View full sizeLandscape expert Ahmed Hassan of DIY Network’s “Yard Crashers” is among the celebrity guests at the Great Big Home Garden Show at the I-X Center, Feb. 8-16, 2014. Tiffanie Hassan

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Landscaping expert Ahmed Hassan knew at an early age that he wanted to be just like his father, a landscaper in Compton, Calif. “I grew up knowing I wanted to work with my hands, wearing jeans and smelling like diesel fuel,” Hassan said.

Fast forward a few decades, and Hassan has matured into a professional landscaper who funneled his passion for horticulture into hosting DIY Network’s “Yard Crashers” and its spin-off “Turf War.”

Hassan is one of the celebrity guests at the Great Big Home Garden Show, Saturday, Feb. 8 through Sunday, Feb. 16 at the I-X Center in Cleveland. The show, known for injecting a welcome burst of color into the drab Northeast Ohio winter, offers home decorating and home-improvement inspiration.

His appearances will be at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8; and noon and 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9.

The Great Big Home Garden Show will also include these highlights:

Frank Fritz of the History Channel’s “American Pickers” is scheduled to appear Saturday, Feb. 15.

The Idea Home, sponsored by Perrino Builders Interiors, shows off trends for building, remodeling and decorating. The ranch house melds traditional and contemporary styles and has beamed 12-foot ceilings, a master spa bath and a “Jack and Jill” bathroom.

The Garden Showcase features international-themed gardens created by some of the area’s top landscapers.

The Dream Basement showcase highlights an audiovisual theater designed by Xtend Technologies.

Celebrity Designer Rooms feature interiors created by local designers and inspired by local television or radio celebrities.

Visitors to the Home Garden Show will leave with extravagant ideas for their backyards – only a few of which are feasible.

In the past few years, Hassan, 40, has seen his landscaping company’s jobs expand from traditional designs that cost about $20,000 to designs that incorporate up to $90,000 in outdoor kitchens, fire and water features. Clients want outdoor televisions and stereo systems, dimmable lights, foggers and automated irrigation, which requires Hassan to oversee electricians, welders and plumbers to get the job done.

“They want bells and whistles,” he said. “It’s a lot more complex.”

Some clients insist on a specific plant without considering whether it will do well in their yard, Hassan said. It’s his job to educate the client about better botanical choices.

Hassan was hired by DIY Network in the mid-2000s, a time when the network was trying to get the husbands of its female viewers to watch its shows. Hassan, who was hosting an obscure gardening show on DIY at the time, got the nod to host “Yard Crashers,” which followed the familiar format of client ambush, two-day makeover and reveal. (You can catch the show, with co-host and licensed contractor Matt Blashaw, at 11 p.m. Mondays on DIY.)

“Yard Crashers” spawned a spin-off, “Turf War,” a competition that pitted landscapers against homeowners and a ticking clock. “It took landscaping and turned it into a sport,” he said. Episodes of “Turf War” and “Yard Crashers” also aired on DIY’s sister station, HGTV.

Hassan left both shows at the end of 2011 because he was frustrated by their formatted nature. He wanted variety in every episode but “apparently that’s not the way TV works,” he said.

Hassan lives in Sacramento and produces industrial videos and web content for the horticulture industry, and he runs his landscape company. He still loves working outdoors doing landscaping, wielding chain saws and climbing trees, although he doesn’t get his hands dirty as much as he used to.

“Landscaping has always been an art form, not work, for me,” he said.

DETAILS

The Great Big Home Garden Show: Home improvement inspiration with international-themed garden showcase, Idea Home, cooking stage, special guests and more.

When: Saturday, Feb. 8 through Sunday, Feb. 16

Where:  The I-X Center, 6200 Riverside Drive, Cleveland.

Hours: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday, Feb. 10-14; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16.

Tickets: $14, adults; $10, seniors (Monday-Thursday only); free for children 5 and younger. 

Contact: www.greatbighomeandgarden.com/‎

By Katie Marks


Posted Jan. 29, 2014 @ 1:01 am

GHNS

One hundred and forty years of farming in the same locality by descendants of two families makes an impressive story, rich in detail of hard working lives.

Keen gardener Margaret Pullar has written the story of her husband Gordon’s Trapski-Pullar families, based in the Pukerau district.

The book launch took place in the garden of what is now their son’s home, on land that will have witnessed many family gatherings over six generations.

But while the book does include an appendix with treasured family recipes, it doesn’t have a lot to say about gardening.

This isn’t surprising given how much there is to cover in such a book, but also because there might not be a lot to say until recent times.

There’s little in the historical record, unless you count an 1881 report noting approvingly that fences had all been planted with gorse hedges.

Living memory now only reaches back to Gordon’s generation – he was born in 1927 – but the circumstances he describes from his childhood would be common earlier too.

There was just too much work on a family farm for anyone to have time to grow anything more than food, he recalls.

Water could be in short supply, depending on rainwater.

He recalls his mother growing wallflowers in a house border, there was a peony rose tree in the middle of the lawn, some flax bushes, and little else.

Because food was needed in such quantities, paddock gardening was practised, and Gordon recalls big areas of potatoes, “beautiful potatoes without disease,” which were stored over winter in pits covered in straw and soil to protect them from the frost.

Other veges mass-grown were cabbages, caulis and lettuces – and peas.

“Kids loved peas. You could go out there and have a feed and no- one asked any questions.”

Children were encouraged to learn gardening as an essential life skill through the Boys’ and Girls’ Agriculture Club, and Gordon still recalls his first-year successes with carrots, parsnips and beetroot.

After a lifetime of growing food as both a farmer and gardener he has the authority to say:

“You’ve got to think ahead and sideways for a vege garden.”

Veges also came first when as newlyweds, he and Margaret built their own first home in 1958.

Like the pioneer generations, they started on a bare paddock site, but were able to shape the grounds with the moving power of a crawler tractor.

As ever, shelter was a prime consideration, and the solid hedge behind the house is also a memorial to a young relative, Colin Knox, a brilliant student and keen mountaineer, who helped plant it.

“You will have to tell your grandchildren I planted the hedge,” he announced, a request that soon seemed tragically prophetic, for he died young in a climbing accident in the French Alps.

Establishing a garden around the new house was a challenge, Margaret recalls.

“Coming from Northland I didn’t understand Southland gardening.”

Northland had huge water shortages in homesteads and didn’t have big gardens either, just a lot of shrubs and fruit trees, especially citrus.

She laughs looking at old photos, noting the flowers she initially grew were those familiar from the north – iceplant, geraniums, dahlias and hydrangeas.

“I didn’t know about rhododendrons.”

She recalls noticing Southlanders’ enthusiasm for currants and gooseberries.

“They were in everybody’s gardens. I thought the red currants were absolutely beautiful.”

But her main memory of her own early garden is of weeding.

“We didn’t ever feed the garden very well and certainly didn’t water it.”

In the late 1960s Anne Lewis helped with a redesign, and photos show this took in the current fashion for a heady mix of plants, and for conifers.

In a story that will resonate in many households, a golden thuja had grown ever more beautiful, until the men of the household decided it was shading the lounge, and in that decisive way of men with chainsaws, they removed it.

Margaret recalls being utterly shocked to come home and find it gone, although she’s now willing to admit it did open the garden up.

While larger than the pioneer garden (as evidenced by aged macrocarpas framing tiny sites) this was still a garden of enclosed spaces, including stone boundary walls constructed after Gordon’s Nuffield Fellowship year in Britain.

“We’d fallen in love with them in Scotland. Though they’re not orthodox,” he says.

(He knew the stones weren’t the right shape, so used sand and cement.)

The wall-building story indicates the seasonal lull farmers once enjoyed in winter, when after two hours feeding out, Gordon and farm worker Jack Taylor could spend the rest of the day on the walls.

In 2005, designer Arne Cleland helped the next generation on the farm, Philip and Shirlie Pullar, redevelop the garden.

The Pullars had first met district newcomer Arne when Gordon was buying the horizontal elm, one of many specimen trees Gordon selected for planting in a paddock beside the house.

Arne’s offer to help plant the elm was welcome, given this was a tree requiring an A-frame cradle on a large truck to transport it home.

Arne became a family friend, and saw the garden grow over the years.

His redesign has unmistakeably 21st century landscaping priorities.

The garden is integrated with the house – large doors open onto a deck flush with the lawn – and with the wider countryside by a subtle design of shapes that draws the eye outward.

It respects the past, by using and even repeating plants to reflect the family heritage, but garden beds are reduced, and some are mass planted, often with native plants, to minimise maintenance.

The roses from an earlier era are liberated from formal beds and integrated into mixed plots with repeat plantings.

And while many of the hedges dividing up spaces are gone, and the grove of mature trees, including the horizontal elm, is now part of the park-like vista from the house, the stone walls remain as a statement of continuity.

GARDEN FEATURE

One anecdote in the Pullar- Trapski story can be claimed as garden-related.

A young lad rushed inside bearing a find he had dug up, just when it was Mum’s turn to host the visiting drama tutor, a Mr Worthington.

This tutor had a fine sense of decorum but maybe his dramatic sensitivities carried the day when the prized find on exhibition was a cat skeleton, produced with the triumphant cry, “We’ve found Ginger.”

Hopefully Ginger got a better burial, and if nothing else, the story can serve as a reminder that graves of favoured family pets are such a common garden feature

– © Fairfax NZ News

Sponsored links

Comments

The next “Saturday in the Garden,” a speaker series featuring Florida-friendly landscaping, is 10 a.m. Saturday.

The Lake County Extension Office of University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences will present the program at the Lake County Agricultural Center, 1951 Woodlea Road, Tavares.

Brooke Moffis, residential horticulture agent, will present this month’s program, “Pruning Your Landscape.” Participants will learn how and when to prune landscape trees, shrubs and palms.

• Topics
• 
  
  Laws and Legislation
  
• 
  
  Agriculture
  
• 
  
  Soccer
  
• See more topics »

Participants are welcome to visit the Discovery Gardens at the center following the class. The outdoor learning center is on 3.5 acres, which features a variety of themed gardens.

Discovery Gardens will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. the first Saturday of each month. The public is invited to visit the gardens. Admission is free.

The fee for the class is $5 for adults and free for children 16 and younger. To register, visit bit.ly/1cWkZqu or call 352-343-4101, Ext. 2714.

Library programs

•Marion Baysinger Memorial Library, 756 W. Broad St. in Groveland, will present “Winter Car Care Tips and Tricks” at 11 a.m. Thursday. A representative from O’Reilly Auto Parts will present the free program.

There also will be door prizes. Details: Jennifer Moton, 352-429- 5840.

• The October Mountain Washtub Band will entertain with classic country, bluegrass, gospel, patriotic and pop music at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday at the Leesburg Public Library, 100 E. Main St.

Seating is limited for the free event. Details: 352-728-9790 or librarian@leesburgflorida.gov.

Affordable Care Act

The Tri-County Unified Progressives will host a presentation about how the Affordable Care Act works at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Marion County, 7280 S.E. 135th St., Summerfield.

Joseph Flynn, a retired insurance executive and business consultant, will be the speaker. Anna Wilson, a certified marketplace exchange navigator, will be available to help guide applicants through the enrollment process.

Spanish language assistance will be available.

Refreshments will be served. The event is open to the public. A $2 donation is suggested.

The Fellowship’s Community Service Committee is sponsoring the event.

Clam chowder tasting

A pre-Super Bowl party featuring Tony’s World Champion Chowder from Cedar Key is 7 p.m. Thursday in the office of Brian Kraus of the Clermont Raymond James Financial Services at the Clermont Financial Center, 1795 E. State Road 50, Suite A.

Participants are encouraged to wear their favorite football jersey.

By now millions of people have heard that Silicon Valley billionaire Tom Perkins compared progressive political speech to Kristallnacht, the night of religious violence that led to the death of 91 Jews and paved the way politically for the Nazi Reich and the Holocaust. Here’s what you probably don’t know: Perkins’ rage appears to have been fueled, at least in part, by a dispute over gardening.

That’s right: Gardening.

Perkins’ now-infamous screed for The Wall Street Journal is filled with bilious commentary about “the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.'” Bad as it is, Perkins is not the first billionaire to do that kind of thing. Hedge funder Stephen Schwarzman notoriously compared to a tax increase for people like him to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

Perkins continues to double down on his offensive comments. That proves that he is serious about these ugly opinions, and will lead many people to conclude that he is an unredeemable jerk. (See update below.) Kleiner Perkins, the investment firm Perkins help create, has already distanced itself from Perkins with an outraged tweet pointing out that he has long since left the organization. (The tweet might be interpreted thusly: Shut up, Tom.)

It’s important to understand, or at least attempt to understand, the mental state that produces such plutocratic rage. After all, our political and economic system gives billionaires an extraordinary influence over the lives of every individual in the country. It pays to investigate their emotional makeup, if only for our societal well-being.

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times provided context to what he rightly described as Perkins’ “ghastly outburst,” pointing to his past offenses (which include writing a vanity romance-novel project called “Sex and the Single Zillionaire”). Paul Krugman responded to the Perkins controversy by pointing to the “paranoia of the plutocrats,” and that’s undoubtedly a large part of the problem. But that still leaves an unanswered question: Paranoia about what, exactly?

There were several curious things about the Perkins editorial (besides, that is, the delusional comparison of political speech with the mass murder of innocent people solely on the basis of religion). The first was the special effort Perkins took to attack the San Francisco Chronicle, which, while a fine newspaper, is hardly the People’s World. The second was the mention of romance author Danielle Steel, who Perkins describes as “our number-one celebrity.” Perkins says that Steel was subject to “libelous and cruel attacks” in the Chronicle — presumably on orders received from the Occupy movement’s high command.

It doesn’t take a lot of research to discover the Danielle Steel is Tom Perkins’ ex-wife, or that the couple has maintained a close and friendly relationship after their divorce. Good for them — and we mean that. I suppose it’s gallant of Perkins, at least in some way, to rush to his ex-wife’s defense.

But over what? What sort of “leftist” attacks were made on the romance author in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle? Here’s what we discovered: It criticized a hedge. Specifically, it criticized this hedge, in an entirely nonpolitical one-paragraph item in the paper’s “Cityscape” feature.  That piece describes Steel’s landscaping flourish as “comically off-putting” and bemoans its harmful effect on the ideal of “friendly streets.”

Not only is the item entirely nonpolitical, but “Cityscape” writer John King doesn’t seem entirely certain that Steel is the present owner. He opts instead for the vaguer language that the mansion was “later inhabited by best-selling novelist Danielle Steel.” King’s point seems clear, and anything but personal: Houses and their gardens shouldn’t intrude on public sidewalks, and this one does.

Afterwards a Chronicle reporter asked Steel about the controversy. Steel said that her “security people” had recommended the hedge for privacy, then added: “Sometimes, I think San Francisco hates successful people. No matter what I do, people say nasty stuff. I mean the world is falling apart and people complain about my hedge. It’s a mystery.”

Steel went on to complain about city residents’ sense of style, saying “There’s no style, nobody dresses up — you can’t be chic there. It’s all shorts and hiking boots and Tevas — it’s as if everyone is dressed to go on a camping trip.”

That drew a pithy response from Chronicle blogger C.W. Nevius, who called her a “snob” and argued that she shouldn’t live in a conspicuously public home if she wants privacy. Steel wrote a letter objecting to that characterization and pointing to her own charitable work as proof of her good character.

Let’s be clear on one point: We take her at her word on that. There’s no need to tear down Steel’s character.  (It should also be noted that Steel never frames this as an issue of the “left,” but rather addresses matters of tone.) Nor do we have any desire to be drawn into the hedge controversy. We cover the worlds of politics, economics, and big business — scant preparation for the really contentious fields of gardening and home improvement. We will make only this simple observation: Nobody in the Chronicle criticized Steel’s wealth. There is nothing even vaguely leftist about disliking someone’s landscaping, or even in calling them a “snob.”

So why does Perkins target the left? He should be going after the Better Homes and Gardens crowd instead.

Oddly, Perkins also says that his screed was written in response to a Wall Street Journal editorial about “censors on campus.” That editorial argued that schools who suppressed bigoted speech were violating basic constitutional rights. But Perkins isn’t agreeing with them. He’s creating his own list of censored speech, with criticism of his own crowd at the top of the list.

What’s ironic about that is that the apparently unpleasant Perkins (he boasts about his ego frequently) has been the subject of almost relentlessly flattering press attention. That includes a puff piece about his yachting adventures from 60 Minutes, a news organization that has long since transformed itself from a hard-hitting journalistic operation to a puff-piece factory for the billionaire set.

There’s a pattern here. Billionaires like Tom Perkins are accustomed to being flattered, no matter how silly or nasty they sound. They view every form of criticism of the social peers — even of gardening choices — as a vicious personal attack, no matter how mildly it’s framed. They appear to have lost all real empathy for people who must live with the consequences of their actions, whether it’s an unsightly and intrusive hedge (make up your own joke about “hedge funders”; we’re tired) or the tax breaks and other favorable policies they promote for themselves with their wealth and influence.

Perkins does allude to at least one serious matter: the recent outbreaks of violence against Google employees in San Francisco. But it’s possible to both reject that violence and understand the social forces which give rise to it.

Perkins either mischaracterizes or fails to understand the outrage at play there: People don’t object to Google’s buses, which it uses to transport its employees between San Francisco and its Peninsula headquarters. They object to those buses’ illegal use of taxpayer-funded bus stops, which is symbolic of the way noblesse oblige further discomfits a dying middle class. And the “rising real-estate prices which … ‘techno geeks’ can pay” are ruining lives, while robbing a city of diversity, livability, and character.

Even as global financial leaders fret over inequality at Davos, Tom Perkins is using extremist rhetoric to shut down such talk among his social inferiors. After an ugly screed, inspired in part by a gardening dispute, one hesitates to imagine what Perkins has in mind for more progressive-minded one-percenters like those at Davos and Kleiner Perkins — a Night of the Long Pruning Shears, perhaps?

Perkins may not like to hear it, but rising wealth inequality is shattering our society, as San Francisco’s plight so amply demonstrates. There is no room left for middle-class life in a society dominated by excessive wealth. Perkins may choose to become outraged over trivial as well as serious offenses, but he’s in the process of losing the one treasure which money can’t guarantee yet: the respect of others.

(UPDATE: After defending his comments, as of this writing Perkins is speaking on Bloomberg TV. He is expressing “regret” only for the use of the word Kristallnacht, and is continuing to adamantly defend his premise. He is describing a world in which the “creative one percent” is being persecuted. His solution? “Let the rich do what the rich do.” In other words, he remains steadfast in his hatred of progressives and his belief in the “job creator” myth. Perkins also confirmed that the hedge incident was the original inspiration for his commentary.)

Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter:

www.twitter.com/rjeskow

Purposeful gardens — habitat, edible and sustainable — have been on the rise, and 2014 promises more of the same.

Chemical-free gardens for birds, butterflies and bees remain high on the gardener’s to-do list, and organically grown edibles play their own harvest-to-table role with health-conscious backyard gardeners.

Gardeners are also more cost conscious, turning discarded items like packing pallets into planters, planting from seed and composting kitchen scraps. In fact, composting is the new recycling, according to Peggy Krapf, a member of the Virginia Society of Landscape Designers.

People in general want to restore balance to their lives, so frivolous spending on more “things” is out, according to Susan McCoy, president of the Garden Media Group and a national garden trends spotter.

“They are beginning to truly understand the relationship between gardening and connecting with nature — and how this can lead to a fully satisfied, purposeful life,” says Susan.

Here, more garden gurus forecast their own idea of fun and purpose in the garden for 2014:

CHICKEN CHIC. Chicken keeping continues to attract more who want fresh eggs for their table and cute chickens for backyard buddies. The Peninsula Chicken Keepers had 30 people at its first meeting in 2010 and now include about 320 backyard chicken enthusiasts. — Carol Bartam, chicken keeper in Yorktown, Va.

MANLY MOVES. More masculine colors and styles in home and garden decor are showing up at markets and in stores because there’s a “role reversal of fortune,” where 40 percent of women are the sole or primary income earner and the number of stay-at-home dads continues to increase. — Tish Llaneza, owner of Countryside Gardens.

GARDEN JOURNALS. Master gardeners across the United States are using Nature’s Notebook to track bloom times on sentinel species to make bloom calendars, which, in turn, gives scientists data on climate change. Gardeners can also use phenology (seasonal changes in plants and animals from year to year) information to understand the relationships between garden pest outbreaks and timing of the plant phenology to know when best to apply Integrated Pest Management strategies. — LoriAnne Barnett, education coordinator Nature’s Notebook

EDIBLES AND MORE. Gardeners are integrating edibles into woody ornamental and perennial gardens; planting native species to benefit bees and other insects; recycling objects into creative plant containers; and using Pinterest to share ideas and inspire others to garden. — Nicholas Staddon, director of new plants for Monrovia, a plant brand sold at garden centers nationally.

BEES MATTER. Saving our pollinators is big and getting bigger. Everyone needs to read the Aug. 19, 2013, Time magazine with the cover that spotlights “A World Without Bees: The price we’ll pay if we don’t figure out what’s killing the honeybee.”

Home gardeners really need to learn about keeping blooms coming; easy and quick-growing cover crops that can fill a space to provide excellent habitat; and how to let go of chemicals, even certified organic pesticides can be harmful to bees. — Lisa Ziegler of The Gardener’s Workshop, an online garden shop.

CONTAINER CRAZE. Containers can spice up a yard without a lot of cost and effort. For instance, bamboo stems can be painted colors to match the season, celebration or your home’s exterior palette and then inserted into pots that may already contain evergreens or annuals like winter pansies or summer petunias. For easy-use containers, Smart Pots are lighter and cheaper than ceramic containers; the large, raised-bed size acts as its own weed-block when placed on the ground and provides a temporary garden space if you can’t install a garden bed where you live. Reviews for the Big Bag Bed version are good on Amazon, where they can be ordered, as well as www.smartpots.com. — Marie Butler, horticulture curator at the Virginia Zoo, where she specializes in creative containers

REPURPOSE, REUSE. There’s a continued focus on using recycled building materials. I was surfing the net, looking for compost bin designs and came across a wide range of recycled indoor and outdoor garden furniture using repurposed pallets. People are staining and painting them or leaving them natural and creating some really beautiful stuff! I’ve also seen new ways of vertical gardening using recycled materials such as pallets, felt pockets and even things like two-liter bottles hung from strings. — Grace Chapman, director of horticulture at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Va.

KEEP IT SIMPLE. Classic elegance in colors and landscaping will be popular in 2014. Plant drifts of similar or blending colors and mix a single color with white in containers, outdoor fabrics, or furnishings. Buy quality products which will last for years — and eco-friendly products with a smaller carbon footprint. Use slow-growing plants like boxwoods which live for many years and natural materials like stone or brick that get more beautiful with age. — Peggy Krapf

PERFECT PLANTS. Re-blooming and extended bloom plants are hot. Color is paramount. Dwarf and compact plants are in demand. Plants that are less likely to become maintenance nightmares are dominating the market, therefore “low maintenance” is less of a buzz word and more of a reality. Plants that can provide color or interest in multiple seasons enable customers to enjoy their landscape all year. — Allan Hull, nursery manager at Peninsula Hardwood Mulch

IMPERFECT OK. Increasingly, homeowners are relaxing their notions of what’s “right” in their landscapes to embrace seasonal drama and its disorder. In spring, weeks of bright daffodil flowers are worth weeks of un-mown bulb foliage recharging for next year’s display. In summer gardens, sequential pockets of bloom are enjoyed with no effort to achieve all-over-bloom all of the time. In fall, brilliant fallen leaves are savored with no rush to clean up. Winter landscapes are dotted with dried grasses and seed heads left for the birds. These are well-maintained properties kept with a different mindset. — Sally Ferguson, a Pawlett, Vt., master gardener and gardening and outdoor living communicator

By Maureen Gilmer
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services


Posted Jan. 14, 2014 @ 7:17 pm

GHNS

By Sarah Cosgrove
Friday, 24 January 2014

The Association of Professional landscapers (APL) has announced the shortlist for this year’s awards.

More than 60 entries were deliberated upon by an expert panel of judges including Richard Barnard (Hillier Landscapes), Bob Sweet (former RHS Head of Garden Judging), Sorrel Everton (Gardens Illustrated), Robin Templar Williams (Robin Williams and Associates), and James Steele-Sargent (Arun Landscapes). 

The shortlist is as follows:

Project Value Under £15,000: Garden Box Landscape Design, Living Gardens 2008, Muddy Wellies, Red River Landscapes,  The Real Garden Company, Twigs Gardens.

Project Value £15,000 – £25,000:  Arbworx, Garden House Design, MJT Design Landscapes, Tendercare Nurseries.

Project Value £25,000 – £50,000: Landspace, Oakley Landscapes, Robert Charles Landscapes, TKE Landscaping.

Project Value £50,000 – £100,000: Garden Builders, Hambrooks, The Teamlandscapers.

Project Value £100,000 – £250,000: Linden Landscapes Domestic Gardens, Millhouse Landscapes, Outdoor Space Design, The Teamlandscapers.

Project Value Over £250,000: Garden Art Designs, Stewart Landscape Construction.

Soft Landscaping: Big Fish Landscapes, Tendercare Nurseries.

Hard Landscaping:  Landspace, Liverpool Landscapes Ltd, Millhouse Landscapes, Shore Landscapes,  TKE Landscaping.

Overall Design Build: Frogheath Landscapes, Garden Art Designs, Garden Builders, Landspace, Roger Gladwell Landscapes.

Special Feature: Amenity Trees Landscapes, Roger Gladwell Landscapes, Vandenberg-Hider Landscape Design and Construction.

Young Achievers Award: Hambrooks, Wildroof Landscapes.

Judging panel chair Barnard said: “With an increase in entry numbers this year, the judging panel were burning the midnight oil to complete an intensive day judging schemes of exceptionally high standards.

“I believe the optimism in our industry over the last year has benefited the quality of schemes, which showcase the importance of awards and their value to members and the industry.”

The awards ceremony, sponsored by Bradstone, takes place on Wednesday 12 March at new venue Gibson Hall, London.

Sponsors are Andrew Plus, British Seed Houses, British Sugar Topsoil, Classiflora, Easigrass,  Greentech, and Sovereign Turf.

1:00 AM

McLaughlin Garden in South Paris plans lectures on a variety of topics, including Mediterranean plants that should grow here

By Tom Atwell

In the dreary days of winter, a trip to the Mediterranean sounds good.

McLaughlin Garden in South Paris can’t put you on an airplane, but it can give you a couple of hours of Mediterranean flowers at 4 p.m. Feb. 26 as part of the garden’s winter lecture series. The lecture by Harriet Robinson is actually called Mediterranean Plants in Maine Gardens, but that could be enough to give you a midwinter break.

McLaughlin Garden is offering seven programs in its series, which runs at 4 p.m. every Wednesday from Feb. 19 to April 2. Not only are all of the lectures free, if you arrive early, you can have free tea and snacks to go along with the companionship of other gardeners. Walk-ins are welcome.

Stephanie Edwards, garden operations manager, said the talks fulfill several purposes.

“We like to bring in people from local businesses, so we have a connection to them,” she said. “Part of our mission is horticultural education, so it helps with that.”

Judy Florenz, who with Becky Burke is co-chairwoman of the programs committee, said Robinson’s talk was a last-minute addition, to reach seven programs.

“She is a member of the committee and has a doctorate in archaeology, so she spends a lot of time in Greece,” Florenz said. “She said, ‘Oh, I have a lot of photos of plants, so I can put something together.’”

Other programs in the McLaughlin series, co-sponsored by McLaughlin’s affiliated Foothills Garden Club, include beekeeping by Carol Cotrill, president of the Maine Beekeepers Association, Feb. 19; Growing Cut Flowers by Cindy Creps of Meadow Ridge Perennial Farm, March 5; Garden Blogs by Jean Potuchek, March 12; Growing and Using Lavender by Betsey-Ann Golon of Common Folk Farm, March 19; Landscaping and Landscape Design by Eli Goodwin of Goodwin Nursery, March 26; and Not Your Grandmother’s Geraniums by Cindy Tibbetts of Hummingird Farm on April 2.

• Merryspring Nature Center in Camden has speakers at noon Tuesdays, but not all of them are about gardening. They are free to members, $5 for non-members. Highlights (for me, anyway) include New Plants for 2014 by Hammon Buck, Feb. 25; Sedges of Maine by Matt Arsenault, March 4; Gardening for Birds with Native Plants by Sharon Turner May, 13; and Tending the Perennial Garden in June by Wendy Andresen. For a complete list go to merryspring.org.

• Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens has little going on for public programs until April. Lois Berg Stack, an ornamental horticulture professor at the University of Maine, will teach Soil Science for Gardeners on April 15 and 16 at $120 for members and $150 for non-members; and Brady Barber and Lisa Cowan will teach Shaping a Natural Site into a Landscaped Space on April 24-26 at $150 for members and $180 for nonmembers.

Garden clubs also offer a lot of different programs.

• The Belfast Garden Club has an extensive schedule of programs, usually at 2 p.m. Tuesdays, but sometimes later in the day and not every week. Highlights include Bonsai by Aaron Bowden at 2 p.m. Feb. 18 and Container Gardening with Liz Stanley at 2 p.m. April 8, both at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, 95 Court St., Belfast. For a complete list go to belfastgardenclub.org.

• Longfellow Garden Club in Portland is beginning its 10th decade, so some of its programs will be on club history. Gardening programs include Gardening for Hummingbirds with Anne Murphy of Gnome Landscapes at 11 a.m. April 8 at Woodfords Congregational Church, 202 Woodford St.

(Continued on page 2)

Were you interviewed for this story? If so, please fill out our accuracy form

Send question/comment to the editors

Tweet

Fernando Wong has long been impressed with Palm Beach because of its residents’ history of interest in horticulture and landscaping.

“They take their landscapes very seriously,” said Wong, 38, who started his own landscape-design firm nine years ago in Miami Beach. ”It’s a world-class place for landscape design.”

Wong and partner Tim Johnson, who oversees the business side of Fernando Wong Outdoor Living Design, recently opened a satellite office on Worth Avenue, to better handle the firm’s growing roster of clients around town, in North Palm Beach and on Jupiter Island.

Wong’s first job on the island came about three years ago, after local decorator Lillian Fernandez saw an ad for his firm, featuring a photograph of a Miami project, in a design magazine.

The look of the garden in the photograph struck Fernandez as “something new and different for Palm Beach,” the decorator said. After meeting him in Miami and seeing a few of his projects with her clients for an oceanfront house, Fernandez was sold on Wong’s aesthetic and recommended him for the job.

“What I appreciate about Fernando is his artistic sensibility and his ability to listen to what clients want,” she said. “He is also a quick study, able to conceive the landscape plan and sketch it out on the spot, and then install it without many changes. Most clients don’t like surprises. There are no surprises with Fernando. His designs are thorough, complete and workable.”

Fernandez has introduced Wong to several clients and has hired him to do work at her own home.

“Lillian Fernandez really opened the doors for us in Palm Beach,” said Johnson.

The firm is currently involved in about a dozen projects on the island and in the surrounding area. Wong also is participating in the upcoming Red Cross Show House.

Another Palm Beach decorator, Leta Austin Foster, also was instrumental in bringing Wong to the attention of Palm Beach clients. The two met in 2011 at a DCOTA event, hit it off and began working on projects together, with Foster recommending the landscape designer to her clients.

“That’s why we opened the office here,” said Johnson, who worked out of Foster’s Via Mizner office with Wong for a short time before they found a space of their own in December.

Two people work full time in Palm Beach. A staff of eight works out of Wong’s Miami Beach headquarters. Wong and Johnson plan to spend half their time working out of the island office.

On the island, the firm’s primary focus is on residential projects. Wong tailors each garden design to the architectural style of the house, as well as to the tastes and lifestyles of clients.

“I like to think of a garden as series of rooms,” he said, explaining that the style of a landscape design can range from traditional to contemporary. Scale, proportion and layering are essential ingredients in gardens, Wong said.

“I think about how the design will age,” he said.

Thus, he advocates the use of native plants because they will do better over time. “I don’t like the idea of a client having to replace plants every year.”

That idea was fully developed when Wong was hired by Karen Eggers to design the landscape at a new North End house. Eggers wished to create a so-called green home, certified according to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

Introduced to Wong through her builder, Tim Givens, Eggers was pleased with the landscape designer’s ideas and his enthusiasm for the project.

“Fernando understood the aesthetic of the house, which is Art Deco, and had a thorough knowledge of drought-resistant plants,” she said. Eggers’ home, completed last fall, received its platinum LEED certification in December. It is the only house in town that is LEED certified.

For more information about Fernando Wong Outdoor Living Design, call 515-0213 or visit fernandowongold.com.