is environmentally sound thinking to incorporate those species and their selections — sometimes called nativars — in Pennsylvania gardens and landscapes. These plants will support many species of insects, including our very important pollinator insects.�

Adam says new plant selections and hybrids are an exciting aspect of horticulture. Some of them turn out to be assets to gardens; others don’t stand the test of time. Some of the new plants that will be presented at the symposium include Tiarella ‘Sherry Kitto,’ Penstemon ‘Red Riding Hood,’ Coreopsis ‘Electric Avenue,’ Echinacea ‘Guava Ice’ and Brunnera ‘Silver Heart.’

Jeff Gillman, horticulture instructor at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, N.C., will give a presentation about the benefits and drawbacks of organic gardening.

“Organic gardening can be healthy for us and good for the environment, but not all organic gardening practices are created equal,â€� he says. “The greatest benefit is an improvement in soil through use of mulches and compost. The biggest challenge is figuring out which organic practices are really worthwhile. Just because it’s organic, it doesn’t mean it’s good for us or the environment.â€�

Maryann Frazier, senior extension associate in the Department of Entomology at Penn State, will address declining pollinator populations and how gardeners and landscapers can improve habitats and reduce risks in her presentation, “Will There Still Be Honey for Your Tea?�

Some 15 regional vendors representing nurseries, garden centers and farms will have a variety of plants and related items for sale, including 20 varieties of scented geraniums, dwarf conifers, Japanese maples, drought-tolerant plants, deer-resistant perennials and shrubs, cyclamen and Colocasia tubers, onion and leek plants, garden tools and books. Penn State Master Gardeners will be available to answer gardening-related questions.

Candy Williams is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.